FAR Future, Episode 22: Why Are We Still Here?

A brief interlude as part of the story. I’m about ready to start the next cycle.

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Sunday, April 7, 2013
Why Are We Still Here?

It’s a nice spring afternoon out here today. I’m sitting out front with the laptop. Stuff is growing, the sun is shining, the windmill is turning slowly… I’m not exactly feeling gloomy, but I’m not nearly as sunny as this day has turned out to be. I guess the word is “introspective.”

The right-wing spins one way or another these days, like an old Chevy stuck in the mud, looking for traction wherever they can find it so they can get back in the race. They end up slinging mud everywhere, spinning their wheels, and sliding around. Their talking points still work with the most delusional among us, but not even their old crazy base is safe territory anymore. The opinion polls that came out after the bill to kill heating assistance last winter, for example, showed a 3-point drop in support for the goplets.

Even the most un-evolved knuckledraggers seem to have accepted that “they” just can’t pump more oil now, or enough more to make a difference. Therefore, rationing makes sense — nobody gets all the gas they want, but everyone gets some and there’s a way to get more if needed (on the exchange). They accept not driving the SUV unless they need the cargo capacity, and that their beloved NASCAR is changing their format to reward the most fuel-efficient vehicles. They’ve even (on the whole) accepted climate change and the need to address it, although many believe that declining fossil fuel usage will do the heavy lifting.

So it’s been a rough couple of years for the Spewers of Spin. The latest attempt to gain a little traction goes, as Shotgun Sam put it yesterday: “We’re interconnected, more than we’ve ever been in history. Push on one thing, and you create a ripple of push one way, and a ripple of pull the other. And this so-called ‘peak oil’ is, if you believe the liberal liars, is a mighty big push. They tell us that oil is the lifeblood of our economy, and we have to do all these Big Brother type things — rationing, h– [I think he barely managed to catch himself before saying heating assistance, which would have turned off his listeners big-time] mortgage relief for people who weren’t responsible enough to live within their means, tax hikes, draconian regulations on our automakers, all that. It’s killing jobs, it’s killing your jobs, and if we’d just let the free market handle things, we’d be fine.”

Predictably, this didn’t exactly resonate with the listeners. You can’t train people over the years to not think very hard about what they’re hearing, then hit them with something that complex. All the callers were nit-picking about whether the free market would have supplied enough gasoline for everyone, or why it was so bad to keep people in their houses, and completely missed the first point about how everything is interconnected.

Sam’s was a classical tactic: start with the truth, say “therefore,” and then tell a pack of lies that have little or nothing to do with the first part of the statement. Yes, this is a highly interconnected world — and yes, dwindling oil supplies gave it one hell of a push. But every time I hear the word “interconnected,” I think back to the good ol’ days of the Y2K wars. Among those who were paying attention, there was a pretty solid rift between “doomers” (Y2K is going to kill us all) and “pollies” (Polyanna, maybe a few disruptions but nothing earth-shattering). It would have been easy — but facile — to put right-wingers on the doomer side and lefties on the polly side. As it turned out, there was some weighting in that direction, but you could find plenty of people representing the entire political spectrum on both sides. I met CPR after I came over to the polly side, and he was a bulldog & a major Bush-league supporter. I participated in the endless flame wars, and watched and listened to arguments on both sides, and finally identified the dividing line:

Y2K doomers considered interconnections to be a weakness.
Y2K pollies considered it to be a strength.

Of course, it turned out the pollies were right — a domino falling was caught and supported by its neighbor, rather than knocking that neighbor into the next domino. But we’re not dealing with a fixable bug in a computer’s date programming, we’re dealing with something much deeper and more far-reaching. Fuel shortages have knocked over a bunch of dominoes. Fortunately, there’s still enough resilience in the system to keep things (mostly) upright — most people really didn’t feel a direct pinch until we had to give up almost a fourth of the fuel we used to consume back in Y2K days.

What’s falling, is falling slowly — small comfort to those who froze to death last winter, or died of less direct causes — but it’s up to all of us to make sure those people didn’t die in vain. Go look up that “Coming Together” article that ran on Time’s website last month — unemployed people went around to check on their neighbors, offering to “share the fire,” or brought chunks of a dismantled house to people who couldn’t get firewood for whatever reason. Some lives were saved, probably thousands more than what the media wrote about. Others pooled their grocery money, sent one or two cars to get groceries for the entire neighborhood, and made sure everyone had food. From what I’ve seen and heard, the bonds forged in winter’s cold furnace aren’t being broken now that spring is here — in what’s left of the 'burbs, they’re starting community gardens.

That’s a huge difference nowadays: people are getting to know their neighbors and make sure they’re OK, then work together for something — anything — instead of whining about someone painting their house the wrong color or having too big an antenna on their rooftop. When energy was so plentiful that anyone could drive their own car, nobody needed anyone else and the far-right was able to exploit our selfish streak to their own ends. But now, people know they have to depend on each other to get by… and selfishness has gone out of style. Way out.

One of the major chains down in Atlanta has started a “neighborhood pickup” program — the neighborhood picks an abandoned house and leaves it intact. People pool their grocery lists, and the store delivers to the pickup house. Then everyone walks in, pays the driver, and collects their food. It’s proving to be wildly popular, and the other chains are trying to get in on the action too. (How many people live within walking distance of a supermarket?) A lot of large developments are encouraging dwellers to park their cars near the road and leave the interior streets to bicycle and foot traffic now. You don’t have to convince the kids that it’s a good idea, and the parents are slowly coming along. One of the stories in that Time article talked about some kids who realized a particular geezer wasn’t chasing them off the sidewalk; they told the parents, who ran over to find the guy fighting for his life with the flu. He lived, and the kids were heroes. Doesn’t mean the geezer is any nicer to them, though. :-)

So in the long run, I still have a lot of hope. That doesn’t mean I don’t expect major trouble ahead, or that I’ll get through it personally, but things will be OK in the future for our descendants. Speaking of which, Daughter Dearest wants to “vacation” with us this summer after school’s out. It’ll be nice to see her here again.

continued…

Another fire

This is pretty much all that’s left of the house just down and across from FAR Manor. It seems the old guy was cooking in the kitchen and something got away from him. His grandson came in and got him out, so nobody was hurt. But the house… well, you can see it. There’s not much left even to clean up.

Daughter Dearest said she heard the car (one of which you can see through the trees) blow up.

I’m not sure where the former residents went. They put up a “caretaker” trailer (going behind the zoning board’s back), but the grandfather is in a wheelchair.

General stuff

I hadn’t been doing a very good job of updating this week. A couple nights I felt like reading instead of getting on the computer.

We’re starting to get the hang of the fireplace insert. It’s still a little smokier than we’d like when opening it up to feed it, but it’s getting better. Mrs. Fetched likes how it projects the heat into the room; the fireplace would get the mantle hot above it. When it’s really going, running the blower can about cook us out of the living room. Of course, we’re in the Dr. Jekyll phase of winter on Planet Georgia right now; it’s barely getting to freezing at night (if that) and the grass is greening up quickly.

The Boy asked to borrow the car the other day to look for a job. We had some serious misgivings, but he did his usual song and dance and Mrs. Fetched told him to be back so she could take the car to the chicken house. Of course, he showed up around 11:30 that night… with Snippet in tow. I gave them the choice of going to bed right away (because I had to get up the next morning) or I’d take her home right then and there. After he stalled as long as he could, he found somewhere else to stay. It’ll be interesting if he even bothers to ask to borrow the car again.

We were supposed to have performance reviews this week, then the boss got sick. They do a yank-and-rank system at work, much like Microsoft, which basically means the employees get the crumbs of the “raise pool” after the management eats its fill, and your raise depends more on the performance of your boss in what they call the “peer review” than your own performance (and since the boss went into those reviews sick, I can guess how that’s going to go). I tacked a sticky note to the corner of my monitor with my motto of the moment: Pretend It Matters.

Amazingly, I'm not feeling all that stressed. Off to write a piece of flash fiction and do some reading. The latest Asimov’s came in the mail yesterday, hooray!

Oops, I almost forgot. While you’re waiting for the next installment of FAR Future, go check out Yooper’s Trails. He’s putting up his own story — a bit darker than mine, but anyone who wants to write should be encouraged, right?

Inserting an Insert, The Grand Finale

The big day arrived at last. We wanted to make it as easy as possible, so we had moved stuff out of the way, including removing the door between the kitchen and living room.

We scooped out the ash as much as possible, and pulled out the grate (which got cleaned off and will be used as a wood rack).


It occurred to me to brush down the sides and top of the fireplace. This yielded a rather large quantity of black soot, more than I’d expected, but I just pulled the cover off the ash hole and swept it all in there. Then I vacuumed in the corners.


