Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th is on a Friday this month. It's a full moon as well, which means it's the day for teenagers everywhere to run off into the woods, consume massive amounts of alcohol, lose their virginity, then be gruesomely murdered. By a werewolf.

I'm doing this because right now it's raining. Again. Or maybe I should say, "Still." At least all our transplants are loving this weather. Everything seems to have taken hold and is doing well. We've made some other changes in between rainstorms, but we haven't had a chance to take any pictures. So instead, here's what our view from our porch has been for the last few days:

Last weekend, we had enough time and dry weather to finally get the coat closet roughed in enough for us to start using it. We still need something smaller for the paper recycling (the big blue thing sticking out in the room), and the whole Florida room needs paint and paneling, but for now, it'll do:

That mostly clears out the closet part of our pantry/hall closet. Because our walls are nothing but 2x2's and paneling, I wasn't able to put up the shelf and rod correctly when we first moved in; now with it mostly empty, we're going to beef up the wall the rod and shelf are attached to and position the brackets correctly. If the rain gives us a break, we can probably get that cranked out this weekend. (Big "if" at this point.) Then most of my clothes will get moved out of the bedroom closet into the hall closet, making the bedroom closet somewhat less crammed full. Fun, fun, fun!

Yesterday, I spent most of the day on the road, driving back over to Lake Mary to pick up the new lenses for my glasses, drop off/pick up stuff for Debbie at her office, and hit one of my doctors for my quarterly check-up. News was less than ideal, which, in keeping with our wonderful medical-industrial complex, means spending more money I don't have just to confirm that indeed, I'm gonna die someday, just like everyone else. (I don't recall if I ever said, but I have yet-another chronic, life-shortening disease. No treatment needed for decades, but it must be constantly tracked. For reasons. Please hand your credit card to the lady behind the window. See you in three months.)

Anyway, it's lunch time.

The Rain Arrives

So after I whined about a non-rainy rainy season, we got dumped with over 3" in less than an hour later that night. It rained a little last night, and we thought we were going to get some tonight, but it all somehow missed us. At least all the plants got some good water instead of chlorinated hose water. Everyone has their fingers crossed that this is the beginning of normal (15-20 minute thunderstorms every afternoon) and we won't go back to the hot and dry we've had the last month or so.

Today I stumbled across an article listing the 10 deadliest cities for pedestrians. In what will shock exactly no one who has spent more than five minutes driving in Florida, the four worst cities were Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville and Miami. The article puts all the blame on badly engineered roads, which is completely true, and not just for pedestrians. Every place we've been in this state has at least one intersection or stretch of road that was intentionally engineered to cause accidents. Maybe the road engineers are getting bribes from the 1,001 law firms that endlessly advertise on TV, billboards, etc. It cannot be accidental. For one, it's far too common, and two, it's so damn obvious. When we lived in Sanford, there was one intersection where there were two left-turn lanes turning onto a side street. No big deal until you are halfway around the corner and you realize there is only a single lane for the two solid lines of cars to turn into. I went through that intersection on my way to work. I never remember there not being fresh broken glass there. Narrow, twisty residential roads where little kids are getting on and off school buses have 35 mph speed limits. Every city loves to block sightlines at intersections with trees and bushes. And on and on forever. So sure, the morons in charge of the roads are part of the problem. But certainly not all of it.

When we first moved to Sanford, there was some big deal on the news about all the Orlando school kids getting hit by cars on the way to school. A dozen or so in the first few days of the school year, if I recall. There was all the usual hand-wringing about poorly-marked crosswalks and careless drivers not keeping an eye out for children. However, the real problem was that the parents didn't want to wait at the light to turn into the school, then wait in line to drop them at the "safety zone" at the door. So the kids were bailing out of the cars in the middle of an 8-lane highway and making a run for it. All the fancy crosswalks in the world can't fix that level of stupid.

Another big stink was made about a rash of bicyclists being found dead on the side of the road every morning from hit-and-runs. Now yes, hitting someone with your car and not even slowing down is pretty bad. But I've encountered these bicyclists both in Sanford and here in Zephyrhills. First, they insist on riding into traffic, even on highways. They ride between lanes. If they see someone they know on the other side of the road, they just make a hard left and start riding across the traffic. They ride around at night in dark clothing and not even a reflector let alone any lights. They run stop signs and red lights. Again, all the bike lanes and PSA's urging motorists to "share the road" can't fix that kind of stupid.

And of course, the same stupid people who shove their own kids out of the car in the middle of a highway and ride their bicycle after dark without any lights also drive cars. The Florida driving test must be, "Can you fog this mirror?" The completely idiotic things I see people do down here every time I get in the car would fill volumes. I would rather have a root canal without anesthesia than drive anywhere. It's that bad.

So yea. Have at the piss-poor job the road engineers have done and are still doing. But a lot of other people need to be fish slapped.

Busy Weekend

We were busy little persons this weekend. We kicked things off early with a bunch of planting on Thursday and Friday. One of the couples here in the park gave us a ton of plants and cuttings, and another couple gave us some starts from their plumeria bush. They are all in the ground now except the plumeria. I'm leaving that in the pot until its roots develop a bit more, and to give me time to make a spot for it. They get pretty big, so I want to make sure it has some room. Here is how things look so far:

Nothing really new up here, just rosemary going crazy trying to eat the porch. The thyme is doing anything from good to poor, depending on which plant. I may have to give up on the sage. It doesn't ever do anything except sit there not growing for a few months, then gradually dies.

Hard to see the new stuff with the crazy purple-flowered plant in the way, but we have a couple plants that we're not sure what they are (probably some sort of begonia), gardenia, philodendron, and some sort of miniature iris that seems to volunteer all over the park. 

We stuck in a spider plant and some aloe back here. The aloe is supposed to put up a spike with bunches of small orange blossoms in spring/summer. We'll see what happens. The big, green spiky thing in the center is another plant that likes to take over anyplace in the park not being routinely mowed. We got this one from my parents, but it will be relocated to the fence to make room for the plumeria currently rooting in a pot tucked into a shady spot. We'll leave the small suckers for now, but we'll need to keep them in check. Every one of those leaves has a needle-sharp spike on the end, and I swear it jumps out of the bed and stabs your leg when you walk by. 

A rose bush of some sort, geraniums and ginger (which is just a root and hasn't poked its head up yet). And some other kind of plant that my mother always grew as an annual in our Michigan back yard, but I can't find a name for.

On Saturday, we headed downtown for the Zephyrhills Music and Motorcycles event:

I've owned cars that were smaller than this beast.

For the economy biker.

The latest in biker fashion.

Another monster three-wheeler, with a rag top.

We lived down the street from a place that did custom work similar to this when we were out in Prescott AZ. Serious eye candy.

