Wallowed

It started with a message, then came some clues.

With ominous clouds looming, I spent the drive to the ride contemplating the competition.

"...a trail under a road that rhythms with help, ...where Ben hid the Pabst Blue, It was in a stump where nobody jumped"

Some showed up in costume...

But most just showed

The commish split us into teams of two, made us pound our beers and down our shots.

Into the dark we raced off with our separate strategies

Hiding from each other in search of what was hidden from us

By a fire in the ruins of a riverside barn, it came to an end. There were winners, losers and badly busted fingers. For this Wallow Ween, all had fun and a game was won.

- b

A Wedding

So it's four weeks late, but here's the link.

- b

Work Hard, Drink Beer

- b

New Storage

Before

After


- b

London Calling

London pictures are finally up.

Four months late, but whatever.

You can find them here.

- b

Vacation is Awesome!

Home from Vermont to do a little work on the house.

- b

Slow in Stowe

The internet access wasn't what we expected it to be while on vacation, so I'm a little behind.

I'll try to get things up soon.

- b

Watch Out!

I'm onto you.

Rejection Fosters Intuition


- b

I Love These

Home Inspection Nightmares

- b

Smooth Talker

I was taught, or instinctively knew, that those who portrayed a vision, understanding and experience beyond that of my own were the ones to follow.

As my Dad always said, "You've got to have the right tool for the job to do it right."

If you can't comprehend or even articulate the job, then you're probably not the right tool.

- b

Who is Joe Sixpack?

I don't get it.

Does he drink an average of a six pack a day?

or

Is he walking around with six pack abs?

Either way, why is he of national importance?

How does this get a candidate elected to run our country, handle our debt, manage our foreign relations?

Yeah yeah. I realize it's a euphemism for "Average Joe", but does Joe realize this?

And yes I know the average household income for this country is that of Average Joe, but really how complicated can the issues of Average Joe be over that of the financial crisis or energy independence?

Not to slight Mr. Joe, but why doesn't he just go to work, come home like the rest of us, and leave the administration of this country to those more capable.

With the basic necessities provided by this country, clean water, social security, infrastructure, etc. you're way beyond the means of the rest of the world. Count yourselves fn lucky and shut up.

- b

ps. I'm not the only one confused

Nice Quote

"travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness."

Mark Twain

- b

More Vacation Dreams

There are two wood stoves and predictions of snow in the weather forecast!

- b

Huh?

I've had this grass/leaf catcher thing lying around my garage since I bought the place. I tried once giving it to a friend, but it just wouldn't fit.

I tried Freecycle, but no one responded.

Then I tried Craigslist.

Someone responded.

From: haywood jablowme <...@yahoo.com>
To: sale-...@craigslist.org
Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2008 2:51:31 AM
Subject: leaf catcher

I'm interested in your leaf catcher. I'm in ... and pick it up today or whenever your available. Let me know.. 555-1212

Who in their right mind would nickname their email address that way and expect any kind of (positive) response?

- b

Take a Trip

WWMD

- b

Vacation Awaits

"Unique fieldstone house on over 25 private acres. Breathtaking views of Mount Mansfield from every room. Fieldstone inside and out, with cathedral ceilings made from wooden beams from an old barn. Hardwood with slate and antique, brick floors downstairs and wide, pine floors upstairs."

"Huge master bedroom suite with six-foot-wide, sliding, glass windows with awesome mountain views from the bed..."

"Totally private, situated on your own meadow... Hike or cross-country ski right out of your back door. Located on a quiet gravel road adjacent to wilderness..."

"This is the ideal retreat from a busy life, a magical and sacred home of natural beauty that calls to those who cherish the simplicity of nature and the spirit of the mountains... This is a home for special discriminating individuals..."

I'm having a hard time getting anything done these last couple of days. I just keep reading the description and drifting off.

- b

Changing Their Tactics

The ad masterminds at Yahoo realized I wasn't interested in the floozy's in the flirt ads and gave me this one today.

What's a guy to do?

- b

Asparagus & Beer

Make a bad combination.

- b

Night Sky

Jen was making dinner.

I was out back playing fetch with Gretchen when I saw this.

It's the moon. It's rising over the brightly colored trees of our yard. It was amazing, though I wasn't quite able to capture that.

I tried.

I tried real hard.

I ran inside and downstairs to grab a ladder.

Just a ladder.

Not the ladder I usually use to get on the roof of the house, but a ladder.

I ran back upstairs, out the door and set the ladder up on the deck.

It was short.

I briefly thought it was too short and I wouldn't get back down as I scrambled up and onto the roof.

"Jen's smart, she'll get me down", I thought to myself.

Across the ridge of the roof I set up my tripod and started snapping shots.

Meanwhile Jen was snapping instructions. "Try the flash. Try the night setting. Try the..."