At this point, Mrs. Fetched and Daughter Dearest headed off to an extended “check us out” weekend at a nearby college. I stayed on target and tackled the glass doors. It turned out to be held on by two clamps inside the fireplace; loosen two bolts and the whole thing came right out. I sat it outside to scrub the soot off the glass and get it out of the way.

Of course, with the doors out of the way, I was clear to get more soot and ash out of the fireplace. This I did, and followed it up with one more vacuum run to get it all cleaned up.


George’s son Roland showed up first. We chatted, waiting for George… and waiting… and waiting. Finally, Roland figured he was looking for the drill that Roland already had, and took off to look for him. I remembered that I needed hardware, and took the opportunity to scare up some screws. I also measured the door into the living room (29-1/2") and then the insert — and learned that the only way we’d get through was to tilt it on its back and bring it in sideways. Sometimes, delays are a good thing.

Roland showed up with his dad in tow, and the festoovities began. They tipped the insert up onto the dolly, while I scared up a piece of plywood so we wouldn’t have to carry it up the steps. I had to grab from the top and pull, while they pushed from the bottom, but it came in fairly easily.

We had laid down blankets and throw rugs in the living room to make sure the floor would be OK. It rolled right into place.

George and Roland managed to pick the insert up without damaging themselves and pushed it into place. George wasn’t sure there would be enough front-to-back clearance to get the insert all the way in, and was telling me about some workarounds they could do if necessary. But they ended up having to pull it back out a little bit — there was plenty of clearance.

With the insert in position, they attached the trim panel and centered it up. We tossed a couple pieces of paper and a small cardboard box in side and Roland lit it. The smoke went straight up the chimney, just like it was supposed to. George was concerned that some of the smoke might make its way to the front and seep out through the mortar joints in the brick, but that wasn’t a problem.

And that concludes the latest improvement at FAR Manor, minus any little details that might come up. George suggested that if we get smoke out the mortar joints, there’s some stuff at Home Despot to seal that up. It’s a fairly nice day right now, so I’ll light it up this evening and try it out.

FAR Future, Episode 21: Awakening

The drought here may be over — we’ve had above-normal rainfall for a month now. It’s not wiping out our deficit very fast, but maybe we’ll do OK anyway. I have this and another post lined up, so I hope the episode deficit is getting addressed too.

As I type this intro, I see a little moth at the window, the first of the year.

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Saturday, March 23, 2013
Awakening

It’s finally spring. The earth awakens from its restless winter slumber.

Mrs. Fetched’s mom and I have a few zillion tomato plants in starter trays, not to mention the peppers. The perennial herbs wintered over just fine, minus some deer attacks (flavored meat if we catch ’em at it), and we’ve got the annuals started. She’s happier than I’ve seen her in a while — she was asked to conduct some basic gardening seminars for the people in big subdivisions who are starting the community gardens last month, and they were all well-attended. As Mrs. Fetched said, “her idea of a ‘small garden’ is 5 acres,” and they’re scaling up from there. Her kind of gardening — including a couple passes with a tractor and plow, just to get the sod dug up. There’s some concern about pesticides and all, but the extension office says that most of the people who abandoned their houses had quit intensive lawn maintenance before giving up altogether. The bad stuff has had plenty of time to break down.

Not all the “planting” is crops, though. Time capsules are a fad at schools again, another “planting” activity this spring. They’re including photos and student-written essays about various aspects of life, along with the usual newspaper clippings and tokens. They use a small candle, lit just before sealing it, to get rid of most of the oxygen inside the capsule before burying it. It would be interesting to be around when they open the capsules in 100 years — will “they” have figured out how to deal with energy shortages by then? Or will there even be anyone to dig them up? I remember being a kid, and hearing about the moon bases (and Mars, etc.) and flying cars we’d have by now. Of course, the closest anyone came to dreaming up home computers or the Internet was this idea that you would get a tailored newspaper delivered via fax every morning. I remember incredulously asking my dad, “You didn’t have TV when you were a kid?” With my kids, it was “You didn’t have computers?” My grandkids, if I have any, probably won’t have cars and might not have computers — but they may have stuff we haven’t even thought of now.

Now that winter is giving way, they’re finding people who didn’t make it through the winter and were never checked on. In some cities, the cops started patrolling with dogs and marking the houses like they did in Miami after Kim a couple years back (or New Orleans after Katrina). Some of the larger metro departments had burglars sitting in jail, and brought them along to pick locks in exchange for a reduced sentence. One of the network news shows interviewed one of the latter (face blocked); he said, “There’s not much worth stealing anymore anyway — why not help? The smell is pretty bad sometimes, but they give me a mask and the cops don’t make me go inside anyway. I just get the doors open for ’em.”

Even in the salad days, though, people died. They died of diseases, starvation, cold, heat, accident, combat, and old age. There aren’t any new ways of dying, but more people are dying of the same stuff than before. Except for disease and old age, though, it was “them” who were dying, not “us.” People who didn’t have the basics weren’t “our” people, so it was easy to ignore what has always gone on. Now we’re “them,” or “they” are us… maybe both, and it’s not just nature that’s awakening.

I’ve got more to write about this, but there’s stuff to do.

continued…

Clocks Cleaned While You Wait

Of the places we lived when I was a kid, I guess I’d have to say the house on Sherman Street was my favorite. The back yard bordered on woods, woods that had dirt bike trails that would take us as far as a tank of gas or nerve would let us go… with maybe a couple hundred yards of scooting down public roads on an off-road vehicle. There was the crawl space under the stairs that we used for indoor camping. But most of all, the neighborhood had plenty of kids our age to hang out with. We’d have occasional snowball fights in winter (if the snow wasn’t too icy or slushy), bicycle races and water wars in summer, and hide & seek on weekend nights.

For whatever reason, I got to thinking about this water war story, and thought it might be amusing enough to share with everyone. In the early 1970s, there were no Super Soakers — a typical squirt gun had a range suitable for hand-to-hand combat, not much more. For longer range, we had grenades (water balloons) and fixed artillery (a water hose).

There were unwritten but strict rules that we observed during water wars:

1) All combat took place either in the street, or in front/back yards of combatants.

2) Adults and girls were non-combatants (the girls would have been welcome to join us had they been interested — we were 13 or 14, and they would have been in bikinis, 'nuff said). Anyone else was fair game, declared or not.

3) Cars were non-combatants, unless they belonged to an older sibling. People on bicycles were fair game — part of the fun was to run the gauntlet, after all.

There was a kid named David directly across the street from us who wasn’t really old enough to join the water fights, but he usually wanted to participate so Rule #2 applied to him. His problem was, he would want to join in, then want to quit as soon as water got anywhere near him. None of us really had a problem with him being on our “side” — we’d take him on as an extra because we knew he’d quit before he got to be a pain.

We had enough water hose to squirt most of the way across the street, so our house was pretty much the designated house for running the gauntlet on a bicycle. We’d run the gauntlet if we didn’t feel like running around with water balloons (or if everyone had run out), and that’s what we were doing this particular afternoon. David was riding around with us, fully understanding what we were doing but thinking he was somehow privileged. My brother (not Solar, the other one) was manning the hose, and I was standing next to him, having just taken a break from running the gauntlet, when David came out on his bike.

“I’m not playing now!” he yelled.

“You know the rules,” one of us yelled back. “If you’re in the war zone, we can get you.”

“No you can’t!” he yelled defiantly, and proceeded into the crossfire. Phil lobbed a water balloon and missed — but my brother’s hosing was accurate enough, and David ran inside crying to mommy. A minute later, Mrs. Smith came marching down her yard and across the street. Phil was not the brightest bulb on the string, and I could see he had a mind to introduce her to a water balloon, but he wasn’t that dumb (his brother Paul, now… fortunately, he wasn’t there).

Even though my brother was holding the water hose, Mrs. Smith chose to start screaming at me — probably because I wasn’t as openly defiant of authority as some others on the block and wouldn’t stand up for myself so much (I’ve improved in that regard, but not enough). “He knew he was going through the war zone,” my brother and some of the other guys explained. I just stood there.

“IF YOU DO THAT AGAIN, I’M GONNA CLEAN YOUR CLOCK!” she screamed, and walked away. I had a really hard time suppressing a smirk at that… and after that, whenever there were two or more of us together and she was anywhere in sight, one of us would say, “Clean your clock, Mrs. Smith” in a snarky undertone. Both we and Mrs. Smith banned David from further participation in water wars (or snowball fights) — one thing we could all agree on — but we included him in other things, sometimes to his (and our) detriment.

A year or two after that, they moved away, and Carrie the Barbarian moved in. But that’s another story.

