The Daily Diversion Archive For October, 2001

Wednesday October 31, 2001

I see the Yankees won last night. I figured they would, but I figured it wouldn't be nearly as close as it was. Good pitching always beats good hitting and sometimes people do give their best shot when the chips are down. Props are due to the Arizona pitcher last night. Great effort.

We survived the inspection. The house passed with flying colors. It's even going to be considered for FHA loans. That's a good deal. We spent the evening running things to storage. The place now looks somewhat vacant and our stuff is well hidden. It looks like all the houses we've ever gone to look at. All the stuff is tucked away, personal pictures are down, random junk has been boxed and lost forever, and most of the funky little knickknacks that make the house seem more homey are all stored away in their laagers. Good luck finding anything.

Today, the house is going to be professionally cleaned and Thursday we're having the windows professionally done. Thursday is also the day we hit the market. We're hoping the house sells quickly. We're not looking forward to a long wait for a sale. We're also hoping that a renter buys it so that they can move in quickly. Nothing would make me happier than to finish the year in a different house.

This isn't saying that we don't like our house. We've grown very fond of it and we will always have a special place in our heart for Northome. This was our first house. We got married while we lived here. It's going to give us the wherewithall to make our future a whole lot stressful. It's likely that I'll never have another investment that makes as much money for me as this house did. I love the way we've painted our office. I love the big oak tree in the back yard. I like the garage, even though it tended to be full of things to do most of the time. I like the way my wife has made the garden her hobby. I hope she continues in our next place. I like the basement for the fact that it's mostly dry. I love the balcony out back and the porch in the front. I like the fact that it has full-height ceilings in the upstairs bedrooms. There's not a slanted wall in the place. The house itself has a great design being a foursquare/praire style house with a hipped roof and large overhangs. It's on the top of a large hill that causes the garage apron to be about 5 feet lower than the flat back yard. The other houses to our south either have steeply sloped yards, tiny garages, or awkward access to their garages. This house has none of that.

Our house doesn't have the high option wood trim, but it is almost undoubtedly a "kit" house. For those of you who don't know, most houses from the early part of this century were kits bought from the local lumber yard, Sears, or other outlets. The business would ship the raw materials via rail to the nearest spur or freight terminal, and then the materials would be trucked to the site. The future homeowner could put the house together him/herself (not likely to be a her at the time, but we must be fair...), or hire a contractor to do the work for them. If you don't live in a poshy posh neighborhood and your house was built between 1905-1930, then your house is probably a kit house.

Our house was a later kit house, built in 1923. It has solid plaster and lathe walls, nice plainsawn oak woodwork and hardwood floors. The downstairs floors are oak and the upstairs floors are maple. I was joking with my wife last night, saying that a T.V. on the main floor of this house was historically incorrect. Just like Timothy "Speed" Levitch said in the movie "The Cruise" about people jogging in Central Park in New York City. The park was created for relaxing and walking, not for physical exercise. So to was our living space created. The house was built before T.V. and probably during the era where radio was kinda like the internet was about 2 years ago: the new, space-age thing (to mix a metaphor). We have piano windows, so to be truly historically accurate, we should have had an upright piano on the north end of the living room and probably a couple of club chairs in the main livingroom area. Our dining room, before we started cleaning it up to sell, was probably the most historically correct room in the house. Our sideboard, diningroom table and chairs are all from about the same time the house was built. Thanks to my Grandparents on my Dad's side, we were fortunate enough to get them. Our light fixture probably pre-dated the era of the house by a good 10 years, and the rug on the floor was from the turn of the century via Sarah's Grandfather on her Mom's side.

I'm prattling on here, but suffice it to say that we're really going to miss the house when we go.

Tuesday October 30, 2001

No, I'm not dead, but it sure feels like it.

This getting ready to move thing is like having two jobs. The regular 8-hour fun fest, followed by an equally fun 5 hours of hard labor. I'm not trying to whine up a storm, I'm just stating that life sucks ass right now. Perhaps not for long. The inspection is happening very soon and after that, we're having two sets of cleaners in to do the interior and exterior. By the end of the week, we should be on the market with a clean, finished house. We hope.

From the why we're going file:

The car alarm follies continued last night, but this time there was some kind of closure. I don't know if the woman got the hint, but Minneapolis' finest officers certainly served her with a notice that she'd better be attending to her vehicle when it starts making noise.

