White Lightning Axiom: Redux

Ahhh, Thursday. The best thing about Thursday is that it is the promise of Friday. A Friday before a long weekend ... even longer still since we will be going to Hershey Park for yet another vacation. A little too soon for my tastes, but It's the date that the Mrs picked do go we must! I slept a bit better tonight. Either its the cooler weather or the fact that the Mrs changed the bed sheets last night. In any event, I did not wake from my blissful slumber till 6:30am. The Twins didn't complain and the Hounds didn't howl. The later is a bit disturbing because by the time I got down to the "Hall of the Hounds", Katie had already taken matters into her own paws and relieved herself on Thor's bed. Not good. Now I will certainly need to wash the soiled bed covers, the towels and the blankets tonight.

In spite of getting up late, I did manage to get to work before 8am. I am so damn fixated with getting to work before 8am. I know that if I leave after 1615 I will have a rough time and I NEED to do 8 hours a day, but this 0815 thing that is stuck in my head seems a bit neurotic. Some day, I'll spend some time thinking about it. Some day, when I'm retired and sitting in a boat on a placid lake ... fishing my days away. Ahhhh. ... WAKE UP! Whew, almost had a pleasant thought there for a second. No quicker way to ruin a day than to think of things you much rather be doing. One of the things that I don't want to be doing is fixing my car. The fabric covering on interior of the roof is coming loose in the back of the car. Not sure how that happened, but it will need some attention. It is not causing any mechanical or performance issues. I only see it when I look in the rear-view mirror. Flapping away like two flags in a hurricane. That makes me look again, and think about fixing it. And I look again, and again, and ....argh! It just bugs me and I cant seem to remember to fix it unless I'm on the road looking at it. Damn OCD. (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, for you sane folk) I think I'll put together a list of things that I need to deal with before I go on vacation.

fix car roof

pack up kennel

wash dog beds,blankies,towels

move retaining blocks to back yard

Purple Heart donations

I did the QA assist thingie again this morning. She is coming along. Once she figures out how to run the system without errors, she can start introducing problems and give me something to work with. Instead of doing what I'm paid to do, I will probably spend most of the day doing blog stuff. I'm just too pooped after we put the Twin Toddlers to bed to do anything but lay about the floor and lament about how tired I am. Then I watch a few hours of mindless television programming. Mostly junk. Last night, I noticed that our channel 14 is gone. It was the Starz channel with some nice movies on it. We got it for free, but no more. Comcast wants us to upgrade to digital and they are motivating us by taking away the premium channels. The Mrs was thinking that maybe we should switch, but I'm not going for it. We don't watch enough TV to make it worth while. Then she said that it might cost less. I don't think so. I guess I'm an old curmudgeonly old fart, I don't like change for no good reason.

On a lark, I decided to go out with the gang for 'Dollar Pint Thursday' at the local Rock Bottom tavern at the KOP Mall. Oh boy, its been a while since I've put away a couple of pints and it sure feels good. A manly burger with onion, spicy mustard and horse-radish and 2 pints of Double-IPA .... ahhhh. Why did I give this up! Oh, yeah, because I feel like a slug for hours afterwards. Good thing I'm just reading design documents and lending assistance to QA right now. I don't think making critical decisions about work or finance right now would be a good thing. But, oh man, does my stomach feel content.

This morning, I got a call from the Lovely and Tolerant Mrs MDMHVONPA which I missed. She quickly followed it up with an email about the price quote for the runner. As soon as I saw the voicemail light blinking, I gave her a call. I knew it was her because to date, I have only gotten 2 types of call on my phone from people who would leave messages. Lonely man, I am. While I was dialing her new number, I was reading the email she sent me and saw the numbers for this exercise. 1600 dollars for a pretty rug. Good God. At this point, however, I'll pay the price to just get it over with. The installation is 150$, which is a bargain. If I had to spend 4 hours putting in my own rug, I would not value it at 150$. I would value one hour with my children at roughly 250$. In the grand scheme of things, I think that this is an extremely fair price. I told her that I would pay for the CC bill that is charge appears on, no quibbles. Yes, she has her own last name and her own bank accounts. I have no problem with that. She pays small bills, I pay big bills. We get paid the same and in the end, we have enough money to make things work with a bit to spare. I once floated the idea that we should have one bank account, but that went over like a Narc at a Grateful Dead concert. I pay for the House, the cars, the condo (mostly), insurance and such. She pays the rest. Granted, I do build up some surplus savings, but I usually end up needing that when the life insurance and car insurance bills come due. Now that we spend an extra thousand dollars on car insurance, that buffer is even more important. So, 1600 dollar carpet it is. It still feels awkward.

Looking at my to-do list, I'm wondering if I should add 'mow the lawn' to the list. I probably wont do it. I do need to get the donations for Purple Heart set out though. I got quite a bit of stuff from the basement that needs to go and I might as well let these guys get first pop at it. They always need a bag of clothes, and I have stuff from my high-school days that I just don't need. These shirts fit snug when I was 145 lb. Now I'm at 190 and snug would be a very generous term. I can't even use them as work shirts. A little bit of sweat gets on them and they become a second skin. Nearly impossible to remove and not much of a barrier for insect bites. Damn skeeters go right through them like they were some sort of gossamer toga. Naw, they can have my old track t-shirts and ratty old denim pants, I'll take the dual pleasure of a less cluttered basement and a tiny line item to deduct from my taxes.

# posted by mdmhvonpa @ 7:48 AM