It's Sunday of the 4th of July weekend. I have Monday off as well, so I can slough off longer than some of you. We've already had a good time, but we also opened the question, is the 4th of July a great holiday?
Our town has a very nice set of July 4th activities, going on all day, in our big lakeside park. There's food and drink, softball, fire department-sponsored hose battles, a kids' pudding-eating contest (courtesy of the local Swiss Miss pudding factory), live music, a petting zoo, crafts, a water-ski show, etc., and fireworks at night. On the other hand, it's been the same for a number of years, so we go to have a little lunch, see who's out and about, and watch an event, then we go home for a nap. The fireworks are better viewed from the downtown lake overlook, as it has fewer mosquitoes and fewer crazies setting off their own fireworks, which they do right among the viewers in the park; we didn't even go downtown the past few years, as the folks they hire seem to set off about one shot a minute. We had dinner at a friend's house and went home just about at dark.
Ah, but I opened the day with a stint at the laundromat (appliances still in garage). And I ran some shopping survival errands. Then there was the sign at the park entrance: "Welcome to Freedom Fest! No coolers. No carry-ons. No parking in beach area." Independence Day, my ass. So, all in all, I had a very nice day but not a thriller.
Yesterday, we went up to see our daughter and her boyfriend in the Twin Cities. We visited the "Taste of Minnesota" festival in St. Paul, and spent too much money for parking, too much money for food and drink tickets and beer wristbands, and too many tickets for most food and drink. Ah, but the "Little Charlie" filet sandwich, the shrimp skewer and the deep-fried lobster on a stick were tasty, and the Element 115 beer was dark and full-flavored but well-hopped, so crisp and thus good on a hot day. Then we went to the Twins' baseball game at the Metrodome. This would have been a lovely evening for outdoor baseball (the Twins' new outdoor stadium will be ready for the 2010 season), but we got $7 seats (outfield upper deck), and had some hot dogs and beers, and we got to see a fun ball game. The Cleveland Indians went up 5 to 2, but the Twins came back gradually and won 9 to 6. I didn't hear the attendance, but Ross and I guessed that something over 30,000 were there (31,887 as reported in the box score this morning). Food lines were long, as it seemed many of the upper deck concession stands were closed, but all in all it made for a fine evening at the ballpark.
So we had a very nice day.
It came up that one of our friends remembers not liking the 4th of July. This led us to think back about how each of us ranked the day. Was it a special holiday, like Christmas or Thanksgiving? No. Was it just a day off? In my case, not always. Was it, like our day this year, nice but not outstanding? Was the celebration of our nation's declaration of independence an important part of the day? Nobody mentioned that at all.
Every one of us, however, thought back to our recollections of the 4th when we were kids. Did we go to the park, did we remember fireworks? Pretty much yes. Did anyone recall special family customs? Wendy remembers the bike and wagon parade for kids at her local park; there wasn't anything else.
So: we take the day off (many of us), we grill out, we go to the local park, we drink some beer or lemonade, we watch fireworks or shoot off our own, and we don't get too worked up. Uh, I should probably mention our neighbors here. They have their biggest gathering of the year, with plenty of friends and family. They drape the house and fence in bunting. The guy mows a mini golf layout in his lawn and sets up the obstacles, which are reminders of US history (he's a teacher). And they have a bit of a ground fireworks show. So it may be more fair to say, some of us don't get all worked up.
Is the 4th of July, Independence Day, anyone's favorite or most meaningful holiday? I'll take input, but I'm starting from no. Maybe we need to take a little more time with the civics.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Up In The Air part 9
45,000 pounds. 22-1/2 tons. Ten yards of "mud."
They poured our basement floor yesterday. At roughly 4,500 pounds per cubic yard, that's how much concrete it takes to make a floor about 4" thick, in a space about 23' x 40'. No wonder there are a couple cracks in the sidewalk where the cement truck sat.
I'm not sure when it's safe to go down there and take a gander. Certainly nothing happened today, and I'm betting against any activity tomorrow. But I might toss a ladder through the egress window opening - I hate ladders, and I'm no good on them, and they kill my knees - and crawl down there for a look-see. This means, of course, that our old basement stairs were - mercifully - ripped out and new ones have yet to be built.
I'll want to be sure I know where the floor drain is, and the sump pump pit, and the roughed-in bathroom, and the laundry drain. I'll want to see if I can discern, without spilling a lot of water to test it, if the floor slopes toward the floor drain. And I'll want to call out some spots for ceiling fixtures (light) and duplex or fourplex receptacles (power).