Sarah and I were out raking the front yard at about nine last night. Yes, I know it had been dark for several hours, but we do have a pretty good front light, and it had to be done for today because the realtor will be coming to take a picture sometime today. The leaves had to go, and there were other things to do before that happened. This is why we were raking leaves at nine. While we were getting started, apropos of nothing the same Noisy-ass car alarm equipped Caddy from down the street goes off. The alarm that is. Since I'm way tired of listening to it, and I know nobody was messing with it, I try to roust the owner to do something about it. I knocked on the door, rang the doorbell and I could have been shouting at the wind for all the good it did. After five minutes of cacophony, I finally called the police. At first I dialed the non-emergency number, but the officer there said to dial 911. I did. I described the car, gave the location and plate and that was that.

Naturally, the car alarm finally ceased about a minute after I got off the phone. The owner swore up and down that it wouldn't go off again if she didn't turn it off. I knew that to be bullshit and we were actually glad that, like the night it kept us up the whole night, it went off again after being off for about five minutes. About another minute went and the police cruiser dispatch to our call came creeping down the street with its lights off. I imagine they were being cautious to try to catch someone in the act, but there was no act.

They pulled up next to the car and got out. One came over and asked if anyone had been messing with the car and I told him "No." They ran their usual checks on the license plate and probably the background check of the owner to see who they were about to roust, and then turned on all their lights to attract attention. Nothing. Mind you at least five minutes of noise has passed and the alarm is still blaring. The police go up to the duplex to try to find someone to turn off the alarm. After trying for a few minutes, someone--I think it was the owner woman--came out and turned it off. She glanced our way and gave us a dirty look. I don't think she saw me giving her the finger, but if she'd have paid close attention to my hands on the rake, it would have been apparent that she was being flipped off.

The police had words with her and she went back inside. End of story.

Am I happy? You bet. The woman now knows that I know she's a liar. The police aren't going to like responding to another call about the same car and you can bet your ass the next time I hear it, I'm calling the police again. I have the plate number written down and I won't even have to go outside to call it in. It's as easy as that.

I hate car alarms.

Friday October 26, 2001

Dammit!

Would you believe another house on our street just went up for sale? I wouldn't, except for the fact I saw them digging a hole for a funny sign this morning. This time it's the duplex to the north and across the street from us. It's nice to see a house on their side of the street up for sale, and since this is a duplex (cheap, too), it's not really going to be any competition for our house. Nonetheless, we're less than a week out from being on the market and now there's one more thing to worry about.

I spent the evening with our handyman guy fixing small stuff in the house. We finished the evening off by going to Home Despot and finding it closed for the night. I guess time flies when you're doing time. Or something. Anyway, the coolest thing we did last night was take some of our windows out to replace some broken glass. They came out easy enough, but then we got to have some fun. Breaking glass. YES!!! It's cool to be breaking lots of glass at 10pm. I wonder if anyone called the cops. I doubt it. Anyway, we'll be putting these windows back in tonight and doing some other stuff on the short list. It will then just be a waiting game as to when the inspector can come back and check off the things we fixed. I can't wait.

In the meantime, we're still hoping to get the house on the hill. I mentioned a while back that we had looked at this place twice and were hoping its too-high price would still be scaring folks off. Well, that's been the case. We're probably going to offer a contingency offer this weekend if we can talk our realtor into it. We'll see.

Thursday October 25, 2001

So I'm here at home today, watching the plumber tear hell out of a wall that had been torn up earlier in the week. How nice. We're giving him lots o'money as well, but at least that problem has been put to bed. Good for us.

I spent the day telecommuting for the first "real" time. I had done stuff at home for work before, but never to this extent. It's nice to work here with the dog at my feet and my abrasive tunes pumping out of the speakers on my desk. Life is good, sometimes. Anyway I spent the afternoon hard at work to the extent I didn't even realize the whole afternoon had passed. Wow, that's why my back is sore.

Outside, it blows a blue gale. The wind gusts are topping 40mph here in Minneapolis, and I'm glad. Unintentionally, I'm doing the big leaf giveaway. Yesterday, I had a carpet of leaves totally covering the grass in the backyard. Now, I have leaves pasted against the fences, but very few of them. Someone somewhere with no trees in their lawn is really pissed off right now.

