So, d'j' all celebrate the holidays appropriately?

The Ides of March, St. Urho's Day and St. Patrick's Day?

We fired up the hot tub for St. Urho's Day, but otherwise, we didn't do nuthin'.

I thought of a little ditty while showering up after the long

July 4th weekend:

Bug bites and sunburns and duck-poop-caused itchin'
Long weeds and deadfalls and Mom-in-Law's bitchin'
Patching the rooves that hail damaged last Spring
These are the truths of our lake cabin dreams.

All right, a couple lines were tortured into to place to fit the rhyme and meter. We didn't have any rooves to fix this time around. But I'm not quite clear on why they need to remove deadfalls from the woods. Not that it isn't fun to play with chainsaws.

Oh, and I actually like my mom-in-law quite a bit. So, sorry about that one, Mom. But...you know...stereotypes...rhyme schemes...

Well! We can get on with that bourgeois lifestyle, then!

My piece of the stimulus bill:

wireless and broadband deployment grant programs

(including transfer of funds to Al Erkkila for the Al Erkkila Personal Economic Stimulus Program)

For necessary and unnecessary expenses related to the Wireless and Broadband Deployment Grant Programs established by section 6002 of division B of this Act, $2,825,000,000, of which $1,000,000,000 shall be for Wireless Deployment Grants and $1,825,000,000 shall be for Broadband Deployment Grants: Provided, That an additional $365,000,000 shall be paid directly to Al Erkkila in the form of subsidized loans that do not require repayment. Provided Further, That the funds be used by Al Erkkila to retire to the Bahamas or for whatever. Provided Even Further, That Al Erkkila will receive free Green Bay Packers tickets for life. Provided Even Further Still, That Al Erkkila shall be treated as a cabinet-level appointment for the purpose of income tax reporting, and therefore no taxes shall be paid on any of the aformentioned benefits. And one more thing: Barney Frank is hereby expelled from Congress, effective immediately upon enactment.

H/T Mr. Pt.

Get yours here.

What I did over the weekend

I'm somewhat proud of myself. Saturday, I put the pool away. It looked clean enough to me, but I did have to vacuum out all the leaves and the water. Then I pulled it out of the shade to dry in the sun. Then I rolled it into a ball twice the size of the box, jammed it in as best I could and stowed it in the shed.

Good enough.

I started to rake the front yard then, but I decided it'd be better just to run the bagging lawn-mower over it. Looks good.

Sunday we overslept for church. The wife started b... uh, nagging at 10:15. That's when we have to be in the car and on the street to get to church by 10:30. She was up at 8:00. Therefore she's virtuous and we're not.

You know what I'm thinking.

Anyway, well, the furnace hasn't been working this fall. The indicator light said everything was just dandy, but it wouldn't turn on. Laurie called Ron and handed the phone to me. Ron walked me through a bunch of tests and we got the bugger running. Well, I had to go to Menard's and get a new thermostat, but everything's working now.

More later.

I suppose the people who still stop by here are aware

that my tagline, or whatever you call it, "Seeking transcendence one relationship at a time" is a bit of satire. But since nobody's mentioned it, I figured maybe I should say something.

Any suggestions for how I could make it funnier?

[Edit-5/16/2010: Good thing I quoted the tagline, eh? Since I changed it. It's actually quite a brilliant line. I think I changed it out of guilt.]

We've been having critter troubles lately.

A week ago last Friday, a squirrel managed to drown in our pool. So I got to pick him out (could have been a "her" for all I know - I'm pretty squeamish about looking, and I'm not well enough versed in squirrel parts to know if I could tell, anyway). Rigor mortis had set in, so it was like handling a little, furry statuette. That told me he'd been there awhile, but not too terribly long.

I bagged him up, and threw him in the dumpster. I forgot to say any words of condolence to his relatives. "He was a cute little guy..."

So we drained the pool, mopped it out and refilled it.