Phoenix crankin' out the tunes.

The band, Phoenix, was awesome. It's probably the first event we've been to with a band that plays "our" music (late 1970's and early 1980's rock). Nice change from really old oldies and country/western.

Sunday, I spent the morning watering all the new plants. The weather has been rather odd for the last six months or so. We had a dry season that wasn't, followed by a rainy season that wasn't either. And we're trying to get plants in the ground. We had clouds and even thunder in the afternoon and evening, but not a drop of rain. But if the summer rains are late, the summer heat and humidity have arrived in full force, so once the watering was done,  it was indoor projects instead of melting outside:

We took the small window out between the kitchen and Florida room. Because of how the AC was put in, the hole is sorta necessary for the air circulation to work correctly. We'll eventually trim out the hole and have a narrow shelf there.

The new hole from the kitchen side, plus the monster pile of dirty dishes. Probably ought to get on that....

We had to rip out the carpet a while back because the wax seal crapped out on the old toilet. This is just a coat of primer to make it easier to clean and help preserve the wood until we redo all the floors.

Monday was the park Memorial Day potluck. The weather was sunny with a few clouds all day:

Intense sports...

Intense conversation...

Intense floating...

Intense eating.

We did finally get a small shower in the afternoon, but what we really need right now is a good ol' fashioned Florida summer gully-washer. Today is supposed to be a possibility of our afternoon rains, but the chances are not that high. At least we seem to be hanging onto our morning cloud cover, so I may get a break from dragging the hose all over the place.

Debbie has today off because she will be working this Saturday, so we're going to canvas the park for a truck we can steal long enough to run down to Home Depot and load up on enough stuff to knock a couple more bits off the to-do list over the next several weeks.

Well, gotta get at it.

COLD!

Well, summer appears to be over. Woke up this morning to temps in the low 60's. Everyone in the park is digging the sweaters and winter coats back out and complaining about how cold it is. It never dawns on the whiners that they were complaining a few days ago about how hot it was. I'm sure this is temporary, so I will be outside today taking full advantage of it to get as much work done in the yard as I possibly can. We had some rain, so the grass and weeds are growing so fast you can hear 'em at night. OK, that may be a slight exaggeration. But it's jumping up there fast.

I also have to go digging around and see why water isn't getting down to the end of the soaker hose. I expected it to clog up with roots eventually, but not less than six months after I laid the thing out. But this is Florida, so it could have gotten blocked already. I don't like how I routed it anyway, so maybe I'll take this as a sign to rearrange things.

And we are going to try to make some progress on the interior of this dump. We've been completely focused on exterior work for the last 18 months, but now it's time to start making the place livable. The first step will be to build the coat closet next to the front door so we can get all the coats out of the hall closet, which will become my clothes closet. I also need to get the caulking gun back out and finish up ant-proofing the Florida room. We've already had two serious invasions, mainly due to the dry weather we've been having. It's really weird; lines of ants walking right by dirty plates to get to a drop of water in the kitchen sink. Usually, I run the soaker hose in the beds around the trailer and they go away, but with the soaker hose not working, it didn't have much effect. The rain we got Thursday night did the trick, but with the expectation of another dry summer, I really need to get that soaker hose working.

At least I now have plenty of time; the bastards in the park bitching about me working finally got what they wanted. I was fired on Monday. Congratulations, bastards. As for Carefree and its Nancy No-Nuts CEO, the less said the better.

HOT!

Well, summer has definitely arrived in Florida. Most of last week, we had temps in the 90's with humidity to match. And me outside right in the thick of it slaving away. I had thought that spending the last two summers working on the trailer would have gotten me acclimated, but I don't think it worked. I start at 7am, and most days I look like I've been playing in the sprinklers by 8am.

So, this cruise thing we did a couple weeks ago:

The Carnival Sunshine is a refurbished ship. Everything was redone and a couple new decks added, making it comparable with some of the newer ships tonnage-wise. Our stateroom was quite unexpected:

I've been in hotel rooms that were smaller. We had an ocean-view room on the lowest passenger deck. We tried to steal a peek into the inside rooms across the hall, but never managed to see if they were as large as ours. I'm pretty sure this is the largest stateroom we've ever had other than the suite we got because Debbie booked my entire extended family for my parents 50th wedding anniversary. I didn't get a good picture of it, but even the bathroom had a full-sized shower and a sink with actual counter space.

The waterfall and pool was part of the Serenity Area. I think whomever named it that needs to buy a new dictionary. Opposite the waterfall are the 30-foot speakers on either side of the drive-in-movie-sized TV screen that blasted music from early morning until midnight. Not sure how that is in any way "serene". However, the furniture was comfortable enough, and most of the music was at least something that we didn't hate.

Debbie found a hammock to relax in, and I "relaxed" the same way I always do on one of those death traps. When we retire to our beach in St. Kitts, Debbie can have the hammock. I'll take a chair thank you very much.

We did find some weird pod-type thing that seemed comfortable at first, but got annoying after a while. We stayed in it long enough for a selfie, then went looking for more comfortable place to sit.

Great place to eat if you don't mind listening to your arteries harden. The food on the ship was good, but we were a little disappointed in the selections both on the buffet and in some of the restaurants. I counted what was on the buffet our first night; if I included all three kinds of bread as separate items, there were exactly ten items on the buffet. It also seemed like there wasn't the usual number of crew, and what there was seemed like the second string. Everything got done, but sometimes an area would look neglected for a substantial time before things would be tidied up. We've never been on a two-night before, so maybe this is normal on the short cruises? Anyway, it seemed odd to us.

Some blah, blah, blah about a red frog. Live Thirsty.

In any case, it was a good couple days away from here and jobs and drama.

And that's all for now: 5am comes early.

Greetings!

(Apologies to those long-time readers who have no idea what I'm going to be talking about for the first little bit. Let's just say that some people really need to get a life.)

So if you are wondering why you landed here when you were trying to get to the Blog That Shan't Be Named, well here's the story. Debbie and I live in a senior RV park. We're not seniors, but we're here by special dispensation, mostly to keep my parents from getting into too much trouble when they are down here in Florida. You've all heard the wild stories. That seems to be a big problem with a certain other non-senior who also lives here. We'll call him Dorothy Dickhead. He cannot stand the thought of not being the center of attention, so every spring, when all his adoring fans fly back north, is a tough time for ol' DD. He usually responds by kicking up some sort of fuss here in the park, usually dragging the park's corporate owners into it. This year, he was absolutely beside himself that an asshole like me would be working for his park and demanded to know why the owner of that horrible Blog That Shan't Be Named was employed by the park's corporate overlords. Well, the CEO of said corporation, we'll call him Nancy No-Nuts, responded just as you would expect the CEO of a large corporation that owns close to 100 properties across the country as well as in Canada to respond to such a minor kerfluffle kicked up by a nobody living on one of said properties; throw his management team under the bus.