It seems Microsoft has locked other browsers out of its MSN site. Well, that's just fine. Between my hotmail account filling with at least 50 unwanted spam emails a week and now this, I'm wondering if M$ needs to get its ass kicked by the government. Yes, the government. Da guhbuhmindt. It's funny, the antitrust lawsuits filed against M$ were on the right track, however, I feel that the M$ money slowly stole the wind from the sails of the people who wanted Bill's head on a stake. One could read this as the guhbuhmindt as shaking M$ down for tribute money. The government files suit, M$ spends money getting the feds to back down, all returns to status quo. That's a convenient way to look at it, but the truth remains that M$ is practicing predatory, pro-monopolistic policies and no amount of buying favors in Washington is going to change or cover the somewhat disingenuous and blatant flaunting of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Who or what made M$ the bully-boy on the block? That would be their tying practices. Who can undo it? You and me. Either by not buying or supporting M$ products or through our elected representatives and appointed judiciary. Yes, their products are quite nice these days, but what kind of brilliance could we have had if there had been more choices? Certainly something to think about.

Wednesday October 24, 2001

It seems like forever since I've written anything. It hasn't been, but Sunday night was so long ago. Since then I've done a ton of home improvement projects all in preparation for the inspection. The dreaded inspection. The inspection we need to be able to sell our house in Minnesota legally. It's been a long time coming, this inspection. We have been painting and doing various other projects over the past 3 weeks just to get ready. We thought we were in pretty good shape for the inspection. We were, but we're still going to have to shell out a bunch of money to the plumber for some work that needed to be done. We're not happy about it, but what are you going to do?

So that explains why I haven't been doing much writing lately. I had to take a half day off yesterday to get a bunch of last-minute stuff done before the inspection happened. It was a success. These things got done and were not a problem when the guy rolled through. Nice.

The result of all this are two very sore hands, a couple of nice cuts in same, a pre-inspection list of things to fix before the final inspection, and some pretty darned extreme fatigue. I got 9 hours of sleep last night and I'm still exhausted--physically and mentally shagged out. The house is in the best shape I've ever seen it in. We have a very short list of things that remain to be done. We are in pretty good shape to make our goal of being on the market by November 1st. I wouldn't bet against us.

I'd like to set up the Gripe-O-Tron 2000 for a bit of railing against the powers of dumbshit, but I'm hardly in the mood. It was a major effort just getting to work today. I will say this, though: Doodle doodle dee, wubba, wubba, wubba. Figure that out.

Monday October 22, 2001

It's actually very early in the morning on Sunday and I can't sleep. Insomnia sucks major ass, I must say. I'm no pshrink, so I don't really know if this is insomnia or just a panic attack. All I know is that it sucks to be thinking about stuff you don't want to think about in bed when you're trying to sleep. A racing heart and being about ready to jump out of my skin are a couple of sensations I can truly do without as well.

We were very busy Friday night and again on Saturday. Much cleaning of the basement was done and we dropped yet another couple of hundred bucks at the warehouse home improvement store that I love to loathe. I will say one thing, though: They have a great returns policy. We brought the thing back, handed the guy the receipt and within less than a minute, we were walking away with the cash. Very good, indeed.

Out of the corners of our eyes, we watched the Minnesota Gopher Hockey team kick the crap out of Bemidji State both Friday night and Saturday night. The U scored 14 goals in the two games vs. BSU's 3. Both games were fun to watch and they very much reminded me of the powerhouse teams the U had in the early '90s. I once saw an extremely lopsided game against Providence where we were chanting 10! 10! 10! just a bit into the third period. We got it and more.

BSU is really only in their second year as a Division 1 hockey squad and therefore are pretty much going to get trounced. Apparently they went from being on top of the heap in Division 3 and Division 2 to being less that wholly successful in Division 1 last year. I understand there were only like 4 wins. Not so good. They should do better this year. They showed flashes of excellence between the times when they were shooting themselves in the foot with penalties and the times when the Gophs just took them apart. As I said earlier: it was fun to watch.

Friday October 19, 2001

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the City of Minneapolis for fixing the clock on City Hall. I use this clock every day and I was bummed when it didn't work for a while. It always scares me that they just might give up on it like the powers that be gave up on the Grain Belt Beer Neon Sign on Nicollet Island. That would suck. Thanks for fixing it.

