FAR Manor, 2058: Crash & Burn

Intro
Vision the First

Vision the Second.

We are heading into pessimistic territory here, but by no means the worst case: Wars abroad and chaos at home tore apart what little of America was left after GW Bush was through with it. Suburbia emptied out, then was repopulated by urban refugees once food supply lines collapsed for good. Climate change hit hard west of the Mississippi; the plains again became a Dust Bowl while sea levels rose roughly 20 feet (and counting), swamping most of the world’s great cities and inundating several small nations. Refugees from the former bread-basket collided with those fleeing the coasts, and the ensuing free-for-all was the final nail in the coffin of the US. The most optimistic estimates put the population of the former nation at just over 40 million; this remnant is scattered along most of the new coastal areas and around the Great Lakes. Planet Georgia’s inhabitants live mostly along the coast and the old pre-Fall city of Agusta (Augusta). Lately, both the weather patterns and civilization have begun to settle into new configurations…

Old Guy sat impassively in the wagon, cradling the ancient carbine, watching over the troop. Four of the younger folk sat or stood around the wagon, keeping watch although the whole month had gone by without seeing any hostiles. This far north, the wildlife had mostly forgotten about humans and made for easy pickings — this much seemed like the only luck on an unlucky trek. Old Guy had directed them north and west from Agusta, backtracking only once to put a wide margin between themselves and the ghosts that surely ruled Ol’ Lanna.

The old roads were more overgrown the farther they went; since skirting Ol’ Lanna, they had to cut their way through much of it. Fallen trees often blocked the way now, and they settled on having one horse pull the wagon and the second ready to pull trees out of the way. Kudzu covered the road; after rolling into a ditch once, Frenk and Tanni walked ahead and poked the ground to make sure the pavement was where they thought. It was slow going, unlucky, and the youths had begun to grumble when they were sure Old Guy wouldn’t hear.

Two nights ago, they had slept uneasily in a crumbling building at the center of a long-abandoned town; Old Guy called it “the old courthouse.” It was a government building, he reassured them, so they would offend no ghosts. But Tanni thought perhaps he had been lucky that the dream he’d dreamed in that place was just out of reach… to grasp it would have perhaps been grasping madness. Ghosts went where they would, Frenk’s da had once said, and those men who were more at home on the job might well haunt the offices and work stations that defined them in life. Since that night, they had managed all of eight or nine miles, going into a place where even the signs of long-abandoned dwellings were thinning out. It was an empty place, one that the kudzu and pines would try to fill in vain.

Around mid-afternoon, they reached a crumbling culvert. Old Guy leaned forward to look at the sides, and grunted in satisfaction. A creek ran under the old road here, quick and clear. “We’ll stop on the other side,” he said. “You can take the horses down for water, and take a break. It’s maybe a mile from here, up that hill and straight on.”

Take a break, the old pre-Fall phrase for a short siesta. Old Guy’s old way of speaking was one thing; the way he spoke person to person, low and almost slurring the words, made him nearly impossible to understand. But when he stood before the people with a song or story, it rang out loud and clear. He wasn’t just the eldest of the people, he was their bard (a word even older than the pre-Fall world, but it had come back in this time). That the people could afford such a luxury was a matter of honor and prestige — and a matter of life and death to Old Guy, whose other skills were suited mostly to a pre-Fall world of elektrissy and cahs. But anyone who had lived his entire adult life surviving the Fall and its aftermath commanded a modicum of respect and obedience; when he had asked the warlord for five young men and a wagon for a winter expedition, all was given without question.

Everyone worked their way to the creek, hacking a path through the ubiquitous plant life, leaving Old Guy to stand — or sit — watch. None of them felt guilty about this; he was often arrogant as a warlord, rude as a drunken teenager, and someone had to keep watch. Besides, they would have had to carry him: both feet and part of one leg were gone, long-ago victims to a pre-Fall disease they called die-beaters (Frenk often wondered at that name; a sickness that ate you piece by piece didn’t seem to have anything to do with living forever). But most of all, he had the carbine: a pre-Fall weapon, even older than Old Guy himself, and as old as he was he could shoot it better than any of the people.

So Old Guy sat in the wagon, under his hat, while the others filled flasks and watered the horses. Clouds were coming and going today; it was warm in the shade and nearly hot in the sun. The heat never seemed to bother him, but he would spend those few cold nights near the end of Janiary huddled close to a fire. After a quiet time, Frenk brought a flask of water to the wagon and offered it to Old Guy. He drank half of it at a gulp, nodded to Frenk, drained it then handed it back. Frenk turned back toward the creek, then stopped and turned back, putting a hand on the wagon and looking up at Old Guy. The old man looked back down and waited.

“You said we are nearly there,” Frenk said. “You know where we’re going then,” he said, looking expectantly at Old Guy. He merely nodded and looked back at Frenk.

Frenk looked back toward the creek, and leaned into the wagon. “Where?” he almost whispered. Asking a direct question, especially of an elder, was a grievous breach of protocol — unless one were inquiring about that person’s health or comfort.