So to keep the story short, the deal is this: in order for me to have a seasonal job here in the park and not dump more shit on people who have already had more than enough dumped on them over the last year, the Blog That Shan't Be Named, with its hundred or so readers (it was only a dozen until DD sent a link to it to every e-mail address he could find), had to go. So now you are here. And in case Nancy No-Nuts is reading this: If you think I'm making any other accommodations for you, your corporation or Dorothy Dickhead, you can take that and your job, fold them until they are all points, and shove them straight up your ass.

Oh, and one last note to Dorothy Dickhead: Once again, thank you for proving again to everyone here that you are a... well... a dickhead. And one more thing; you ever, ever, EVER call, or even speak to my parents again, it will not end well for you. You have been warned.

Enough.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

We seem to be past the worst of our computer issues. Debbie is working on her new Win7 computer with no more than the expected issues, and sharing things between two like versions of Windows is a dream compared to getting and keeping a Win7 and a WinXP machine on speaking terms. Our main machine is back from the shop with a new, properly-sized power supply and seems to be running much cooler and quieter than before. While it was there, I had the guy do a deep clean on everything. He found a bit of adware hiding out in some dark corners, but nothing like I expected. He installed a bunch of new anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-adware, anti-everything software. I'm not sure I approve. A lot of it may end up in the dumpster. It turned a screaming-fast quad-core system into a dog. There is a full-minute lag between clicking on a program icon and when there is any indication that the system intends to even start to load the program. Internet pages now load slower in Chrome than they used to in IE. Some software won't run at all. And for some reason I cannot fathom, all the drive mappings for my external drives were changed. Understand that I do not store anything on my local drives. Every program had to be brought up and redirected to the new drive letter mappings. Every. Single. Program. The fun ones were the programs that wouldn't load because the drive they were expecting to be there wasn't and instead of giving an error and allowing me to correct the problem, they would just give up and shut themselves back down. I love crapware.

Anyway, as of a couple hours ago, everything seems to be more or less back to normal, whatever that means.

So as I may have mentioned, I have this new job working here in the park. Basically I walk for eight hours a day either lugging a weed wacker, a pump-up sprayer full of Roundup, or a leaf blower. Mindless doesn't begin to describe it. Eventually, I think I will be doing more of the minor fix-it type of maintenance and maybe checking on the pool every day, but for now, yeah. I need to find an unabridged version of Toynbee's A Study of History on tape. Oh, and two separate people tried (unsuccessfully thus far) to get me fired in my first two days on the job. The above drama was all on day one. Then on day two, some asshat comes out and grabs me while I'm running the weed wacker and starts giving me a bunch of crap. So I gave it right back to him. After spending twenty minutes screaming on his phone loud enough I could hear him two lots away with the weed wacker running, precisely nothing happened. And now he smiles and waves and says, "Hi!" every time he sees me around the park. Just. Plain. Weird.

And because of work, I've yet to get the cruise pictures off the camera. Any day now. At least the bottom of the to-do pile is in site. I've had all kinds of bizarre time-sucks over the last month; find missing people, help sell used cars, help pack up people who are moving, running for office at the Moose Lodge, etc. But I've managed to either do most of it or at least shove the problem off on someone else. Sheesh. I had hoped to do some work on our trailer tomorrow, assuming it ever stops raining, but I may need to keep chipping away on the pile here next to my computer.

Debbie is still cranking out cruises like it's peak season. I'm not sure what the story is with that. Everyone trying to get in one last hurrah before the floor drops out of the world again? Whatever the reason, we ain't complainin'. Da green be rollin' in and dat's all dat matters.

So yeah. That's our life.

Anecdote for the week:


I could so do that....

Grrrrrrr!

So, Debbie needs a new computer for work. She's been using an old Win XP laptop we bought before we left Michigan back in 2006? 2007? Anyway, a long time ago, and Microsoft cut all XP support a couple weeks ago so it was time. We had recently heard that Best Buy's website had Win7 refurbs for around $200, so we grabbed one. It was delivered on Tuesday, April 14th. Obviously, nothing was going to happen with it until after April 15th, so the box just sat by the door. When I finally dragged myself off the bed on Thursday, I thought I'd set it up quick by plugging it into the TV and seeing what it was like. I had big plans for all kinds of yard work that I'd been neglecting for the last 90 days, but this would just take a minute, right?

Heh.

So I turned the thing on, typed in the activation code, and was immediately informed that I was running an illegal copy of Windows. Sigh. It would certainly help if they wouldn't print the activation code in a grey, sans-serif 6-point font on a busy, multi-colored sticker. So I cursed Bill Gates and called the 800 number and managed to get through the phone activation. I was enthusiastically informed that I was running a legit copy of Win7. Gee. Thanks.

I opened up IE and tried to download Chrome. I was hit with a blizzard of security warnings telling me that Google's SSL certificates were out of date. That proceeding was DANGEROUS and was I really, really sure I wanted to do that. I initially thought this was just more Microsoft BS trying to force the world to use IE and Bing, but it quickly became apparent that something was wrong. I couldn't get to any website, even Microsoft websites. Bill Gates came in for another round of curses, as did his mother.

I had a copy of Firefox on my Drobo, so I gave that a try. Same result, although I was able to plow through and get Chrome loaded. That also proved futile; Chrome had no better luck than the other two browsers. I tried to update Windows; unknown error occurred. I tried to update IE; unknown error occurred. I tried to update Firefox; unknown error occurred. By now, I was cursing Bill Gates, his mother, his grandmother, and his entire linage back to the Pilgrims. (And no, I have no idea if Bill Gates is descended from one of the original Pilgrims, but at this point, logic wasn't playing a big role in what was running around in my skull.)

OK, enough. I flipped the TV over to the port my computer was plugged into and hit the power button.

Nothing.

No "click" when I hit the button, no lights, no fans, no nuttin'. Crap.

Debbie was already logged in at work, so I couldn't use her computer. I turned everything off and went outside and did yard work. I was fairly certain that my rake, broom and reel mower would work, but I was still a little apprehensive. Luckily, they all "booted up" fine. So that's how I spent most of the day.