I also read a killer article in the City Pages about Caving the sewers and tunnels around the City of Minneapolis. In the article, they visit a couple of places I'd love to go see. They visit Devil's Cave on Nicollet Island. This cave was brewery storage and then a mushroom farm before being capped off many years ago. They also go exploring in the East Side Milling Canal Tunnel. This is another place I'd love to see first hand. If you click here, you'll see a picture of what's above the East Side Milling Canal Tunnel. In that picture, the tunnel starts about at the end of the yellow brick building (the Upton Block) and continues on to just past the Pillsbury "A" Mill. I can't believe these guys were traipsing around inside the old milling canal tunnel. Neato. I wouldn't for all the tea in China step through raw sewage just to see a hole in the ground, but it doesn't sound like one would have to do that here. I might be too big to get through some of these passages, but that's probably OK, because it's not likely I'd ever try.

The guy who this article is by has a website. I'm going to check out his website. Now that that link is posted, so can you.

Much has been made of the current situation in the U.S. and abroad. One of the things I'd like to know is why the hell don't they like us. I saw on the Daily Show last night a guy who's written an article for Newsweek who looked like he had the answer. I'm going to go read that article. I'm just looking for insight.

Thursday October 18, 2001

We can put a man on the moon, but we can't keep my dog from chewing on his splint. Good boy.

I came home yesterday and the back gate was hanging off its hinges. Nice. I can guess what happened. One of our criminally unsupervised neighborhood kids decided to get a look into our back yard. Perhaps there was something like a ball in it that they wanted. Our front and back gates are locked, so we can have some privacy. In seeing this, the enterprising child stands up on the bottom rail of the gate. With the added weight, the lower gate hinge slides down the pole and the gate becomes unhinged. Nice. No note, no explanation, no warning. Whoever did it just left.

It took me 5 minutes to fix it, but that doesn't mean I'm not sore about it. Once again, if parents around our neighborhood gave a crap about their kids, they'd watch them.

Well, there's yet another house on our block for sale. The old lady's place one from the corner is up on the market. It's a plain-looking 2 bedroom, one bathroom thing with an attached tuck-under garage. It's no great prize and it's priced to move. Fortunately, it's not really competition for our place. The only thing that's bad is the addition of yet another for sale sign to our side of the street.

We had another run-in with another of our esteemed neighbors. The owner of the car with the annoying-ass alarm made herself known yesterday. We drove up after going out to eat and the same car alarm that kept us up most of the night a few nights back was on again. I was wrong. It wasn't the Lincoln Continental. It was the buff colored Cadillac.

It was going off when we pulled up, so we decided to find out which car it was and get the license plates off it so that we could call the police. As I was walking around it, Sarah said that someone was at the window of the duplex across the street. Sure enough, the owner came out to shut it off only after someone started looking around at the car. I figure that if we hadn't nosed around, that alarm would have gone off all night.

Confronting the owner of the car about the noise of the other night, she swore up and down that it couldn't have been her car. She said that her alarm would go off after a while if it wasn't turned off. I said that it probably did go off, but that it was set off several different times during the night. She again said that she always took care of her alarm when it went off. Yeah, riiight she does. Lying rat. Like hell she does. That's another thing that kills me about my neighborhood. It's never anyone's fault when things go wrong. Sure, the police, society and the city get blamed all the time, but when you catch someone in our neighborhood acting like a jerk or doing something they shouldn't, it's never their fault. It's always someone else's fault or something else's fault. It seems as if it would kill someone in our neighborhood to own up to anything.

I would fall over dead from shock if I caught the neighbor kids throwing rocks into my lawn (like they do) and one of them said, "Sorry about the rocks. I'll pick them up." or "Yes it was us throwing rocks into your yard." We came home this summer and all the kids were eating Mr. Freeze sugary-frozen wand things. Each one of them had coloring all over their face and there were 3 wrappers in our yard. Oddly enough, there were three kids without frozen goodies in their hands and with color rings around their mouths. When we asked them to pick them up, they said that they weren't their wrappers. Even after all the other kids ratted them out, they still persisted with their stories.