But Old Guy was Old Guy, and only chuckled. “I wondered when you’d finally get around to it,” he said. “I knew those louts wouldn’t have the nerve or the wish to know.

“We’re going to my old home, Frenk, where I lived before the Fall. I’m going to make my peace with my family, since I’ll likely be joinin’ them before long.”

Frenk’s eyes grew to wheel size. “Their ghosts will be waiting.”

Old Guy laughed and shook his head. “Na. They won’t bother anyone but me, if they bother anyone. Tanni might have one of his dreams, though.

“Okay, go tell the others to come back up. We should get there before it gets dark.”

It took nearly an hour of cutting and pulling to make that last mile. Tanni spied the cemetery on a hill to the right, but nobody worried about the spirits of those who had a proper pre-Fall burial. Shortly past the cemetery, and on the left, stood an overgrown post with a sagging cross-piece pointing toward the edge of the road.

“This is it,” Old Guy said. “My old home.”

Frenk wandered over to the post, while the other youths chattered and worked at clearing what Old Guy said was the driveway, and stepped on something smooth and firm. He brushed away the leaves, and lifted a rusting metal sign; the remnants of a pair of chains showed how it had hung on the post. There was writing, which only Old Guy and Frenk knew how to read; it said simply: FAR Manor. He brought the sign to Old Guy.

“My dad called it that,” Old Guy grunted. “He had stupid names like that for everything.”

Finally, the driveway was clear enough to bring the wagon off the road. Old Guy strapped a pod to the bottom of his longer leg, picked up his crutches from the wagon floor, and slithered down to the ground. He paused only to make sure the carbine was secure, then led the hushed group to a large house, bigger than a warlord’s. Time and the Fall had not been kind to it; most of the windows were broken, and a large tree had at one time crushed through the roof of one wing (“my parents’ room,” Old Guy explained). The front door stood open; Tanni (the lightest) went in while the others went to work salvaging the good glass, wrapping the panes in old blankets and storing them in the wagon. Pre-Fall glass was hard to come by, and much better than modern glass. Enough glass might make this expedition worthwhile.

Tanni said the floor was weak but held him. “Go on,” Old Guy said. “Even if you fall through, you won’t go more than a couple of feet. The deepest part is under the bedroom, and I’ll go in there.” He didn’t feel it necessary to mention that the remains of his parents were in that room.

They filed into the house, scaring up birds and other wildlife. The few pieces of furniture were decrepit, moldering things barely suitable for the nests they supported. The walls had been ripped apart at some time, and the wiring was gone: Old Guy was not the first person to visit FAR Manor since the Fall, it seemed. But the looters were only after wire; the bathroom mirror and a glass door going to a porch were intact. The toilets were also whole, but nobody used those anymore.

Tanni went up the groaning stairs to check the upper rooms while the other youths carried their finds out to the wagon. Old Guy made his way down the hall, clearing the occasional spider web, until he came to a closed door at the end. The door resisted and protested his opening it, but Old Guy managed to push it open far enough to slip through. The crushed bodies under the tree had gone to bones, but otherwise the room was as he’d left it. He pushed the door closed and leaned against it.

Old Guy had lied to Frenk, but lying was his stock in trade and one believed Old Guy only at one‘s peril. There were ghosts here, all right. But Old Guy had been truthful about one thing: they weren’t interested in the others.

I told you to take care of yourself, didn’t I? his dad whispered. You’re lucky you still got all your fingers.

Why did you bother coming back? his mom asked. They obviously hadn’t gotten the word about new cultural mores, Old Guy thought.

“I came to wish Dad a happy birthday… today, if I got the calendar right. Your hundredth. And I came to say I’m sorry for all the stuff I put you guys through.”

Dad’s ghost made a sniff sound. You remembered. Good job. So what are you doing with yourself?

“I’m the bard in Agusta. I didn’t go on the world tour, but everyone still turns out to hear me sing and tell stories.”

That’s good, I guess, Mom’s ghost replied. At least you did something with that talent, instead of wasting it on that screaming crap.

“Huh. We all scream on new moon nights now. It’s how we chase away the other ghosts.”

Figures, Dad said. Is there anything left out there?

“Not much. A few cities. They say Chicago has electricity; one of the old nuke plants is still running. Could be a bunch of bullshit, though.”

Probably. I suppose my diary got rotted in the shelf over there, or started a fire.

“Nope. It’s in the library in Agusta. A couple of people, the ones who know how to read anyway, look at it from time to time. They say it gives them strange dreams, though.”

Dreams fade, Dad said. So do ghosts, Mom chimed in. We’ve been waiting for you. We’ll probably move on, now that you came. From the looks of it, you’ll join us before much longer.

“Yeah. They call me Old Guy now. The oldest man in Agusta, if you can believe it.”

