A lovely day!

The Babe and I went out to the Emerald Lanes to see if her ball was done and to go bowling.  But when we got there, it turned out that there was a women's bowling tourney about to start so there was no bowling to be had.  However, Forrest did get her ball drilled and fitted--this took almost an hour as he had to do other things as well and it's not a trivial operation to get it drilled and adjusted.  I was worried that it wasn't going to be right, but he did a lovely job and it fit nicely.  We even got her initials in it.  :)  The Babe said that she'd done bowling league stuff from when she was 6 to after she graduated from high school and she'd never had a new ball.  She was pleased and I was very excited also. 

We went to another lane in town, Southtowne Lanes, to try it out.  It's not as good a lane as Emerald in our opinion but we did have a chance to see how her new ball felt.  (Perfect!)  I'm rather keen to figure out the weight I do best with so I can order a ball of my own.  (Yes, I'm going to go for that blue-and-gold "Scout" number.) 

We didn't want the fun to end, so we went out to see "Mrs. Henderson Presents" this evening.  Judi Dench is, as always, an amazing actress and I think that it's impossible for her not to look alive and beautiful and scrumptious.  (Yes, I'd probably run off with her if she asked, so it's just as well I don't know her. <G>)  Bob Hoskins is aging beautifully as well.  The two of them were amazing.  I'm interested in reading the two books that Vivian Van Damm and his daughter, Sheila, wrote about the theater and the happenings.  Both the Babe and I were very impressed at the quality of the casting: they had several dozen showgirls and they all looked like real, 1937 English women, with the chunky thighs and everything.  The costumes were delightfully authentic, too.  The whole film had that lovely "small" feeling that so many British films do and that most American films don't.  And it's really quite emotional to see the bombing of London and knowing that the war was going on for 6 years for Britain and that this was only the start of it. 

At one point, one of the characters flips off the German planes with the classic two-finger gesture Brits use.  It was only a few years ago that I finally made the connection between the gesture and Churchill's "V for Victory."  Yeah, it was a V, all right.  What a wonderful joke for flipping off the enemy.   <G>

A lovely day!

Sattidee at last!

I turned in the draft of the article I'd been working on this week (which had to go in two days early for a meeting--I am a tree; I can bend).  I've got another interview they'd like me to do for it, which sounds fun: someone in a PNW Department of Corrections who's going to talk about thin clients versus desktop computers, which will be interesting.  30 seconds to breathe and then I start the next article.  :)  Nice having work on the desk. 

Actually, we're going to go bowling today, too: the Babe's new bowling ball is likely to be done by now, which'd be really nice.  Might even do that right after breakfast and beat the Saturday rush. 

BC is sitting right next to me, periodically putting his head down and bumping my left hand while I'm typing.  It's very sweet and all, but it's annoying, too.  His fur's growing back on his side, too.  I noticed this morning that he's actually rather thickly furred now, but it's all dark undercoat, which is black, and the cinnamon-colored top layer hasn't regrown yet.  (So thaaaat's how he does that! <G>)

Breakfast is in the offing.  And bowling, of course. 

Sattidee at last!

Ship of fools, ISP of idiots

It is truly amazing to me how bad my ISP has gotten.  From being a pretty good place to be for the last 11 years, they've sunk into the depths that only the Texas cellphone marketing jagoff that's now running them could understand.  I just found out today that I've been losing email because they don't know how to run mail servers anymore, apparently. 

I am really looking forward to kissing them goodbye.  I'm just waiting for my last account to switch over to the new registrar and then I'm throwing the switch. 

Ship of fools, ISP of idiots

And the hits just keep coming!

Rick Davis has done a song entitled "Cheney's Got a Gun." 

Has it occurred to anyone that any shotgun wound involving ~200 pellets and had at least one that was in deep enough to get into the circulatory system and migrate to the heart is not a "minor" hunting accident as the Veep's propaganda minister would have us believe? Accidents happen, but this one is just plain funny. 

Some veins of ore are just too rich to play out quickly.  This is one of them. 

[Addendum: okay, it turns out that this isn't a song of Rick Davis's. He just linked to it. It is, in fact, a Bob & Tom Twisted Tune. Oh, well. What's interesting nevertheless is that someone put this song together, recorded it, and posted it within a couple days of the incident. Like I say, it's pastures o' plenty for the schnarky.]

And the hits just keep coming!

This is just too rich a vein not to mine

I'm looking forward to the monologue comments from Leno and Letterman. Some jokes just write themselves.

Here's another one that's just come in:

CHENEY SAYS SHOOTING OF FELLOW HUNTER WAS BASED ON FAULTY INTELLIGENCE
Believed Shooting Victim Was Zawahiri, Veep Says

Vice President Dick Cheney revealed today that he shot a fellow hunter while on a quail hunting trip over the weekend because he believed the man was the fugitive terror mastermind Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Mr. Cheney acknowledged that the man he sprayed with pellets on Saturday was not al-Zawahiri but rather Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old millionaire lawyer from Austin, blaming the mix-up on "faulty intelligence."

