ReaMde

I never thought that I would recommend a book before I finished it, but here I am, less than 1/8th of the way through Neal Stephenson's latest, and shouting to anyone who will listen that it is a must read.

Those who have read his previous works know Stephenson has a knack for portraying remarkably intelligent people doing not-so-intelligent things in bizarre situations, and he does it while keeping his people in character and making the bizarre situations totally believable.

His best books (Cryptonomicon and the System of the World trilogy for example) tend to run well over a thousand pages without an unnecessary word, and Reamde is no exception.

I would write more, but I can't wait to get back to the book.

Moon Stuff

Tonight will be a Super Moon, a Blue Moon and a Blood Moon, and, for once, it should actually be visible here.

• A Super Moon because the full moon will be closest to Earth in its elliptical orbit.
• A Blue Moon because it is the second full moon of the calendar month.
• A Blood Moon because a partial eclipse will cause the moon to turn reddish-orange just before dawn.

That is a whole lot to be happening in one night, and, as if that wasn't enough, it got me thinking about the moon's orbit of the earth.

How long do you think it takes for the moon to circle the earth?

If your first response was 24 hours (or 25 if you account for the fact that the moon rises a little later each day) you would be spectacularly wrong, since most of what you think you are seeing is the result of the Earth rotating on its axis.  

If, on the other hand, you thought in terms of a 28 day lunar cycle, you would be a lot closer to right.  Actually the time required varies depending on your point of view.  If you're counting relative to the sun, it is more like 29 days and change; relative to the stars, it's just over 27.

If all that seems complicated and a little confusing, that's OK.  We could always go back to when the Earth was flat.

Unhinged

The hinge project I talked about yesterday is a no-go.  There is not enough wood on the cabinet side to screw the hinges in properly.
I did find one of the old hinges broken and two of the others had come apart. I was able to get them back together, and that helped a lot.

Hinge Project

When we had our house remodeled several years ago, they built us a very nice pantry in the utility room, with a door that has shelves for storing lots of stuff. 
The only problem with that is that the darn door is too heavy for the hinges they used to hang it. 
The contractor used hinges like this -

which worked for all the kitchen cabinets, but constantly go out of adjustment on the pantry door, causing it to sag and hang open at about a 30 degree angle.

I had thought about replacing them with a six foot piano hinge, but the "expert" at Home Depot suggested these instead.

I bought three plain ones and two with an adjustable self-closing feature.  I'll probably get started on installing them later today, and I'll let you know how it works out.

Either Or

Either our new neighbor made it home last night, or somebody has stolen his truck.

Distracted Eating

A survey released yesterday says that 72% of Americans admit to some sort of electronic distraction while they eat.  Most of them just take their dinner with the TV on - I'm guilty of that - but 29% say they can't get through a meal without at least checking their smart phone.

I guess this gives me a chance to feel superior to that 29%.  For some reason, it reminded me of my father saying "If you had a brain, you'd take it out and play with it."

On the other hand, I'm one of those dinosaurs who only use their phone to talk.  I seldom text, and never use my phone to pay bills, check Facebook, play games, etc.

Spring Garden?

Change

Well, sometimes it is, anyway.  Whether it is or not, change seems inevitable - nothing stays the same forever.
Some days, though, make me think that I've outlived my ability to gracefully accept the changes going on around me. 
Just today, the top headlines say that Toys-R-Us, which used to be like a license to print money, is closing 180 stores, and that College Park, Maryland, has decided to allow non-citizens (with or without Green Cards) to vote in local elections.
Stuff like that can make you question all of your assumptions, not to mention the sanity of your fellow human beings.

Shake-Up

Things are certainly getting shaky around the so-called Ring of Fire that surrounds the Pacific. 

There was a major earthquake this morning in the Gulf of Alaska southeast of Kodiak.  The quake, 7.9 on the Richter scale occurred near the fault line between the Pacific and North American tectonic plates.  Meanwhile, there are two volcanoes spewing ash and lava in the eastern Pacific, Mount Kusatsu Shirane in Japan and Mount Mayon in the Philippines.

It may be unlikely to happen again, but at least one reputable news source is pointing out that the catastrophic eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 was triggered by a much smaller earthquake than the one that struck today.

I have said for years that a major earthquake in California is overdue, and I am not alone in that opinion. 

David Galloway, a seismologist at the British Geological Survey, studies earthquakes all over the globe. He says that it is only a matter of time before a big one strikes again

"We expect a big one to happen in Japan and another one in California. Stress has been building up over the years," he explained.

"it's like pulling an elastic band. If you keep pulling it, it will snap."

