Tales from FAR Manor

We’ve all seen them or dealt with them: they cut in line , or they shoplift stuff & try to “return” it , or they scuttle our weekend pla...

I stumbled across Journler in a MacDevCenter post today, and it took about 10 minutes to get me hooked — at last, I can write posts offlin...

A recent post from The Homeless Guy prompted me to think about this while I was in front of my blog for a change. He wrote, “ I think I'...

Seagull: someone who makes a lot of noise, craps all over everything, then flies away. It’s been a while since the last one of these, before...

... on the road ahead... and it says: “JOB BURNOUT - KEEP GOING.” The question is: where do I turn off?

A while back, I wrote that Ken Lay (and Jeff Skilling) would stay out of jail because Bush-league would write them pardons on his way out t...

I'm no sociologist, but that’s never stopped me from pontificating. In a world of change, one constant is that there is always a boom re...

Yesterday, I came in from doing something or other, and walked down the hall toward my bedroom. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement ...

Family Man posts a lot of great stories; today’s was about The Hay Field . It reminded me of a story about Uncle John, a colorful character ...

You get paid on Friday... next Friday... and you don’t have time to drag yourself to the theater anyway. Tonight’s selection is a horror fl...

I have to hand it to Alltel — the new DSL box came in today, the most optimistic end of the 3–5 days the support guy said it would take. The...

Some brief scenes of work lately.... I got moved to a different cube last week, after being told I wasn’t moving, which in turn came after ...

That could actually be the subject of a voluminous blog in its own right, but for now we’ll limit it to one thing: he hasn’t learned that “m...

I should have known better than to think I was going to spend Saturday at the resort. My first hint should have been the phone starting to r...

Mrs. Fetched told me yesterday (Thursday) that she was thinking about taking the kids up to a resort where we have a membership, about an ho...

This afternoon, as I was pounding on work stuff & Mrs. Fetched was doing the same with her own, she told me: “I can’t wait for this week...

Two projects blew up on me at work this week. That wouldn’t usually be a major problem — happens all the time — except that I got volunteere...

Daughter Dearest has already bailed from her first job, after just over a week. Some b***h of a customer got snippy with her, which upset he...

Well, I can’t say it on a public mailing list using my real name, anyway. But it’s too funny not to share. The following conversation took p...

The usual pre-visitor cleaning frenzy is well under way at FAR Manor. Let me be frank here: I usually don’t bother doing any cleaning until ...

When you’re confronted with a device designed to be used against you, how do you react? Geeks find their own uses for technology. This is p...

One of the good things about the Techcomm list is that it’s not archived. That means we can gripe about our jobs, or make jokes about Britne...

Daughter Dearest wound up, on a Sunday afternoon of all things, being the only waitress at the lodge. The other one called in sick. She sum...

That’s what Mrs. Fetched calls them, anyway. It’s growing wild in front of an azalea along the driveway. Each flower is about the size of a ...

I picked up Daughter Dearest from her first day being a waitress. She was exhausted, footsore, and had about $35 in tips. Seems that the lod...

My basil plant finally got big enough where I felt comfortable harvesting some leaves for pesto. Next thing I knew, it was blooming. I’m goi...

Taken in front of a Mexican restaurant yesterday. I just happened to have my camera with me. The bees were all over the lavender, but didn’t...

Another gem from Techcomm. There were red faces in the Ordnance Survey office when its English surveyors returned from compiling a list of h...

Answer: one stuck in your head that you’re dancing to . This is all Daughter Dearest’s fault. Night before last, she introduced me to Cascad...

Today is June 6, 2006, considered the Day of the Beast by some (6/6/6, geddit?). JohnB on the Techcomm list dredged up some information that...

Daughter Dearest had a little fun with the camera and iPhoto today, and came up with a couple of good ones. She was gracious enough to allow...

Go visit Shout Out Out Out and click the link for “Forever Indebted.” The lyrics are quite rude, but sometimes The Truth doesn’t come in p...

The wedding shoot went OK. No dead batteries, no mangled tapes, nobody fell out of the balcony/hallway (which would have been me since I was...

It began at 6 a.m. this morning (and I especially don’t like getting up that early on weekends) to help set up the church yard sale. It con...

As the time for refinishing the wood floor in our living room draws ever closer (i.e. we’ll get it done someday ), questions come up. One of...

We picked up The Boy yesterday, planning to help him put a tire on his car (parked near some apartments close to the retail district). The t...

Mrs. Fetched’s mom bought a trailer from a relative; I think the motive is to fix it up and rent it out. The kitchen was in pretty bad shape...

I have to confess that many years of using Macs, combined with a monkey curiousity that led to deep familiarity with the platform, has spoi...

I still think I should have gotten you the Victoria’s Secret gift card, but I’m glad you liked the live flowers....

Lay and Skilling are guilty . Unfortunately, I doubt that it will translate to real jail time. The two of them are already appealing their c...

The Boy came by the in-laws’s place for Sunday dinner, a sort of post-Mother’s Day thing. He came walking in with his lip ring (gag) in plac...

The baby wren decided to give his wings a try today, and ended up in the corner of the garage, with frantic parents dive-bombing Mrs. Fetche...

Lobster’s been gone... six weeks as of tomorrow. No, he hasn’t tried coming back, and he pretty well burned his bridges anyway, but you hear...

I realized late last night (a week too late, and a couple hours too late to mention) that I’d let Tales from FAR Manor ’s first anniversary ...

A new pastor was visiting his parishioners. At one house it seemed obvious that someone was at home, but no answer came to his repeated knoc...

Another gem dug up in my email clean-out As technical writers go, I’m relatively lucky. In my 20-odd (and I do mean odd) year career, I’ve ...

Saw this in an email a while back. One day God was looking down at Earth and saw all of the evil that was going on. He decided to send an an...

I should have known that this would bite us in the @$$ some day. When we got our smellphones, we wound up on a rather generous plan, minute-...

If your cellphone bill looks like ours this month, you probably don’t have the wherewithal to go see a movie either (more about that above)....

In an example of synchronicity, articles about first drafts hit both 43 Folders and MacDevCenter today. 43 Folders suggests Just Doing It,...

If you ever wondered what this Internet thing is good for, check out GetHuman.com . This is something you would never have seen in the pre-...

Current music: DI.fm Goa-Psy Trance I came in from work, ran out to check over a presentation about a power line running past the church (an...

Whether you’re a mother or another, I hope it was a pleasant one for you! If you didn’t get any flowers, please accept these Mother’s Day Ro...

M.A.E.’s back, and brought a cold with her. Fortunately, the other female type (whom her acquaintances call “Psycho”) is not. The Boy consid...

I had a peek at the nest, evening before last, and found a new occupant. The picture sucks, but that was the best angle I could get & I ...

I got several phone calls at work late last week, mostly having to do with formatting and printing the term papers the boys finished up (aft...

Monday, I mentioned that The Boy was having tire problems, and put the (mostly bald) fake spare on. I said at the time, “pray it holds up un...