The contractor will need to lower most of the appliances and the furnace through the egress window opening to put them in place. I want them to put in the stairs, and take the dryer down the new stairs, to see if it's at all possible to get such down and up for future appliance needs. The dryer is the lightest of those items that would need to go up and down the steps. Otherwise, there will need to be some permanent accommodation made at the egress window.
They also blocked up all the remaining openings in the foundation walls, except where the two lights (windows) and the egress window will go. All right: an egress window is the escape from the basement in case we or a future owner put a bedroom down there. I don't know what's going in those, or exactly what if anything will be done for window well and drainage. I know the egress window will require either a cover, or gutter at the roof, to keep water out of such a well.
A few treated boards need to be stuffed in between the block and the old house sill, and some sill repair still needs to happen. The plumber has much to do, as does the heating guy: almost all the sheet metal is being replaced and rerouted. Former cold air returns will now be heat vents and vice versa. Then the furnace needs to be hooked up to gas and power, and the central a/c unit needs to be reconnected and recharged. We've run out of luck on that score: days in the mid 80's leave the house pretty warm. The plumber will do a new supply line and reconnect everything, rescue one toilet, and get us a new water heater.
We still need to call out where the furnace and dryer will vent, and where the water connection will come out for garden hose, etc. This is our chance to get the hose hookup where it should be, near the back door. We might even be able to aim the furnace vent (in older times, chimney; now, PVC pipe out the side wall. Where's the elegance?) and dryer vent at the water connection, to help keep it from freezing.
Then comes the rebuilding of the front porch, the finishing of the back entry, and the fixing of the concrete outside the back door (perhaps these last two should be the other way around). This is where I recall that the contractor said, "four to six weeks," and we're finishing six weeks. The contractor needs also to do a make-good on a couple support beams and to have a look at some of the settling cracks and issues - for example, our kitchen counter has moved from 1/8" to 1/2" down the walls and pulled away from the wall by 1/4", although all the cabinets seem to be fine under the counter. The guy's truck bears the legend "Done Right the First Time," and we're not entirely sure.
When the house is done, we can begin to consider the yard and garden. Wendy thinks we can try to regrow the lawn by seed, and I can give that a go, but only if we get a lot of dirt in here to get the grade we need. We also get to redesign the garden spaces, the front walk (house to public walk), and - if we can scrounge enough brick - a patio-like space for a yard table.
Enough of that. Time to wander off-topic.
$4 gas is making itself known on the highway. I have said that I am now driving a little slower, let's say about 70 on the Interstate. This is down about 3 or 4 mph from my previous habits. At old speeds, I used to be passed regularly, about half the time by Minnesota cars and about 10% by even-faster Illinois cars. Today, for example, I was passed only by a motorcycle; I passed an Acura from Minnesota and a BMW from Illinois!
I have a bit of a fall-back position. My employer offers a stock purchase plan with after-tax dollars that gets us company stock at a bit of a break (discount from lower of current or previous buy-period price) and, although that's still attractive (bless me, I don't work for Circuit City, whose business and stock performance is so abysmal that Blockbuster walked away from an offer to buy the company), I could cover about half my monthly commute by pulling out of the program. Not yet, maybe, but a pad is a pad.
If you know me, you'll wonder when I might say something about beer. Here's one to try, but you may need to get west of Eau Claire and east of the Twin Cities to find. The Rush River brewery of River Falls, WI, makes two fine beers. Their "Bubblejack" IPA is tasty of the type, but to my mind their star is the "Unforgiven Amber." This is beautiful to look at and better to put in your mouth. Amber to copper, lovely head, full but not too thick, full-flavored but not cloying, good finish but not lingering aftertaste.
This is where I speak heresy. I drink wine. Sometimes I drink booze. Now, I seldom drink more than one of these flavor families per night, although a little nip of something is nice if not too many beers have preceded it. Generally, if I start with wine, I finish with wine, and if I start with a wee nip, I might well finish with another. Beer is wonderful: if I start with beer, and behave myself, I can finish with a shot; if I start with a shot, I can finish with a beer or two.