I came home about a month ago and all the neighbor kids were sipping on juice boxes on the neighbor's back porch. One of them didn't have one and there was an empty juice box on my back patio. I asked them if minded keeping their trash in their yard and the kid without the juice box said, "I didn't throw that juice box in your yard." The funny thing was, where it was sitting was down on the ground, out of his sight. Our privacy fence was blocking his view. His friends ratted him out there and then and he persisted it wasn't his. I asked who's it was. His friends said it was his. One of the kids came to the fence and asked if he could throw it away. I said sure and gave it to him. I wish I could say this was unusual, but it's not. Our yard is pretty much constantly full of trash when we get home. I'm tired of it.

Monday October 15, 2001

Here's an update on Brutus' condition. He's fine. He didn't do much damage to himself when he chewed up his splint, and so he didn't need surgery. Better yet, he may be able to get his sutures out by the end of the week. That'd be nice.

I'd like to propose a national day without the word "motherfucker." I think the country needs to know that this word is overused and needs a break. I'd like for people to know that there are more expletives available for use in day-to-day speech. It would be nice to hear a conversation that went something like this:

Dat mothafucka betta na fuck wi my mothafuckin shii or I'll whup dat mothafucka's mothafuckin' ass.

Sound something like this:

Dat person of questionable character betta na fuck wi my hard-earned shii or I'll whup dat ruffian's bountiful ass.

I guess if I overheard one of our neighbors or someone in the supermarket parking lot saying the latter phrase, I would probably think I was just teleported to a parallel universe it would be so odd. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm tired of people over-using this somewhat nonsensensical phrase and that I think the whole country should spend a day without it to see what else we can all come up with. C'mon, it'll be fun!

Speaking of fun, or the polar opposite of it, we had a battle here this weekend. Not a gun battle, nor a war of words, but a battle with the home-improvement monster. As you all likely know if you've been tuning in recently, we are preparing our house to sell. It's been a difficult and stressful process and we're sick to death of it.

Thursday night mom comes over to help us strip off the wallpaper in the dining room. It went very quickly and there was much rejoicing.

Friday night we wash the wall and prep the surface for painting. I spackled a bunch of nail holes and took the light switch plates off in preparation for a painting day on Saturday.

Saturday morning we get up early, go out to breakfast and then head for the hardware store. We buy a quart of likely paint to test, some masking tape, some brushes and some other stuff for other projects in the house. When we return to the house, I start masking the trim and Sarah takes the dog to the vet to get his bandage changed.

It's not quite noon when I get a call from Sarah. It seems that Brutus has popped a suture and the wound is open. They're thinking they'll have to put him out again to close him up. This is not good. It's hard on the dog and frankly, it's hard on our budget as well. We didn't expect to have to deal with his paw the first time around and that procedure was quite a hit on our finances. To have to do it again for something that wasn't our or his fault is going to cause us some real hardship. Not to mention being really bad for the dog.

I'm disheartened to hear this news, but I continue taping. Sarah and Brutus get home a while later and we're ready to paint. In a last-ditch effort to get the sutures that remain to hold together, the vet has splinted Brutus' foot. He's clubbing around the house, but it doesn't seem to be affecting him too much. That's good. Sarah and I get down to painting.

The first coat goes on without too much struggle and we like the way it looks. It turns out that a quart is enough to do the dining room, but unfortunately for us, this particular color didn't do a great job of covering the lemon yellow paint underneath it. Nuts.

So a second coat will be needed. Fine. We start in on some other projects that need to be done. I decide to go for paint at about 4 just in case the hardware store closes early. I go and come back with 2 quarts of paint. We start painting with rollers this time--the first coat went on with brushes. We roll what we can and finish off with brushes. We didn't realize it at the time, but the roller paint came out of one can and the brush paint was out of the other can. Bad.

I guess this was a learning experience, but one we didn't know about at the time. When we finished, we headed off to bed.

Brutus woke me up at about five the next morning wanting to go out. Fine. He does this from time to time and that's fine. Going downstairs, I flip on a light and discover, to my horror that Brutus had chewed up his cast and most of it, including the padding for his sutures was laying on the floor. To make matters worse, he'd raided the trash as well. It seemed that he was trying to make the record books in the bad dog category. The cast/splint thing is bad because if he'd eaten it, it would probably block his intestines and either kill him, or cause him to have surgery to remove it. Fortunately, he didn't seem to eat any of it, but we'll have to see. Unfortunately, he's probably bought himself another trip to the surgeon. Shit.