"I believed I had credible intelligence that al-Zawahiri had infiltrated my hunting party in disguise with the intent of spraying me with pellets," Mr. Cheney told reporters. "Only after I shot Harry in the face and he shouted 'Cheney, you bastard' did I realize that this intelligence was faulty."

Moments after Mr. Cheney's assault on Mr. Whittington, Mr. al-Zawahiri appeared in a new videotape broadcast on al-Jazeera to announce that he was uninjured in the vice president's attack because, in his words, "I was in Pakistan."

An aide to the vice president said he believed that the American people would believe Mr. Cheney's version of events, but added, "If he was going to shoot any of his cronies right now it's a shame it wasn't Jack Abramoff."

At the White House, President George W. Bush defended his vice president's shooting of a fellow hunter, saying that the attack sent "a strong message to terrorists everywhere."

"The message is, if Dick Cheney is willing to shoot an innocent American citizen at point-blank range, imagine what he'll do to you," Mr. Bush said.

This is just too rich a vein not to mine

"Cheney's got a gun!"

I just got a picture for "Nintendo Dick Hunt" this morning, about 16 hours after Cheney shot his friend while hunting. It's amazing how fast some things get on the web, eh?

(Addendum: sorry, I thought I'd posted this earlier this morning but it turned out not to be there for some reason. Sorry to everyone who looked for it in vain around 10:00am.)

"Cheney's got a gun!"

Hey, nice news!

I just got a phone call as I was finishing the previous entry about smoking that I've won a raffle! The prize is a basket of coffee and chocolate and things like that. They'll even swing by and deliver it this afternoon. Not bad at all!

Hey, nice news!

Random personal statistic du jour: smoking

Here's a personal statistic that I'm pleased about: today, February 12th, it's been 29 years since I quit smoking.

But I still miss smoking. I know it's bad and I'd have been dead years ago if I were a smoker; shoot, if I started now, with my diabetes, I'd be losing body parts withing 2 years, probably. Every junkie knows his drug, they say, and I sure know mine. I can tell you what it felt like the first time that day, my preferred brands, methods of administration, what it felt like after too much... everything. Tobacco's my drug and it always will be.

I have a dream at least once every summer or fall, when the weather's balmy. I'm at a party and someone unseen holds out a package of cigarettes and says "Oh, it's okay; they've taken all the bad stuff out now." And I reach down and take one and start to light it. I'm sure that it's something of a replay of when I lit someone's cigarette for them in 1982. We were camping and I figured I'd light it just to see what it felt like. I didn't inhale, knowing that that would've been sure to set off really bad cravings (and I would've coughed my head off, I'm sure), but the joke was on me: even having that little bit of smoke in my mouth and soaking in through the mucus membranes was enough to trigger some wicked-bad cravings for a week, so I haven't done that since then. And I now I'm stuck with this dream that comes up every so often that says "C'maaaaaaahn, you can do it. You won't get hooked because you're cool."

Nope.

Random personal statistic du jour: smoking

Another great quote

It's a good day for quotes, apparently. This one's old hat to a number of people in the writing industry, but it's still lovely. (And if you're not familiar with Edward Tufte, go look him up.)

Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
~Edward Tufte

Another great quote

The new house news, bowling balls, and the neat quote du jour

It's Saturday afternoon.  I went out to a MeetIn.org event last night--playing Texas Hold'em with other local MeetIn.org folks.  We'll be doing some other things locally as time permits so we can keep expanding our social circle here in Eugene. 

The Babe and I went out for a little bit this morning.  We had heard that the stairs were going in on the "Kingsley" style house (that's the one we're getting) in the other lot, so we could see what upstairs looked like.  There were workers there, so we couldn't go in, but we were able to see on a drive-by that the stairs weren't finished: only the sides with the notches for the risers had been placed at this point.  It'll doubtless be in later today or very shortly thereafter, so we'll see the upstairs soon enough.

The dormer's also been put on the front of the house (where my office is going to go).  I was a little apprehensive of the deep slant to the room's wall (which is up against the pitch of the roof there), but the Babe reminded me that the floor area on my office is 10' x 20', so I should have enough room.  I can put the couch there against the window as one possibility--that'd be nice.  It may make putting the treadmill in the office a bit problematic, but we'll see.  I can almost certainly put the exercycle there so I can do the thing I used to do of exercycling while working on the computer (which is tres geeky, but really fun). 

Groundbreaking on our house should be happening shortly, the builder says.  You'll be seeing lots o' pix when this happens, you can count on it. 