But I understand why old men drink straight booze, or wine. It's a cut to the chase issue. They have to pee less often; they may have to wake less often for that purpose. I have a healthy set of prostate problems, and as a beer-drinking man I may be up three or more times a night to drain. Most times, I can get right back to sleep, unless an unsettled house project weighs on my mind. When I drink wine, that might be down to two times, and if I sit with my friend George Dickel (not mentioned in George Thorogood and the Destroyers, "I Drink Alone" but it should have been), I might get by with the 12:30 whiz. The other night I tried drinking a glass of limeade (non-alcoholic) as the only beverage; I was tired and my liver needed a night off. I was still up twice, so I voted to not worry about abstaining. The longer I can stretch things between waking to pee, the more and better I dream. Since I believe that dreams, among other things, vent some pent-up issues in the subconscious, the more I dream, the more I like it. I feel better after dream-filled sleep, even if I don't recall much about any of the dreams.
George Dickel "Original Tennessee Finest Quality Sippin' Whisky" No. 12. Not to be mistaken for No. 9, Sour Mash Whisky. That's drinkable, after a fashion, for those who prefer sour mash. No. 12 is, to my mind, similar to a bourbon and better than Jack Daniel's, which generally costs $5 more per 750ml bottle. From what I have found on the net, the company has been up and down, has sold a few times including recently, has been in and out of production, et., etc. It still tastes as good as it did 40-plus years ago when I first learned about it in the alley behind Conkey's Book Store (Appleton, WI). As long as the recipe is true, the whisky will be honest with you. Hell, it's booze: if you have too much, it'll kick you in the ass, make you behave stupidly, and make you ill. But if you can manipulate such a liquor, get enough that you reach the land of pleasantness without flying past it, George Dickel is one of the more tasty ways to arrive there without making your wallet ill .
I am wondering how the new basement will be in regard to temperature. Our old basement ("Other people have basements. We have a cellar." - our daughter, in her early teen years) was, among other things, cool. It was a great place to hold beer and wine, in what I always called "cellar-cooled" temperatures. In winter, the sill along the stairway to the basement was a great place to keep good beers, as they were ready to drink at about 48-50 degrees, and wine from the basement was at about the same temperature because it was near the old floor. I will need a whole year, starting as soon as they tell me they're done, to calibrate the storage temperatures of the new basement and what changes in refrigeration and holding spaces will be needed to provide the happiest beverage moments with the least energy. I may have to go through some room-temperature George until I have some results to report.
They poured our basement floor yesterday. At roughly 4,500 pounds per cubic yard, that's how much concrete it takes to make a floor about 4" thick, in a space about 23' x 40'. No wonder there are a couple cracks in the sidewalk where the cement truck sat.
I'm not sure when it's safe to go down there and take a gander. Certainly nothing happened today, and I'm betting against any activity tomorrow. But I might toss a ladder through the egress window opening - I hate ladders, and I'm no good on them, and they kill my knees - and crawl down there for a look-see. This means, of course, that our old basement stairs were - mercifully - ripped out and new ones have yet to be built.
I'll want to be sure I know where the floor drain is, and the sump pump pit, and the roughed-in bathroom, and the laundry drain. I'll want to see if I can discern, without spilling a lot of water to test it, if the floor slopes toward the floor drain. And I'll want to call out some spots for ceiling fixtures (light) and duplex or fourplex receptacles (power).
The contractor will need to lower most of the appliances and the furnace through the egress window opening to put them in place. I want them to put in the stairs, and take the dryer down the new stairs, to see if it's at all possible to get such down and up for future appliance needs. The dryer is the lightest of those items that would need to go up and down the steps. Otherwise, there will need to be some permanent accommodation made at the egress window.
They also blocked up all the remaining openings in the foundation walls, except where the two lights (windows) and the egress window will go. All right: an egress window is the escape from the basement in case we or a future owner put a bedroom down there. I don't know what's going in those, or exactly what if anything will be done for window well and drainage. I know the egress window will require either a cover, or gutter at the roof, to keep water out of such a well.
A few treated boards need to be stuffed in between the block and the old house sill, and some sill repair still needs to happen. The plumber has much to do, as does the heating guy: almost all the sheet metal is being replaced and rerouted. Former cold air returns will now be heat vents and vice versa. Then the furnace needs to be hooked up to gas and power, and the central a/c unit needs to be reconnected and recharged. We've run out of luck on that score: days in the mid 80's leave the house pretty warm. The plumber will do a new supply line and reconnect everything, rescue one toilet, and get us a new water heater.
We still need to call out where the furnace and dryer will vent, and where the water connection will come out for garden hose, etc. This is our chance to get the hose hookup where it should be, near the back door. We might even be able to aim the furnace vent (in older times, chimney; now, PVC pipe out the side wall. Where's the elegance?) and dryer vent at the water connection, to help keep it from freezing.