"Uh-huh" - click, click, click.

"oooh look at that," I turn to see the sunset too - from the roof.

Click, click, click.

Eh. The sunset turned out ok, but the moon rise could/should have been crisper.

- b

Can't Heat

Having worked so much the last few weeks, my "honey-do" list was piling up.

Hell, I did so much, I can only remember half of it at best.

Of course it's the bad stuff that comes to mind first.

Let's see, while cleaning the pellet stove in preparation for this seasons heating, I found this little crack.
It's tiny, but it's there and it goes all the way through.

My favorite was what we found trying to close the pool (again). Remember that new skimmer we put in last spring? It's broken.

There were all kinds of things I never liked about the way the guy did the job, but for the most part it worked and I was happy.

Until it wouldn't work.

No matter what we tried, we couldn't get the pump to suck the last bit of water out of the skimmer. Reluctantly I decided to start digging and maybe do a little cutting. I cut out the corner closest to the pool and tried our "water in water out" procedure again -- use the hose to pump water in and use the cover pump to pump it out.

For reasons I can't remember, I decided to dig some more, but a funny thing happened. The closer I got to the pool deck, the more wet the dirt got. The dirt shouldn't be wet. I thought maybe my hose had sprayed in places I didn't see, but the water was coming from under the ground. If you look real close in the above picture the dirt under the pipe is wet. As I would pull dirt out, I could sit there and watch the wetness percolate back into place.

This is bad.

This means the integrity of the pipe under the deck is seriously compromised.

It's fn leaking.

This means the whole job's gone to shit.

It has to be done again.

Yeah, so after that discovery, a whole bunch of beers, La Vie en Rose, and a comatose sleep, I got up this morning and crawled into the attic.

I started an outdoor speaker project four months ago in June that required some wiring in the attic. Being that June is summer, it quickly got too hot to do too much in the attic and the project went unfinished. 8am, I was up there this morning laying across the insulation and pulling wires.

It was beautiful and itchy all at once.

See I'm a bit of a freak.

With the weather turning cooler, the disrupted insulation (due to the project) in the attic was bothering me. I can't say it's completely what's keeping me up at nights, but it probably didn't help.

So I got the wire pulled through, the insulation back in place and even laid out another bag of hot itchy fiberglass.

I swear the crap makes me warm just looking at it.

The project isn't done and I'm by no means done with the insulation in the attic, but I'm better off then I was. Probably not good enough to not have heat, but maybe good enough to sleep a little better. At least till April, when I start thinking about the pool again.

- b

Not the Best Buy

Sometimes I'm not very nice.

I was in Best Buy a while back looking for a DVD cleaner. As I'm perusing the store I come across Underworld playing on some big flat screen.

It's werewolves, vampires and Kate Beckinsale in latex. I had to stop and watch a little.

A sales rep sidles up next to me and says, "Pretty nice huh?"

With a big happy dumb guy grin I turn to him and say, "Yeah."

It takes a couple of seconds then he goes into the specs of the TV, "Well this is the X9-4000 , blah blah blah, flat panel, blah blah, blue ray, HD..."

Scornfully I turn back and tell him, "I don't give a shit about the TV. I'm watching the fn hotty in latex!" I turn and walk away.

- b

Biodegradable is not Compostable

We've got these dog poop pickup bags for when we used to take Gretchen for walks around the park behind our house. Between the invisible fence, doggie daycare and her morning runs, she really doesn't need the exercise of the park walks.

The bags come in hundred count packages, so we have a lot leftover.

What to do?

I decided, as the little icon in the bottom right hand corner suggests, to reuse them. Not the actually used ones, but the new ones that had not been used. I gave them a new purpose.

I started using them as sandwich bags. When I ran out of the old plastic kind, I made the "greener" switch to the biodegradable ones. Now I no longer had to feel so bad about using the plastic ones with a half life longer then my whole life.

So what if the empty bags at my desk said "Pooch Pickups", their implied intention is for excrement containment, and visions of using them that way in the past are all I see when I pull the box out to load up my lunch.

They're perfectly usable sandwich bags and biodegradable too. Just take the used ones home and throw them in the compost.

No quite. There's a huge difference between biodegradable and compostable (duh?). Probably a few months or maybe even a year difference.

All the bags I put in the compost this summer were still there. Every time I'd flip or stir the compost they were there, sticking to the pitch fork tines, to remind me of this difference.

So I gave up. I pulled out what I found and threw them away. Not only that, but I stopped using them for sandwiches too. I've made the even greener choice (and less consumable) to use Tupperware for my sandwiches.

The unused bags will just sit on the shelf or in the car till we take the dogs somewhere we'll need them. With my luck, by the time I do go to use one, my fingers will push through the degraded bottom of the bags just as I go to pick up its intended contents.