I was in for another, wretched surprise after I woke up for good at about 9. Sarah was downstairs already. When I showed up, she told me to go look at our handiwork in the dining room. Well I'll be dipped. The two cans must not have been exact matches because even a blind man could have seen the difference from where we'd rolled and where we'd done brush work. The lesson learned is to never buy two quarts, ever. Buy one batch of paint and make double damn sure you never have to see what I saw in the dining room that morning. Shit.

With all the bad news of the morning, I needed to get out of the house for a bit. We went to the newsstand and bought The Sunday Times and some other magazines for the week's reading and then went to get some doughnuts. Because a morning like this one could only be made better by doughnuts.

We got back and sat and read the paper and ate doughnuts and drank coffee. OK, life isn't so bad after all. I went to the hardware store and bought a WHOLE FUCKIN' GALLON of paint and some new, big brushes. We waited until the Vikings game started, and then started painting. When we were done, we started in on some more projects. Around dinner time, it was apparent that this effort was going to be the winning effort after all. We cleaned up the room, took up the drop cloths, pulled the masking tape off. Yep, it looks good. We moved our furniture back into the room, ran a bunch of junk to storage and then cleaned the house for about an hour. After an hour's worth of work, we realized the house did indeed look a whole lot better.

We ate dinner, we finished up a couple of more, smaller projects, and now we sit. Rest is good.

I will say that this has been the toughest weekend so far, but I think it got us over the hump. We've either done or are in the process of doing all of our projects, and the rest of the big stuff is being done by people we hire. We're looking to be on the market very soon and the house on the hill is still available. We're keeping our fingers crossed.

Wednesday October 10, 2001

The tiles in the back hall are in and look nice. The cyst in Brutus' foot is not cancerous, and all the things we're going to need for the house are either already here or on order. It doesn't feel as if we're making much progress, but there's less chaos everyday and the trash bins in the back yard keep getting filled. There has to be an end somewhere.

I was reflecting on the state of relations between the U.S. and the U.K. the other night. I thought of a brother/brother relationship, but it really doesn't fit. Sure, one could make that analogy fit, but I think the father/son metaphor fits much better. The U.K. is older like fathers tend to be. The U.S. rebelled like sons tend to do. We speak the same language, but the U.K. seems to be a bit more conservative than the U.S. tends to be. My father/son relationship certainly turned out that way, and so I would think it fits. It would also give Uncle Sam a last name. One of the mascots of the U.K. is John Bull. He's a boisterous, somewhat pudgy fellow with a belligerent chin. Think a cross between a bulldog and Winston Churchill. If John Bull is Uncle Sam's father, then Uncle Sam is Uncle Sam Bull. The mother? Lady Liberty Bartholdi.

The reason I was thinking about this is the way the U.K. is helping out the U.S. in this time of trouble. Tony Blair is really making a statesman out of himself and the U.K. is really giving us a lot of help. I can see why they would be spoiling for a global action against terrorism. The IRA and its ilk have been blowing up stuff in London for a number of years. Since the terrorist networks seem to collaborate, it makes perfect sense to strike at a place where the local kooks turn drugs into money to back their wacked agendas.

Andrew Sullivan , in an article in the New York Times (free registration required) called "This is a Religious War" states that what we're fighting is, essentially, a religious war. We're fighting the phenomenon of fanatical fundamentalism within Islam. Islam had it's high point a few hundred years ago, but right now, the followers of this faith seem to be on the rocks. In Palestine, in Chechnya, and in India, Muslims are getting the raw end of the deal when they used to rule the roost. It's the Jeremiad come alive: The past was glorious, the present sucks/is dangerous/treacherous/we're at war/etc..., but the future holds a bright promise of glory if we only get together and fight this enemy we have here. No doubt about it, this little device gets used quite often, but it seems to most Muslims that that's where they are. In that middle part. The part that sucks.

I'm not going to debate them and tell them they're wrong. Nor am I going to be an apologist for murdering innocents because someone is murdering people elsewhere. I will say that we are going to have a very sticky little war to fight and one of the things we're going to be fighting against is religion whether we like it or not. It's going to take some crafty hearts and minds trickery to get through the coming months without some major collateral damage here in the U.S. or elsewhere in the coalition.