Then comes the rebuilding of the front porch, the finishing of the back entry, and the fixing of the concrete outside the back door (perhaps these last two should be the other way around). This is where I recall that the contractor said, "four to six weeks," and we're finishing six weeks. The contractor needs also to do a make-good on a couple support beams and to have a look at some of the settling cracks and issues - for example, our kitchen counter has moved from 1/8" to 1/2" down the walls and pulled away from the wall by 1/4", although all the cabinets seem to be fine under the counter. The guy's truck bears the legend "Done Right the First Time," and we're not entirely sure.
When the house is done, we can begin to consider the yard and garden. Wendy thinks we can try to regrow the lawn by seed, and I can give that a go, but only if we get a lot of dirt in here to get the grade we need. We also get to redesign the garden spaces, the front walk (house to public walk), and - if we can scrounge enough brick - a patio-like space for a yard table.
Enough of that. Time to wander off-topic.
$4 gas is making itself known on the highway. I have said that I am now driving a little slower, let's say about 70 on the Interstate. This is down about 3 or 4 mph from my previous habits. At old speeds, I used to be passed regularly, about half the time by Minnesota cars and about 10% by even-faster Illinois cars. Today, for example, I was passed only by a motorcycle; I passed an Acura from Minnesota and a BMW from Illinois!
I have a bit of a fall-back position. My employer offers a stock purchase plan with after-tax dollars that gets us company stock at a bit of a break (discount from lower of current or previous buy-period price) and, although that's still attractive (bless me, I don't work for Circuit City, whose business and stock performance is so abysmal that Blockbuster walked away from an offer to buy the company), I could cover about half my monthly commute by pulling out of the program. Not yet, maybe, but a pad is a pad.
If you know me, you'll wonder when I might say something about beer. Here's one to try, but you may need to get west of Eau Claire and east of the Twin Cities to find. The Rush River brewery of River Falls, WI, makes two fine beers. Their "Bubblejack" IPA is tasty of the type, but to my mind their star is the "Unforgiven Amber." This is beautiful to look at and better to put in your mouth. Amber to copper, lovely head, full but not too thick, full-flavored but not cloying, good finish but not lingering aftertaste.
This is where I speak heresy. I drink wine. Sometimes I drink booze. Now, I seldom drink more than one of these flavor families per night, although a little nip of something is nice if not too many beers have preceded it. Generally, if I start with wine, I finish with wine, and if I start with a wee nip, I might well finish with another. Beer is wonderful: if I start with beer, and behave myself, I can finish with a shot; if I start with a shot, I can finish with a beer or two.
But I understand why old men drink straight booze, or wine. It's a cut to the chase issue. They have to pee less often; they may have to wake less often for that purpose. I have a healthy set of prostate problems, and as a beer-drinking man I may be up three or more times a night to drain. Most times, I can get right back to sleep, unless an unsettled house project weighs on my mind. When I drink wine, that might be down to two times, and if I sit with my friend George Dickel (not mentioned in George Thorogood and the Destroyers, "I Drink Alone" but it should have been), I might get by with the 12:30 whiz. The other night I tried drinking a glass of limeade (non-alcoholic) as the only beverage; I was tired and my liver needed a night off. I was still up twice, so I voted to not worry about abstaining. The longer I can stretch things between waking to pee, the more and better I dream. Since I believe that dreams, among other things, vent some pent-up issues in the subconscious, the more I dream, the more I like it. I feel better after dream-filled sleep, even if I don't recall much about any of the dreams.
George Dickel "Original Tennessee Finest Quality Sippin' Whisky" No. 12. Not to be mistaken for No. 9, Sour Mash Whisky. That's drinkable, after a fashion, for those who prefer sour mash. No. 12 is, to my mind, similar to a bourbon and better than Jack Daniel's, which generally costs $5 more per 750ml bottle. From what I have found on the net, the company has been up and down, has sold a few times including recently, has been in and out of production, et., etc. It still tastes as good as it did 40-plus years ago when I first learned about it in the alley behind Conkey's Book Store (Appleton, WI). As long as the recipe is true, the whisky will be honest with you. Hell, it's booze: if you have too much, it'll kick you in the ass, make you behave stupidly, and make you ill. But if you can manipulate such a liquor, get enough that you reach the land of pleasantness without flying past it, George Dickel is one of the more tasty ways to arrive there without making your wallet ill .