- b

Dog Hikes

We've started up the dog hikes again.

In this economy it's the cheapest date like thing we can think of. As date like as you can get when there's other people around riding horses, hunting, or walking their dogs too.

Today we hit one of our favorite local spots at Springton Manor Farm where there's a large rock along the way, I've been eying this rock since last spring. With all Gretchen's "agility training," I decided to climb up and see what she had.

What she had was a brain full of chipmunks. She spent most of the hike running in circles throughout the brush in hot pursuit of the teasing little rodents.

So CJ decided to climb it. CJ the twelve year old dog that falls up the stairs and can't get in our bed anymore. CJ the dog that will go three days without pooping because it's just too much effort.

Seeing CJ up there was enough to distract Gretchen from her chase and up she scrambled.

Doesn't look so bad huh? We did a retake.

She's not jumping. She's actually running up the rock. There were a couple of slight ledges on the way up. The rest was just claws scraping rock. I expected her to come from the left, but no. Straight up was more fun or something.

Then it was back to the chipmunks.

- b

Sweet Emotion

These stupid things started showing up in my Yahoo ad bar a couple of weeks ago.

At first they were there all the time throughout the day.

Someone must have complained since they disappeared till 5pm each night or all day only on weekends.

The three in the middle actually do some pseudo online chat thing. They giggle and act coy while bouncing their boobs all around in those ridiculous tank tops.

The ensemble reminds me of a neighbor I once had who wore only wife beater tees. She's not a memory I like to revisit very much.

And yeah, I can't help to think contacting any of these would surely be like this.

- b

Ouch

Obviously a little biased, though I'm entertained by the author's no-holds-barred writing style and reflection.

- b

Hang Man

Though there are plans for a boat rack, I created a temporary storage solution for Jen's kayak.

It's very temporary. As you can see, it sort of blocks the door.

- b

Again, No Bias

Props to McCain, but this is shameful.

- b

Escape Artist

The stories I've been hearing are true.

For the first time in weeks (maybe months), I got home before Jen and found this.

It seems Gretchen thinks she's too big for the kitchen. We've been "crating" her there with baby gates to keep her from the rest of the house, and whatever she might get into, while we're away.

The last week or so she's been getting out.

So far everything's fine.

Soooo, do we leave her free, expand her space or actually crate her?

Not sure yet. We'll see.

- b

About Them Shoes

It's true.

I like shoes - especially women in their shoes.

So when I see Posh in her PVC Thigh High Micro Wedge Boots, I have to comment.

Most relevant to the topic, I like heels - high heels. Yeah there's the whole thing they do with women's legs making their calves stand out blah, blah blah, but I like the heels.

I honestly don't know what it is (something in the engineering I suppose), but I like the heel itself.

Tall little tiny heels dazzle me. Stylish heels with some kind of flare are intriguing too.

Wedges - eh. If they're stylish sure, but wedges in general - not really.

Micro wedges? There's no heel, so double no.

I give her credit for the PVC (though it's sweaty and smelly), but the stripper platform/micro wedge - I hate.

- b

Not That I'm Biased

"During the Bush Administration, the national debt, now approaching ten trillion dollars, has nearly doubled. Next year’s federal budget is projected to run a half-trillion-dollar deficit, a precipitous fall from the seven-hundred-billion-dollar surplus that was projected when Bill Clinton left office. Private-sector job creation has been a sixth of what it was under President Clinton. Five million people have fallen into poverty. The number of Americans without health insurance has grown by seven million, while average premiums have nearly doubled. Meanwhile, the principal domestic achievement of the Bush Administration has been to shift the relative burden of taxation from the rich to the rest. For the top one per cent of us, the Bush tax cuts are worth, on average, about a thousand dollars a week; for the bottom fifth, about a dollar and a half. The unfairness will only increase if the painful, yet necessary, effort to rescue the credit markets ends up preventing the rescue of our health-care system, our environment, and our physical, educational, and industrial infrastructure."

Read the whole thing here.

- b

Boo Hoo

Cry me a river you old fart.

- b

Crap of the World

I really needed to relax last night. After two nights of very little sleep, I decided to pop in a movie and drink some beers.
The movie was Fight Club. The beer was Storm King.

Relaxing indeed.

- b

Tunnel of Light

I'm not sure I can describe in a way you'll understand the ephemeral feeling of riding through the night.

Sounds simple enough, but add speed, dark woods and the ungodly hour of 6am and you've got something special.

Carving the narrow single track that spirals down through the woods, I was keenly aware of how little there was to be aware of. My light lit a tunnel of sight twenty feet in front of me, maybe ten feet in diameter. Beyond that glow was black. Nothing existed. There were no sounds, no sights, only blackness. As fast as new trail and sights came into view, the old was lost.