The news that the anthrax in Florida is man-made is disheartening. I can't believe it's started already. I can't believe that some kook would try to make someone or a bunch of somebodies sick at a tabloid. Sure, the tabloids are awful, little rags full of lies, but a free society shouldn't fear them and the actions of one person or several people shouldn't put these folks out of business or kill them outright. I hope the perpetrator in this case is a U.S. national. If it's someone foreign, the repercussions will be ugly, indeed.

Monday October 8, 2001

Here's something I don't understand: Car alarms.

What the hell good are they? Unless the car itself has a way to contact the police and the owner, car alarms should be looked upon with the same disdain and derision as boom cars and loud pipes--unnecessary racket. One of our considerate neighbors must either have purchased a new car or had a new alarm system installed. Whatever the facts, this Silver/White Lincoln Continental's alarm went off about every 20 minutes all night. My wife and I called the police several times, but we never saw a cruiser drive by. I suppose they have bigger fish to fry at the present time, but it wouldn't have mattered much anyway. It seemed that whenever we called, the alarm would quit soon after. To say it was infuriating is to say Lake Superior is a frog pond. By morning I was about to slash all four tires on this piece o'merde car and then run my truck over it. I also had pleasant thoughts of bashing out all the windows, headlights and plastic pieces on this luxo-flatulo-fronto-barge with my trusty hammer. At least with these actions, the car alarm's warning bleat would be warranted. As it was, it was an impotent wail in the night who's owner was considerately sleeping through it. Handing this guy his teeth might have gotten my point about being considerate of your neighbors sleeptime across as well.

I've ranted about the stupidity of car alarms here in the past. They're just little noise makers that make the faulty assumption that someone's going to call the police to protect someone else's property. Sure, car alarms work correctly when the owner is within earshot, but they only serve as a noisy and ineffective deterrent when the owner isn't around. The car alarm's effectiveness is based on 3rd parties coming to the aid of the owner's car. That's a bit cheeky, don't you think? Do I give a shit about this guy's car? Hell no. Would I call the police when the alarm goes off? Only after the fifth time it went off did we even consider calling the cops. Car alarms in our neighborhood are like ears of corn in a cornfield. Abundant, and not very compelling. The only reason we called the cops on this guy's car is that we wanted it gone and were disappointed that someone wasn't stealing it. Someone making off with this car would have made us pretty damn happy last night.

Boy, I don't like jerks like that.

We're finally busting a cap on the Taliban. It's all good, really. I was fortunate to have a chance to watch the program "Behind the Veil" on CNN the other night. For those of you not in the know or cable-disadvantaged, this is a program that a film crew shot about a year ago in Afghanistan. It documents the oppression of the women in that country by the Taliban. Things like putting on makeup or unveiling one's self in private can and does get women shot in that hell-hole. Nope, there's pretty much nothing anyone can say to me to make me think destabilizing these bunch of yahoos is going to be a bad thing for anyone except those yahoos. From what the program said, the Taliban's soldiers are killing dissenting voices, then perpetrating mass-murder/genocide upon those not in the same ethnic group as well. If it wasn't for the fact that these animals are killing everyone, the Taliban is a damn good reason to just nuke the whole country off the map. They will truly deserve the bullets that enter their bodies as whoever pushes them off the perch of power decides to do with them what they did to others. It is the golden rule, after all.

Osama bin Lameass has begun spouting off this nonsense that we Americans are scared here in this vast, unfriendly country of ours. Yo, Osama, whatever you're smoking, put the pipe down. It's really messing up your mind. And while you're at it, go look for your sentries. They've dropped their weapons and have run off, haven't they? Sure, you folks gave the old Soviet Union a bloody nose a few years back, and that's fine. You beat a bunch of conscripts fighting a war they didn't want to fight. You are now up against the finest military machine in the world, bar none. All of our people are volunteers. All of them are pissed. It's almost certain that a large number of the people trying to put a laser-guided suppository where your head is had their retirement investments put in danger from your little 9/11 caper. You can't take money from people and not expect to pay the price. Similarly, many of the folks plotting your doom had kin and friends in the Twin Towers and at the Pentagon. Your extermination would be a step in the right direction to soothe these peoples' anger.