I am wondering how the new basement will be in regard to temperature. Our old basement ("Other people have basements. We have a cellar." - our daughter, in her early teen years) was, among other things, cool. It was a great place to hold beer and wine, in what I always called "cellar-cooled" temperatures. In winter, the sill along the stairway to the basement was a great place to keep good beers, as they were ready to drink at about 48-50 degrees, and wine from the basement was at about the same temperature because it was near the old floor. I will need a whole year, starting as soon as they tell me they're done, to calibrate the storage temperatures of the new basement and what changes in refrigeration and holding spaces will be needed to provide the happiest beverage moments with the least energy. I may have to go through some room-temperature George until I have some results to report.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Fixing the World...
Sometimes you have to see something a number of times before your brain kicks in. This is the premise of advertising; they believe that you get the impact of the ad on about the 12th or 13th viewing. Tonight I saw a blip from a news story about third world and developing nation having increasing energy demands that may impact the availability and price of energy for all nations. The item focused on someone saying how we needed to make some changes in our usage.
The synapses finally fired. I recall discussions of the total penetration of cellular phones in Scandinavian countries being driven by the problems of constructing traditional infrastructure, and how they ultimately were able to skip the wired step and go right to wireless in reaching difficult locations.
Then I recall that the island of Madagascar is nearly denuded of its once-thick forests because the ever-increasing population keeps chopping them down for firewood, for simple heat and cooking.
Then I think of China, a number of other countries, and the US itself constructing or planning new energy-generation facilities using traditional fuels. Xcel Energy just fired up a new plant that uses natural gas for fuel; this replaced an old coal-fired plant whose 570-foot chimney was imploded the other day. The new gas-fired plant went into construction before natural gas prices doubled and more.
The technology exists to produce energy from so many other sources: solar, which has been badly handled instead of avidly pushed; wind, which is huge in many countries and is blocked by such concerns as the blades on the turbines kill birds; geothermal; tidal, such as with the Bay of Fundy with its 40-foot tide swings; and hydroelectric, which works incredibly well with small impoundments as well as with the misguided dammings in the desert. Not to say nuclear, which is on the upsurge for traditional reactors as well as the new pebble reactors.
Where are the developed nations, where are the environmental NGOs, where is the US with its vaunted inventive and innovative powers - about all we have left as a leadership position now that we've suffered the Bush Presidency - in taking these technologies to the rest of the world, helping them to avoid our mistakes, avoid the expense of infrastructure that's fated to be obsolete before it's built out, avoid the unnecessary expenditure of limited capital? If China has to spend a, well, shit-ton (that's technical language for a whole bunch) of money on new energy generation, why aren't they skipping the bad tech step and grabbing onto the new?
When I think that nothing's happening on the energy front, I remember all the wind turbines I saw in the Netherlands as we flew into Schiphol Airport. Hundreds! Now, they may simply be powering the pumps that keep the sea at bay, and with global warming they may need twice as many and more before they light a single new bulb on dry land, but they weren't any more obtrusive on the landscape than warehouses or cell towers and they gave me hope.
Then, of course, if we can save the developing world some grief and some money by helping them skip forward to the new alternative energies, why can't we make that happen right at home?
The synapses finally fired. I recall discussions of the total penetration of cellular phones in Scandinavian countries being driven by the problems of constructing traditional infrastructure, and how they ultimately were able to skip the wired step and go right to wireless in reaching difficult locations.
Then I recall that the island of Madagascar is nearly denuded of its once-thick forests because the ever-increasing population keeps chopping them down for firewood, for simple heat and cooking.
Then I think of China, a number of other countries, and the US itself constructing or planning new energy-generation facilities using traditional fuels. Xcel Energy just fired up a new plant that uses natural gas for fuel; this replaced an old coal-fired plant whose 570-foot chimney was imploded the other day. The new gas-fired plant went into construction before natural gas prices doubled and more.
The technology exists to produce energy from so many other sources: solar, which has been badly handled instead of avidly pushed; wind, which is huge in many countries and is blocked by such concerns as the blades on the turbines kill birds; geothermal; tidal, such as with the Bay of Fundy with its 40-foot tide swings; and hydroelectric, which works incredibly well with small impoundments as well as with the misguided dammings in the desert. Not to say nuclear, which is on the upsurge for traditional reactors as well as the new pebble reactors.
Where are the developed nations, where are the environmental NGOs, where is the US with its vaunted inventive and innovative powers - about all we have left as a leadership position now that we've suffered the Bush Presidency - in taking these technologies to the rest of the world, helping them to avoid our mistakes, avoid the expense of infrastructure that's fated to be obsolete before it's built out, avoid the unnecessary expenditure of limited capital? If China has to spend a, well, shit-ton (that's technical language for a whole bunch) of money on new energy generation, why aren't they skipping the bad tech step and grabbing onto the new?
