“safe”?!?! Who decided that I was “safe”?! Isn’t that like being rated “mostly harmless”?!
I think I’m offended. Everyone wants a little edge. Everyone wants to be a little dangerous. Where’s my edge?! Where’s my danger?!
Sphere: Related ContentI still can’t believe McCain picked Palin as his VP. I’ll grant you, that it gave him a big, short-lived bump in the polls, but this woman is so underprepared to lead the USA that its frightening. It should have sent people running from the Republican ticket.
Do they not pay attention? I need to see if I can find that bumper sticker that says “If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention”
Sphere: Related ContentYou’ve probably already heard about this, but last night John McCain was scheduled to be on the David Letterman show, but in all the hubub about suspending his campaign so he could tend to the economic crisis - he had to cancel.
Dave says he was very sorry to hear that but understood that McCain has to do what McCain has to do. On the other, hand I guess Letterman still has a show to do and everything is now a mess because someone they were counting on bailed.
So youtube.com has nine minutes and eleven seconds of Dave being ticked off at McCain and making innumerable jokes at his expense. Frankly, its hilarious. And when Dave discovers that McCain turned up in Katie Couric’s television studio for an interview at the SAME TIME he was scheduled to be with Dave…. well, hilarity ensues and Senator McCain may not be back on Dave’s show ever.
Sphere: Related ContentSo me and Gabriel were supposed to go camping on Saturday. We were both looking forward to it. Its a fair amount of effort just to be able to sleep on the ground, but it gets us out of our every day rut. he gets to run around like a nut and I get to make chili and enjoy the fresh air.
Not so this weekend. Apparently there’s a nor’easter brewing off the eastern seaboard of the US that is supposed to hit Massachusetts on Saturday delivering between three and six inches of rain.
This isn’t terrible news. I wasn’t feeling great anyway and who wants to spend all that time in the rain anyway.
In terms of terrible weather, Massachusetts has had a pretty rough time of it this summer. To illustrate, please take a quick look at this picture of the devastation caused in one storm alone:
Finally, I am trying to pick up chess again. I play some correspondence chess at RedHotPawn.com.
Sadly, I stink. My rating there got very low when I canceled, like 12 games at once. When I forfeited that many games it really ruined my numbers. Now I am going to see if I can improve those numbers again.
But I am hoping that with some practice I can be less embarassed.
Sphere: Related ContentLast night I took Gabriel to a boy scout meeting. As you may or may not remember, Gabe has shown little interest in continuing with the Boy Scouts. He has now finished the last of his requirements for the Cub Scout award: Arrow of Light. He is old enough now but because Ben had a tricky start with the scouts he has been very reticent to even consider it. We went last night and Gabe talked to the scoutmaster, who had some very kind things to say.
Now he’s considering it. I won’t push him in to it, but I continue to think that he’ll have a great time and grow a great deal.
Liz has been sick for the last few days and is only just starting to recover. I think she caught the nasty bug that has been going around: flu-like symptoms with a bad cough.
I feel a little funny today myself and am hoping that its all in my head.
Fall is here - the maple trees are turning. I always like them the best because their individual leaves have such a wide variety of colors. The air is cool and dry and perfect. I love this time of year.
I was planning on going camping with the boy scouts on Saturday night but I understand there is a "monsoon" coming so they might cancel it. Ok, not a real monsoon. just rain. Rats. I just checked and they’re calling for three to six inches of rain. Well, that’s enough for me! I’m out!
Hopefully Sunday will be ok.
Sphere: Related ContentSundays just ain’t what they used to be. The little woman caught some kind of bug - a flu or something and she spent the day in bed, which is a shame. We had been thinking of going to King Richard’s Faire - its some kind of renaissance festival in south-eastern Mass. We’ve been before and I have to admit that its a pretty good time. Lots of good pictures, some good food. Gabriel always wants to buy some kind of sword, dagger or axe.
So we had to postpone it. Instead me and the boys put the pool away - its one of those collapsible, round pools - 15′ across and about 3′ deep. I had it draped over the swingset for a couple of days so it could dry out. The store room is in pretty good shape - mostly clean - so it wasn’t too hard to find a place to store the giant piece of heavy plastic and its associated equipment. That took up a good chunk of the morning.
At lunch time we were hungry and filthy and I was in no mood to put together lunch for five - liz was still sick in bed. So I grabbed the kids and we got some lunch out. I dropped the boys off at our town’s new skate-park. I was a little reticent because I wasn’t sure what sort of kids they would encounter there. So we hung around a little while to make sure they didn’t get hassled or anything. And I have to say that although it was crowded with bicycles, skateboards, rip-stiks and things I don’t have names for, the kids looked like they were trying to be careful. The oldest kid there actually asked a little girl to move before he dropped in on the ramp. So they stuck around there for an hour or so.
I went home and got in a little nap while watching the Patriots throw away their first regular-season loss in 21 games. Ugh. it was an ugly loss too. I soon decided that I would prefer to pull air conditioning units out of the windows and stash them for the winter than watch my team do any more damage to themselves. I spent the rest of the afternoon doing that. I was supposed to have mowed the yard too, but I didn’t get to it.