That evening, I had my end-of-tax-season party, and the next morning we left on a two-night cruise that Debbie had won at work, so there things sat until we got back on Saturday. Figuring magic faeries or gnomes or something had fixed things while we were gone, I made another go at it. No improvement. One completely dead PC, one PC with non-functional internet, and one aging laptop running an unsupported version of Windows. I jumped on Debbie's laptop and started Google-ing around. I kept running into information on fixing problems with SSL certificates on the server side, but nothing from the client side. After a half-dozen or so rearrangements of the same search terms, I finally hit something promising. Except the fix looked like it was written by a half-Chinese, half-Klingon mutant with twelve fingers and a broken keyboard: Change the router's pishnaj setting from "M88t^h" to "U$(g74". And so on for about a screen and an half. I hadn't the slightest idea what he was talking about, and in any case, I was pretty sure my router's "pishnaj" had nothing to do with the problem when Debbie's laptop, running through the same router, was working fine.

Scrolling down, I saw another reply that listed several reasons why a browser would think every site had expired credentials. One item mentioned checking the PC's date. I had checked the date; it was OK. The time was off a couple hours and in the wrong time zone, but I thought I had fixed all that. But never hurts to check again. I walk over and look at the date and time: April 20th and the time was the same as the cable box. Then I looked a little closer:

4/20/2000

You have got to be KIDDING ME! I just wasted hours chasing my tail and cursing the entire Gate's family tree because Win7 thought the year was nine and a half years before Win7 was created?

So yea. Fix that and everything magically works. Twelve hours or so of downloading updates and rebooting and installing everything Debbie will need to switch over to this system, and all is well.

With one system, at least. Our main system was still DOA. I opened the case, took one look inside, and decided I didn't have the time* or patience for that anymore. Not to mention that I've shed most of the weird little tools and gadgets for disassembling and testing PC parts. A neighbor recommended a place right around the corner that didn't try to take your first-born just to look over a system. I needed to buy a second monitor for Debbie's new PC anyway, so off my system went to the shop. In about five minutes, he had it diagnosed and priced out. Dead power supply. Best $100 I ever spent and it will be ready by tomorrow afternoon.

*As to why I don't have the time, it looks like I will be starting to work for the park tomorrow. They wanted me to start today, but I told them I needed Monday to get some things done, like dropping my PC off at the shop and buying Debbie's monitor, and laundry and unpacking and and and. I wasn't supposed to start until a week from Monday, but one of the maintenance guys just found out he has cancer and will be starting immediate treatments. So instead of being the extra person that is supposed to get everything caught up around here, I'm just getting the headcount back up to what it was last summer. Wheee.

Well, I need to go make dinner.

My Day Off

I had a day off today. I had to stay close to the phone in case they got swamped with last-minute tax filers, but at least I could sit around in stretchy shorts and relax.

Well, sort of.

One of the things I needed to get a jump on was laundry. Due to job changes and such, I've recently had to expand my wardrobe, so I had this pile of new clothes that needed to be washed and dried. Usually we do laundry on Sunday's, but with so much extra to do, plus the fact that I will be working tomorrow, we decided that we'd do a couple loads this morning, then the rest tomorrow.

So here I am, walking back to our place with a laundry bag full of wet clothes to hang on the line when one of the park residents comes running up to me asking for help. I come around the corner of his place to see his neighbor's feet sticking out of his door. I knew what that meant. I ran up on the porch yelling the guy's name; no response. When I got to the door, it was obvious that he was stone-cold dead. I checked to see if he was breathing or had a pulse, but nada. I got on the phone with 911, and of course per standard procedure, they wanted me doing chest compressions until EMS arrived.

So yea. I started my day today doing chest compressions for five minutes or so straight on a cold, dead naked guy.

The joys of living in a senior park.

Still Kickin'

The end is in sight; I only need to drag my tired ol' bones to Walmart five more times, then I get to relax. Well, "relax" is probably the wrong word. More like frantically try to get caught up before I start my summer job on May 1st. But compared to sitting in a metal cube in Walmart, bombarded with stupidity and other people's diseases, it will seem like sitting on a beach sipping some form of hard liquor in comparison.

I don't talk much about peak oil anymore, largely because it seems rather pointless. Most people I encounter have their heads fully stuffed into the sand and just don't want to hear that they may be required to give up their God-given right to destroy every inch of the planet. Seriously; that is why God created the world, wasn't it? So we could screw it up? Shove countless species into the hole? Leave behind a toxic wasteland for our children and our children's children? All so we can drive around in 10,000 pound SUV's festooned with "Praise JESUS!" and "Drill Baby Drill!" bumper stickers, right?

Ahem. Anyway.

John Michael Greer had a link to this little gem in his most recent column:

Peak Oil Denial Bingo!

There are a couple other keepers at that site, like the software development bingo card. Back in the day, I could have filled one of those puppies multiple times at every endless meeting I was forced to be a "participant" in. I'm so glad I now spend my summers mowing grass....

I've been in contact with my Uncle Charlie's second wife, who seems to have inherited his collection of "stuff" from his Shaverite years. I should soon have more information to post over at the Charles A. Marcoux blog that I started as a repository for everything I've been able to dig up. I recently contacted a couple of his children to get some leads and let them know what I was up to.

Well, I need to get some other work done before I have to go sit and stew in bacteria and stupid.

Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead

"Pastor" (not sure how anything this person ever said or did corresponds to any definition of the word) Fred Phelps, Sr., creator of the godhatesfags.com website and head of the Westboro "Baptist" (his church was not affiliated with any denomination, Baptist or otherwise) "Church" (The only members were family and a couple neighbors; the IRS yanked their 503c years ago) is dead. Maybe now he's enjoying his version of heaven where he will be sodomized for all eternity by the dead soldiers whose funerals he and his "church" desecrated. You really have to wonder about a guy who spends his entire adult life 100% focused on gay male sex. Speaking of which, has CPS ever checked up on the kids in this "church"? Do they have such a thing in Kansas? Anyway, it sounds like the whole thing started blowing itself apart in September 2013, when the church excommunicated Phelps Sr. for being too nice to gays. Or they finally discovered what many of us have assumed all along; Phelps was suffering from a classic case of self-loathing.

As a counterpoint, watch this:


Album should be available in the US this summer. Amazon has her CD listed as available on April 8th, but the price is over $40. She's supposed to be in America this summer; one would assume that will coincide with official US distribution and a more reasonable price.

And summer appears to have finally arrived. Hot, muggy and buggy. All that's left is for the snowbirds to fly back north.

Post Number 2,001

I didn't realize at the time, but the previous anniversary post is also the 2,000th post. That's a lot of typing.

Not a great deal going on at Chez Frost. We're both working our way through our respective busy seasons. I'm not working a great deal of hours, like back in the day when I would put in 60-70 hours a week during tax season, but I'm working a lot of days. I'm sitting at The Desk at least six days a week, but working short shifts. Which completely sucks. Working only five hours still pretty well screws up the rest of the day as far as getting anything else accomplished. I always have big plans, especially when I'm working the late shift, about all the things I'm going to get done in the hours that I'm not at work. Yet somehow, very little if anything seems to get done. The Stuff just piles up and up. There is no way I can get through the pile in the one day off. Fortunately, I do have a break coming up in the form of a couple 5-day weeks. The irony is that I'll likely spend my two days off doing income taxes for family and park people....

