White Lightning Axiom: Redux

The TSD Test went off fairly well this weekend. The kids did well and I managed to bumble through my Black Belt test. Now, I'm a full fledged black belt practitioner. Next test, 2 years. Heh. One down side is that I may have broken a bone in my hand. Two days later and it's still swollen. I've considered going to the local ER ... but to what end?
In other news, the chickens are doing well in spite of this weekend's "end of days" rain storms. So much flooding, so cold. The cooler weather is doing ugly things to my squash/gourds but the corn and beans are loving it. The tomato plants are growing well, but the fruit is staying green since the night time temps are not peaking above 80 yet. Ugh.

Technorati Tags:Swimming | Karate | Children | Rain

Labels: Children, Rain, TSD, Weekend

SO, how did the class go last night? Not too shabby. We spent the whole time inside reading over a book regarding the obvious topic while the sky outside was rent asunder by great discharges of lightning and boisterous blasts of rolling and cracking thunder. It was quite a show and we were visited with flooding and power loss throughout the area this morn. The Agricultural Sector may appreciate the great drop in local temperatures, but I'll have to be satisfied with less since I had not managed to set up my damned water barrel system yet. Such a slacker, I am.

Two other things to bring up: first, entertainment. Deb-Deb sent this to me which, oddly enough, made me smile and feel good inside. I cannot explain it, but it is fascinating how it worked. The guy has some killer dance moves too! As for poetry in motion, you may have noticed that little widget in the upper portion of my left side bar showing the current price of oil. With the recent drop in oil futures, the local gasoline purveyor is hawking his goods at $3.91 USD/gal here. This is odd, no? Less oil is being pumped, but some of us got the message and stopped driving our MegaTon SUVs to the end of the driveway to get the mail. Gosh, market forces in action!

Technorati Tags:Gas | Weather | Rain | Gardening | Motorcycle

Labels: Gardening, Gas, Motorcycle, Rain, Weather

Late, late, late. So sorry. Really, cannot you just grasp the visceral experience of my sorry-ness just oozing from the screen? No? Sigh ... okay, yeah. So I've been preoccupied. Let's just skip all that perfidy and get down to the rub, eh? Last Friday, yes. Dodge Ball and swimming ... all good except that the pool heater had been broken all week and by the end of the run the pool temperature had dropped to something just short of freezing. This morning, the ambient air temperature was somewhere around 38F so you can imagine the blue-lip experience I was getting from all that semi-liquid wonderfulness. The kids did not mind one bit though. I cannot fathom how latitudinarian they seem to be about heat or the lack there of. Must be the Minnesota Blood I contributed to their genetic makeup. That, or the nano-bot fusion heaters running about their bodies. Either way, on top of the 'energy death' cold days, it's been raining consistenly all week so mowing the lawn had to be skipped. Fortunately, I scalped the pastoral expanse last week so I could skip this weekend without having to worry about looking for Doctor Livingston in the Darkest Heart of Africa the following week. I need to weed the Haupertonian Agricultural Sector too ... this extended cool period has really been a boon for the leafy greens and pea. Totally out of control! I've been eating salads freshly picked every night for the last week and I've got 10 bins all set up for this week (lunch, dinner). Delish! (no, I'm not stealing this from that faux personality who whores for Dunkin Donuts)