A thumping noise came from under the floor, breaking the spell. Once again, Old Guy was alone in the room. The only thing in here worth salvaging was already in his memory, and he muscled the door open and stumped through, yanking it shut behind him. He made his way outside, and followed the sound of voices around the side of the house. Four of them stood there on the concrete between two garages, amazingly clear.

“Tanni said there was a back door down there,” Frenk said. “He’s checking it out. There’s a big old desk in that little brown shed over there — it’s too big to get out, but it was put in some way.”

“Sure. It comes apart. Lift the top off, and there’s screws underneath, I think. You can take it apart and carry out the pieces.”

Three of them went back to take the desk apart, and Frenk poked his head into the detached garage. “Pretty much empty in here.”

“If the roof looks good, we’ll sleep in there tonight, then. Have you looked in this garage yet?”

Frenk stuck his head through the door, ignoring the question; they were used to Old Guy’s ill-mannered ways by now. “Two old-time vehicles. We should get the sheet metal and glass from these, too.”

The others presently came by, carrying the dismantled desk, and then joined Frenk in cutting up the two vehicles. The larger of the two had a single word, Explorer, in chrome on the back. More blankets for the glass; the wagon would be fairly crowded on the way home. At least the way back was already cut. One of them snapped the Explorer off the sheet metal and tacked it to the back of the wagon, watching Old Guy for his reaction. Old Guy simply nodded; he’d lived here in the years before the Fall, and part-way into it, but it was new territory and they truly were explorers.

A sudden shout left Old Guy scrambling to unlimber the carbine, nearly falling off his crutches before the others caught and steadied him. If it hadn’t been for that, he might have shot Tanni when he burst around the side of the house, waving what looked like a red stick.

“Copper pipe!” he shouted. “A whole pile of it, stacked underneath the house!”

The others forgot everything: the hardships of the trip, the bad dreams, the bad luck, their resentment of Old Guy. An ancient wooden desk was a good find, sheet metal and glass were always useful, but copper pipe was treasure. They rushed to the back door, leaving Old Guy shaking his head and getting a better grip on the carbine.

“Damn,” he said to nobody. “I still don’t remember that being down there.” The warlord would take a share, to be sure, but the six of them were now rich. For the youngsters, it meant prestige, wives, all the good things. Old Guy had all the prestige he wanted and the attention of women when it suited him, but it was still good. Perhaps he would have his share made into bracers or jewelry; he could work it into a story. He would go the way of all folk, sooner or later, but someone else could become the bard. Meanwhile, all of them would have a story to tell.

Vision the Third

It’s Friday

And this is my state of mind at the moment.

FAR Manor, 2058: Happy Landings

Intro

Vision the First.

This is one of the more optimistic scenarios I can imagine in the next 51 years: Civilization reconfigured itself around natural, locally-produced energy rather than collapsing. There’s still a USA, but it’s a loose federation of independent regions. Planet Georgia was originally part of New Dixie, which was variously a white supremacist paradise or a dictatorship dressed up in a theocracy, but by this time has balkanized into a collection of freeholds and city-states. FAR Manor is now part of the New Hope Freeholders’ Community.

Climate change missed the “runaway” scenario, although a big chunk of Greenland ice let go in 2032 and flooded most of the seaports. Population declined without too much starvation or all-out war…

“Hop it, kids!” Mama yelled down the hall, harvesting some grumbles. “The digester’s clogged! I’ll fix breakfast on the patio while you’re taking care of it.”

As usual, Martina and Bobby were the first two moving, walking through the kitchen while Mama packed a crate with pans and food. “No gas?” Martina chirped.

“Nope,” Mama said, looking her over. Martina had a baby on the way, their first in a long time, and was just beginning to show. “You guys grab the tools and wait for the rest of ’em. Don’t reward ’em for being slow, right?”

“I heard that,” laughed Miguel, entering the kitchen. “You need some help with that crate, Mama?”

“Nah. But you can pump me a bucket of water while they’re getting the tools out.”

Mama had the fire going in the patio stove before Miguel brought the water, and it was starting to steam by the time the rest joined Martina, Bobby, and Miguel at the digester. Thank God I’m upwind, she thought, as the whoops and laughter told her what the smell was like when they lifted the cap. She looked up at the windmill, turning slowly in the morning breeze. They were pretty well off here at FAR Manor — there was usually enough juice for lights, and nearly always enough to run the small refrigerator. Air conditioning was a distant memory, but fans usually worked when needed the most, and they slept outside in screen tents most of the summer anyway. This time of year was pleasant, if a little cool for outside; the first frost would likely come in a week or two, and they would soon be harvesting and canning the last of the warm-weather veggies. With the digester down, though, they’d be cooking outside for a week or so until the methane pressure built back up.

Clad in their work smocks, the kids worked quickly to get the hardened muck out of the digester, tossing it on the Next Year compost heap. Once the biscuits were cooking in the Dutch oven, and the omelets were going, she turned to find all the boys — and two of the girls — standing on the benches around the open digester and pissing in it. Modesty these days was like gasoline: hard to come by, and mostly not missed. (“Boys” and “girls” — they were all adults, but she was Mama and they were the kids. None of them were hers — her only child sailed out of New Savannah on a merchant ship — but in another sense, they were.)