When I think that nothing's happening on the energy front, I remember all the wind turbines I saw in the Netherlands as we flew into Schiphol Airport. Hundreds! Now, they may simply be powering the pumps that keep the sea at bay, and with global warming they may need twice as many and more before they light a single new bulb on dry land, but they weren't any more obtrusive on the landscape than warehouses or cell towers and they gave me hope.
Then, of course, if we can save the developing world some grief and some money by helping them skip forward to the new alternative energies, why can't we make that happen right at home?
Friday, June 27, 2008
When is nothing something?
Nothing happened on our house project today. Or yesterday, or Wednesday. Today it took an act of the concrete people, who didn't deliver due to the prediction of rain, to make nothing happen. Is it nothing when it requires a decision or an act? Where's Sartre when you need him? It finally rained this evening. It rained like a son of a bitch for about ten minutes. I was driving home during the rain, and I drove through rain for about two miles: a few drops, then a shower, then a heavy rain, then such a downpour that several drivers pulled over because they couldn't see, then 150 yards later, down to nothing. Remarkable.
Bad philosophy joke. "To do is to be." - Descartes. "To be is to do." - Sartre. "Do be do be do." - Sinatra. Another: "Nietzsche is pietzsche."
Wendy is taking faith that most of the settling has taken place, She is putting items back into the dining room hutch, which displays them in an enclosed lighted cabinet. We managed to break one piece while packing them for safety; the reloading is going better.
The nothing of the house project allows me to reflect on the passing of George Carlin, and on how many disparate sources note his passing and how he spoke to their field of interest. Sports Illustrated made mention of his marvelous take on football vs. baseball. I had forgotten the part they mentioned, but I remember "Football is played in a Stadium. Baseball is played in a park. "
And something on the order of " in football, they have blitzes. The offense drives through the opponent's territory, throwing bombs...in baseball, they're trying to get home safe." Carlin was a master at emphasizing these with nuances of voice: you can hear the aggression in his descriptions of football and the instant change to gentle innocence when he speaks of baseball.
I remember his reflection about the glass: "some people say the glass is half-empty. Some people say the glass is half-full. I say the glass is TOO BIG." He loved language and ripped on its misuse, and noted some interesting contradictions: all he had to say was 'jumbo shrimp" and you knew that something didn't quite fit.
And he understood dogs and cats. I don't have his exact words, but: A dog will walk into a table, and cry out to show pain and come to be petted and pitied. A cat will walk into the same table, and stalk off as if to say, "I meant to do that," then go behind the couch and say to itself, "oh, MEOW."
I remember him from 60's shows, portraying Al Pouch, the Hippy-Dippy Mailman, or Al Sleet, the Hippy-Dippy Weatherman; from the latter came his famous forecast of "Tonight, dark. Dark through the night, followed by increasing light toward morning." We saw him in Milwaukee, in his first visit to that city after his arrest for the fabled seven words. Of course, he had to explain them and defend himself. You only need to remember that "a cocksucker isn't a bad man, it's a nice lady."
I got a little bit exasperated with the near-canonization of Tim Russert of NBC, especially by that network but all through the media. I believe that the loss of George Carlin has a broader cultural impact, and that more people will remember him fondly without having to be sold on it.
Bad philosophy joke. "To do is to be." - Descartes. "To be is to do." - Sartre. "Do be do be do." - Sinatra. Another: "Nietzsche is pietzsche."
Wendy is taking faith that most of the settling has taken place, She is putting items back into the dining room hutch, which displays them in an enclosed lighted cabinet. We managed to break one piece while packing them for safety; the reloading is going better.
The nothing of the house project allows me to reflect on the passing of George Carlin, and on how many disparate sources note his passing and how he spoke to their field of interest. Sports Illustrated made mention of his marvelous take on football vs. baseball. I had forgotten the part they mentioned, but I remember "Football is played in a Stadium. Baseball is played in a park. "
And something on the order of " in football, they have blitzes. The offense drives through the opponent's territory, throwing bombs...in baseball, they're trying to get home safe." Carlin was a master at emphasizing these with nuances of voice: you can hear the aggression in his descriptions of football and the instant change to gentle innocence when he speaks of baseball.
I remember his reflection about the glass: "some people say the glass is half-empty. Some people say the glass is half-full. I say the glass is TOO BIG." He loved language and ripped on its misuse, and noted some interesting contradictions: all he had to say was 'jumbo shrimp" and you knew that something didn't quite fit.