The battle of sensory deprivation and sensory overload (go really fast!) was raging, but you've got to let loose. You've got to let the sight of light flow in and out. Turn the corner, briefly into darkness, and go down faster.

- b

Damn Doctors!

I was totally going to hand out hedgehogs as Halloween treats this year, but now I guess not.

It's back to the old apple for all the little kiddies.

Not really. We don't get any kids at Halloween.

Might have something to do with us turning all the lights out, starving the dogs a few days, then chaining them up out in the driveway.

I figure if a kid gets through that, they deserve a beer - not some stupid candy bar.

- b

Dirtball Wannabe

Besides the fame and fortune, how is it Justin Timberlake gets to go to a wedding as Jessica Beil's date (and she's a bridesmaid) looking like such a slouch?

My wife will hardly let me go to Home Depot with a beard like that - let alone with her to a wedding.

Maybe that's why Jessica looks so annoyed?


Or maybe I'm just annoyed I had to work all weekend and still get up and shave this morning.

Why can't I get paid millions to do what I love, I'm good at and only do it parts of the year?

Instead I bust my ass at something I hate for crackers.

Yeah yeah. It's the lament of the masses.

At least Victoria Beckham suffers some for her fame and fortune. Can you imagine walking in these thigh high PVC boots? How does she put them on? What does she tell her kids? Not that I really care about any of those things. They're just more palatable questions then the ones I'd really want to ask about those boots.
Click here for the full picture.

Yes it's true.

I peruse People.com.

I've truly lost it.

- b

Mine Eyes

Are not seeing any glory.

Imagine the following orange square is a window on a computer screen.

If I were to look at the same window without my glasses it would like this.

And that's before any beer!

Now if I really was a geek, I would have taken an actual desktop application and skewed it for effect. Alas. I am not.

- b

I'm a Geek

If I'm going to work all weekend, I better make it interesting.

So what's going on here? Looks like two laptops with a flat panel in between.

Sort of, but not quite.

It's physically two laptops and a flat panel, but one laptop is actually driving the other two monitors as its second and third screens.

Huh?

It's like this.

That's right. I'm pimpn' two extra screens to the one that comes with my laptop.

Pretty awesome huh?

Whatever. I had to work all weekend.

It sucked.

- b

Fire! Fire!... Fire!

Had a little emergency this morning.

Jen was making breakfast burritos - heating the tortillas in the toaster oven, when this one decided to catch fire.

I was a bit stunned at first watching the flames flicker out of the front of it as Jen tried to blow it out. Meanwhile the kitchen filled with smoke.

I grabbed a magazine to fan it, but realized it would do just that - fan it, so I took a deep breath and blew it out.

Then the smoke detectors started. Sounded like all the smoke detectors in the neighborhood going off. Gretchen howling didn't help.

We ran around opening windows as the smoke poured out.

If the coffee wasn't strong enough, the thought of the kitchen going up in flames certainly was.

- b

The Verdict

Like a high school science experiment, we planted these hanging plants back in May. The overhead watering resevoir/system worked well for a month or so, then the capillary strips stopped transporting the water from the top to underneath where the soil was. I found out I could order new strips and quickly we were back in business.

Didn't last long.

I went back and read some reviews about the setup. Most people weren't thrilled with the watering mechanism and now I agreed. The capillary strips just don't last.

The cherry tomato plant did great anyway. The peppers were only so-so. Would I do it again? Probably. I liked having the plants off the ground. I'd be willing to get more and put them in a garden, but I'd have to configure some kind of watering system. The fact they're hung by 4"x4" posts would facilitate running some kind of plumbing up the post with nozzles over the baskets, but that's for another season.

- b

Twins

Jen got her new boat the other day.

Sitting side by side, we could see some subtle differences. The new boat looked meaner and sleeker, so she took it out to Marsh Creek for a spin.

By the smiles and speed at which she paddled about, I'd say the new one is without the problems of the old.

- b

Balloon Weather

This morning at breakfast this went floating by

It looks tiny in this picture, but it was huge in real life - something technical about perspective I'm sure.

FYI I'm working this afternoon, so there may be a few of these "one hit wonder" posts coming your way.

- b

Found These Guys

In the bottom of a bucket.

I assume their mother dropped them off while looking for a warm place inside our garage. Must have been there a while. They were a little slow when I first found them. After some nourishment, they were moving quicker, so we relocated them outside and sent them on their way.

This way if they make it back in the house, they'll recognize the peanut butter - in the traps.

- b

Motorhead

Dad got his hemi painted.

I got nothing but work, so I'm sharing what others are doing.

- b

Different Day

Lunch:
    Bacon and cheese sandwiches
- b

Another One of Those Days

Breakfast:
    Chocolate (Storm King Stout) brownie and a Diet Coke.

Lunch:
    Pizza

Dinner:
    Pizza, Chicken and Beer

- b