This Saturday, after a rocky start, we got going at 1000 hours for a favored destination ... Sesame Place! Nice and close, about one gallon of gasoline for a round trip. Of course, as noted, we have had a flood recently of a mostly semi-liquid slurry of liquid hydrogen and suspended dark-matter. It was concentrated in the water-based attractions and you KNOW that Attila required me to ride with her on the more vigorous rides. The ducky-ride, one of the favorites, was particularly chilly being the first thing we hit after Ghengis' required visit to the Super Grover Roller-Coaster: VaporTrail. The upside is that we never had to wait for more than 60 seconds to get on ANY wet ride attraction we were interested in. The dry rides took a bit more patience, but nothing out of the ordinary. Tea-cups, Blast-off and Flying Fish were the only lines. All in all, well worth the kidney I had to give up for the season passes. On the way to the Park, we noticed a new restaurant on Street Road just before we got onto the Freeway. It's called Ristorante Toscana 52. I thought we could stop off on the way back home (park closes at 1700 hours) for a quick bite to size the place up. Well, it was absurdly wonderful. A bit more pricey than Carrabas, but a culinary treat of surprising proportions. I think we were lucky to arrive so early since when leaving roughly 1.5 hours later, the lot was overflowing into the street and the waiting area was mobbed. Note to the wise, always arrive early. A brief tirade, but there is no reason to waste bits of your life waiting for food and service if you do not have to.

Sunday, it rained. Slacked about, folded some laundry and actually relaxed a bit. Bizarre, guilty feeling made the whole experience rather uncomfortable. My tendency towards pluripotency when it comes to activities is a hard predilection to rally against. I'm finding that imparting this trait upon my scion is a case of low hanging fruit ... if they are not doing something, they want to help me do something. I dread the day we let them start playing with the Wii. This should help us with the reward points for system usage.

Technorati Tags:Gas | Swimming | Karate | Children | Rain | Sesame Place

Labels: Children, Gas, Rain, Sesame Place, Swimming, Tang So Doo, Weather, Weekend

I had started this Sunday Night ... but alas, the anti-soporific allure of the Television captured my attention and I ended up watching 'Tin Man' on the SciFi channel till the wee hours of the morning. These vicissitudes in my sleep patterns are doing me no good, I know. Sometimes I just want to watch a show without a squeaky clean animation character. Speaking of characters, the dodgeball/swim night went well on Friday ... followed closely the next morning of me hauling my sorry sagging rear out of bed at the absurd hour of 0745. The tyrants were rampaging though the house and this always invoked the 'WHINE' factor in the hounds. They understand if they simper long and loud, I'll eventually let them out to do their stuff on the back-50. Then, it's off to administer the death penalty to another innocent evergreen. I went to a small farm that I spotted on my commute to work that was selling live trees for $30 a pop. Free-range, yup. So I met a man by the name of Emmo who apparently had a son that went to Cornell! Funny. Even funnier was the damned ATM at the Wawa that I usually stop off at was out of order so I had to find a different working one. Cost me about 15 minutes. After I gingerly transported the 50 foot pine strapped to the top of the SuperSaturn POS with spit, duct tape and gumption, I cored it out and hauled it to the Grand Cathedral in the Manor with a bit of help from the Mrs. As you know, I have some slight balance issues and have learned to NOT TRUST my internal ear. Just because things feel like they are tipping to the left or right, that means nothing to gravity. I have to judge my 'uprightness' by checking my surroundings. Makes swimming a real bear. In any event, the Mrs gave her 'Seal of Approval' and the strings of lights were added. Ornamentation would come later at the deft hands (and myopic minds) of the Tyrants.

That afternoon, the whole clan spent time outdoors raking up leaves in the front expanse. The Mrs would rake to the curb, I would run the mower over the area to suck up the remaining leaves and detritus. Rake, mow, blow, suck ... ummm, yeah. We cleared out the front fairly well leaving mountains of leaves which were promptly blown back into the grass and garden beds. Damn. We had to do it though since we were expecting nasty weather the next day. With continuing unpleasantness through the rest of the winter. Indeed, it snowed that night and made a terrible mess. While we were at it, I had the Tyrants take the truck load of aging pumpkins from the front porch to the Agricultural Sector and SMASH THEM! HULK SMASH PUMPKINS!!! Heh ... time and place for everything, you know. They were starting to get a bit soft so it was time to dispose of them. I'm certain I'll get a lot of 'volunteers' next spring after I till them under. After the Mrs and I finished up with the leaves (the Tyrants abandoned us for the comfort of the wood-burning stove), I ran across the street to help our neighbor, Gus, with a couple of 25 foot tall trees that he needed to take down. Yep, just could not get enough lumberjacking in so I started in on the arboreal work in the local area. It took little time but the chain on the semi-commercial saw started to dull before we got to the hard part ... cutting the stump flush with the soil. Leaning over with a roaring chain-saw ... yep, I'm destined to be sore the next day. To cap off the day, I made some Bohemian Goulash and load of Beef Stroganoff for the week's meals. The Mrs made chicken wings (ACK!). The cavalcade of leftovers is never long lived. I'm not sure what I would do without the double-blessing of ground beef and pasta.