Weekend Cinema

Short, free, and you don’t even have to leave the seat you’re in now! (Wow… has it really been November since I posted one of these?)

I’ve mentioned Stranger Things before — it’s a video podcast that (in their own words) “depicts a world of ordinary people stumbling into the secret lives of the paranormal, the metaphysical, the unnatural, and the strange.” Imagine a 21^st-century version of The Twilight Zone, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what it’s about.

The episode I’m highlighting here, One of Those Faces, would be up for an Academy Award for Best Short if there were any justice in the world. Good story, fantastic ending. A little less than 16 minutes means you can take it in at some odd moment. Check out the other episodes; they’re all good but the first two have rather dark endings.

I’m not sure what facilities they have for dialup — perhaps a DVD will be coming soon?

How cool!

I’ve always wanted to do something like this.

“The most splendidly pointless space experiment of all time” — and they expect it to survive the trip down!

FAR Future, Episode 20: Spreading the Wealth

Stay warm, everyone. Spring’s comin’. In FAR Future, it’s about here.

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Friday, March 8, 2013
Spreading the Wealth

This has been all over the local media. A gang of suburban “mainstream” (i.e. WASP) teenagers have been stealing all sorts of stuff that’s easy to fence these days — bikes, motorcycles, solar panels, siphoning gasoline, etc. — and either selling them to pay their parents’ utility bills, or giving them to neighbors who need some help. The parents had no idea what was happening. “We thought we’d been put on an assistance program, and to be honest, we didn’t want to ask questions in case it was a mistake,” said one weepy mom.

Opinion is running every which way. The media always uses the phrase “suburban teenagers,” which brings to mind your wholesome, blond-haired, blue-eyed A student looking forward to starting a “good” college and then a professional career. “Robin Hoods” is another phrase being beaten into the ground. It sort of fits; they were going into the hotsy-totsy developments, the country clubs and so forth. Through the winter, they posed as the gutter cleaning or landscaping services; some of them wore makeup to darken their skin (since Hispanic folks do most of the work) so nobody paid much attention to them. They took ladders, went up and actually did the work, then scarfed stuff and tossed it in the panel truck they were using. They didn’t rob each house they went to, either — which was smart, they had a little more leeway before they inevitably got caught.

They spread the proceeds around pretty thoroughly; like I said, they paid utility bills, gave solar panels to people who needed them, and not just to friends and neighbors. The Atlanta civil rights groups are defending them, saying they only did what should have been done in the first place (“made sure that people could keep their houses warm and the lights on”). Their victims, obviously, disagree. Seeing that the patron class were the primary victims, Shotgun Sam and the others are trying to push the idea that they were a gang of rogue teenagers who were in it for their own enrichment. Things got a little interesting when one caller objected: “It turns out they helped my Aunt May with her utility bills. They were about to cut off her gas, and those Robin Hood kids went in and took care of the bill for her. She’d’a froze to death without them doin’ something for her.”

“Well, she obviously has family — you, for example. Why didn’t you help her?”

“I didn’t know how bad off she was; I’m in Columbus and she didn’t say nothin’ to us.”

“So that means it’s OK for someone to give her stolen property?”

“Them people that they took the stuff from ain’t hurtin’ for nothin’. Why ain’t they helpin’ out? They can afford to.”

Sam stuttered for a moment. “Well… they didn’t have a chance, they got robbed before they could do anything. You ever think of that?”

“Bleep. They ain’t gonna take their solar panels off their roof and give ’em to Aunt May. They’d’ve bought some for her, if they were gonna.”

Sam cut him off and went to a commercial break — a long one — then came back whining about the Wal-Marts that got closed. A few more people wanted to put in their two cents about the theft ring, but Sam insisted that they were on a new topic. When you’re losing the argument, change the subject. Another Wal-Mart closing is a topic that’s usually sure to get his listeners upset the way he wants them upset.

One of the TV stations pixellated one of the “Robin Hoods” and distorted her voice (I’m pretty sure it was a “she”) to get an interview. She said she’d do it again because it was the only way they could keep the lights on — for themselves and their neighbors. They know they’re in a big ol’ pile of trouble, but (she said) they did what they had to. They talked about quitting when the noose started to tighten, but then they saw that news piece about the people up north who died in the Arctic storm and decided they had to keep going to save lives. Some of the civil rights lawyers are offering pro bono defense, and one DA recused himself (it turns out the kids helped out one of his own relatives), so they might get a light sentence if they can find anyone who wants to be cast as the “Sheriff of Nottingham” and actually prosecute them.

What the country club set doesn’t seem to realize is that it’s their time to step up. If things get a lot worse than they are already, those guys will fall faster and land harder to get to the same level as everyone else — they need to start making friends before that happens.

continued…

What part of…

“Come home alone by 7” did The Boy not understand? I’m guessing two parts, “by 7” and “alone.”

As I mentioned Wednesday night, The Boy found some slick stuff on the way home. We were expecting him to call and tell us, “I’m in a ditch,” but instead it was “I fishtailed, so I went back to DJ’s” (a friend in town). Mrs. Fetched wasn’t thrilled, but she also didn’t follow through on her threat to come get the car either. I guess she realized I couldn’t drive two vehicles home.

I had already set myself up to work at home yesterday, since I needed to take some photos for work, so I didn’t get out. School was out, but Daughter Dearest is pretty quiet anyway and I was too busy working to notice how quiet… too quiet… it was. In fact, I didn’t close up the work laptop until around 9pm. (Working at home has its drawbacks, sometimes.)

So I brought the laptop out into the living room to enjoy the fire, and thought maybe I’d get to bed around 10:30 and get a decent amount of sleep for a change. It Was Not To Be: about 11:30, we saw and heard The Boy roll in. But he didn’t come inside right away. “Why isn’t he in?” Mrs. Fetched asked… which is Wifese for “go see what he’s doing.” I put on my robe and fuzzy feet, figuring I could warm my legs up on her legs when I got back in bed. :-P But when I saw The Boy smoking a cig with J and (aw geeeeez) Snippet, I slammed the door and went back in.

After telling Mrs. Fetched what had happened, I didn’t get a chance to put my cold legs on her warm ones: she got up and locked the door. Naturally, I’d forgotten to turn off my smellphone, so he shortly called it. Then popped the lock on the door, somehow. (I’ve written about security at FAR Manor before.)

The mood wasn’t much better the next morning when Mrs. Fetched went upstairs to find The Boy and Snippet crashed out on his bed. Clothed, fortunately — J was also in the room, but still. They know where the guest bedroom is (downstairs), and that’s where Snippet should have been. She’s blonde, but not that blonde. However, she brought a bad cold — or maybe the flu — with her, so Mrs. Fetched was inclined to let her stay here. (Her mom is living in a camper right now.) But The Boy has lost his driving privileges, for at least as long as Mrs. Fetched finds it convenient.

Snow Day

You know you’re in the South when the forecast includes an inch of snow and it’s the Top Story in the media.

I grabbed a treadmill in the workout room at the office late in the afternoon; I came back to people lined up along the windows. They had roped off half the parking lot along the side of the building today, so I figured they were doing something interesting with a crane. Seeing nothing like that, I said, “what’s going on?”

“Snow!” one of the gawkers said. Yup. Flake-here-flake-there, but it was snow. The morning forecast said “little or no accumulation,” so I really wasn’t paying much attention. I lived in Michigan the first 22 years of my life, so light flurries were nothing to marvel at.

About 5 o’clock, The Boy called. “It’s snowing pretty heavy out there now. It’s starting to stick to the ground, and it’s blowing around on the roads, too.” I looked out the window again: still light flurries, more than before but nothing to worry about. “OK,” I told him. “Nothing like that here though.”

Not ten seconds after he hung up, Daughter Dearest called. “It’s snowing a lot out here. I’m coming home from [her job]. You need to start coming home.”

“OK, nothing like that here, but I’ll be leaving in ten minutes or so. Just be careful going downhill and over the bridges.”

Five minutes later, Mrs. Fetched: “It’s snowing heavily here. They’re saying we could get six inches. When are you leaving?”

“In a few minutes. I have to do a photo shoot, so I’ll work at home tomorrow anyway.”

So much for “little or no accumulation” — by the time I got to town, snow was sticking to the ground and covered the used car lot. About five miles from home, it started sticking to the road too. A traction check told me there was nothing to worry about… except for the guy in the pickup truck in front of me who slowed to 25 whenever he saw a patch of snow. Sheesh.

So I got home. The Boy had left class a bit later than he should have, so he called about an hour later and said he’d fishtailed outside of town and went back to spend the night with a friend. Mrs. Fetched was, shall we say, less than thrilled.