Debbie has been cranking it out big time at her work. She just set a new office record for the number of cabins sold in a single pay period. Most are still not taking insurance (which is what her bonuses are computed on), but enough of them are that she's gotten a couple big checks so far this year. Which of course go right out the door, mostly into the ever-eager arms of the Medical-Industrial Complex. It seems that's all we work for: paying medical bills. Of course, under Obamacare, that is exactly what we would be doing; sending our entire take-home pay to either our health insurance provider or to pay all the doctor bills and prescriptions that won't be covered by our expensive health insurance. Or we can just continue paying cash for our medical expenses like we've been doing for years, and give Obamacare a giant middle finger.

And that's pretty much our life at this point.

Happy Blogiversary

I've been dumping inanities on the internet for ten years as of today. At least using Blogger. There was the daynotes site before that and endless e-mail lists and forums going back to before the days of the internet (anyone remember Compuserve? Prodigy?). But this iteration started ten years ago today sitting in the cabin on our property in northern Michigan, running my laptop off a bank of deep-cycle batteries while connected to the internet at a blazing 14.4 Kbps over a phone line that General Telephone had run along the ground and hung on tree branches. Sweet.

I've dug up more Uncle Charlie info, but I don't have it together enough to make another post out of it. I just jumped on here because Debbie happened to look at the calendar today and remind me that I started this thing ten years ago today.

Down the Rabbit Hole

[Warning: Some of this post will read like the bad fiction you find for free on Amazon, but trust me when I say that I am not capable of making this stuff up. So come on Alice; don't be afraid....]

When I was growing up, we had some family out in Arizona near Phoenix. My dad's sister (Aunt Marie), her husband (Uncle Charlie) and three kids had lived out there since I was old enough to know such things. At the time (late 1960's and early 1970's) the distance from Flint, Michigan to Phoenix was approximately the same as the distance from Flint to the dark side of the moon. Contact was limited to the occasional letter or card, and the annual Christmas-morning phone call. My parents twice drove out to visit them; the first time in the early 1960's before I was born, then again in either 1970 or 1971 when I was around six or seven years old. That was the only time I met Uncle Charlie. At the time, he was recovering from a recent stroke and spent most of our visit in his favorite chair. Later, I would be regaled with stories of all the crazy (and illegal) places he had taken my parents and sister during their first visit: hidden valleys, caves, old mines, pueblos, and so on. But who I met was a kindly "old" man (younger than I am now, but when you're six, anyone past third grade is "old") who seemed to live in his chair and was a bit awkward around a young boy.

I was also told that Uncle Charlie was... well... eccentric. He was a fair artist; there were rumors that GM had once offered him a serious sum of money for his drawings of cars of the future. He was also a writer, although my parents never seemed to know what he wrote about, or where, or if, any of his writings had ever been published. I never saw any of this, but I was assured it was all very "weird". In my young mind, that fit, as my Aunt Marie was a reverend in the Spiritualist Church. Aunt Marie and Uncle Charlie = weird. Got it. In a fundamentalist Baptist house, that isn't just something said with a wink and a knowing smile. That is an indictment of the most serious kind. I was being warned.

Sometime in the late 1970's, we received word that Uncle Charlie had divorced Aunt Marie, packed up all his writings and artwork, and vanished. At some point in the early 1980's, my Aunt Marie received a phone call from a woman who identified herself as Uncle Charlie's widow. She informed my aunt that Charlie was dead, but refused to offer any details about where, when, how or what Uncle Charlie had been up to in the years since he'd pulled his Houdini on his family. There were a few rumors that he may have died of a heart attack or maybe was stung to death by bees. That he had died while climbing Superstition Mountain (one of his favorite haunts) or may somewhere in New Mexico. Or maybe Mexico. Or....

No one knew anything or who might know anything, so that was where things stood for over three decades.

A couple months ago, I had purchased a stack of books by John Michael Greer. I first encountered JMG thanks to someone posting a link to his blog, The Archdruid Report, on Jerry Pournelle's Chaos Manor website. I had already read most of JMG's current peak oil books and decided to try some of his less-mainstream books on magic, the occult, UFO's, monsters, and so on. One of those books was his Element Encyclopedia of Secret Societies. The entries on men named Shaver and Palmer, and others on various beliefs centered on beings living underground started some serious itching in the back of my brain. I asked my parents a few questions, then spent time on the Googles. This is what I've dug up so far. Understand that this is from the internet, which isn't always the best source for facts, and that the people with these "facts" hold beliefs that most would find... okay; "weird" is as good a word as any. Here we go:

The early to mid 1900's was the heyday of pulp science fiction magazines with titles like Astounding, Thrilling Wonder Stories and Startling Stories. One of them, Amazing Stories, was struggling financially until a new editor by the name of Ray Palmer began running stories by Richard S. Shaver about ancient humans he called the Deros and Teros, living deep underground and controlling humans via telepathy. Magazine subscriptions soared. Then Palmer dropped a bombshell: All the Shaver stories were true. Subscriptions exploded, but there was also some grumbling that Palmer was taking the magazine off the deep end. Palmer ended up starting several magazines that focused on Shaverism (that article is in German, but Wikipedia will translate it to passable English), Ufology, etc, while moving Amazing Stories back towards pulp sci-fi.

Enter stage left: Uncle Charlie, or as he is known in Shaverite circles, Charles A. Marcoux. He was a true believer. The drawing at the top of this post is one he made of two Teros he encountered on the corner of S. Saginaw St. and Union in Flint, Michigan while leaving the Thom McAn shoe store. You can read the entire story in his own words from an article published in Fate, another of Palmer's magazines. Just to give you a taste:

Soon, the light changed, and as they crossed the street they passed within six feet of me. I decided to walk over to them, while I searched for the right words to start a conversation. Try as I may, my body would not respond to what I wanted to do and to what my mind was telling it to do. In those few seconds when they passed so close to me, their eyes did not waver right or left, and their thoughts left a mark in my mind. They seemed to say, "Guard your thoughts from unfriendly rays."

I was stunned and speechless as I helplessly watched them go up the street with the crowd of Christmas shoppers. At that moment, I was again able to move, just as they seemed to merge into the crowd and disappear. Hastily I walked after them, and I assure you that I could have caught up with them, but try as I may I just couldn't find them. It appeared as if they became one with the other people. As I rushed to the spot where last I saw them, I psychically examined the crowd of people. The couple had simply disappeared or became "invisible" from my mind.

