Bad From the Start

As I wrote yesterday, some days are just bad from the start.

Let me write about my Sunday.

It all began before I was awake--or should I say as I was awakened with a thumping on my back and my lovely, but sleep deprived wife screaming at me to stop snoring. I asked her what the problem was--because I was startled and not fully coherent. She told me in her best imitation of a sailor that I was snoring and should leave. It being 5:45am and being now fully awake, I just decided to get up, which Makayla thought was great.

Groggy though I was, I did enjoy watching Sportscenter, especially since the Orioles were in the last segment which was just airing as I got the TV on.

My next mistake was making coffee. Although I make coffee all of the time, this morning the coffee pot decided, about half-way through the brew, to stop accepting more coffee--which sent hot coffee over the counter, onto the floor and saturating the rug in front of the sink. A nice mess to continue the day. Although I was later accused of not emptying the coffee from the pot before brewing, I pointed out that the pot was only half full of hot coffee when I poured my first cup and so that could not be the case. Doubts, however, remained in the accusers mind I later found out.

Next was the breakfast bagel. By now my lovely sleep deprived wife was with me and I offered to make her a bagel after I completed mine. She was happy that I offered and I cut her bagel and placed it in the toaster at which point I noticed that there was a bagel setting on the toaster that I had not used. Feeling very pleased with myself I selected the bagel setting and pulled the handle down. A short while later I heard the toaster pop up and then the smoke alarm sounded. Seems her bagel was a bit crispy. I gave her the unconsumed half of my bagel and took one of her crispy halves. The smoke alarm stopped wailing after a short while.

We prepared to go to church and the last thing I do before leaving the house is put my wallet in my pants. I never lose my wallet. I know where it is. Yet, this morning we could not find it. We looked all over the house in the usual and unusual places, retraced steps to the car--but no wallet. Finally, as we became later and later departing for church, I realized that the last place my wallet had been located was my pants pocket from the day before after moving Patrick and Tina. Great. Or not. Someone had thoughtfully picked up my pants and washed them while I was swimming in the pool. Yes, we found my drenched, ruined wallet still in the washing machine. Fortunately the losses were not too great--but one of Chris's shirts was destroyed as the color from the 10 or more year old wallet had run into her shirt.

And so it was off to church with my driver's license in my pocket--but no wallet. What could happen at church? Nothing right? Well almost. No sooner had we seated ourselves and stood for the opening songs when I could not find the bulletin to doodle on. It had fallen under the seat in front on me.

One would think, that with the time being only about 9:20am and this many things going wrong that I would have gotten the message, right?

No.

We returned home after I had been coerced into grocery shopping, a stop which went from "we need a couple things for dinner today" into major grocery shopping.

I unwittingly decided to mow the lawn. After dutifully inflating the tires on the mower, and my truck and Kitty; the mowing went relatively uneventfully until I crashed into a short tree stump that I forgot was there because it was covered with grass that I wanted to mow. This bent the mower deck so that the blades would not turn--but thankfully, did not break the drive belt. Two hours and one severe rainstorm later, I had finished repairing the mower deck after saying some unkind things to the person I live with who showed up late with suggestions about how to fix the mower deck. I was very hot and sweaty because the humidity was up around 100 percent.

Was I bright enough to just call it a day at this point?

No. Sadly--

We went over to Patrick and Tina's to help them unpack and move in. Everything went great right up until the last project of the night. Patrick and I were hanging a quilt on the wall. It is a very big, beautiful quilt that Tina's mother made. The hanger needed a bracket in the middle to stop the sag. Right where I wanted to put the bracket in the wall was something into which I could neither screw a screw nor even drill with a masonry bit. Ugh! With the ends already in place and secure and the quilt already modified for the middle bracket I had to move the bracket a bit, the quilt is about 1 inch off center. UGH!

With that--and it being 10pm, Chris and I took Makayla and went home ending one of those days that should never happen to anyone.

Monday Musings - August 23, 2010

1. Some days are just bad from the start--and then they continue to get more frustrating until, finally, crashing into bed and drifting off to sleep ends them.

2. Moving is hard. Packing is bad but unpacking is worse.

3. Some weekends pass by so quickly that on Monday morning as I am preparing to go to work I hardly feel refreshed for the workweek ahead.