We didn’t get six inches of snow, but we got an inch & a half. The crazy rhododendron bush has already had a bloom cycle interrupted by a hard freeze; I suppose we’ll be snapping these buds off too. It doesn’t care.

Farf the Guest-Blogger

I’ll be guest-blogging tomorrow at Eat4Today — Katiebird is under the weather and asked me to post the regular “Just 4 Today” feature and whatever else comes to mind tomorrow.

If you haven’t been to Eat4Today, and are interested in weight control and personal health, it’s well worth making the daily stop. Katiebird’s philosophy is that weight control is more of a daily commitment than a matter of “just” diet and exercise. As she puts it: “Before, I was looking for a program that I could follow for the rest of my life, now I’ve got a program that only has to work for today. Just today.” That also means if you blow it, you’ve only blown it for today. You can make a fresh, stress-free start tomorrow.

So drop by tomorrow and say hello. If you like what you see, leave a comment — better yet, bookmark it and keep coming back!

Inserting an Insert, Part 2

When the weekend comes, use Rust-Oleum
— Ad jingle from the '60s

The sun was shining, a beautiful beginning to the weekend. After a slow morning, taking our time dragging around, I grabbed the spray can and a roll of masking tape, and got to work.

Being in a hurry to get started, I elected to start painting on the side(s) that didn’t have any labelling to worry about. That took all of five or ten minutes, then I had to put down the spray can (my fingertip was already black) and pick up the masking tape.


After masking off the labels here and there, I got at it. After painstakingly attempting to fold a round piece of paper to mask the decorative ceramic thing on the door, I realized that two bendable tabs held it on. [DUHHH ← me.] I painted the door and finished the insert… by this time, the paint can was getting pretty light but no problems.

With the insert painted, I went back to the drill and attacked the trim panel. This turned out to be slightly more difficult than I’d anticipated: I had to lift the edges up off the driveway to get to them. But perseverance paid off in the end, and I hung it up and hit it with the spray can. The spray began to stutter about 3/4 of the way through, but I (barely) managed to get it done before all I got was a hissss.

The instructions on the can say to wait “less than one hour, or more than 48 hours between coats.” I got the new can today, but I’ll wait until tomorrow to finish it up. I think there's a couple of places that need to be smoothed off first anyway.

A House Full of People Begins to Awaken…

It’s safe to say I was the first person up this morning. I slept until 8:30, which wasn’t bad because I’d gotten to bed before midnight. My back decided I’d laid on it long enough and drove me into motion.

The Boy’s birthday is tomorrow, and he has a pack of his closest friends and FOFs over to celebrate. We’ve been watching carefully to make sure nobody was smuggling in beer; EJ (the only friend of his we trust now) was reassuring in that respect. They spent mucho time out in the detached garage, playing Final Fantasy 3 on an old Super Nintendo someone brought over. I can keep an eye on things under the pretense of working on the insert (painting starts today, pictures tomorrow). Things were pretty quiet, overall.

One of Snippets friends, whom they call “BB” for no known reason, is one of the guests. She wears these plastic-frame glasses that give her a nerdy look I find strangely charming — but she smokes, and that kills all the charm. Just as well, I guess.

So I dragged myself out of bed, threw on my robe, grabbed my laptop and started a pot of coffee. BB was huddled under a quilt on the couch; The Boy’s tall (as in 7 feet+) friend in a recliner, and other guy wadded up on the love seat. That left one recliner for me. After the phone rang, with one of these pseudo-charities (do-not-call list notwithstanding) losing me to a bad connection, Mrs. Fetched dragged through and grabbed a bowl of cereal. I’d threatened to make cinnamon rolls last night, but it was already 11:30 and I figured these kids would inhale them. Oh well. I got up and got my own cereal, and fed the cats.

As I was finishing the cereal, Daughter Dearest rolled in. After a kitty-cuddle, she took it on herself to come in and start making enough noise to wake the dead The Boy’s guests. So BB sat up all at once — reminding me of how The Boy used to wake up when he was little — found her glasses, and tried to smooth out her hair. “I won’t lie,” DD told BB. “You’ve got bad hair.” Everyone, including BB, laughed.

Then BB stood up, and the “fun” began. After a stunned moment, I said, “Um… you might want to pull up your pants. You’ve got the plumber thing going.” She went whoops and yanked them up, thankfully. It didn’t seem to embarrass her too much otherwise, though. Low-rider jeans are dangerous that way.

In the time it’s taken to write this, the kids have arisen and cleared out. One has a job (and The Boy had to find his keys for him, which fortunately he did). Others have other places to go. The only noise is coming from the kitchen, where Mrs. Fetched is making stuff and straightening up. I suppose I should go see if she needs help. Or I could go paint the insert.

FAR Future, Episode 19: Up Against the Wal

I’ve been doing a fair amount of writing, and some of it on future episodes. I hope to (eventually) return to a twice-weekly schedule, but for now I’ll try to do at least one a week.

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Thursday, February 21, 2013
Up Against the Wal

From the “right thing for the wrong reasons” category: WalMart closed a couple of stores last week. “Low performers” is a phrase we’ll probably hearing a lot more out of Bentonville. Looking at a map, I’m guessing that those stores were using more fuel than the beanie counters want — they’re likely at the end of the supply line. That “warehouse on wheels” became a warehouse on rails pretty fast, but they still have to truck the stuff from the depot.

Speaking of WalMart, that article about Chinese factories knocking down outside walls so they can work by daylight was interesting. Even more so are the Chinese freighters being rigged with sails — people used to move a lot of freight that way, but how quick they can train a new generation of sailors is beyond me. There’s no telling how long it will be before they can start shipping a significant about of stuff that way, but I’m guessing it’s a bluff to keep people from reshoring (love that new buzzword, it rhymes with “restoring”). Just think: in a couple of generations, “Chinese junk” went from a name for a kind of boat, to the stuff they put in the boat to ship here, and now it’ll become a boat again. Long supply lines — or rather, the fuel costs associated with them — have to be eating up any advantages in labor costs… especially since the workers have woken up and started demanding a bigger share of the pie.

I haven’t seen anything on the US news sites, but there was a brief mention on the BBC site about container-loads of stowaways taking the slow boat from China to wherever. The only places where I’ve seen details are the nationalist (i.e. racist) sites — not even Shotgun Sam has brought it up yet — and I tend to discount most of that drivel. But either they’re sourcing the same lies, or they’re sourcing the same facts. Anyway, as the story goes: the Chinese government is outfitting shipping containers with food, water, toilets, and hammocks, loading about 10 or 20 people in each one, and putting several containers on each ship leaving the country. They ship to warehouses controlled by some front group, get the stowaways fake papers, and turn ’em loose. The only primary differences I’ve seen in the stories is who’s behind it: either the government (letting volunteers ride for free to get them out of the country) or a tong/mafia group (high payments, indentured servitude on this end of the ride). The US government is (supposedly) looking the other way in return for the Chinese government not calling their notes all at once. The Chinese have been collecting on our debts, but slowly, probably to keep from crashing our economy (or inviting a default), and probably to subsidize worker pay hikes.

Meanwhile, back here at home, Wally don’t wanna play with the locals, but I suspect it’s inevitable — if they want a store fill of crap, they need to fill it up somehow. But the domestic companies aren’t giving WalMart much of a discount these days, especially the ones who have reshored their operations. Wal-Mart naturally wants cost-reduced versions of stuff like microwaves and furniture, but I’m sure they’ve seen the surveys too. People buying appliances don’t want throwaway crap anymore, and they’ll pay for stuff that’s going to last a while. The “Site-to-Store” feature they’ve had for years accounts for a huge percentage of their sales now — I think anyone who has wasted gas going to Wally-World for something that was out of stock has become an instant convert.

Ironically, Wal-Mart’s cutthroat pricing policies are exactly what has come back to bite them. Higher-end retailers have barely seen any price moves; there are plenty of margins to cut into and a lot more goodwill with their suppliers. Not so with the razor-thin margins “enjoyed” by Wally’s suppliers: if labor costs go up, if shipping costs go up, if materials costs go up (and all of them have lately), Wally either has to absorb the increases themselves (and pass it on to their customers) or lose another supplier. So the prices are going up at the low end a lot more than the mid-range or high-end, at least so far. That’s one jaw of the pliers: the other is that much of Wally’s price-conscious customer base is spending all their dough just to keep the heat on. You would think that would be offset by formerly higher-end shoppers looking to stay on a budget, but the ones who have spoken out about it said the price breaks aren’t worth the hit to quality.