“Throw a couple handfuls of wood chips in there if you’re gonna do that!” Mama called. “And wash up after!”

“We know!” they chorused. Of course they did; the important parts of biochemistry were taught in fourth grade.

Don’t hassle the people doing the crap work, Daughter Dearest, Dad — or the part of her that used Dad’s voice — whispered in her head. You can’t afford to alienate them, especially.

I know, she answered. They expect me to hassle them, though. Just like I expected you to hassle me.

He laughed. You gonna work ’em ’till they drop today?

“All morning, anyway,” she laughed aloud. “This afternoon, we’ll do something really strenuous, like weaving kudzu baskets and deciding what to take to the community Thanksgiving dinner.”

“Plannin’ the day, Mama?” Liliana patted Mama on the shoulder and surveyed the cooktop. Mama was getting ready to start the omelets. “I was kinda hopin’ me and Roberto could get a little sleep here after breakfast.” Roberto stood grinning on the edge of the patio, holding her rifle and his bow. One of the cow dogs sat at amiable attention next to Roberto, grinning just like the boy and reminding Mama of a dog they had when she was even younger than these two.

“Yeah, if you sleep. I know how you two keep yourselves awake all night.” She rolled her eyes. “Newlyweds.”

Liliana just grinned. “I think we finally wore each other out this morning. We’ll sleep.”

“Nothing happening with the cows, I guess.”

Roberto shook his head. “Not even a coyote. We left the other dogs down at the pasture, we’ll hear ’em if there’s a problem.”

“Anything I can help with here?” Liliana asked.

“Nah, you two go wash up with the others. You both can help carry it in after.” A stray breeze carried the sound of the other kids chattering around the pump. “You missed the excitement, by the way. The digester clogged and the other kids took care of it.”

Roberto wrinkled his nose. “Oh, is that what we smelled coming up here? Give me night watchman duty any time!” The couple walked to the pump, arms around each other. The dog followed them a few steps, turned and sniffed toward the patio, then trotted back to lay on the cool stones.

Good bunch of kids there, Dad spoke up again. You’ve done well — I never did make this place home like you have.

“You almost got there, Dad,” Mama said. “You said it yourself. The last thing you wrote, I think.” She thought about Dad’s old diary, the oldest pages printed off his blog from back when Internet was something you could access just about anywhere (not just the occasional day-trip to the library in town), most of it in his loopy scrawl with an occasional photo or drawing pasted in. This was the time of year… tomorrow, in fact, she would gather the kids on the porch and read some of it to them, contrasting those early oft-despairing rants with the peace he’d realized in the last few months of his life. She thought she would end this year’s reading with one of her favorites: We were refined in the crucible of chaos, depopulation, and Pharisee warlords, and have emerged a purer, stronger people. We have come through the fire with hard-won lessons, and this is perhaps the greatest of them all: unbounded energy does not lead to unbounded happiness, quite the contrary. In the end, we have gained more than we lost.

And that was true. People had to travel in those days, just to get far enough away from home and work to rest. And then they would rush from place to place, wearing out themselves and their machinery and never really finding any rest. Compared to those times, every day at home was a vacation.

“Kids!” she called. “It’s ready! Someone come help me bring it in!”

Vision the Second

FAR Manor, 2058: Intro

Here follow a series of possible futures for both FAR Manor and America. Each of them will be set in an oil-depleted world, in late November of 2058, on or near my 100^th birthday. (While I’d like to live that long, I might have come to regret that desire in some of these futures. I had planned to be around in at least one of the three, but none of them quite worked out that way. Other family members take the lead role in each of these futures, however.) My Muse is a hard taskmaster, and wouldn’t let me work on anything else until I got halfway through.

Each future vision is progressively uglier, but all of them end on what I think of as a hopeful note. To avoid cluttering the story itself, I’ll lead off each piece with some backstory and add some further commentary to the comments.

Now proceed to…
Vision the First
Vision the Second
Vision the Third

Upper Floored: Preparation (H)

In between me buying a new motorcycle and looking about 50 years into the future, we’ve been working on putting down wood flooring in Daughter Dearest’s bedroom. We’d done the hallway before — we know what to do now, it should be a breeze, right? Rip up the carpet and glue down the new floor….

Of course, any job at FAR Manor is going to turn into a complete hairball.

First, we found a mixture of plywood and particle board under the carpet. And that’s not all: I’m not sure exactly what those spots are, but they look like blood. It wouldn’t surprise me that FAR Manor was causing pain even while it was being built.

The instructions for the new flooring specially say that it can’t be put down over particle board. To make things even more “interesting,” there was a pretty significant sag in the middle of the floor, almost two inches (no, I’m not exaggerating). I looked at Mrs. Fetched and said, “I was right about this place.” (While she was going completely berserk, and driving me berserk wanting to buy this place, I saw its many flaws and described it as a pig in a poke. Like any data that doesn’t fit the previously-made decision, she ignored it. At the time.)