I'd hazard a guess from what I'm hearing that the second biggest danger coalition forces will face in Afghanistan will be the hazard of tripping over dropped AK-47s after their owners dropped and ran. Those soldiers remember the Gulf War. Sure, we didn't get Saddam, but it's not OK to kill the leaders of other countries overtly whether we like them or not. He got to live because he was the head of the government. You have no such protection.

I really doubt the U.S. will try to kill Osama bin Jackass. The U.S. wants to make sure that he gets a fair trial in our country and then, if convicted (HAH!), spend the rest of his natural life in one of our fine, federal prisons. Perhaps 5,000-odd consecutive life sentences will give Osama bin Dipshit a chance to read the Koran and find out he was wrong. It will be a good day indeed if this fellow realizes the error of his ways before he stops breathing.

In other news, Brutus is on his way to recovering. He was pretty low from the general anesthetic the day after surgery, but he's more or less back to being his old, loveable self.

We did lots more work on the house this weekend. There was paining, some odd jobs and much more packing done. The house is pretty well trashed again, but that's come to be the usual way we leave it after a weekend's worth of work.

We also went to look at another, well recommended house on Sunday. It was nice, but way too small. I think it was smaller than our current place. Our bed wouldn't even have fit in the master bedroom. Nope, we'll keep looking and pining away for the house on the hill.

Thursday October 4, 2001

Every once in a while, I stumble across something really good on the internet. Here is something good.

I spent a large portion of last night in the garage trying to track down all the pieces of the 2 Suzuki GS850Gs I'm trying to unload. Man, what a chore. I also threw out every, single carry rack that I've accumulated over the years. I gave one to a guy down the alley, but I ended up throwing away about 6. So long. If I want a rack for my next bike, I'll get bags instead. Racks are handy, but they just look like hell.

Sarah did some painting on the house and we both got the trash ready for the trash guys. Those guys took every last little bit. Impressive.

We're all on pins and needles today. Our dog, Brutus is having some minor surgery done to his paw today. He has something stuck inside of it and because it took four people to unsuccessfully hold him down for a biopsy of that something, he's going to have to be sedated for them to get a sample. As I write, he's just going in, so we'll all be on our toes for any information we get. I sure hope he'll be allright. There's nothing in the world better at making things feel all wrong than having a beloved pet at the vet for medical problem. We're holding our breath.

The work on the house continues.

Wednesday October 3, 2001

There's nothing like being busy and sick. I'm a bit less sick today, but I'm maybe twice as busy as last week. The projects are being dispatched at a furious pace. We're rockin'.

This site was down for about 10 minutes yesterday afternoon because I wanted to prove to the world that I was an idiot. No, not an idiot, just an optimist. I tried to configure my other web server to do my bidding, but I've found that the level of complexity I've introduced to this machine hasn't stumped it, it's stumped me. I need to do a lot more research on the subject before we go live. I already have a bunch of new ideas as to how to get it to do my bidding, but I'm strapped for time. The idea was to get the new box up and running so that I would only have to move one live box as opposed to the two now running. No such luck. I hope that life slows down some soon.

Monday October 1, 2001

If we had our house sold, we'd be making an offer today. I think that's about the size of it, really. Now the hard part is getting on the market. It looks as if we have a bunch of things to do before we get inspected.

There are still a bunch of things that need to be done around the house. It needs to be tidied up, it needs the windows to be washed, it needs a couple of hours of contractor work, and it needs the yard to be raked, daily. What fun.

We then need to get it inspected and then we can get it on the market. We'll then spend our nights looking at other houses, or doing some final packing/throwing/storing so when it comes time to move, we're ready and waiting.

We've already thrown off the lodestone of our junk. We still have junk to toss, but the end is near. The stuff from now on is almost like cheating. Stuff like yard waste, tree trimmings and the rest of the large objects we need to toss just don't seem like real trash. Yard waste happens naturally--especially if you have a 80' oak tree in the back yard. I'll probably catch hell from our cranky biker neighbor for cutting down most of the weed elm trees that were hanging over our garage aprons, but if he wants trees there, he can keep them on his side of the lot.

We ran the furnace for the first time this weekend. Forced air furnaces are great for heating a place, but boy, do they stink after they've sat for a while. There's nothing like the smell of burning dust and the cloud of dust that comes out of the vents when the blower kicks in for the first time in 6 months. Ish. Saturday was a perfect day for this as it was nice and cool outside and we could open all the windows to air the place out. Very good indeed.