At work, we didn’t so much reshore as reshuffle. Our manufacturer in China is still making stuff for the Asia-Pacific market. A company we bought a while back has a factory in Mexico, so that’s where we moved Western Hemisphere production. Finally, we contracted with a factory in Italy to handle Europe/Middle East/Africa products. One of the manufacturing guys I talk to about one of our products says that’s becoming a trend: build the stuff close to where it’s being sold; sending information is still dirt-cheap and you can save big on shipping costs. Translating documentation is another inflation-resistant service — it’s all handled electronically and the people doing the actual translations often have wind or solar power (like me) to avoid blackout issues.

Things got a little shaky at work late last summer; the blackouts made it pretty difficult for our customers to deliver the goods to their customers, and we had an alarming dip in orders. Fortunately, things improved with cooler weather, and they’re pledging to not get caught out like that again, so maybe I’ll stay employed for another year. Our new product, an EMTA that can go 2 days on battery power, with data and two phone lines in constant use, made us one of the few growth companies last year… which is why I was able to afford my own backup power; our stock zoomed up and I cashed in some options. Go us. :-)

It’s already starting to warm up; the in-laws have started trays of tomato plants. We’ll be starting our gardens before you know it. This year, we probably won’t be going to Wal-Mart for much of anything, though.

continued…

The Boy Matriculates

I was trying to be positive, but I couldn’t actually bring myself to believe it was going to happen until it did. The Boy started at Lanier Tech this week.

He’s enjoying the classes, although none of us are enjoying the prices on textbooks. At least the Hope Grant he got knocked off a lot of that as well as his tuition. He finally got the battery in my car, with the incentive of being able to drive it to school (hey, it wasn’t my idea, I didn’t know about it until I came home to no car in the garage). With the front tires as worn as they are, driving it anywhere farther than the nearest tire store is a rather risky proposition at the moment.

But I digress. I think with his artistic bent, The Boy could find custom paint & body work a rather lucrative field if the economy picks up again.

Inserting an Insert, Part 1.1

After an evening using the big drill with a 3" wire wheel, I figured there had to be something bigger that would let me get the job done faster. After some evening errands Sunday night, I swung by Home Despot. Although it was 7:53, the girl at the door told me they were closed (they nominally close at 8) and wouldn’t let me in. Fine: if Home Despot doesn’t want my business, there’s a Lowe’s near my office.

So on the way home from work, I picked up a 6" wire wheel and a 3" cone wheel for the odd corners, strapped them to the back of the bike, and headed home. The 6-incher made a huge difference; I got the top, back, and right side done in the same amount of time it took to do the left side with the old 3" wheel. That left the hardest part, the front — that iron filigree work was a bear to work around and through.

Somewhere along the line, I plugged in the blower and hit the switch. It came on, with a bit of a groan but got going after it remembered what to do. I still have to de-rust the trim panel and, but it’s flat so I don’t expect much problem there.

Tomorrow is probably going to be a down-day, with choir practice eating up the evening, but I’m still holding out the possibility that we’ll install it this weekend.

Inserting an Insert, Part 1 [UPDATED]

Some friends of ours decommissioned an Earth Stove fireplace insert some time back, and had it sitting under their porch ever since. When they learned we were talking about getting one, they were only to glad to give us that one. Of course, there were the minor details about getting it delivered (as it’s several hundred pounds of steel and firebrick) to the manor, and what kind of shape it was in. The Boy has been disappearing all weekend for most weekends, and then I managed to hose my knee. But then their sons showed up: J and his older brother, a skinny Marine home on leave; they devised a roller system with some PVC pipe (which you can see under the insert) and rolled it on his truck and then off into our detached garage.

I had a little time yesterday, and the anti-inflammatories have done a pretty good job (my knee still aches but it’s only annoying), so I spent half an hour getting stuff together. Wire brush, dust mask (plenty of those around, thanks to the chicken houses), jacket, gloves… and the camera, of course.

I opened it up to find several inches of ash still inside the thing. I guess I can’t complain about a freebie though; but I could (and did) scoop it out and toss it in The Boy’s firepit.

With the initial preparations out of the way, I took wire brush in hand and got to work. The rust on the box is actually pretty light, except toward the bottom — I think a lot of what came off was dirt. I’ll probably go over it with some medium sandpaper, just to make sure, but I’m already half-done with the initial phase of the project (Phase 2 = painting, Phase 3 = installation).

There are two possible wrinkles that I need to be aware of. First is the blower; they told me it worked when they plugged it in a year ago, but it’s been sitting in a non-climate controlled area since then. So I’m going to pull that unit out and have a look at it before plugging it in. Second is Mrs. Fetched… she’s not sure she wants black. Rust-Oleum has several colors of high-heat paint; I have some black paint (put to good use painting an old grill & a motorcycle tank), but she’s not sure she wants black. She certainly doesn’t want green, though. There’s a “copper” color, which might be interesting… I might use it on the trim panel and maybe the door & hood if nothing else. But I have a little time to make those decisions.

UPDATE: I has a drill. They use large DeWalt drills in the chicken house as winch motors; like anything in the chicken house, they develop problems. The thing I like about them is that they are built to be repairable, and Mrs. Fetched brings them to me to repair. I happened to have a couple drills in the queue; I tried one and it shot fire out the back. I snagged the brushes out of a “parts” drill, added some gear oil to the gearbox to quiet down the shrieking, and it run fine. I put the wire brush on it and got to work. The drill is heavy as all get-out, but never even got warm and it took nearly all the rust off that the hand brush missed. The insert is much more black than rust color now, at least on the side I did.

FAR Future, Episode 18: Political Theater

The in-laws have a superstition that whatever you do on New Year’s Day establishes a pattern for the year ahead — thus, it’s a good day for doing things you want to do all year and avoid things you don’t want (like work). I’m not sure if it’s a southern belief, or specific to the in-laws — but I figured holding back on this FAR Future post for one day might be just the thing I need to establish a pattern I want in the year ahead. By this time next year, I hope to be posting Episode 60 or thereabouts.

Happy New Year, everyone, and don’t forget to go easy on the fossil fuels!

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Friday, February 8, 2013
Political Theater

The whole secession thing died back for a while — it turned out a lot of the people who were willing to pander to the lowest common denominator weren’t quite willing to cut the cords. Planet Georgia, as I said back in December, huffed and puffed about “respecting our values and concerns” after the people turned out to be seriously conflicted about the whole matter. Other states mostly followed suit, although Wyoming and Utah look a little shaky these days. After this week, though, it might start making more noise again. Or not.

The new Congressional leadership agreed to “hear and seriously consider the proposals of the minority,” which is even smaller than before. I don’t know how they managed to say “seriously” with a straight face; the goplets, which great enthusiasm, took the opportunity to really show their butts to the entire nation. They crafted a big ol’ grab-bag of their pet legislation: drill ANWR (nobody believes it will make a difference anymore, but that didn’t stop them), abolish the NFRB (rationing), eliminate heating fuel subsidies for low-income families, big tax cuts for their patrons, eliminate pollution controls (in the name of “energy efficiency” of course)… basically, attempting to re-do all the damage that Bush-league did and we’ve all worked so hard to undo.

I think at the highest levels, their plan was to introduce the legislation, let it die in committee or via filibuster, and tell the base that the government wasn’t interested in their wants. Instead, the committees let each bill go through, with no amendments and no serious opposition — the last few rational goplets started trying to kill the bills themselves when they saw what was happening, but to no avail. C-SPAN then got to show the supporters doing some incredible verbal contortions. Naturally, when it came time for a vote, each bill went down in flames. “Hear and seriously consider” has nothing to do with “support,” thankfully.

Boy, did Shotgun Sam get an earful though! A bunch of callers were complaining “what were our guys thinking, wanting to kill heating assistance, me and my family would be freezing to death without it!” and “whose brilliant idea was it to try repealing rationing, it’s the only way I can get enough gas to get to work.” Once again, he was having a hard time steering the mood of the listeners. Indeed, repealing heating assistance went down 427-6 or something like that — the only goplets with the stomach to deal with their voters on that one were in Florida or some of the high-income districts. Or both. I guess it goes to show that not even the most rabid right-wing voter has more sense than their candidates, who seem willing to hurt himself for “the cause” — in the end, the goplets ensured that a few more of their own voters will sit the next election out, and maybe lose a couple more seats.

Well… we’ve gotten past the worst of the winter, unless we get a late freeze. In a few months, we’ll be wishing it was cold again. We’ll be “looking forward” to blackouts all summer long, I’m sure. I’ve got as much wind & solar generation at FAR Manor as I could afford, and it should be enough to run my computers for work and keep a fridge or two (mostly) going. I’m actually looking forward to some warmer weather; going to the creek to cool off is tons easier than chopping food & feeding a stove.

continued…

Kneecapped

I must have whacked my knee a good one the other day at the chicken houses. It started hurting a bit the night before last; it woke me up around 4:30 and I took a couple Advil to make it quiet down a bit. This evening, it was noticeably swollen and Mrs. Fetched finally realized I had some issues with it. She’s made me all comfy in the living room, dropped an ice pack on the knee, and even ran an extension cord so my MacBook would have da jooz.