After driving by the house, we went over to the bowling alley.  I'd gotten two bowling balls through Freecycle, one for Susan and one for the Babe.  We'd dropped them off last week to have the one for Susan engraved with her name ("Sooz") and the ball for the Babe plugged and patched (there were a few dings) and then drilled for her hand.  We got to watch today while Forrest, the proprietor, engraved her name and then rubbed it with white wax crayon to make the letters stand out.  We then looked at the other ball for the Babe, a nice 12-pounder with a blue sparkly finish.  The big ding had been plugged, bless 'im, but there was still a small ding in the ball.  It wasn't worth patching, Forrest said, as it was going to be on the side where it wouldn't affect the rolling at all for a right-handed bowler, but it did spoil the look having the ding in it and the Babe looked disappointed.  "Not to worry," I said, "I'll be glad to take this ball and we'll get you another one."  "Yes," Forrest said, "we could plug and patch every little ding but a new ball only costs $62 so you'd spend more than a new ball fairly quickly."  Our ears perked up: only $62 for a new ball?  Which balls were $62, we asked?  Apparently, a whole row of very colorful balls on the counter.  Well, heyyyyyyyyyy! 

"You want a new ball, sweetie?"  The Babe had never had a new bowling ball and we looked over the ones out there.  Forrest said there were more balls, too, and showed us several selections in the catalogs.  He also showed us the more expensive balls and gave us a quick course on how bowling balls work with the different finishes on them.  (All this while dealing with a very busy Saturday mid-day crowd.)  After some selection, the Babe selected a nice swirly "Magenta Sky" 12-pound ball from Columbia in their White Dot line, like this one:



Well, I like the blue sparkly ball okay, but Forrest asked if it was heavy enough for me, pointing out that you want to use the heaviest ball you're comfortable with, as you're hitting 36 pounds of pins.  I don't know if that's heavy enough but I was feeling a bit disappointed, as I was going to be spending more than half the price of a new ball on a used ball.  Not to worry, Forrest said, if I wanted to buy a new ball, he'd charge me only $10 for the plugging they'd done so far and then we'd be square.  Hey, now, that's something!  So I told him to hang on to the ball (which we'd measured me for at that point) and then the next time I came in, I'd try out different weights (he recommends a 14- or 15-pound ball) and see if I wanted something heavier.  I may well be able to handle a 14-pound ball okay, and if so, I'll buy a new ball for me, too.  MY problem is figuring out what color to get.  At that price, I'm partial to another of the Columbia's that we saw in the catalog, the "Blue Pearl."



Having said that, I'm not completely sold on the color of this one.  And Forrest points out that you should really like the color of the ball you're using.  (I agree with that--why buy a ball you don't like, after all?)  The bowling ball that I'm leaning towards is a little more expensive, but much more colorful and it's something I like a lot more:

I'm going to think about it and, in the meantime, I'll try out different weights to see what I want to get. 

Finally, here's a lovely quote that I ran into:

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. ~ Galileo Galilei

The new house news, bowling balls, and the neat quote du jour

What a pest!

I'm downloading all the files for my website to a holding directory on my hard disk.  I'll then upload them to the new hosting service so that they're ready to rock-and-roll.  Meanwhile, I'm trying to get all the passwords for my various domains so I can move them, which is a pain in itself.  I oughta send the ISP a bill for fees incurred for breach of contract. 

What a pest!

Roy Blount, Jr.

Roy Blount, Jr. (star of all sorts of things like Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me, Prairie Home Companion, and many others) wrote two small books of very light verse almost 20 years ago: Soupsongs and Webster's Ark.  These books are combined into one small volume that you flip over to read the second book.  I've heard him read some of his poems and he's got a fine, deep, mellifluous voice dripping with Southern accent that makes the poems come off the page and dance around in one's forebrain.  But even without the layer of auditory pleasure that his voice adds, I'd like to quote two of my favorites from these books to persuade you that you, too, should go buy this fine collection of silliness:

From Webster's Ark:

The Dugong

The DUGONG
Has tusks in the male
And a bilobate tail
And appears in the following song:
"Camptown Racetrack five miles long,
Dugong, dugong."

From Soupsongs:

Chicken Medley

How sweet it is to kiss the hand which
Holds a chicken salad sandwich.

Wonder product, chicken skin!
Tans while holding moisture in.

So often, here's the taste report of
Epicures: "Like chicken, sort of."

Ever wonder who the dickens
Joined the comic and schmaltz in chickens?

Nothing cuts a broader swath
Through the blues than chicken broth.

You know who's my fondest dream?
You, suffused with chicken steam.

I mean, how can you not be inspired by an Ode to Grits that includes the couplet:

Grits at taps, grits at reveille.
I am into grits real heavily.

Go get it. It's fun.

Roy Blount, Jr.