Monday

Passing Gas

I stopped by Buster Brown Propane to get a small bottle filled on Friday, and mentioned to the guy filling the bottle that I'd bet the cold start to January got them off to a great start. 

He told me that during the height (or should I say depth) of the freeze they had one driver who had delivered seven thousand gallons of propane in a single day!

Considering that the average residential propane tank holds 250 gallons, and the average fill up is 100-125 gallons, that's a Heck of a lot of stops - all delivered over icy roads.  I have no idea how their drivers are paid, but that driver deserves a bonus.

Nobody Dies On TV Any More

TV news has been full of stories about the Opiod Epidemic in the US. 63,600 opiod deaths in 2017 caused Life Expectancy in America to drop for the second straight year.

But -

Nobody dies of an overdose on TV shows any more! 

First responders - EMTs, Firemen, Policemen, and last night on Hawaii Five-O, even the Coroner - always have a supply of Naloxone (Narcan) or some similar miracle drug which they administer in the nick of time.  The druggie is revived and back to normal within minutes with no visible side-effects.

This strikes me as a very dangerous precedent.  Someone needs to explain to the writers of TV dramas that not everybody carries antidotes, and in the real world, people are actually dying of overdoses every day. 

Silver Lining

Finally - Last night the temperature did not drop below freezing, and the last few patches of snow and ice are melting away.

Speaking of mosquitos, we've only seen one or two since the Air Force Reserve did their aerial spraying four months ago.  

That spraying in the aftermath of Harvey was so effective that I

1. wish they would do it every year.
2. worry that anything that effective has to be harmful.

Jamuary 73

The weather prognosticators are still holding out hope for 70 degrees by Saturday, but there are still patches of snow on the ground, and our overnight low was 22.  Most of the greater Houston area has been on hold for the past couple days - school and work cancelled and folks urged to stay off the roads.

That got me thinking about January of 1973. 

I was working for 3M Company, servicing office equipment.  On the evening of January 10th, a Norther blew in that resulted in snow and ice on the roads in the morning of the 11th.  I went to my first scheduled call as usual, only to find there was nobody there.  After waiting for almost an hour, I went and found a pay phone and called the office.

The sales manager answered and said he was the only one there, and that I was the only technician who had called in.  He told me to go home and get warm.

As I was pulling into my driveway. my pager went off.  I went inside and called the office.  This time, I reached Monte Miller, the service manager for the Houston area.  He told me to "Go do inventory or something, and keep your pager on." saying "There's no way in Hell I'm telling St. Paul, Minnesota that we cancelled work over less than two inches of snow."

Flight 101

Houston is still frozen, and that's all anyone is talking about, so I almost missed the story about United Flight 101. 

Beginning with the maiden flight on Friday, the 787 Dreamliner  will fly nonstop from Houston (IAH) to Sydney. The flight leaves at 8pm for the 8,596-mile trip to Australia’s largest city. Scheduled flight time is 17 hours 30 minutes.

The plane arrives at 6.30am local time in Sydney, two days after leaving Houston, with one day lost because of the International Date Line. But on the return journey, passengers will arrive 75 minutes before they set off, local time. Departure is at 11.50am, with scheduled  arrival at 10.35am the same day.

For business travelers, United promises “elevated inflight food and beverages, tranquil custom bedding from Saks Fifth Avenue, comfortable pyjamas and exclusive amenity kits with products from Soho House & Co’s Cowshed Spa”. Meanwhile, economy passengers get “an adjustable headrest and a personal on-demand entertainment system”.

Winter Warnings

Just about everything in the greater Houston area is closed this morning - all due to a winter storm that would probably be just another November day in St Louis or Des Moines.
Yesterday, the forecast called for a chance of freezing precipitation - sleet or snow - with dropping temperatures that mean it might actually stick around for 24 hours or more.  So far, we have had a light dusting of sleet here at the Boggy Thicket, and the temperature dropped below freezing shortly after dawn.
An abundance of caution is probably a good thing, but our reaction has got to be causing a lot of laughs in the rest of the country. 

OEDILF

After a recent post trolling for new members for Addicted to Limericks, my niece (not the one who's a member but never writes anything) replied asking if I had ever heard of OEDILF, and if I was a member.
The answers were No, and No - but that has changed.
The Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form  is a delightful and amazing project.  Some of their Limericks would not be acceptable here, but there are marvelous (and awful) rhymes about anything you could imagine.
Here are a few examples:

In their boat were two Eskimos seated
And lacking the warmth that they needed.
So they started a fire,
Turning craft into pyre.
Guess you can't have your kayak and heat it?