While still living in Flint, Uncle Charlie was also published in a non-Palmer publication called the Journal of Borderland Research. In this article, he relates being confronted by, as he calls them, Men in Black after verbally sparing with one Howard Menger after a talk Menger gave on aliens and flying discs in Flint. In Uncle Charlie's own words:

I knew it was time to stop this line of inquiry. It would he reckless to attack Merger on his chosen field of battle. I knew that if I continued, my hatred of THE SECRET EMPIRE would rile me up; so I got up and walked outside. My feeling then was that Menger was a complete hoax, or that he was a pawn of the Secret Empire, willingly or unwillingly. Obviously, the money taken in from these lectures would not pay Menger’s expenses and those of the two men in black with him, and pay for the $5,000 car they were driving. To me it was significant that their car bore New Jersey license plates. That state is a hot house of Dero control. The Cavern World is in complete control of ALL surface exchange in that area. The Cavern Bosses get much of their needs from this State.

As I left the meeting, one of the men in black, the one called Dave, followed me outside.

“Don’t you think it would be better to follow the higher contacts?” he said.

“I could have knocked loopholes in everything Menger claimed,” I replied. “I know a faker when I see one — after being in this work twenty years.”

“Then why didn’t you?” he asked.

“Wouldn’t that have been stupid — to attack him in his own field!”

“Yes, it would. You were wise, not to do so in such a large gathering.”

That was the end of it, or so I thought. The Menger meeting made me disgusted with all contactees. A few months later a car bearing Detroit license plates cane to my home in Flint. There were three men in black this time and they tried to barge in to my house, using foul, threatening language. They couldn’t scare me. I told them to get on down the road. The next thing I knew was a campaign of slander against me, from nowhere. This broke up my group. The members got scared out. They didn’t [want] anything more to do with me, just like that.

A major player in Shaverism was another Michigander named George D. Wight, who claimed that while exploring Blowing Cavern near Cushman, Arkansas, they had found an entrance to the Underworld, spent several days exploring, eventually being guided by Teros to one of their cities. Wight wrote everything up in a document called the Wight Manuscript, which made its way into the hands of good ol' Uncle Charlie. I have no proof of this as I haven't been able to nail down an exact timeline, but I suspect this was around the time Uncle Charlie disappeared from Arizona. Several years after receiving the Wight Manuscript, Uncle Charlie put together a team to explore Blowing Cavern in 1983. According to several accounts I have dug up, it was either in or near the cave that he was attacked by a swarm of bees and died from the resulting heart attack. Here is a story of Uncle Charlie's demise written by Richard Toronto published in Fate magazine in 2000:

With wife Lorene in tow, Marcoux moved to Cushman in September 1983. He made some tentative forays into the cave, preparing for the final assault once expeditionary unit members arrived. Before the team ever assembled, however, internal disagreements brought accusations from Marcoux that questioned some members' dedication to the project.

A month passed as Marcoux taunted readers in both Shavertron and The Hollow Hassle.

"I allow you to disclose the location and name of this cave, which will give your readers enough information to decide for themselves whether they want to explore it... if they have the guts."

Then, while hiking near the entrance of Blowing Cavern that November, Marcoux was attacked by a swarm of bees, bringing on a fatal heart attack. He died at the scene, leaving the handful of Blowing Cavern team members wondering what to do next.

Rumors fluttered around Marcoux's untimely -- some said mysterious -- death. Shaver had always warned that the cavern world was hidden for good reason, and that cavern dwellers liked to keep it that way.

A troubled Mary Martin conferred with a California psychic who knew nothing of Marcoux or Shaver. Martin wanted to know if Marcoux had any message to impart.

"I told [the psychic] his name and that he had died, and could she make contact with him," Martin said.

"This is the message she received: 'Tell her I am unable to find the way to the underground tunnel at this time. Tell her to look in the Cucamonga wilderness area for what she seeks. She must be very wary for the guardians are quite jealous... They won't let me talk to you anymore. They are forcing me away... help me...'"

The elusive "L" was also contacted. He said evil intent had nothing to do with Marcoux's death, but he would not elucidate. He also threatened to re assemble the old Michigan spelunking group one last time to wall up the Blowing Cavern portal to the Underworld. It had caused too much sorrow and misery already, he said.

The story of Blowing Cavern, the Wight manuscript, and Marcoux's efforts to locate the Underworld of Richard Shaver was the final nail in the Shaver Mystery's coffin.

Most active Shaver Mystery buffs had given up hope of finding proof long before Marcoux's 1983 attempt. They were facing old age and waning interest. Newcomers to the UFO/occult scene became New Agers, with new controversies to contemplate (Roswell, Area 51, Majestic 12) -- enough to distract from the Underworld of Shaver and Palmer.

That's pretty much what I have at this point. I'm in contact with a number of people who knew Uncle Charlie, and I'm chasing a lead that will hopefully uncover at least some of Uncle Charlie's journals and artwork. I've also ordered compilations of yet-another Palmer magazine titled Shavertron that Uncle Charlie wrote numerous articles for.

Little by little, the story is surfacing. I'm sure this will all consume far more time than it ought to over the coming months, but it's fun digging up information on someone who disappeared decades ago.

Camels Wrecking Christianity?

No, no, no! Not like that! Like this:

New research using radioactive-carbon dating techniques shows the animals weren't domesticated until hundreds of years after the events documented in the Book of Genesis. The research was published by Erez Ben-Yosef and Lidar Sapir-Hen, archaeologists from Tel Aviv University in Israel. They believe camels were not domesticated in the eastern Mediterranean until the 10th century B.C.

And yet, the hump-backed creatures are mentioned repeatedly alongside Abraham, Jacob and Isaac, indicating the Bible's writers and editors were portraying what they saw in their present as how things looked in the past, says a New York Times article by John Noble Wilford:

These anachronisms are telling evidence that the Bible was written or edited long after the events it narrates and is not always reliable as verifiable history. These camel stories "do not encapsulate memories from the second millennium," said Noam Mizrahi, an Israeli biblical scholar, "but should be viewed as back-projections from a much later period."

My title is completely hyperbolic as most of Christianity has accepted that the Bible is not, nor was it ever intended to be, an historic document. Remember the famous Harrison Ford line from the first Indiana Jones movie? "Archaeology is the search for fact ... not truth. If it's truth you're interested in, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall." No religious document is about fact; they are about truth. Or if they are real ambitious, Truth. Does it really matter to the broader narratives of the Old Testament whether or not Abraham rode around on a camel? Of course not. But I'm sure that in no time, a certain corner of Christianity will loudly denounce this finding with all the usual canards about radio-carbon dating and global, anti-Christian conspiracies. Queue Pat Robertson and his New World Order in 3... 2... 1...