Instead I took the kids over to the elementary school so the boys could skate and Chloe and Grace could ride their bikes. We hung out there for a while until we got hungry and then went over to a local pizza shop for a couple of slices.
All in all it was a reasonably good day. Funny, when I lay it all out like that it doesn’t seem like as much as it felt like.
This week, Gabriel and I have to get ready to camp out on Saturday night. It will probably be his last scout outing. I haven’t made any progress in trying to get him interested in going on to boy scouts. I won’t make him join, of course, but it would make me happy if he did.
Ok, that’s it for now.
later.
Sphere: Related ContentBaseball is pretty popular here. In fact, they just held tryouts for next spring’s baseball season. Grace thought playing a baseball game where you can get out and maybe you can win a game. In t-ball around here they modify it so nobody loses and nobody gets out - I guess because they don’t want anyone to cry or something.
Anyway she was totally psyched to go to a baseball tryout. I need to spend a lot more time with her showing her how to hit and throw and to catch. I swore to spend more time doing this over the summer, but only spent about two hours on it.
Anyway, she did fine. They weren’t turning anyone away, just trying to put together teams with generally similar levels of talent. So we did that.
Ben and Gabe got new skateboards today. This was a pretty big deal because they weren’t run-of-the mill boards. They were serious skateboards and they are FAST. I used to skate when I was a kid and these boards kick ass. On Thursday our town will open a new skateboard park and they’re looking forward to trying it out. They’re having a great time with them so far.
This evening I cooked dinner. Yeah I did! I made chili in a dutch oven. Chloe helped. I showed her how to brown the ground beef and she did that. We added taco seasoning, then layered on the beans and tomatos. Finally added mixed up cornbread dough. I did this because its my plan to cook the same thing next week when Gabe and I got camping.
It turned out just fine. I’ll look forward to having it again next week! I was very happy with it.
So it was a decent day.
Sphere: Related ContentSo the federal government "bail-outs" of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and AIG… they just nationalized these companies, didn’t they?
I’m sure the federal government and people from both parties would be loathe to call it that, but isn’t that what happened?
I’m not even saying its a bad thing, but lets call a spade a spade. Maybe taking over privately held companies is the only way to keep the whole economy from sliding in to crisis. I can buy that. I understand that.
But that’s not raw capitalism. That’s the heavy hand of a state run economy, isn’t it? Its a matter of scale I’m sure, because its only a couple of companies.
To quote John McCain "You can put lipstick on a pig, but its still a pig"
Call it anything you’d like, but it is still w
andering towards socialism and state management of the economy.
Sphere: Related ContentI watched a couple of episodes of "Its always sunny in Philadelphia" last night and was pleasantly surprised. Its a situational comedy on the F/X channel - see? Not exactly a recipe for success. But its a funny show! Danny Devito stars or co-stars and its way better than I thought it would be. I guess I missed the first two seasons, but I understand its available on Hulu.com, which I can’t say enough good things about. I sat down and watched a couple of episodes of that new Terminator show on Hulu.com and the interface was excellent, the quality of the video was outstanding (for streaming video). Oh, and the show was also better than I expected. I don’t think I’ll continue to watch it, but it wasn’t bad.
I still like Big Bang Theory. I can’t get enough of that dumb show.
I had high hopes for "Fringe", which I hoped would be similar to X-Files, but it isn’t good. Its gross, but not good. The pilot was intriguing but the second episode fell flat. I’ll maybe check out the third.
I’ve always liked Christian Slater and I’m interested in his new show, "My own worst enemy". I’m afraid that I’ll be disappointed again. Oh well, you have to take some risks, right?
I’m also hopeful that Heroes will be back soon. I’ve also always been a fan of Lost.
You know what i can’t understand? Those nitwits in hollywood were on strike for, like four months right? The TV was AWFUL while they were on strike. Good god, it made me read a book for crying out loud! But they’ve been back on the payrolls now for six months! Where are my shows?! Where is all the great TV that makes this country great? I’ll tell you what: people all over the world don’t admire us for our naturally curly hair or good looks (although it doesn’t hurt). Its our top quality pop culture. And if we can’t rely on that, how are we going to compete any more?
Believe me, it will be Soupy Sales and Jerry Lewis all over again. Either that or Big Brother all day and Survivor all night.
Sphere: Related ContentI got a call at work yesterday from my nine year old daughter, Chloe. She had just arrived home from school and was SO excited because she had been accepted to the City-Wide Children’s Chorus. Well, sort of. She went last week and tried out and didn’t feel at all good about the performance she gave. The director had worked with her a little bit trying to see if she could match a given pitch.
This gave her a lot of trouble and she was afraid that she wouldn’t make it.
But she got a letter welcoming her to the reserve chorus. I had to go back and read that twice because I wasn’t sure what a reserve chorus was. it turns out that its different from the chorus that actually performs. I guess its like the B-team - they go to all the same practices and learn all the same songs but don’t get to perform unless someone tears an ACL or something.
So now we’re all praying for an injury on the City Wide Children’s Chorus.