Today we mourn Bob, who's the guy
Who penned all of my novels. No lie.
I confess. Goodbye, friend.
My career's at an end
With my ghostwriter now in the sky.

Said the cop, "I would bet my last dime,
That a ghoul has committed this crime.
But the chance of arrest
Is unlikely at best.
I'm afraid it's a wraith against time."

Sometimes I Can't Help Myself

I saw this picture yesterday, and knew it just screamed for a Limerick.  Then, once I got started, it was hard to stop.

On the way from Detroit to a dealer near you
With a load of cars, all shiny and new
Pulled over to catch me forty winks
Woke up and didn’t know what to think
And I don’t know what to do

I’m confused, amazed, aghast
My delivery date is long past
I just stopped to take a tinkle
Turned into freakin Rip Van Winkle
There’s no need now to drive fast

How did this become my fate?
Don’t know. Can’t even relate
The road I was driving was good
Now I’m in the middle of the wood
And the road’s been replaced by an Interstate

The search was called off long ago
I guess they looked for me, although
My boss, I’m told, said fire the fool
My wife remarried, has a kid in high school
Who knew they would all miss me so

It’s oh so easy to be mislead

By that voice from the dash (or that voice in your head)

I wouldn’t be in this godawful mess

If I hadn’t believed that darn GPS

And relied on a roadmap instead

7 Year Itch

I just realized that I founded the Addicted to Limericks group on Facebook a little over seven years ago.  I probably wouldn't have thought about it, but several members have been going back and reposting favorite rhymes from our early days.

We are a small, but international group of folks who enjoy reading and writing Limericks.  We have members in the US, Canada, Great Britain and Australia, and may or may not have one in Russia - I used to really enjoy hearing from her, but she hasn't posted anything on Facebook in over a year. At the moment our current membership is less than forty, with a core (hard-core?) group that posts at least one new limerick a week.

After the first year or so, we closed the group because some members actually post from work and didn't want their employers finding out. 

I should point out that, even though we are a "closed" group, we are constantly on the lookout for new members, so if you think you might be interested in joining, please let me know.

I am also asking our members to do a little evangelizing - we could use some fresh minds in the mix - but, believe me, I realize how hard it is to come up with the ideal candidate.  For example, I thought my niece and her husband would be perfect matches - she has written serious fiction and recently a successful line of "Bodice Rippers," while he is an English professor who actually hails from Ireland for Pete's sake.  Do you think either one has contributed a single word since I added them over five years ago?

Demetria

Primary elections are coming up in March, and although incumbent Greg Abbott probably has a lock on the governor's office, ten democrats filed to run for the job.
Oops!
Make that nine!

Back in December on the last day to file, Demetria Smith of Houston presented the petition with the required number of signatures, and a personal check to cover the filing fee.  This week the Texas Secretary of State announced that she was ineligible to run because her check had bounced.

Smith, whose bio lists her professional experience as home mortgages and financial advisor, said that campaigning had left her too busy to keep up with how much money was in her checking account.  She is claiming that declaring her ineligible is unconstitutional, and plans to sue to get her name on the ballot.

False Alarm

I was relaxing, minding my own business, when I felt something crawling up the back of my neck. Wasp, I thought, or maybe a spider, and I smacked myself on the neck before it could bite.

It turned out that the label on the sweatshirt I was wearing had flipped up and was brushing against my neck. 

I laughed at myself, felt a little foolish, and at the same time relieved that the culprit hadn't been something that might actually bite or sting.

That should have been the end of it, but hours later I still feel something there, and it's giving me a full blown case of the creeps.

Premonition

I would normally be going to the grocery store today, but I woke up with a vague feeling that the trip would not go well.  Nothing concrete, not precognition or even a well-formed premonition, it was just a mild  feeling of concern.
I mentioned it to Honey and she immediately told me to stay home.
Now I have no idea what we're going to have for supper. We're not totally out of food, but what we have left may lead to an interesting combination.

Rescheduling

There are things going on in the Couch household today, but nothing I want to share, so I went searching for previous posts worth mentioning again.

Back in January of 2015, I wrote about Prepone. 

The post was about a friend who had recently returned from a trip to India and had collected a list of perfectly good English words we never see here. Prepone was the one that caught my attention, and it's a word I think deserves a place in American vernacular.

If we want to reschedule an activity for a later date or time, we postpone it, but what if we want to reschedule for an earlier time?  That's where we need a word like prepone - what else would you call it?