Brilliant

[We interrupt this blog post to bring you the following important announcement:

It has come to our attention that Friday the 13th will be on a Thursday this month. Thank you.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog post, already in progress.]

I haven't posted much about politics lately, mainly because I've removed myself from most sources of "news", and also because of a shift in my own thinking about where the US is headed in the long term, and how unimportant what passes for political activity in this country will prove to be even in the short term.

That said, it seems that the populist Obama we saw in the Democratic primaries has managed to wake up after being in a coma for six years. This is a small example of what people thought he meant by Hope and Change, rather than simply being a darker, younger George W. Bush with a passable jump shot:

U.S. President Barack Obama signed an executive order on Wednesday to raise the minimum wage for federal contract workers to $10.10 an hour starting next year and encouraged employers nationwide to increase wages for their workers.

OK, so lets get a few things out of the way right up front, then I'll explain my choice of title. 

1) This executive order isn't going to impact many people. Even the White House is saying it will only raise the pay of around 200,000 people, and will take several years even then. Hardly the stuff of economic booms. Obama's hope is to kick loose a minimum wage bill stuck in Congress.

2) Keep in mind that the term "executive order" is simply a US euphemism for "decree". As in, "And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed." Not to defend what has become an unconstitutional power grab by this and many previous presidents, but do realize that, contrary to the history we teach our children, Caesars didn't come to Rome because some megalomaniac one day decided to abolish the Roman Senate and crown himself king of the world. It was the result of decades of the Roman Senate acting in ways contrary to the best interests of those they supposedly represented while voting themselves wealth and perquisites. Sound familiar? 

3) No one really knows what sort of impact a near-50% jump in the Federal minimum wage (the ultimate goal of this political stunt) will have on the economy as a whole. Obviously, people who make less than that would see an increase in their income. On the other hand, most studies show that if employers are forced to pay more, they hire older, more experienced workers rather than younger, first-timers. Or replace humans with technology. Given the difficulty that teens and 20-somethings are having finding jobs, making it harder would certainly be a downside. My own gut feeling is that if Obama were to get his way and Congress were to bump the minimum wage up to $10.10, the long-term negatives will likely exceed any short-term benefit.

So why would I call this "brilliant"?

1) This isn't about economic data or fancy graphs or worker pay vs. productivity or any of the rest of that egghead stuff. This is about the people who put Obama into office. Not the bused-in first-timers like the black woman in Detroit who celebrated Obama's victory by dancing around in front of a TV camera screaming, "Obama gonna buy me a new house! Obama gonna buy me a new car!" (I often wondered why no one ever did a follow-up interview with that poor, deluded woman....) Rather, this is about the long-time Democrats who in an act of defiance chose a populist outsider rather than the DNC's heir-apparent, Hillary, and have watched helplessly as Obama has bumbled around for six long years. This is what they were looking for; pure populist politics. Brilliant populist politics.

2) In one simple move, Obama has put a giant spotlight on our feckless Congress just as the midterm political campaigns are getting started. As Dimitry Orlov pointed out earlier this week, "according to numerous opinion polls, members of US Congress are now less popular than lice, cockroaches, colonoscopies, Hitler or Genghis Khan." Obama knows that bypassing Congress, regardless of its legality or constitutionality, will be immensely popular, especially with those who put him into office in the first place. Again, pure populist politics. Brilliant populist politics. 

3) Every business knows that immediate gratification is what drives human beings. If that wasn't true, we would all eat spinach salad for breakfast before we bicycle off to work rather than feasting on M&M's and hauling our 600-pound selves around in giant SUV's. A sharp increase in the Federal minimum wage will have an immediate, measurable, positive benefit by those directly affected vs. a long-term, amorphous, possible downside that even if it can somehow be quantified, won't happen until Obama is raising money for his presidential library. Brilliant populist politics.

Well, I have to leave things there and go do income taxes. Wheeee!!

...And Another One

We got a phone call around midnight. Like any phone call in the middle of the night, it was not good news. My uncle had just died a few minutes earlier. He had been diagnosed with terminal cancer last winter, so it wasn't a real surprise, but this makes three funerals in six weeks. Enough already.

Which also means that my 80-odd-year-old parents are road-warrioring their way up to Michigan for the third time in six weeks. So if you see a tired-looking grey Chevy Blazer hoofing it up I-75, you may want to give it some room. If you see a tired-looking grey Chevy Blazer broke down on the side of I-75, please stop and help. Their first trip, they got held up on the way back due to car trouble. Then the last trip, they took our car up while their's was being worked on. Then as soon as they got back, they had still more work done on it. We're hoping they at least get back to Michigan before the thing craps the bed again. Their car is only a year older than ours, but it just doesn't seem very... I dunno... durable. Even when I was just tooling around Z-hills while they had our car, I felt like I was leaving a trail of debris behind me. Anyway. Something else to worry about during tax season.

Speaking of which, I'm working 7 days, but still only getting 40 hours a week. I hate working short little shifts. The problem is trying to cover all the hours the boss-man wants the place to be open with only two people, neither of which is supposed to work any overtime. Once peak season is behind us, things will normalize a bit, but even then, I'll be driving up to Wally World waaaay too often for the hours I'm getting paid for.

And then there's this:



This is what walks by my little temp-cube office. All. Day. Try focusing on doing someone's taxes when all that is walking by. Try focusing on doing someone's taxes when all that is sitting on the other side of the desk. Maybe a bunch of short little shifts ain't such a bad idea after all.

And just to completely change gears mid-post (or grind-it-till-you-find-it), here is Jon Katz's TEDTalk from a couple months back. Timely considering all the medical crap we've had to deal with lately (there's been a constant stream of not-dead-but-could-be-soon news mixed liberally with our recent funerals). Enjoy:


And that's all I have time for today, kids.

Another Funeral

We're still recovering from our whirlwind trip to Michigan over the weekend for my grandfather's funeral. 2014 so far has seriously sucked. Not that his death was completely unexpected; the guy would have been 101 in April. He had declined severely over the last few weeks, and was basically bed-ridden and helpless, something he would have hated. Knowing that doesn't make losing him any easier, but it does. (Anyone who has been through this scenario knows what I mean.) We did get to see some of my family that we haven't seen in several years, but we would have much preferred it to be for something other than a funeral.