I can kind of walk on it if I keep it straight. If I don't move the joint, it doesn't hurt that much.

The pain isn’t worth two lousy days away from the chickens. If I’d done it earlier, and gotten a week off? Maybe.

Unintentional(?)

All I can say to this is: don't I wish!!!

Cinnamon rolls

Continuing the holiday baking series…



I wonder how many will be left tomorrow morning. I told The Boy in passing that I was making them, thinking maybe he’d have an incentive to hang around the house tonight. Oh well… his loss!

Turning, turning…

It is said "the wheels of justice turn slowly." But turn they do, and they came around late last week for The Boy.

Back around the end of February, while The Boy was on probation for his little boo-boo, he got busted again for underage drinking — less than a week after he finished a week in the cooler for his first probation violation (failed drug test). The mere fact of getting arrested was another probation violation, and that one cost him a month in the Cinder Block Hilton.

As I said earlier, we got the notice last week: his arraignment is Jan. 9. We told him at the time that he could either save himself some money and hire an attorney (as if he wasn’t having issues paying the last one) or try his luck with the public defender. Given that “live for the moment” is a rather tame way of describing his attitude, guess which way he went?

Hi ho, hi ho, off we go. We actually got to talk to the younger partner in the PD’s office — he’s so fresh out of law school that there’s still pieces of shrink-wrap clinging to him. That’s not a completely bad thing: a new guy is more likely to be idealistic and try harder. The senior lawyer wasn’t there, but he used to be a DUI lawyer before taking the public defender gig, so underage drinking isn’t foreign territory for him. They should have a good idea of what the DA is going to offer in a plea arrangement in a few days; with any luck, he might get away with a smallish fine and six months of probation. The joker in the deck is that the cop didn’t give The Boy a breathalyzer or a blood test, so any evidence they have is fairly flimsy. If J, whom he was riding with, can’t be found to testify, all they have is an assumption (but if J does show up, he’s Up The Creek). Another helpful item is that he took a DUI class and drug awareness course after the arrest, so it’s not likely he’ll have to go through them again.

It would have been fun to let The Boy get to know the federal judge that Mom worked for back in the day.

A Christmas Story

[I’ve wanted to write this story for over a year now. Olga, my B&D Muse, finally took pity on me and let me get it down.]

Santa Claus lives in a mobile home in Lumpkin County, Georgia.

I suppose if you want peace and quiet all year, that would be the thing to do: spread rumors about the North Pole, or Finland, or Spain (Spain?), then slip away to a modest place in the country — but I’m getting ahead of myself. The thing about Santa is that he’s never caught out. If you see him, it’s because he wants you to. Or knows you need to.

My wife was running a little food distribution ministry out of the church last year, and we got a request one Saturday afternoon. “Whatever you have is fine,” the caller told her, “but if you can put in a bag of flour, we would really appreciate it.” No problem there; Mrs. Fetched always buys me extra flour for holiday baking, so I added a bag to our box of canned goods and fresh fruit. As usual, she was busy with a chicken house issue, so I volunteered to take the box over. I really wasn’t in a frame of mind to deal with people that day, but anything is better than chicken house duty.

The directions were pretty clear: up GA400, left at the light with the Exxon station, first right, 1.2 miles down on the right, look for a trailer with a porch. The road was one of those windy, narrow little country lanes that were great for motorcycling. The first thing I noticed was that the place was kept up much better than most places we took food. The yard was kind of scraggly-looking, as are most North Georgia yards that don’t get intensive care, but the trailer itself looked to be in much better shape than its age (given away by the design) would suggest. The walkway to the porch was lined with pansies, and a half dozen brilliant poinsettias stood guard at the corners of the porch.

“It’s open,” a man called from the porch as I approached the door. “Just push.” Smart move on their part, I thought; you don’t have to put down your stuff to get the door. The man behind the voice was reclining in what looked like a canvas beach chair on the porch; it was fairly warm for early December and the sun was doing a pretty good job of keeping the porch warm. He was wearing some old-fashioned red flannel get-up, open at the top, and the long sleeves pushed up to his elbows. A furry gent he was; his arms were covered with white curly hair, and the same peeked out of the top of his — jumpsuit? pajamas? Full beard, long straight white hair. He was a big guy, but not really fat, he could stand to lose a few pounds but so could I.

“How ya doin’?” I said. The basic pleasantries.

“Pretty good. Drop that box off in the kitchen and come sit down. The missus will have some hot cocoa ready in a few.” His accent, like mine, told me he wasn’t from around here originally — but it wasn’t the same. It had an almost-upper Michigan lilt to it.

The door to the trailer proper was open — either they like it cool, or don’t mind wasting fuel, I thought — so I nodded and went on in.

Stepping into this place was a little strange. I could have sworn it was a single-wide trailer, but it looked much larger on the inside. It was mostly dark; a few strategic candles provided beacons to warn of reefs of furniture, but I found the way to the kitchen more by following the scent of cocoa than by sight. By contrast, the kitchen was well-lit, and it looked bigger than the one in our house. Something was really messing with my perceptions in this place. But the lady of the house was going full speed ahead in there, and the oven and stove were heating the house all by themselves. She, like her husband, seemed neither fat nor thin, although her billowy apron mostly hid her shape. Her hair was white, streaked with black or deep brown, and pulled back in a bun. She had aged well; the wrinkles added a sweetness to her face that would have left most middle-aged women looking forward to growing old.

She smiled at me, and gestured toward an empty place on the counter, just big enough for the box. I know enough about cooking to know that sometimes you can’t spare much concentration, so I didn’t think much of her not saying anything. “You look pretty busy,” I said. “You want some help putting this up?”

Her smile widened with amusement, and she shooed me out of the kitchen… I felt like a kid being chased out by his grandmother. It was such an odd feeling, and her smile was so contagious, that I ended up running and laughing the last few steps to the porch.

The old man was grinning around an unlit pipe. “You tried to help her, didn’t you? The missus is kind of old-fashioned that way — she appreciates you wanting to help her out, I’m sure, but she just doesn’t let men in her kitchen. She’ll probably put some extra cream in your cocoa to say thanks, though. It’ll just be a minute, take a load off your mind.” He pointed to the other deck chair, so incongruous among the Christmas decorations.

I sat and looked at the guy again, pipe and all, and shook my head. “I’m sure you’ve heard this a zillion times, but you’re a dead ringer for —”

He took the pipe out of his teeth, winked, and nodded. “I look like me.”

“I —” I laughed. “Good one. I’ll bet you’re the best Santa I’ve seen, though.”

“Of course I am. Didn’t I bring you that model airplane when you were twelve?”

My grin, and my lower jaw, dropped to my lap. I wanted to jump to my feet, but my legs had taken a holiday of their own. I settled for gaping and stammering, “But — you — what —”

He put the pipe down and chuckled. “The Big Guy knows everything. But you… there’s a lot of things you want to know, right?”

“Yeah.” I opened my mouth to continue, but everything I wanted to say, everything I’d ever wanted to ask a legend if ever I met one, had flown away like so many reindeer. The arrival of “the missus,” carrying a tray with two mugs and two plates, rescued me. She served us, silent as ever, then watched me expectantly. To stall for time, I took a sip of cocoa — it was just the right temperature — and then goggled at her. “This is fantastic,” I said. She smiled, patted my cheek (she had a way of making me feel like I was five again) and went back inside.

“She makes good cocoa,” Santa said (I had to accept it), “but wait ’til you try her cookies.” He glanced at my plate, sitting on a small table — almost a stand — next to my chair. They looked — and smelled — and tasted — like a choco-holic’s concept of heaven.

“Wow. What does she put in those?”

“Magic, of course,” Santa winked again. “That’s why you won’t gain two pounds or sugar-crash.”

The cookies and the cocoa worked their magic… or perhaps it was only the normal choco-buzz. Either way, after another sip of cocoa, I regained my composure. Or as much of it as I could under the circumstances. “Why here? If you’re not going to live in the Arctic, why not the beach? I don’t get it.”

“I’m everywhere, of course. And right where I need to be.

“I’m in the hearts of parents who forgive their naughty children. I’m there when the ‘heartless’ businessman leaves a box full of presents at the doorstep of a low-income apartment when nobody’s looking. I’m riding with the good ol’ boys when they pull people out of ditches on icy days. I’m helping the kid at the grocery store keep his balance when he gets things off the top shelf for somebody’s grandmother.