We got two opinions on what to do. Our carpenter friend, who advised us on the last floor job, said it would be fine to just glue (and possibly nail) the strips to the floor as it was. A second person, who would be the one to do the work, said it had to be straightened out — we could either jack it up from the ground floor (yeah right) or put some shims between the sub-floor and the plywood that would eventually be the substrate for the wood floor. Cosmic Rule of the Universe Number One: given two choices, Mrs. Fetched is always going to pick the most complicated option. If I don’t fall in line immediately, she’ll besiege me with whines, nags, dire predictions, until I throw my hands up and say some variation of “Do what you want — you’re going to anyway.” Of course it’s not an issue to her: she’s not the one doing the actual work.

In a vain attempt to get some peace, I had The Boy help me measure the sag and mark some spots. I figured I could partially even it out, enough to satisfy Mrs. Fetched’s mania for complicating things. I wasn’t having much luck, and she called in the people who caused all the commotion. Upon inspecting the floor, they informed us that there was a layer of plywood under the top layer, and if we could crowbar it out it would save them some time. Well… taking a crowbar to FAR Manor is a pleasure surpassed by very few things, and one of those is taking a crowbar to the chicken houses. J (the son of our carpenter friend) has been our extra resident for a couple of months now; he tends to be quiet and helpful so he doesn’t get quite the coverage of M.A.E. or Lobster. We spent a happy evening of echar la casa por la ventana (literally, not the Hispanic idiom for a wild party) because the particle board came up in pieces and we could toss the small- and medium-size pieces down to the front yard instead of carrying them. In fact, Mrs. Fetched caught me singing some happy 80s tune, and wondered why I wasn’t mad anymore. How quickly we forget. :-P

Somewhere in there, Mrs. Fetched got one of the farm trucks, and we finished up by loading up the fragged particle board. I got a perfect action shot of J tossing a big chunk on the first attempt.

That got us through the long weekend. Last night, Mrs. Fetched and I cut 1/4-inch plywood to lay down over the new floor (the guy who did the work said it would be best if we did). I was hoping to come home to find it already nailed down, but Cosmic Rule of the Universe Number Two says: if I don’t do it around here, it doesn’t get done. Taking a hammer to FAR Manor is less satisfying than a crowbar, but it’ll do in a pinch.

Tomorrow, we get to glue down the floor… since it’s Daughter Dearest’s room, she gets to help. A lot.

New Toys

Little Zook

The company stock went up a fair amount in the last week, making it worthwhile to cash in some stock options. Then when I saw this DR-Z400SM at the bike dealer with 170 miles on it, for about $1200 off list, I decided it was time to stop talking about getting a smaller bike (like I’ve been doing for a long while) and do it.

My mental image of a motorcycle goes back to the '70s, when little dual-sports ruled the roads in the aftermath of the oil embargo. There aren’t many bikes that look like those, at least shipped to the US anyway, but this is a sort of modern expression of those bikes.

This bike represents a number of firsts for my adult-life motorcycling: it’s the first sub-liter bike I’ve had, the first (almost) new bike, the first I picked out (as opposed to the previous two more or less following me home), first with a radiator and chain drive (the previous two were shafties), first vehicle with a digital speedometer/console… and the first bike without a tachometer, centerstand, or self-cancelling turn signals (I’ll have to get used to the latter).

The ride is very smooth, which isn’t surprising since it has motocross suspension, and I sit at about the same height as a pickup truck driver. Insurance is actually less than the Virago’s (small engines make a big difference), and it gets close to 60mpg. Unfortunately, the tank is really tiny, so I’ll be filling it more often. Go figure.

Now to get really '70s-retro and replace that little bag on the back with a milk crate…

Duty

Iowa Victory Gardener writes an excellent Memorial Day post.

No matter how low our opinion of the “Commander Guy,” we must never lose sight of the people that he’s sending overseas to die for the glory of his ego. Undoubtedly, the vast majority of our underequipped, thinly-stretched soldiers would rather be home with their families today (you and me) — enjoying a Memorial Day barbecue, or even doing house work — but duty calls, and the good soldier answers. As Gordon Dickson wrote: “Soldier, ask not - now, or ever, where to war your banners go.”

On this Memorial Day, as we are engaged in the Second Oil War, let us all — soldiers and civilians alike — remember that we all have our duty. Let us perform it to the best of our ability.

For those of us who want our troops home with their families next Memorial Day, we too have a duty, a duty to act on our convictions. I don’t use the term “Second Oil War” lightly — the first was Desert Storm, aka Kuwait — as it’s easy to see that this is about nothing but oil. The proof is as easy as looking at Iraq and Darfur — why are we embroiled in one and not the other? I remember a protest sign from the First Oil War: “What if Kuwait exported broccoli?”