This happened just as both of us were revving up for the busy time of year; Debbie with peak cruise season and me with taxes, hence the 72-hour trip from hell over the weekend so we could both get back to it. My work is still trying to get everything set up and procedures in place before the real crowds hit towards the end of this week and next week. It's slow going as the people supposedly in charge seem to be mostly MIA thus far. I'm stuck in a little booth across from the bathrooms at Walmart for this season. I covered for people there a couple times last tax season, and it can get pretty crazy. This go-'round we have two computers so a second person can jump in when needed, which should help keep the line shorter. Last year, I had at least a dozen people give up and walk away because the line was too long. Then again, I just found out yesterday that one of the four people that were supposed to be working just bailed on us, so that second computer will mostly be there as a prop. Looking for knowledgeable tax preparers after the start of tax season is like looking for virgins in a brothel.

Debbie's busy season has so far been... well... uneven is probably the best word. It seems like she is either insanely busy or the phones are completely dead. Of course, the lunatics always make a showing, like the lady this morning that insisted that there had to be a cabin on a sold-out cruise because she really wanted to go and what do you mean by "sold out"? How can a cruise be "sold out"? I was trying to clean up last night's dishes while this insane conversation was taking place and almost had to leave the room. Holy. Crap.

And that's pretty much all I have to report at this point. Later.

Make Up Yer Mind!

Last weekend, our high temperatures were the 80's. Then we dropped, with high's barely in the 40's. On Friday, it was back up in the 80's. Now something else weird is going on; clouds, high winds, rain (in the so-called dry season), and nighttime temps low enough the heat kicks on and daytime temps high enough the AC kicks on. Everyone we talk to has some sort of lingering respiratory infection.

But at least it hasn't snowed.

I was able to finish cleaning up after the last couple landscaping projects and get the "yard" to a place where I can ignore it until after April 15th. I have some early morning running I need to do to get set for tax season, then I hope to have time for some photos. If I do, you'll be the first to know.

Speaking of photos, I had my parents bring some of my dad's old family photos down here so I could scan them in before they deteriorate any further. Most of them date back to the late 1800's and early 1900's, and haven't exactly been properly cared for. Some have names and dates, but many of them are anonymous photos of people no living person can identify. I did find one interesting bit; it seems Harry Potter was one of my ancestors:

(Actually, I think it was an early photo of my grandfather.)

We did something different-ish on Sunday. We were at Disney World, which isn't different for us, but instead of our usual agenda, we were there to see Debbie's cousin Beth running in the annual Goofy's Race and a Half Challenge. This was taken just past the half-way point in front of Animal Kingdom:

Pretty bad that she looks less tired after running 13 miles the day after running a half marathon than we felt after just standing on the side of the course for an hour. We also saw her at mile 25 in Epcot, but Debbie threw all our stuff at me and took off down the course running with Beth, so I didn't get a photo. She hasn't posted anything as of me typing this, but I'm sure she'll have all the gory details on her blog.

The most entertaining part of watching a marathon is the crazy get-ups people wear. Isn't running a marathon enough of a challenge without trying to run it while dressed up like a fairy? And you're a 6'10" guy? I'd like to give a couple special shout-outs: Wonder Woman - I'm sure your barely-legal costume made every guy's day. It certainly woke me up.... And to the two guys in full-body costumes (one was Shamu, the other was Tigger), congrats on not collapsing in the middle of the course from heat exhaustion. Seriously, we both broke out in a panic sweat just watching you run by.

Well, I need to get cleaned up and out the door. Besides, Google is driving me crazy today with all the errors. I've gotten a dozen pop-ups that Google couldn't auto-save my entry, and I've tried to upload a video three times. More later.

Later: Not sure what Google's problem was earlier, but everything seems fine now. Anyway, speaking of crazy get-ups, no one knew what this guy's deal was, but he seemed to be having a great time running a marathon wearing a sousaphone:

I was planning on getting some work done outside today, but instead spent most of the afternoon at my parents chatting. Tomorrow is a remote possibility, but it's supposed to rain all day (not that the weather liars ever get it right). After that, it's Tax Season!!

Happy New Year!!

Well, the new year isn't getting off to a very good start. My Aunt Wanda passed on December 31 around 10:30am. She had been in and out of the hospital several times in recent weeks with severe COPD, so it wasn't a complete shock, but still.... My parents took off for Michigan like they'd been shot out of a cannon, and arrived New Years Day after driving for 23 hours straight. They called us when they arrived and informed us it was smooth sailing, other than getting lost twice, going the wrong way once, and oh yea, there was that white-out that lasted for several hundred miles. Smooth sailing....

Obviously, our New Years Eve celebrations were a bit subdued. We had tickets for a party here in the park, so we did go and do that. New Years Day was a movie marathon combined with cleaning up some of the Christmas decorations. We decided to leave up a string of clear lights we have inside. It was nice to come home to them anytime we got back to the trailer after dark. The way the light switches are laid out in this place means we have to walk quite a ways before we get to one; that string of lights in the front window will save some wear and tear on our toes. The outside lights are still up mainly because all it has done for the last couple days is rain. The schmutz is supposed to blow out tonight, so maybe tomorrow I can get those things taken down and put the Christmas stuff back out in the shed.

Other than that, not much going on. I've been trying to wrap up yard projects before I get disappeared for the duration of tax season, but the weather has been decidedly uncooperative. I need to make a big push this weekend, and maybe even have some photos to post here. No promises, but it could happen.

It's a new year, and so it's the traditional time to make resolutions that we won't keep and predictions that generally won't come true. Last year, our only resolutions were to not end up living in a dumpster and not kill our bee-otch neighbor. We lived up to both of those, which goes to show that being a success is mostly about setting the bar extremely low. In fact, we did so well on both of those that they will remain our New Years resolutions for 2014.

w00t w00t; low expectations!!

As far as predictions, I was 100% for 2013, only because they were such wide-sweeping generalizations that nothing short of the Apocalypse or New Jerusalem would have proven me wrong. And yet, that is the point; we are rerunning the 1970's malaise, the next step down in the catabolic collapse of the US and our economic allies. That means we can look forward to big shocks, followed by periods of stabilization, and even modest recoveries. What it doesn't mean is that we can party like it's 1999, or wait for Jesus to come and save us (either the Jesus of the New Testament, or our new, replacement Jesus of infinite progress). We're stuck dealing with the consequences of our own actions; consequences which will most-closely resemble Ol' Aunt Mertabel doing her annual, slow-motion tumble down the stairs after getting a snoot full of egg nog. It starts with a loud, "Oh Lord!", crash, bang, thud, then a pause where she almost regains her balance, then a "Help me, Jesus!", thud, bang, crash, rinse and repeat until she finally hits the bottom of the staircase 25 minutes later. What we're living right now is that second round of bang-crashing which will be followed at some point in the future by a pause in the general downward trajectory, maybe even a slight bounce off the bottom, then another God-have-mercy moment sometime in the 2020's. The final splat will be witnessed by the grandchildren of the grandchildren of everyone reading this.

Have a happy 2014!!

One More Christmas Video