“And… I’m there when a temperamental writer gets frustrated with all the commercialism and just wants a quiet holiday with his family.”

“But what about you?” I asked. “Don’t you get fed up with what marketers make you into just to sell some junk?”

He shrugged. “I know who I am. You know who I am. Everyone who believes in me knows who I am. I don’t sweat the commercial part — for everyone who’s selling stuff to turn a buck, there’s others trying to spread Christmas spirit. The world’s a big place, and I can’t be everywhere — I never could. When you delegate, you have to accept that the results aren’t always going to be exactly what you want.”

I laughed. “Go with the flow, then?”

“No,” and for the first time he looked serious. Here was the other side of Santa that I’d always imagined; the spirit that chided the naughty ones and urged them to rise above themselves. “Going with the flow means giving into human nature, and not caring about anyone but yourself. Swim against the current, man! Bring aid and succor to those who need it, and not just in December. And be kindest of all to those whose very presence annoys you — the Hummer driver on the road, the rude old lady — or the little girl who tells you she hates you. Remember?”

I did: she had said that to me one Sunday after church. I blurted, “Well I don’t hate you, I love you.” She stood there, stunned for a moment, then hugged me and said “No I don’t.” And she was a changed kid from then on.

“Sometimes, the naughty ones — kids or adults — are just trying not to be hurt. A kind word at the right time… well, it can be a Christmas miracle.

“Well, you knew all this already, but sometimes you need a reminder. This is a busy time of year, and it’s easy to be caught up by trivia. Finish your cocoa — look, you’ve hardly touched it — and take a cookie on the road.”

My cup was nearly full, but I could have sworn I’d been drinking it all along. It was simply too good to put down. But I drank it down, and took a cookie as instructed. “Y’know,” I said, “something just occurred to me. Why bring you food? I don’t mind — I mean, the reward was more than double — but do you need it?”

Santa laughed; the jolly old elf was back. “Of course not. But I know of a family nearby that needs it, and won’t ask for help. It will show up in their kitchen like it was always there, and it won’t run out for a while.”

I stood, and Mrs. Claus came back out, smiling quietly as always. She kissed my cheek and took up the dishes.

“Don’t you talk?” I asked her.

She grinned, and Santa answered. “Of course she does. But the wisest are always the most quiet. Remember the guy in the Earthsea books? ‘To hear, one must first be silent.’ It’s true.”

I nodded; there really wasn’t much I could say to that. I bowed — it seemed to be the right thing to do — then took my leave. The wisdom and reassurance weren’t the only gifts they had given me; the road itself was another. I’ve ridden down it several times over the last year — and the trailer is there, but different now. Weedy trees obscure it, and it looks abandoned and seriously run-down, but that’s just protective camouflage. I know someone lives there. They probably won’t answer the door if I knocked, but they’re there alright — whoever needs them will see them.

Santa Claus lives in a mobile home in Lumpkin County, Georgia.

I’ve been to his place. His wife makes the best cocoa.

Pushing the Envelope (updated with photo)

The Boy has been back to pushing the envelope just as far as he can, lately. After the incident a couple weekends ago, he’s been around… oh, about 2/3 of the time. Along the way, he managed to hurt his shoulder; Mrs. Fetched took him to the doc yesterday to have it looked at. While they were there, they ran into EJ, one of The Boy’s old friends that none of us have seen for a while and one of the few we like having around (even Daughter Dearest is OK with him) — it turns out he works at the hospital (in housekeeping), so we brought him home with us. He’s been around most of the weekend.

Because of EJ, Mrs. Fetched decided The Boy could run him home today. Unfortunately, somehow Snippet got involved and hooked up with them. Because of some logistics related to where EJ lives, and where Snippet lives, she ended up coming home with The Boy. So (until I go to bed), she’s sleeping in the guest bedroom. Mrs. Fetched seems to be much more sanguine about the situation than I am; she’s snoring away while I’m trying to get into a sleeping frame of mind. At least I was able to get The Boy to go upstairs instead of starting a movie at 11:30 p.m.


Eh. It hasn’t been all about The Boy today. We had a Christmas dinner that can’t be beat and there’s even a dozen of my rolls left. Turns out my niece is once-bitten twice-shy, and managed to not scarf down a bunch like she did last year. The problem is, with all the rain we've been getting lately, I haven't been able to walk off the feasts… and it’s starting to stay on me. Oh well, the five pounds last put on are the easiest to get off. I stuck with non-meat items for supper, just bread and veggies (and one slice of pie), which tend to digest a little more quickly for me.

We’ll see what happens.

This has potential!

Via Man Eegee…

The Lakota people are seceding from the US, taking what appear to be large chunks of five states with them:



I’d like to get some popcorn and watch the fun, but this could just as easily be either boring or horrifying. It’s also a little unsettling, as (much) later episodes of FAR Future will cover the balkanization of America, including the native nations. Once again, reality is jumping the gun on me.

Pre-holiday countdown

Tomorrow is Virtual Friday. One more day, and I’m outta there for what’s left of the year! Hooray! Our department is having a little wing-ding tomorrow after work, which makes it a great day to start the Christmas madness season in earnest.

So I figured I’d bite the bullet. I was wrapping up work, and told Mrs. Fetched, “I’ll be around the whole week. If you need me in the chicken houses, whatever.”

“Daughter Dearest will be off too,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll need you.” Hooray again!

We videotaped DD’s chorus last night, then one of the band moms lined us up to tape the band concert tonight. We didn’t have the ladder last night, so we had to set up the cameras down front… as in, the bare minimum distance where I could zoom out and get the entire choir. The band mom made sure we had the ladder tonight, so we were able to set up on top of the office area (unless someone’s wearing stilts, there’s no way they could walk in front of us up there). After setting up, my phone beeped up a reminder about the Christmas party at the local bike shop. I got an invite, I suppose since I’d bought a bike there this year, and had completely forgotten about it. Mrs. Fetched said, “Go on, I can handle both cameras. For what you spent there, you need to go there.” (Like I didn’t buy one of the lowest-priced road bikes.) But… Hooray Number Three! “Just be back by 7:30 so we can pack up.” Of course, they had a sale going on; gloves were 20% off but I didn’t see a pair that jumped off the rack and promised to keep my hands warm all winter.

I got an unexpected early Christmas gift: The Boy (who has been in & out a lot lately) left a 7oz hip flask in the back of Mrs. Fetched’s car. It didn’t smell at all, but I washed it out anyway then added rum. Of course, nothing comes without a price — he ended up following through on his plan to take the speaker box out of my car, and still hasn’t put the back seat back together. I wanted the extra trunk space anyway, and was thinking about putting a pair of low-profile woofs under the seat. Not like I’m taking the car anywhere right away; the front tires are worn out.

As long as I’m not doing anything else after tomorrow, I’ll be devoting some serious time to writing. I want to put the final tweaks on a short story (The Boy’s) and send it around too. There will be a couple of Christmas parties along the way, just to make things interesting.

FAR Future, Episode 17

Happy New Year! Kind of.

---

Monday, January 14, 2013
Froze in the Middle

The Mayan calendar began a new cycle on December 21. It’s not exactly off to a wonderful start for a lot of people.

The rural poor (and not-so poor) are huddling together, cutting firewood, and pooling their other resources to stay relatively warm this winter. The urban poor tend to live in apartment buildings, which are easier to heat, and they have an established public assistance infrastructure to help them out. And suburbia?

Ouch. You’ve seen the stories, and I hope you haven’t lived them. The lucky ones still have jobs that cover their heat and transportation costs (if little else). The people in the Foreclosure Moratorium program (FMA) get a break on the mortgages, but they’re still on the hook for food and heat. Many suburbanites aren’t aware of other assistance programs, or how to apply if they do… or prefer to avoid them (pride, ideology, etc.). So even when the house payment isn’t an issue, some are deciding it isn’t worth the hassle. They mail their keys to the bank and move in with relatives (whether rural or not).

Suburbia’s thinning out, in more ways than one. Abandoned houses don’t last too long now: first the furniture disappears up their neighbors’ chimneys, then wood trim turns into fuel and carpet & padding goes on walls (extra insulation), then interior walls turn into firewood, then upstairs flooring, walls, the roof… and of course, the wiring gets stripped for the copper. After a week or so, there isn’t much left but pieces of sheetrock, vinyl siding, the heat pump, and other large appliances (or the remnants, after the motors get stripped for copper too). Houses that don’t get abandoned sometimes catch fire when people aren’t smart about using their fireplaces, or try using the oven as a firebox. So between strippers and fires, empty lots are appearing fairly quickly. I’ll bet some forward-thinkers are already clearing them up for gardens.