Geopolitics and Economics

That's a picture of the Sanchi, an Iranian tanker currently on fire off the coast of China.  It contains condensate, an extremely light product of oil wells that is only liquid if under pressure.  There is a very good chance that the whole thing could blow up at any time.

The ship has Panamanian registry, but Iranian ownership and an Iranian crew.

In reporting on the blaze last night, CBS news mentioned - almost in passing - that the ship and its cargo were enroute from Iran to South Korea.

Specifically, the cargo was headed to Hanwha Total, a petrochemical manufacturer owned in part by Samsung.

Okay - Iran is supposed to be under some pretty severe restrictions, what with being an international sponsor of terrorism, etc. - and isn't South Korea supposed to be one of our staunchest allies?

Who says that the Dollar (or the Rial or the Won) doesn't rule the world?

Striding Into 2018

For some reason - Don't ask, I certainly didn't - our neighbor Alesha Graff owned two elliptical exercise machines.  She gave one to Honey just in time for her to use it instead of trying to take her daily walks in the sub-freezing weather that started 2018.

I think the thing has been a genuine life-saver.

It doesn't seem possible, but using the thing burns almost twice as many calories as walking.  I'm not sure how, it isn't all that strenuous, but both the manufacturer and various on-line calorie counters claim that it does.

I'll bet that my first time on the elliptical would have made a hilarious YouTube video - one that would have almost certainly gone viral.  I held the handlebars in a death grip, and rocked my feet about six inches forward and back.  I probably looked like a little child on his first pair of skates!

After a week, I no longer have to hold on at all, but I am still a long way from trying any of the specialized exercises in the machine's brochure.

It is no surprise that Honey is better at it than I am, and she lasts a lot longer, too.

Cool Car

My first new car was a 1960 Ford Falcon Ranchero, a sort of a cross between an automobile and a pickup truck.

It was really cool in more ways than one. 

It was probably one of the last production vehicles built by an American manufacturer that did not come standard with a heater!

My first modification was to add a Western Auto heater between the floor and the dash.  The Falcon had a 12 volt electrical system, and the heater came with a 6 volt fan, so I added a rheostat to control the fan speed.  Once the engine warmed up, the little heater would make the interior warm as toast.

The heater only blew on the floor, so my defroster was an old hand towel I kept tucked into the seat.

Say It Ain't So

Local TV ran a story this morning that has me distraught. 

Phillip Morris Inc. is running full-page ads in Great Britain announcing that they intend to get out of the rolled tobacco cigarette business in 2018.

I have been the very definition of a loyal customer - I switched to Marlboros when they went on the market sixty something years ago, so I went to their website to see if this could possibly be true.  You can check the link HERE to see for yourself.

There have been an awful lot of changes in my lifetime, and I suppose that most of them were good.  This has to be my least favorite in quite a while.

Expectations

Please don't expect anything wise, profound, clever or even remotely funny today.  It's been too cold for too long, and I'm afraid my thinker's frozen.

Frozen

Wanted poster issued yesterday by the Slidell, Louisiana Police Department.

Blackeyed Peas and Skinner Boxes

Years ago, while attending a respected Presbyterian college, I heard a professor compare Christian prayer to a rat in a Skinner box.  Lightning didn't strike, and he completed the lecture and left unscathed.

He explained that it  takes hardly any time at all to train the rat to push a lever to get a pellet of food.  Once he is conditioned, you can set the box to dispense a pellet or not, and the more seldom a pellet drops, the more vigorously the rat will push the lever.

The same sort of conditioned response (or superstitious behavior) applies to the things we traditionally eat on New Year's Day. 

The food we eat varies considerably depending on geography, but everyone seems to have a must-have item on their menu. 

Some swear by corned beef and cabbage (or just cabbage by itself) while some take their cabbage in the form of sauerkraut, and others claim collard greens are far superior. 

Black-eyed peas are a must for many, while others swear that the peas alone are useless - you must combine them with rice to make Hoppin' John in order for them to bring luck.

While I don't know which of these foods are best, we do continue the tradition, and so far, so good.  

Why, just the other day, before she even started cooking, Honey was rinsing the dried peas in a colander.  At least for a few moments, she achieved whirled peas!

Another Year

Happy New Year!

As of six a.m. this morning, the temperature at the Boggy Thicket was 30⁰ - one of those times that Fahrenheit actually looks warmer, it's minus one point something Celsius - and it is not expected to rise above the 30s for the next few days.

Here's a little poem to welcome the new year ----

Welcome to 2018

Winter’s arrived on the scene

Cold as the proverbial well-digger’s ass

Billy goat, monkey or bra made of brass

Take one step outside and you’ll know what I mean