No sooner did we get that done, when my daughter comes down and informs me that we've got a raccoon on the back porch, eating the cat's food. The wife and I head out to scare it off and the bastard casually rips a hole in the screen and jumps out. So I put the windows back in and blocked the door with boards.

Next day, after church, we stopped at Fleet Farm and bought a live trap. I set it up by the porch, tossed in some cat food, and woke up Monday to find another cute little critter napping in the cage. I went back inside, put on some leather gloves and went out to haul him away. He'd rolled the cage on its side, so I had to roll it back. When I started to reach for it with my hand, the little bugger transmogrified into a demon, screamed and lunged at my fingers. Kinda took me aback. So I rolled the trap over with the bottom of my shoe. Got to see a couple more of those lunges. I picked up the cage and, carrying it out away from my side brought him around to the truck and loaded him in the back. I dropped him off in a park on the east side of the Mississippi. I don't think he'll find his way back.

Tuesday morning, before dawn, my wife and I are wakened by the screen porch door slamming and banging. Again. That was one of the symptoms of the previous feral burglar. I didn't do anything about it right then, except reboard the door, then I forgot about him until, late that night, when I was headed to bed I hear clattering and banging of the boards falling over. So I went roaring out the door... I think I had some kind of weapon, but I don't remember what. Fortunately, he hadn't quite made it in when I did that.

This time, I boarded, barred and blocked the door with every heavy thing I could find. He didn't come back that night.

I set up and baited the live trap again last night and woke to find another napping raccoon in it this morning. Hopefully, not the same one. Repeat of previous performance, but this time I took the litter p----rhead out east of 35W, just in case it was, indeed the same one and he knew the route from the park across the river straight back to my house.

I feel a little bad about something, though. All my friends are hunters and trappers (and fishermen, though that's beside the point), and I'm none of those things. I'm itching to get a pelt. I've never seen a litter of 'coons with less than three...I think the term is "kits."

The sibling or parent of those two twerps better keep that in mind.

Steve needs to read The Mainspring of Human Progress

Henry Grady Weaver would not have objected to me spending a sunny afternoon making this with a magnifying glass:


Quickpost this image to Myspace, Digg, Facebook, and others!

Weaver was a disciple of Rose Wilder Lane and Isabel Paterson.

Aliina said, "I really like you, Daddy!"

Well! I had to answer, "I really like you, 'Liina!"

So she raised me, "I love you, Daddy!"

I called, "I love you, 'Liina!"

She laid her cards on the table, "We love each other!"
We had to split the pot.

At least, I think I got my fair share. Did she ask me to do something? I'm sure I did it! What do you need, dear?

A few words on my latest readings

I've been reading the Jack Reacher stories by Lee Child. Action/Mystery stories. Good stuff. Keep ya up all night. Reacher, the almost larger than life hero, is a "liberal" but his sense of justice is spot on and he acts directly, but wisely.

I read Aladdin and the Magic Lamp to Rosie. Quite a bit different from the Disney movie. Sindbad the Sailor was in the same book. It too is quite different from the movie Sinbad the Sailor that I saw in a seedy theater once.

Rosie gave up on Oliver Twist as hopeless. It's certainly not a laugh a minute, like The Pickwick Papers. We also read Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception. Next is Robert Silverberg's Gilgamesh The King. Be gettin' to that in a minute.

Now I'm reading That Hideous Strength, by C.S. Lewis, after having read Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra - all on The Probligo's recommendation. Very enlightening stuff: pretty deep theology, delivered entertainingly. Since I'm not done with the last book of the series, I'm still not sure where there's a vision of a utopia that I'd actually want to aim for in them.

And I'm also working on The Betrayal of the American Right, by Murray Rothbard and Freedomnomics, by John Lott. I'll get links for those after I put the kids to bed.

Ah! C****! I had something important to say,

but I just had to go run and fish the toddler out of the toilet. Of course, my contribution was laughter. Next time remind me to grab the camera.

She forgot to ask someone to put the baby seat on the potty.

Traumatized for life, I'm sure.