Ow

I spent the whole weekend helping a friend get a house ready to move into.  Great deal because it was a FNMA foreclosure.  However, it had been empty for two years and abused before that.  My personal tally for the weekend was putting a new laminate wood floor down (on uneven concrete), three light fixtures, two ceiling fans, a dozen new outlets and switches, a toilet, two faucets, swapping out a bad breaker in the panel, ripping up three layers of old flooring in the entire walkout level, fashioning and installing lots of trim and wallboard and assorted painting.  Oh, and moving a ton of stuff.  I hurt.

Back from Hell on earth

 

Orlando.  My father landed on a beach in Normandy and fought in the Battle of the Bulge.  But he never took me to Orlando (though in fairness my Mom did right when Disney World opened and then I got too old for them to worry about it).  I have been dozens of times.  I guess I give the edge in bravery to my Dad, but I take the stupidity prize, because he only landed once.  I had a few posts cued up for the last couple of days, but they did not go through.   Since they are a bit dated, I will try to catch up with a few today.

Yet another reason for my political affiliation

Republicans have more orgasms. In fact, the more conservative you are the more often you orgasm. No really. Match.com did it's annual sex survey and this is what they concluded:

Republican Lead the Polls—In Orgasm

Yep, you heard that right. Republicans—and conservative Republicans, for that matter—reported the highest frequency of orgasm of all of the survey respondents, despite having the least amount of sex. More than half of those who identified as conservative Republicans said they reached climax almost every time they had sex, compared with just 40 percent of liberal Democrats. Sure, these answers are self-reported, but the survey was conducted anonymously online. What reason do they have to lie?

Don't screw with grandparents in Daytona

I read an intersting story last week about a miscreant who was shot and killed breaking into a home to rob it.  That miscreant is, or was, the late Mr. 24 year old Tyler Orshoski.  Mr. Orshoski's lovely mug shot is below:

He has a long record.  He also made an bad error in judgement when he picked Charlie Robbins Daytona home to break into.  A little before 6 AM, Mr. Robbins awoke to the sound of an intruder busting his door and grabbed his psitol.  As the burglar started to open the door, Mr. Robbins shot him.  Dead.  Did I mention that Mr. Robbins is a recently widowed 82 year old grandfather (pictured below)?

Then this morning another story out of Daytona catches my eye.  This time it involved 64 year grandmother Karen Granville.  It seems Granny Granville was up at 3 AM one night watching TV when she heard a Police chopper overhead.  She looked out the window in time to see a 22 year old car theft suspect named Roderick Willis jump out of a car and race into her back yard.  She grabbed her 38 and raced after him.  She caught up with him as he was trying to scale her fence:

"My adrenaline was just flowing at 100 mph," she said. "I just said, 'Stop right there (expletive), or you're going to be dead where you stand."

Unlike the late Mr. Orshoski, Mr. Willis decided to freeze until the police arrived.  A picture of Granny Granville's 38 is below.  Oh, and that is her holding it.

I know there is a bit of an age difference, but since Mr. Robbins is a recent widower, I'm thinking he and Granny Granville make a cute couple.

Awwwwwwww...........

Of course, about at the end of the video, Borepatch would drop Bambi with a slug round out of his twelve gauge.

Kinda neat and a little eerie

In 1900 John Elfreth Watkins, Jr. published a list of predictions for the 21st century in the Ladies Home Journal.  Some, of course, seem silly.  But a few are almost eerily accurate considering they came from someone who thought of a steam locomotive as the fastest thing on earth.  Electricity was fairly new and definitely rare.  Bell's patent for the telephone was only 23 years old.  The Wright brothers hadn't flown on the sandy beach at Kitty Hawk. Willis Haviland Carrier had two more years before he would invent air conditioning. Henry Ford wouldn't incorporate Ford Motor Company until 1903, nor roll out the first Model T until 1908. Below are some of Mr. Watkins visions of the world we live in today as he looked forward in 1900:

Prediction #1: There will probably be from 350,000,000 to 500,000,000 people in America and its possessions by the lapse of another century. ***

Prediction #2: The American will be taller by from one to two inches. His increase of stature will result from better health, due to vast reforms in medicine, sanitation, food and athletics. He will live fifty years instead of thirty-five as at present – for he will reside in the suburbs. The city house will practically be no more. Building in blocks will be illegal. The trip from suburban home to office will require a few minutes only. A penny will pay the fare.

Prediction #7:  There will be air-ships, but they will not successfully compete with surface cars and water vessels for passenger or freight traffic. They will be maintained as deadly war-vessels by all military nations. Some will transport men and goods. Others will be used by scientists making observations at great heights above the earth.

Prediction #10:  Man will See Around the World. Persons and things of all kinds will be brought within focus of cameras connected electrically with screens at opposite ends of circuits, thousands of miles at a span. American audiences in their theatres will view upon huge curtains before them the coronations of kings in Europe or the progress of battles in the Orient. The instrument bringing these distant scenes to the very doors of people will be connected with a giant telephone apparatus transmitting each incidental sound in its appropriate place. Thus the guns of a distant battle will be heard to boom when seen to blaze, and thus the lips of a remote actor or singer will be heard to utter words or music when seen to move.