Sunny Sunday ... not so much. Snow, sleet and just general nastiness. This impacted the attendance at Sunday School too. Only 4 little smiling faces showed up ... all talking about how they were going to build snowmen and make snow angels in the slop that laid about the ground like a sodden quilt. Of course, we had to stop at Dunkin Donuts afterwards, and share the plunder with the Mrs back at the manor. The Tyrants decorated the tree and put nearly all their ornaments within the first 3 feet from the floor. Looks good to them I suppose. We rearranged some of them and filled in all the empty spots. I spent the rest of the day bumbling about with laundry, feeding the wood burning stove and puttering about in the garage. I did manage to get the automatic garage door openers rewired so I did not have to use the remote to open the durned thangs. Good to get something accomplished. Oh, and I finally put up the wall Spackle over the patches in the closet wall. Now for the paint and the new shelves ... I can finally put my clothing in the same room I sleep in!

Technorati Tags:Snow | Weekend | Lawn | Christmas | Children

Labels: Banalities, Children, Church, Home Improvements, Lawn, Lumberjack, Mundane, Rain, Snow, Weather, Winter, Wood

Normally, Tuesdays are just a small set of stepping stones in the long climb towards the weekend. Today, the stones were spaced well apart and there were an exceedingly large number of them. So, last night I picked up a few finished boards from the Home Depot Temple and cut some shelves for the Mrs. She was happy with them. The Tyrants ate their lunch, enjoyed swimming, listened in karate and ate dinner quick enough to have some play time. I got them into their bath and then dried their hair before the Mrs read them a bed time story. Within what seemed like seconds, of course, after a restless night it was time to wake up again. Over the last week, our phone answering machine has been an electronic bugbear spewing out line after line of mud-slinging political messages. It is election sign season here and the balkanized nature of pennsyltucky politics means that you have to elect virtually every damn person down to your garbage man! I am gleeful that this will be over soon and the signs will slowly decay (what massive FILTH bespots our landscape, they just lay there for weeks) and eventually, be removed by forced labor details. So, to do my civic duty, I scurried off to the polling location I'm assigned to and brought the Tyrants with me. It was a miserable morning, 49 degrees Fahrenheit and drizzle from the low-hung grey clouds coating the leaf strewn streets. Accident fodder. I take it slow and get there at 0715 ... and there are only polling officials. I'm in, I vote, I let the tyrants push the 'VOTE' button and we are gone again. All of about 30 minutes between the departure from the Manor to drop off at the ReEducation/DayCare center. Not to bad ... I'll have to make sure I do not try to show up early next year ... standing in the cold, wet November mornings with the Tyrants (who desperately want to assault everyone else in line) is not worth it.

In other news, gas prices are going up. You know, because speculators are betting on a long, cold, hard winter and the need for heating oil. Again, I hope the bastards loose their shirts. Jerks. Gasoline went from $2.50USD to nearly $2.90USD in a matter of weeks.

And just so you all know, the end 'Daylight Savings' is the official start of the Depression Season. Do what you need to stay in good spirits. Seasonal Mood Disorder is a nasty little nit and not very helpful if your health is on the fringe.