So what is our duty, those of us who want an end to this waste of time and lives? If the true reason for war is oil, then it’s up to all of us to make oil less important. It’s not easy, though: oil pervades nearly everything in our lives. It’s in our fertilizers, plastics, (of course) our gas tanks, and the asphalt we drive on is what’s left over when all the other stuff is pulled out of the oil. Manufacturing, mining, shipping, lumbering, agriculture, all require diesel fuel.

Admitting that oil is necessary to our “non-negotiable way of life” is one thing, it’s quite another to admit that we are past — or at best, very near — “peak oil,” the maximum point of oil supply that we will ever see. Supply is dwindling, and will continue to do so, while demand has just kept going up. That’s why we’re already paying post-Katrina prices for gas before hurricane season has even started. We can’t do anything about the supply, but we can — and it’s our duty to — do something about demand.

One of the lasting legacies of WWII is the collection of posters and other artwork, exhorting the civilians of the time to support the war effort — by supporting rationing, growing one’s own food in “Victory Gardens,” recycling scrap material, carpooling (even though we, hard as it is to believe, were the Saudi Arabia of the day), and all sorts of other sacrifices. Quite the contrast to Commander Guy’s “go shopping,” huh? Even during the 70s, we had myraid PSAs on the radio that drilled us with all sorts of tips to save gas. Where are those PSAs today? Well heck, we don’t need them — we know what our duty is. Let’s get to it.

Our friends and loved ones overseas are depending on us.

Smoke from a Distant Fire

The south GA/north FL fires are depositing a thick layer of smoke all the way up here — I was pretty sure at first that there was a fire nearby. Someone at church this morning said she heard on the news that ash was falling on the south side of Atlanta. Supposedly, it’s not so bad on the mountaintops.

All the windows are closed and we won’t be doing much outside today. Today, a 30-mile bike ride could be a good way to get a case of black lung.

PITT (Pain In The Thighs)

Mrs. Fetched and Daughter Dearest went to see Pirates of the Caribbean III this afternoon. Since I haven’t seen the first two, I decided to sit it out. This was my chance to ride the road course that goes by FAR Manor. I packed my cellphone (in case of trouble or photo opportunities), two water bottles, and my trusty iPod. Escape Pod provided a high-tech counterpoint to my low-tech adventure.

I haven’t done a 30-mile bike ride since I was in college, so of course I’m feeling it. I could be feeling one or two of the college-day rides as well. The route isn’t exactly Florida-flat, and gets somewhat remote in some places. This bit of graffiti pretty much says it all.


A stretch of road had these flowers growing along the side. They look like a white belladonna, but frankly I got no clue. Maybe one of the plant experts can identify it? I’d appreciate it.


I started “feeling it” about 2/3 of the way through the ride, so obviously turning back would have been a Bad Idea. I’ll probably walk funny for a little while, but Lord knows I need the exercise. If I do this every weekend, I should get in shape fairly quickly. But I’m pleased with how the pictures turned out — the cellphone camera worked will in bright light.

Happy Birthday, Mrs. Fetched! (and TFM!)

Birthdays just aren’t the same when you get past 40, I guess. Yesterday was Mrs. Fetched’s mumbleth, and we spent the evening videotaping Cousin Splat’s graduation ceremony. I got her an orchid (Dendrobium), which we had to re-pot right away because it fell out of the pot on the way home.

And I missed the occasion of the second birthday of my blog (May 16). What are the Terrible Twos like for a blog? I guess we’ll find out together….

Graduation night

Do I really need to say anything more here?



Oh, you want a full frontal? OK, you asked for it:

Friday Night Cinema (rerun)

Gas prices on Planet Georgia had been hovering under $3/gallon for a while — it seemed like nobody wanted to be first. But when one went up on Wednesday, nearly everyone followed suit pretty quickly. Since it’s too danged expensive to drive anywhere, grab a snack and settle in with Friday Night Cinema!

So to (ahem) “honor” the occasion, FNC has brought back an old favorite: Dominic Tocci’s I Can’t Afford My Gasoline.

“Happy” motoring!

On Creativity

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…” — Genesis 1:26a

Does God look like us? Do we really look like Him? Or does “in our image, after our likeness” mean something different? After all, if God has a head, two arms, two legs, and a torso… well, so do the apes. Some other animals use their front paws as hands from time to time (raccoons, squirrels, etc.). Chimps and even some birds use tools to get food. What really separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom?

It’s not language: bees communicate through dance, chimps through gestures, dogs through body language and scent, not to mention whales and dolphins. But that answer is “getting warmer.”

Maybe it’s more a matter of how we use language. It isn’t just a tool for getting food, or bonding, or marking territory. We do all those things with language, but we also use it to create stories about where we came from, or why we are here, or simply to entertain ourselves and (if we’re lucky) other people. In other words, after God created the universe, the earth, and the ecosystem in it, He populated it with a species that could, in a small way, create worlds of their own! Our creativity isn’t divine in its own right — but it’s an echo of the divine. Call it part-divine.

