Saturday, February 28, 2009

They Drown Horses, Don't They?

I just found out (loooooong after everyone else found out) that Connor is on the Jordan High water polo team. The Watson/Reese gang were at our house on Sunday, and Connor was telling folks about his new endeavor. I must'a been in the other room at the time. I didn't hear a word of it. Well, maybe I was sitting next to Connor at the time. Real, actual, meaningful, axiomatic, conclusive dialog cannot happen at our house with the gang here, because there are so many lower jaws a'flappin' (mostly mine) that a constructive message cannot be heard through the gaggle of raised voices.

Anyway, I was excited to EVENTUALLY hear of d'Conman's new groove. But I have some questions. Isn't it kinda cruel to make all those horsies swim around in a swimming pool? Don't the horses make the pool sorta - uh - unsanitary? I know that in parades they have people following the horses with poop-r-scoopers, but how in the heck do they accomplish the cleanup in a pool? Maybe they feed the ponies marshmallows for two days before the match, hoping for a "floating" arrangement instead of a "sinking" one. That would reealy help. How in the world do they get the horses out of the pool? Just wonderin'. Guess I will just have to mosey over there and watch a match as soon as possible. I am really looking forward to it.

Blobbin' at random: I got a comment from the Whitneys on my last blob. Wow. That was great. Things cannot be the same on Altair Drive, but the old friendships are forever. Barb-of-the-faraway-hills e-mailed us and says that they are up to their ears in mud. Well, ya know what they say.... Spring mud brings summer weeds.... It's all good. Brian has been (and/or will be) in 8 or 10 cities in 3 or 4 weeks. Eek. Coast to coast. Eeeek. We have had 2 deaths in 2 days in the 'hood, a couple of weeks ago. One of them was a 29 year old feller who MAY have violated a prescription instruction. Watch those instructions!! I go now. I have been 163 hours without a Pepsi. I seriously go now.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Sillibiz

This is a tutorial from Babs. I'm trying new stuff.

Monday, February 9, 2009

Beware o' the blob.

If the wind is blowing from the northwest at 10 knots, I will blob today. If the wind is blowin' from the southeast at 20 knots I will not blob today. If the wind........... Aw, fer crying out loud, I will blob. Be warned. I am dreadfully low on material.

Maudeen is doing very well with her new blog. She has fabulous stories from her childhood and many current items, also.
Most of our condos in here must have a strange magnetic field in the posts that support the carports, and these fields attract auto bumpers. Bang. Thump. Whoops. You get the picture. Jennifer says that when she bumped her post a few years back, her son, Zack, told everyone he had been in a major accident, with whiplash, seatbelt rash and much emotional suffering.

Well, we lost a post last week. A very elderly lady tried to pull into our carport, thinking it belonged to our neighbor Marcie. I called Marcie's husband, Paul, and mentioned it to him. He said that she was so helpless in her old age that he would rather not mention it to her, but merely pay the damage himself. I told him that I didn't expect the LOL to pay for it and that I would take care of it. (You thought LOL meant laugh out loud when it really means Little Old Lady, huh?)

In a subsequent phone conversation, Marcie offered to pay half the damages. Let's tabulate. The redwood posts were $33. The cedar ones were about $19. I found one made of pine or fir for $6. Here is my dilemma. Do I charge Paul and Marcie $3 or do I charge $3.14 including tax. I'm getting a splitting headache dealing with this issue. Another issue is this: Should I have gotten a waterlogged fir post for $3 that might warp and ooze pine-tar for years to come, or gotten the cedar one which would have resisted beetles and warping for decades? Oh, the pain, the pain. We already had some primer and brown paint, so the paint isn't anything they should pay. Oh, I'm sure they'll bring it up.

On the day of the accident, we discovered that our screen door into the patio from the carport was sticking quite badly. It took us a full week to realize that the LOL had also bumped our fence, driving the fence one inch south, leaving us with a fence to move northward. This should be easy, unless the 38 year old fence posts have been snapped at ground level. This will not be easy to determine, considering that the posts are completely hidden behind the fence slats. Doing a ricketiness test will do no good, because the whole fence is a rickety mess already.

Maybe I could casually approach Paul and Marcie with: $3.14 for the post, $2.50 for the paint. $0.00 for the labor and $1299.99 for "possible damage" to the fence. I am sooooo clever. Wait a minute. What am I doing discounting my labor? Here's the solution to the whole problem. If the wind is blowing from the north at ten knots, I will bill them for $1500.00. If the wind is.............

And you thought I was just being silly when I said "Beware of the Blob."