4. Makayla didn't see too much of me this weekend--I'm sure in her doggie-mind she was wondering if it was something she bit.

5. Sales at major department stores really bring out the crowds on a Sunday afternoon.

6. I was reminded this weekend that the next time I move--we will definitely pay someone to move all the stuff.

7. Fish are great to look at, they are really difficult to move. It doesn't matter if they are salt or freshwater--I've helped move both and they require a lot of care to arrive alive.

8. The pump on the pool burned out. I wonder how long I can keep the pool from turning green and will the new pump arrive before that happens?

9. And here is an interesting tidbit: On this date in 1617, the first one-way streets open (London). Where would we be now without them? (From Brainy History)

Moving day disaster

So the u-haul broke down within a couple miles of the starting location.

Jeremy showed up for comic relief.

We are still here after like three hours.

Help.

We are in moving day hell.

Summer Afternoon?

What is the best way to spend a summer afternoon in late August?

Answer? See image at right.

What is the not so best way?

Answer? Moving furniture form one home to another. Ugh!

It is moving day for Patrick and Tina. And the family is being mobilized because that's how we roll!

Hopefully, we will be able to minimize injuries--the team is not as young as it used to be.

Riding the Rails to D.C.

I took a half-day off Wednesday to take Ethan, along with Chris, into D.C. to do something I always love doing--visiting the museums.

The national museums are free--and so the only cost is getting there--a metro ride, which by comparison for the traffic it avoids is really pretty inexpensive.

A five year-old in a museum is an experience.

It is pretty much point and shoot--see something and look at it then move on.

It takes a bit to get into it and then you can really get going. Ethan seemed to like the movies a lot--where he could watch what was being presented. Although he did appreciate the dinosaurs and the animals. He spent some time playing with the ancestors, too.

I've been to the museums so much, I pretty well have the big exhibits memorized--but I still love looking at the airplanes in the Air and Space Museum.

After Ethan bored with the Natural History Museum, we had some ice cream, shopped till he dropped in the museum stores and then it was off to the National Air & Space Museum. Yay!!!!

We were incredibly lucky to miss getting dumped on by the rain which came down in buckets just as we walked into the Air & Space Museum.

Of course, since he was already tired this museum went by much too fast--but that was O.K. because it was his day! I think he enjoyed the Skylab space station the most--although the exploration of the planets was right up there.

And then, except for the ride home--that afternoon was done. Although we had to navigate the rush hour mess--we did O.K.

Well worth the effort and twice the fun.

That was a day to remember.

Dino-riffic

Spending the rainy afternoon in the Museum of Natural History with Chris and Ethan.

Scary.

And then I lost them both, I hope they are together. I'd hate for them to become Dino food.

Rain, Dark, and Cool

I figured out what it is I don't appreciate about August: rainy, dark, cool days.

The rain really dampens my spirits, although I was able to turn off the sprinkler system which kept the gardens alive, barely, during the scorching heat of July. The rain is here and really coming down as the cooler weather bumps against the humid heat we have been experiencing.

The high for today (Wednesday) is only supposed to be 77 degrees. Cool compared to the 99's of jsut a few short weeks ago.

While we were in Ithaca over the weekend, there was a smattering of 50's in the hills and Ieven saw some early signs of autumn in some of the stressed trees and bushes.

And this morning I noticed that it was dark again--no dawn in sight, as I let the dog out for her moning business. I paused for a sad moment to consider what this means. Of course I was also listening to the raindrops splat against the front walk and encouraging the dog to get her feet wet at the same time--so it wasn't much more than a passing thought.

August, at least the last half, seems to segway into September.

I am reminded of a Paul Simon song--April, Come She Will and the last verse being:

August, die she must

The autumn winds blow chilly and cold

September I'll remember

A love once new has now grown old

I feel as if Paul got it right. My love affair with summer--is becoming old and gives way into the autumn.

But the darkness is creeping across the area again. The hours of light are shorter--by almost 3 minutes every day now.

August, then can be reduced to three things--Rain, Dark, and Cool.

Sadly--

Up in the Air

Sometimes, things are not what they seem.

Usually, when a loud noise is heard in the air I can usually correctly identify it as a jet, or a propeller driven airplane, or a helicopter.