Naturally, this isn’t doing the financial “industry” any good. CWM was offering mortgagees in the FMA program some assistance with heating bills to keep people from giving up. That’s basically good business… an intact house is worth something; a lot with a pile of debris is worth less than the lot itself (since it has to be cleared). Other companies are trying a sort of rapid-response operation, with housesitters lined up and ready to rush to an abandoned house — but that’s a race they usually lose, because the neighbors know when people move out and have a head start on the mortgage companies, equal to the time it takes to send in the keys. Most housesitters arrive to find the house already stripped of furniture and often carpeting; if they’re lucky, the wiring is still intact. Losing a house like that is a double-whammy to the mortgage holders — the Feds let them not report FMA properties as write-offs, but they still aren’t allowed to hide destroyed assets or housesitter costs. They’re all dreading the April reporting. Some regional companies, in Florida and California, have already folded — and there’s no telling who owns their paper now. But against a backdrop of people freezing to death or dying in fires, figuring out who owns some worthless property doesn’t seem to be a priority.

Of course, the yap radio mouths blame their usual suspects for just about all of what’s happening — Shotgun Sam probably got himself a case of emphysema the other day, breathing all the dust coming off the global warming-denial mantle that he tried on. Something along the lines of, “Where’s the global warming gone? We sure could use a little bit of that right now, couldn’t we?” The spazz out there is just incredible. (“spazz” is an old term I defined during the Y2K days; it indicates the ability to cling to a belief after it has been disproved)

Closer to home, FAR Manor is getting through winter in reasonable shape so far. We had some trouble with wood-poachers for a little while, was the worst thing. Fortunately, someone close by asked for permission to get firewood off our place — I told him to only take deadfall and chase off the poachers, and that’s working out pretty well. Daughter Dearest has her teaching job, and she and another teacher are housesitting in a place within walking distance of the school. The county agreed to waive school taxes for the property, so that’s all working out (again, so far). The school buses pick up passengers as well as kids now, collecting fares from the non-students, which helps some with fuel costs. But the Feds had to step up and make sure that rural school districts had enough diesel to run the bus services. Now that they’re letting oil companies pay up to half of their taxes in fuel, that seems to be working out.

The scary thing is that there’s no master plan in effect — people are just making it up as they go. Most of us somehow manage to make it work, but some don’t… sometimes by not thinking things through, other times by just bad luck. Climate change notwithstanding, a mild winter and an early spring will help a lot of people stay alive.

continued…

3-Day Weekend Update, and Planet Georgia Logic

We (mostly) got our 3-day weekend after all. Mrs. Fetched woke up Saturday morning feeling much better than the day before, and continued to improve through the day. Hooray! Late in the afternoon, we packed a couple of bags with things (and I left the laptop at home, as advised by my good blog-buddies) and headed down. We had a little time to just rest and chill out before going to the company party.

The party went pretty well — I ran into a guy who sits two cubes down from me; he had a short but incredibly cute girlfriend with him. She and Mrs. Fetched hit it off famously, and us guys talked about various things (including shop talk).

A couple of hours into the party, the cellphones started ringing. We had told The Boy that he could have four specific friends over (including Cousin Splat), but no girlfriends or other female types, and nobody was to go into the house without escort. Well, that went by the wayside shortly after we left — there were eight people, two of which were female (one of which was The Boy’s old girlfriend Snippet) — traipsing in and out of the house like they owned the place. Daughter Dearest, who isn’t terribly fond of any of The Boy’s friends, locked the door and The Boy broke the doorknob to get in. Then she got rather upset and yelled at all of them. Cousin Splat lived up to his name by threatening to slap her silly if she didn’t shut up. And that was all she wrote.

Upon arriving at FAR Manor, I immediately told everyone to git. And told Splat that if he ever threatened Daughter Dearest again, there would be Hell to pay. He made some lame excuse, and Mrs. Fetched took over at that point. I started fixing the doorknob — the latch was bent and binding — and The Boy made the mistake of asking me what the big deal was.

“The big deal is,” I told him as he waved his hand at me and walked away, “that your mom and I can’t go anywhere without you ruining it for us!”

“Well, I guess I’m just a big screw-up,” he said, climbing into one of his friends’ cars.

“Yes, yes you are. And if you don’t want to straighten up your act, you’re not welcome back here.” He made the same waving gesture and left. Do I sound like I was peeved? I managed to get the doorknob working and put it back together. It’s a little loose; I guess we need a new one. And deadbolts. FAR Manor is about as secure as a Dozebox. But I digress. All of our stuff was at the hotel room, except for my laptop (which Mrs. Fetched said I should have brought).

Sunday morning, no Boy, and Daughter Dearest pronounced herself fit to solo again. We decided to go ahead and go, told DD to go to the grandparents’ if she didn’t want to stay at the manor, I sighed and grabbed my laptop — Mrs. Fetched didn’t want me to leave it there if The Boy decided to retaliate somehow — and a box of oranges we’d ordered for her older sister, and we took off again. We took a nap through the late afternoon, then decided to resume our original plans to eat at Gimza’s Polish Restaurant in Norcross (the guy whose name is on the sign is a co-worker, doing two jobs and burning the candle at both ends). If you’re in the area, the restaurant is at the corner of Medlock Bridge Rd. and Spalding Drive; the parking lot segues into an adjacent Citgo station. The prices are quite reasonable (much more so than the decor suggests) and the food is very good. Mrs. Fetched, who’s usually fussy about “strange” food, is a fan.

Yesterday (Monday) was our planned shopping day. This worked out. VERY well. We didn’t have the mall to ourselves, but parking was no problem and there were no crowds. We will be doing a Monday shopping trip next year, even if there’s no 3-day weekend to go with it (we may not have another one of those for a long time, or at least until Daughter Dearest is safely in college). We got ahem, cough, and phbhblltt for the kids (neener neener, DD!), and met the sister at a Thai place to transfer the oranges. I was very good; even though I had the computer, I only used it when Mrs. Fetched was watching TV — and then, only to type up stuff I’d written instead of getting online. Much. (She asked me to pull up the weather. Really.)

Speaking of shopping… in one locale, the cops are patrolling mall parking lots and yellow-tagging vehicles that have merchandise visible on seats or floors — “in other words, vehicles that are easy targets for thieves.”

Now that’s Planet Georgia logic for you: find easy targets and make them that much easier to spot! All in the name of fighting crime, of course.

Merry Christmas, Family Man!

“Sheriff’s Office.”

“Hey. Listen, my neighbor, Family Man, is hiding drugs in his woodpile?”

“Oh. Is that so?”

“Yeah. One of the logs is hollowed-out inside; he’s keeping the stuff in that.”

20 minutes later, the entire Sheriff’s department descends on Family Man’s house. They go through the entire woodpile, chopping each one open. After over an hour, they split the last log, find no drugs, and drive off disgruntled.

Our hero, who has been watching the entire operation, watches them drive away, then picks up the phone. “Hi, it’s Family Man. Thanks again for letting me use your phone!”

Merry Christmas, FM! Unfortunately, this only works once.

3-Day Weekend

The company Christmas party is tomorrow, and Mrs. Fetched & I came up with a wonderful idea: I take Monday as a floating holiday and we get a hotel for a 3-day weekend getaway — maybe do a little Christmas shopping since we would be in the thick of things. So she prodded me until I hopped onto Hotels.com and found something reasonably-priced and near the club where the company is throwing the party. The community chorale was presenting a large portion of “Messiah” this weekend, so we told them we’d videotape it Friday night before disappearing. Since the venue (the new middle school) is on the way home from work, I planned to just go straight there after work, meet up with Mrs. Fetched, then do our thing.

So this afternoon, Mrs. Fetched called. “You need to leave work early and come home. I’ve got the flu, so I won’t be able to help — you’ll have to do both cameras. Sorry.” Oh, maaaaan.

So I bailed out and came home. Mrs. Fetched was in bed (and still is), barf bucket next to the bed but thankfully unused. She had prepped the cameras: batteries charged, tapes in the bags; all I had to do was huck them in the car, remember the tripods, and get moving. The taping went as well as can be expected; I recruited a friend to start the B-roll camera and just leave it while I worked the primary. Everyone stood up, as tradition expects, for “Hallelujah Chorus” — which blocked my view, but I couldn’t help that. That, and one person walking right in front of the lens, were the only hassles all evening. Well, that and forgetting we’re out of powdered Powerade, so I went back into town and got some. (Last time I had the flu, I sipped lots of Powerade and I recovered pretty quickly. Stay hydrated.)

But if Mrs. Fetched doesn’t get better in a hurry, we’ll be canning the getaway and probably the party. I guess I shouldn’t plan a two-week getaway; no telling what she’d come down with.