Prediction #15:  No Foods will be Exposed.  Storekeepers who expose food to air breathed out by patrons or to the atmosphere of the busy streets will be arrested with those who sell stale or adulterated produce.  Liquid-air refrigerators will keep great quantities of food fresh for long intervals.

Prediction #21: Hot and Cold Air from Spigots. Hot or cold air will be turned on from spigots to regulate the temperature of a house as we now turn on hot or cold water from spigots to regulate the temperature of the bath. Central plants will supply this cool air and heat to city houses in the same way as now our gas or electricity is furnished. Rising early to build the furnace fire will be a task of the olden times. Homes will have no chimneys, because no smoke will be created within their walls.

Prediction #23: Ready-cooked meals will be bought from establishments similar to our bakeries of today. They will purchase materials in tremendous wholesale quantities and sell the cooked foods at a price much lower than the cost of individual cooking. Food will be served hot or cold to private houses in pneumatic tubes or automobile wagons. The meal being over, the dishes packed and returned to the cooking establishments where they will be washed. Such wholesale cookery will be done in electric laboratories rather than in kitchens. These laboratories will be equipped with electric stoves, and all sorts of electric devices, such as coffee-grinders, egg-beaters, stirrers, shakers, parers, meat-choppers, meat-saws, potato-mashers, lemon-squeezers, dish-washers, dish-dryers and the like. All such utensils will be washed in chemicals fatal to disease microbes. Having one’s own cook and purchasing one’s own food will be an extravagance.

There are more here.

I remember ice fishing on Pushaw Pond when I was a kid growing up in Maine

And it was cold.  But it was fun, especially when the little red flag popped up and you ran out and pulled up the fish.  Normally pickerel or perch, but every once in a while a nice brook trout.  Maybe it would have been a whole lot funner if I'd ever got a more than four and a half pound trout like Scott Hersey did.  Scott used to go to lakes and ponds in his grandfather's airplane as a kid in the early seventies.  His gramps used to strap an old "Swedish spoon" hand auger to the skis of his plane that he had used as a kid in the '30s.  That type of hand auger was what I remember using--and auguring through a foot of ice was the only time I remember being warm.  Nowadays, Scott and most everyone else uses a nice gas powered auger that makes life a whole lot easier.  But for some reason he decided to bring his grandfather's old hand auger along on a trip to Moosehead lake.  That forced him to auger in near the shore where the ice is always thinner, and also where his grandfather always said the brook trout winter.  His gramps was either right about the the winter location of the brookies, or he was watching over Scott (or maybe both), cuz look what Scott got:



This would be why I will never bungee jump

Especially above crocodile infested rivers.

For the record, the 22 year old Australian woman, Erin Langworthy, lived when her cord snapped as she dove off the 364 foot leap from Victoria Falls bridge between Zambia and Zimababwe.

I always wondered what would happen if the woman said "no"

And now I know from this poor guy who got dusted by his girlfriend when she turned down his proposal.  At a UCLA Bruins basketball game.  While on the Jumbotron!

I also think the the Bruins point guard, Jerime Anderson was showing wisdom beyond his years when he summed up the situation thusly: "That's cold."

I want this cat

According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Andrea the cat has used up two of her nine lives. She was euthanized twice. And lived.

The cat was put on the death list last fall when no one had adopted her after 30 days at the shelter. Andrea was plopped in the gas chamber to be euthanized but showed signs of life when workers came to retrieve her. They tried again. After gassing Andrea a second time, then finding no vital signs, workers placed the cat in a plastic bag in a cooler.

Later, Andrea was found alive in the bag.

"She’s pretty tough, obviously," Janita Coombs, a volunteer with the Community Animal Welfare Society who agreed to take care of Andrea, told The Tribune after the botched euthanasia attempts. "She’s definitely got some will to live."

What does it say about us as a society?

I always thought that booze was the one recession proof commodity. Not any more, apparently. En mass we have turned to our morning joe as our indispensable luxury item. Worried about being laid off? Don't drown your sorrows, get jacked up on a double mocha latte. It is curious. You would think that one of the first luxury items to go in the down economy would be a six dollar drink on the way to work, but by all accounts the java business is booming. Heck, Karma Coffee in Sudbury, Massachusetts has even survived the loss of Borepatch as a customer!

Up, lit and decorated

Ye olde Yule log

Is burning in the fireplace. And the bruins are winning. And shrimp and Portabello mushroom caps, stuffed with my own special seafood stuffing, are in the oven. And a newly cracked bottle of Sarnac Big Moose Ale is beside me. Ahhhhh...

[update: My stupid iPhone won't let me post a picture of ye olde Yule log, but trust me, it's crackling.]

[update 2:  Here is Ye olde Yule log.]