And he understood dogs and cats. I don't have his exact words, but: A dog will walk into a table, and cry out to show pain and come to be petted and pitied. A cat will walk into the same table, and stalk off as if to say, "I meant to do that," then go behind the couch and say to itself, "oh, MEOW."
I remember him from 60's shows, portraying Al Pouch, the Hippy-Dippy Mailman, or Al Sleet, the Hippy-Dippy Weatherman; from the latter came his famous forecast of "Tonight, dark. Dark through the night, followed by increasing light toward morning." We saw him in Milwaukee, in his first visit to that city after his arrest for the fabled seven words. Of course, he had to explain them and defend himself. You only need to remember that "a cocksucker isn't a bad man, it's a nice lady."
I got a little bit exasperated with the near-canonization of Tim Russert of NBC, especially by that network but all through the media. I believe that the loss of George Carlin has a broader cultural impact, and that more people will remember him fondly without having to be sold on it.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Up In The Air, part 8
All right, there wasn't a seven. But the last entry was actually #7, under an assumed name.
This one will be short, if I stick to the topic. The plumber has done his below-concrete work: setting the floor drain, roughing in the drain connections for a future bathroom and for our laundry area, rerouting the sewerage pipes. The contractor has one more footing to set, and he says the floor will be poured on Friday (rain and other wetness issues permitting). Next week will be at best a four-day work week, with July 4th coming on Friday, but a four-day work week would be a record; nothing happened today, and our contractor has become enamored of moneymaking opportunities in the rebuilding of Iowa ("it hurts to see the devastation..." Hah!) so I'm not counting on much moving forward tomorrow or Thursday.
We have a wall clock with lovely chimes that Wendy is fond of. The chimes stopped a couple of months ago, and when we took the clock down to avoid its falling when the house went up, we took it to a repair shop. It came back today, and I'm waiting to re-learn how to ignore the bonging in the wee small hours. UW-Stout's clock tower has bells that chime the quarter-hours every day, but they don't begin until 7 a.m. and they quit after 9 p.m. I don't know how to make this clock do that. My father used to tell how he hated the cuckoo clock at my grandparents' cottage: it would sound once on the half-hour. He would wake in the night and hear one cuckoo, and, not knowing if it was 12:30, one a.m. or 1:30, or some other wee small half-hour, he would lay awake until he heard two or more cuckoos.
As the house settles on its new foundation, it's finding some new alignments. This results in a door here and there that needs to be planed at the top or bottom, a crack in the plaster above doorways or in corners, etc. I'm not sure we'll ever open a couple of casement windows or our pocket doors. Nothing big has fallen yet, no falls of concrete or new gaps to the outdoors. A couple of folks have said, "sure, now it's setting on a level square foundation and before, who knows?"
Tomorrow will be another journey to the laundromat, my third. This one won't be quite as fierce as the last one, when I did seven loads. But my wife always rips on me for having a healthy supply of underwear and socks, not to mention khaki pants, and that sufficient wardrobe may get us through to the completion of plumbing and the return of the appliances to the basement.
At worst, I may need another yellow polo shirt for work; I've been trying to put off the need for a new one, as the dye lots have changed considerably and the new shirts are about the color of the inside of a pumpkin.
This one will be short, if I stick to the topic. The plumber has done his below-concrete work: setting the floor drain, roughing in the drain connections for a future bathroom and for our laundry area, rerouting the sewerage pipes. The contractor has one more footing to set, and he says the floor will be poured on Friday (rain and other wetness issues permitting). Next week will be at best a four-day work week, with July 4th coming on Friday, but a four-day work week would be a record; nothing happened today, and our contractor has become enamored of moneymaking opportunities in the rebuilding of Iowa ("it hurts to see the devastation..." Hah!) so I'm not counting on much moving forward tomorrow or Thursday.
We have a wall clock with lovely chimes that Wendy is fond of. The chimes stopped a couple of months ago, and when we took the clock down to avoid its falling when the house went up, we took it to a repair shop. It came back today, and I'm waiting to re-learn how to ignore the bonging in the wee small hours. UW-Stout's clock tower has bells that chime the quarter-hours every day, but they don't begin until 7 a.m. and they quit after 9 p.m. I don't know how to make this clock do that. My father used to tell how he hated the cuckoo clock at my grandparents' cottage: it would sound once on the half-hour. He would wake in the night and hear one cuckoo, and, not knowing if it was 12:30, one a.m. or 1:30, or some other wee small half-hour, he would lay awake until he heard two or more cuckoos.