When I was a lot younger--I could often even determine the type of aircraft it was--although those were usually military aircraft. The venerable C-5A has a distinctive sound as does the B-52G.

On this day, I could not identify the air vehicle. I was snorkeling about 100 yards off the beach and I looked up to see the Goodyear Blimp. For real, slowly, and almost gracefully flying overhead.

I kind of wished that I could have just stood and watched it, but as I was in about 10 feet of water, that wasn't going to happen. So I snapped a couple of pictures with my now dead camera, to remember the moment and then went back to looking at the fishes.

I had forgotten that a blimp is based in Miami--and so while it was unusual to see one, it was not something highly out of the ordinary for the area.

I was happy to be in the water snorkeling.

But I still think about flying, sometimes.

More government in our lives is not the answer? Really?

I was reading through the blogs and papers yesterday about the economy and the dilemma that we seem to find ourselves in.

I came away from reading some of the articles believing that bigger government is not having the desired impact on the economy..

Hmmmm!

I think I have heard that somewhere before when a new president took the reigns of a crumbling economy--and then he turned it around.

I was reading an article on FoxBusiness.com about another coming stimulus package and had my eyes opened about the current situation. The article was titled "Watch Out, More Government 'Stimulus' is Coming!"

Really--I feel pretty stimulated already. I sure don't have much more to spend, but I am stimulated.

FoxBusiness made the following statement: "The folks in the White House are true believers. They really believed that bigger government could solve our economic problems."

And then they went on to write about how the White House needs a radical solution, but that Fox was proposing a different kind of radical--that in the form of Ronald Reagan. They wrote: "Most of all, Reagan had the same radical view of government that our founders had: That government is the problem, not the solution; that policies should be developed to keep government out of our lives, not give government control over our lives; that the way to turn our economy and our spirits around was to put our faith in the individual, not the state."

Of course, anyone who knows me knows that President Ronald Reagan is one of my heroes. He was a man who could help me see his vision. He had a vision for America, and he had a way of sharing that vision so that common people like me could understand it.

I remember the labels of "voodoo economics" which were slapped on his policies.

But you know what--his policies worked. This country went from double digit inflation, yes, I bought a house once with a mortgage interest rate of 11.75 percent and thought I had received a good deal, to single digit manageable inflation,. Not like the deflation we are experiencing now, but an economic recovery that sustained this country and the entire world for over 20 years.

President Reagan made the following statement in his Second Inaugural Address:
"There are no limits to growth and human progress when men and women are free to follow their dreams."

Fox Business wrote this about Reagan in closing the article:
"That's the kind of radical vision we need now. Not one based on models that failed us in the '30s, but based on the policies that turned our economy and our spirits around in the '80s."

I guess I am not ready to say that economic stimulus has not worked, but it sure seems to have made a few people rich--and those people were the cause of the problems in the first place. And the rest of us are going to be left with higher tax bills to show for the government's intervention into the economy.

It is almost like a dream come true. Oops, sorry, a nightmare.

Monday Musings - August 16, 2010

1. Drove to Ithaca and back for the weekend. Long drive, especially in the rain yesterday. A convertible is just another car on the road in the rain.

2. We let the GPS find the shortest route to my parents house as we were coming in from a different direction and although we knew the roads pretty well we totally forgot--there are still dirt roads in upstate New York.


3. August is a funny month--it was chilly in NY and hot here in MD. We were surprised how cool it was just a couple hours away--even as we were returning yesterday, it was a lot cooler in York, PA than here in MD.

4. Something tells me it's all happening at the zoo. I'm glad some people can still find fun in the attractions that surround us. Jeremy and Lucas sure seemed to be having a good time.

5. Makayla has become a great traveler. She especially likes riding in Cat with the top down and she puts her nose in the air.

6. The pool really got hammered during the storms--it is amazing how much work a few thunderstorms can cause--despite the good they do with the rain which refreshed the land.

7. The O's had a bad weekend--they lost 2 of 3 to the Rays. But they played tough! And they are 9-4 so far for August, which is a winning record.

8. Someone said something about football season. Do people really get excited about preseason scores? Really--come on. Wait a month till the real season begins.

9. Does anything feel better than sleeping in your own bed after a trip?