Technorati Tags:Gas | Swimming | Karate | Children | Elections | Daylight Savings

Labels: Banalities, Children, Daylight Savings, Gas, Politics, Rain, Township Governance, Winter

The terminus of the 'free wheeling' weekend has come to me like a lost hive of bees looking for a suitably spent reservoir in which they can deposit the fruits of their labor. I'm drained, replenish me with loads of sticky, syrupy energy plz. Of course, the terminus came but the syrupy energy did not. Instead, I have the beginnings of a head cold thanks to my two little disease carriers. Alexis has been brewing some nasty upper respiratory nastiness for some time now and Jake just picked it up. I'm starting to feel a little nasal congestion so it is only a matter of time. I think Last week's support bizarroland travels may have opened up my wacky immune system to the invasion. Stephen knows what I mean. It was nice to ditch the support phone on Friday, but I do not think I'll be able to throw off the damage it did for some time.

Let's talk about the nice things of last Friday though, eh? Yes, it was the end of my support duty till Christmas ... gha, one could hope that it goes well over that Holiday! I picked up the Tyrants early on Friday so we could do the work-place trick-or-treat thing. They loved it! Hundreds of stops for candy and all of them no more than 6 feet apart. Three buildings, thee floors each, all connected by tunnels. It's a diabetic nightmare. After the pillaging of candy-land, we went off to TSD where I was allowed to participate (NO PHONE!) and by proxy, the Tyrants had to behave or I would snap them back into line. The following day, were were planning to go to Sesame Place ... for more Trick-or-Treat activities. Mercifully, this did not happen because of the downpour of rain. We need the rain, but I need to rake leaves and mow the lawn and do all kinds of out-door stuff. So, the Mrs and I slumbered away till noon ... except when I had to get up and prepare the kids breakfast ... and let the dogs out ... and feed them. Oh, then there was that pesky lunch thing. Wait ... did the Mrs let the Cybernetic Mammoths out? Both the long term and short term memory sticky-goo was powered down to the bare minimum. I'm probably lucky I did not end up wandering the streets in my underwear, a hat and my boots.

Sunday fared a bit better. Sunday School at 1000 hours, then off to the Produce Junction to pick up inexpensive veggies for my lunch during the week. After that, Home Depot to buy a sheet of dry-wall. And yes, I actually used the stuff to patch the two holes in the wall behind the Master Bath Shower/Decon chamber. Left a bit of a mess behind, but a quick swipe with the vacuum will clear that up. Finishing that, I mowed the lawn (and thusly, cleaned up the leaves) without the power assist on the mower. I need to pick up that belt but forgot to when I was at the local Home Depot Temple. I can get so single minded at times. In the act of mowing the front pastoral expanse, one of the lids on the sprinkler system got sucked up and chopped to bits leaving a giant hole in the ground. I'll need to put something over that soon or some children will get swallowed up on the 31st. The last thing I need is for a bunch of well meaning rescue personnel to start digging up the yard only to find the previously hidden skeletons of Jimmy Hoffa, Elvis's first clone and some left-over bits of Ark. Speaking of arks ... the Mrs was so kind as to pick up the dog-dip and wash the hounds while I busied myself with other nonsense. Little stuff, like fixing the 'O' in Jacob's name on the Twin Towers , a mountain-range of laundry and spreading out the clippings in the garden. Standard fun-stuff. As a capper on Sunday, I carved out two of the 20,000 pumpkins for the Twins after they drew what they wanted them to look like. Next year, I'll insist that they carve out the guts themselves. They were less than enticed by that prospect this year. The Ever Ready Mrs took a pic of the two gored gourds, but had not posted them yet. Trust me when I tell you that the Tyrants were sufficiently pleased. And, on queue, since the jack-o-lanterns were ready, we got frost this chilly Monday morning. Perhaps I did finally mow the lawn for the last time this year. Perhaps.

Technorati Tags:Pumpkins | Weekend | Karate | Children | Home Repairs | Lawn | Rain | Fall

Labels: Children, Dodge Ball, Fall, Halloween, Home Improvements, Rain, Tang So Doo