This I’ve realized for a while now, more came to light as I read Stephen King’s On Writing, specifically when he talked about many writers having a drinking problem, and himself being baked on coke and booze while writing Cujo, to the point that he didn’t remember writing it. That’s when I got the rest of it: I’d always thought that getting a little squiffed was good for the creative part of me… confirmed, so I thought, by how much easier it was to write after a few drinks (or in the middle of a fever, for that matter). It came to me in a flash: the creative part of us is partly divine and thus isn’t affected — either way — by earthly things like self-medication or even sickness. Alcohol and drugs just muzzle that anti-divine part of our minds, that inner nagging spouse or domineering parent, the part that picks at everything, is never satisfied with what we do, and would rather have major surgery without anesthesia than to say “well done.”

And here I’ve done the worst thing to that part of me that can be done: I’ve vivisected the little SOB and laid its pathetic guts out on the stainless steel lab table for everyone to see. Feel free to laugh at it and ridicule it as it squirms under your amused gaze….

Amazingly enough, I’m completely sober tonight. Must be a leftover from yesterday’s virus.

Taking My Medicine

WARNING: Too Much Input follows.

Mrs. Fetched confiscated the DSL modem yesterday, because The Boy refused to get out of bed and help with the chickens. Not that it mattered: I was awakened a bit too early (after staying up too late) with a bout of what I call LGS (Le Grande Shittes). I had a scheduled checkup at the doc’s yesterday morning anyway, so i figured I’d get that seen to as well, especially when I felt slightly nauseated on the way over.

This checkup was a little more intense than usual: in addition to getting poked for blood (which I hardly felt, they’re good about that), I was also handed a cup. The nurse asked me the usual battery of questions that usually have the same answers, except for the symptoms of the morning. Then when the doc came in, she asked about those and said I probably had a stomach virus that was going around, it would be gone in a day or so, eat bland food and drink plenty of fluids.

Then she pulled on The Gloves. “I don’t enjoy this either,” she reassured me.

“Just like being at work!” I said. Well, maybe the annual review part. She then boldly went where no woman has gone before.

“All the time, people show me things they don’t want to show me and I don’t really want to look at,” she said. I suppose that’s one of the things they don’t tell you about when you start med school. Lord knows it’s the same for technical writers, and probably any other profession: you end up mucking around in things you never really thought about in school.

“No blood in your stool, and your prostate feels normal,” she said. I suppose my dignity was a small price to pay for that good news. “But there was some blood in your urine sample. You need to give us another sample in two weeks, then if it’s still there, I’ll refer you to a urologist.”

The thing she didn’t tell me was to go back home and ride out the stomach virus in bed. Naturally, I felt pretty rough by the time I was ready to go home (probably running a fever) and went straight to bed when I got home. I slept until 10, when the fever finally broke, then read my Asimov’s for an hour or so before turning the light off. The bed was hot; I thought Mrs. Fetched had put a heating pad under the sheet but it was just me baking the virus (and the mattress).

I still have a little LGS, but that’s not completely bad. I haven’t truly been what the old folks call “regular” since I started taking the RIpitmore, and I needed a good purge. I wouldn’t recommend it as a way to lose a pound, but I did that too.

A (mostly) peaceful weekend

I was blessed this weekend with less crazy stuff than I expected. The Boy’s counseling session was moved to Saturday morning since today is Mother’s Day. (My mom is out West having a good time on a tour.) I spent an hour & a half taking care of various business, combining a bunch of errands into one trip, finishing up with groceries.

Coming out of the grocery store, I found a message on my smellphone: “don’t get groceries, go by Subway and get sandwiches… [list] …then bring them over to the chicken houses; we have a water leak.” Since I’d already got the groceries, including ice cream, I decided to just make sandwiches at home and take them over. Fortunately, the leak was near the back end of the house so Mrs. Fetched just drove the small tractor in to scoop the wet stuff out and it really didn’t take long. We finished to rumbling noises in the sky, so we went home, unplugged stuff, and several of us (including yours truly) took a nap.

Today has truly been a day of rest. We took Mrs. Fetched out for Mother’s Day, watched A Night at the Museum and haven’t done much since then.

Family Man describes himself as a slacker, but I’ll bet Dolly Freed could teach even him a thing or three. Back in 1975 or so, at age 19, she wrote a book called Possum Living (link to full text) about the extremely low-maintenance lifestyle she and her father lived. I wish I’d run across this book when I got out of college — it could have changed my life. It would be interesting to see whether she’s still living that ultra-slackerly lifestyle now at age 50-ish, and what improvements she might have made on it.

Friday Night Cinema

It’s almost not Friday anymore on this side of the country, and payday isn’t until next Friday. FNC to the rescue with short free flicks!

This is one I’ve had kicking around in my archives for a while, forgotten but not gone. As I try to be helpful and informative, here’s a handy tip: How to Wake Up a Drunk Friend…

News briefs

Looks like the retail industry is now following the home mortgage industry down the toilet.