As the house settles on its new foundation, it's finding some new alignments. This results in a door here and there that needs to be planed at the top or bottom, a crack in the plaster above doorways or in corners, etc. I'm not sure we'll ever open a couple of casement windows or our pocket doors. Nothing big has fallen yet, no falls of concrete or new gaps to the outdoors. A couple of folks have said, "sure, now it's setting on a level square foundation and before, who knows?"
Tomorrow will be another journey to the laundromat, my third. This one won't be quite as fierce as the last one, when I did seven loads. But my wife always rips on me for having a healthy supply of underwear and socks, not to mention khaki pants, and that sufficient wardrobe may get us through to the completion of plumbing and the return of the appliances to the basement.
At worst, I may need another yellow polo shirt for work; I've been trying to put off the need for a new one, as the dye lots have changed considerably and the new shirts are about the color of the inside of a pumpkin.
Friday, June 20, 2008
As Long As We're Down Here...
The hits just keep on a-comin'. The financial hits. The basement floor hasn't been poured yet, so there's still time to bring in the plumber. We're getting new toilet piping, partly to repair an old problem with the way one toilet sat on the pipes and partly to reroute the pipes now that they're running through open space rather than along a wall. We're getting a new supply pipe, taking a different path from the meter to the water heater. And, oh yeah, a new water heater, since our current one seems to be about half-full of mineral in six or seven years. And new connections from the basement supply to every water-using fixture. A new floor drain, plus new drains and supplies for the laundry. And, since our new basement could be finished at a later date, it's a great time to rough in the hookups for a future toilet, sink and shower. It all makes sense, and it all costs money.
What it probably also means is another night in a motel, although the plumber says his goal is to get us one toilet and one sink by the end of his day digging up the pipes.
Then there's the heat, and the air conditioner. Almost all of our old sheet metal ducting came out, and from all appearances it should have. But this means all new sheet metal, and the heating guy wants to change cold air returns into heat vents and vice versa, and we haven't seen his bid yet, nor do we know how much of that was part of the original. It appears that our furnace and our central air unit will be all right to re-install, the second mercy shown by this project. The first mercy: we've had no weather below 48 degrees at night and only a few days over 80, so the absence of heat and A/C hasn't been a burden.
We hope to have concrete poured by next Friday, maybe sooner. After that, the plumber can get back in to mess with supply pipes, and the heat guy can start cutting metal, and the washer and dryer can get down into place, and they can block up the places where girders held the place up, and install the windows, and build the new stairway. I'm guessing that we have about three weeks to go.
Then they can come into the house and start patching cracks where the house settled slightly differently on the new walls. And finish rebuilding the porch. And get at the roof before the snow flies.
It appears that early retirement is not going to be an option.
What it probably also means is another night in a motel, although the plumber says his goal is to get us one toilet and one sink by the end of his day digging up the pipes.
Then there's the heat, and the air conditioner. Almost all of our old sheet metal ducting came out, and from all appearances it should have. But this means all new sheet metal, and the heating guy wants to change cold air returns into heat vents and vice versa, and we haven't seen his bid yet, nor do we know how much of that was part of the original. It appears that our furnace and our central air unit will be all right to re-install, the second mercy shown by this project. The first mercy: we've had no weather below 48 degrees at night and only a few days over 80, so the absence of heat and A/C hasn't been a burden.
We hope to have concrete poured by next Friday, maybe sooner. After that, the plumber can get back in to mess with supply pipes, and the heat guy can start cutting metal, and the washer and dryer can get down into place, and they can block up the places where girders held the place up, and install the windows, and build the new stairway. I'm guessing that we have about three weeks to go.
Then they can come into the house and start patching cracks where the house settled slightly differently on the new walls. And finish rebuilding the porch. And get at the roof before the snow flies.
It appears that early retirement is not going to be an option.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Not to Say I Told You So...
I heard on Public Radio today that other pro golfers average 0.2 strokes worse per round in events in which Tiger Woods plays. That counts as a debilitating effect - say, like Rocco Mediate, they end up in a tie instead of winning by one. Someone, possibly the same person with way too much time on their hands, computed that this effect has been worth about $5 million to Tiger in his career.
On the way to work today, I was cruising at somewhere between my old and new settings, and was passed by only three cars: two Minnesota and one Illinois, all three SUVs or crossovers.
And that's the way it is...
On the way to work today, I was cruising at somewhere between my old and new settings, and was passed by only three cars: two Minnesota and one Illinois, all three SUVs or crossovers.
And that's the way it is...
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