All the schemes that have been tried to feed Africa’s poor, and the one that seems to be working? Urban Gardens. Get together with your neighbors and plant a garden in the vacant lot next door. I like this quote, for some reason: “He can't grow crops that will get too tall, or else they will absorb too much pollution. Also, bandits might hide in the foliage. Better to keep the vegetables low and leafy.”

And this gem from (of course) The Register: the things that people smuggle into Irish prisons. Not for the squeamish.

Dwarf Lilies

I noticed these dwarf lilies (as Mrs. Fetched found they’re called) springing up where the tiger lilies usually prowl. She said, “they just came up on their own, I don’t know how they got there.” In other words, another pretty nuisance plant.



Click the picture to get a closeup. The blooms remind me of the wild violets that came and went earlier in the year (but are still growing all over the place).

There Goes the Neighborhood

When I first moved out here, I figured that the subdivisions would catch up to me about the time I retired. I wanted to retire when I was 50, but that’s only a couple of years away — and barring a life-changing event, retirement isn’t in the cards for a long time.

That hasn’t stopped the subdivision from coming, though. This is going in just down the road from FAR Manor, a farm across from my in-laws’ that the owners sold last year.

“No Gas Day” Bunk — and a Better Idea

While I expect regular readers of Tales from FAR Manor are intelligent types, there are plenty of people out there who either aren’t too smart or turn off their “critical faculties” when reading the latest email.

Take the latest craze: No Gas Day (Snopes link). The idea is to not buy gas on May 15^th, under the assumption that it will lower prices. The first problem with that is, even if the entire country were to participate, it wouldn’t make a difference. If you don’t buy gas on Monday, you’ll buy it over the weekend (so you won’t run out) or Tuesday (because you’ll probably be running low). So over four or five days, let alone the entire month, there’s no difference in sales.

The second problem is that demand is at near-record highs, at a time when oil production is starting to decline (according to statistics published on The Oil Drum, we may have reached Peak Oil at the end of 2005). In short, gas prices are high because people are buying all they can get and then some — gasoline inventories have been declining all year and hit a 50-year low at the end of April.

Do you want gas prices to come down? Not buying gas for one day, when you’ll buy it the day before or after, isn’t going to make a difference. What will bring prices down is to not use so much of the stuff. Fortunately, it’s not that difficult to cut out 5%, 10%, or even 20% of what you’re using now — we in the US are much more efficient than we were in the 1970s, but there’s still a lot of slop in the system. You can save 5% to 10% just by following some simple Tips to Improve Your Gas Mileage (FuelEconomy.gov link); you don’t have to buy anything. If you have a standard-shift car, give Pulse and Glide driving a try. Just coasting downhill in neutral is enough to give me a 10% boost in gas mileage (36 to 40 mpg).

Simple lifestyle changes, like telecommuting or carpooling, can save 20% or more — and these are the kind of changes that will improve your quality of life and still don’t require you to ride a bus or buy a hybrid. Wouldn’t it be great to not have to drive to work all the time? It would certainly be less stressful.

If everyone used 5% less gas, prices would come down. Of course, the temptation would then be to slack off and watch prices go right back up…

The Real Electronic Shackle

The Boy was kind enough to show off his new fashion accessory last night. It’s going to be a part of him for the next two months. After hearing about this deal, I wonder that he didn’t just choose being in jail for the next two months instead: he has to be in the house (not even the garage) by 8pm; he needs to get permission from his probation officer to do anything later than that. He has to have weekly drug and alcohol tests, as well as 3-hour counseling sessions every Sunday afternoon. His driver’s license is gone-zo until he’s 21 (like that matters; he’s been dropped off our insurance for a while).

The phone is a bit of a pain, but not as much of one as it could be. To leave the line clear for the ankle bracelet’s receiver to do its thing, we’re supposed to limit calls to five minutes. The monitoring service can call at any time. That’s not such a big deal; we have smellphones for longer calls and can turn off the ringer at least in our bedroom.

But I hope last night isn’t going to be typical: since he couldn’t go carouse with his “good friends,” they came to FAR Manor. All evening. And the ones who weren’t popping in and out like blink dogs were calling well into the wee hours. At least one of them had been drinking before (I hope) he got here, and ended up falling asleep in The Boy’s room. I took him home this morning, along with some pointers on how The Boy’s real friends will conduct themselves around him: no booze, no drugs, and no late-night calls. I’m sure it went in one ear and out the other, even though he assured me he’d pass the word around.

We all get to enjoy this time together, I suppose…

Friday Night Cinema

Gas prices are climbing past $3/gallon, and it’s been a rough week anyway. Friday Night Cinema is ready to help you save gas and save time!

Some of the best links I get for FNC come from the Techcomm list, and tonight’s selection is no exception. These guys aren’t The Who, but they’re Brits, and they’re Talkin’ ’bout My Generation…

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?