PJ has thrown the floor open and I am answering the siren call as best as I can, which may leave a bit to be desired these days. First of all, it’s good to be back here after a crazy year plus of insanity, ending in…Well, it’s not over yet, is it? Check RIPCoco or Brilliant at Breakfast for some of my recent exploits and pursuits, saving lives and balancing needles on my eyeballs while leading the entire Ringling Brother’s Circus through the midtown tunnel on a unicycle. Suffice to say that I’ve suddenly got high blood pressure (due perhaps to Yaz, which is presented as a happy little pill and had this very dirty underside of brain explosion and all sorts of bad things that don’t look to be curable with oregano capsules,) so excuse me if I try to stay still so as not to throw a clot or something.

First of all and most importantly, this week all week, Brilliant at Breakfast is the featured blog feed on Sammy’s AAR Front page , so give Jill and the rest of us, (especially Sammy,) some hits and love, even if you have to hold your nose to do it. What a mess over there, huh?

Sunday Barack Obama appeared on the post Russert Press the Meat, featuring Tom Brokaw and a much more level headed discussion of world events than we have seen since Timmeuh decided to make it a regular brunch- with- McInsane showcase. I have to say that I don’t miss old Tim one little bit. Now if the other hyperbole oaf Tweety would fly away, we might start again to get some sort of news. Tho we may need to send Scarborough packing too (yes, I am an MSNBCoholic…is there any other news channel, except on weekends when we get legends and history and lockup 24/7?)

Obama is looking more and more presidential to me and also to grandpa, who even though he remains a bit confused from all the craziness of late, can still pick ‘em…., and he also has some answers to some of the hard questions, which leave McCain hemming and hawing. I’m disgusted by the press, as usual and always on the edge of calling it all a day and moving to VT or some liberal enclave, where I might build a solar house and hide out with my chickens and the boys until…well, forever, I guess.

The Maron man seems to be touring still though his page calendar is still back in May. I saw him in DC in the spring and he is doing just fine, in his way, though it’s surely his way…which is never the easy way.I hear a whisper of New York in August, so we’ll see… I am so hoping that something comes up on radio for him, because he is so fantastic at it; Sammy too. I really can’t put into words my deep disappointment in what has gone on. But I have to say that both of them are so talented that they will be working…it’s just that it may not be in a public forum where we can listen and interact with them. It seems to me that Sirius should hire them both. They have a dearth of good hosts and the only best thing I’ve heard there lately, besides Maron filling in for Hartman, was Ron Silver getting smacked down by Phil Donahue today. Someone really needs to take Silver off the radio. He is a freak!

And finally, yes Tweety did show this clip on his show Sunday, but its well worth posting here because it was one of the first things that grandpa and I have laughed at in a while. As an elderly Jew, Hi has battled back from the brink of death to, among other things, give Obama his vote! There is no upside to being 98 years old, but at least he should be allowed to see that he is able to leave some sort of future start taking shape after all hes seen in the last 100 odd years…

Today beloved Molly Ivins is 64 years old. Probably older than that but that is all I have to work with right now. I sure wish she was still hanging around and blessing us with her brilliance but she did plant enough seeds that we can try to imagine in our own minds and in our own ways. I particularly loved her description of Phil Gramm as a thumb with a face.

You can run your own searches on YouTube or Google and find a lot of great Molly memories so I will just try to insert this remembrance here.

Happy Birthday, Ms. Ivins!

I’ll be hoisting a couple of beverages with you today and shaking my head and rolling my eyes and hoping for the best.

So, the big exciting news from yesterday is that Syracuse, NY is officially on the list for HD locals before the end of the year. Hopefully in August. Other than that, another day in the life came and went. For something like the 17,434^th time.

Here’s to getting number 17,435 the hell over with, too.

Sorry, I got nothing this morning. Been spending too much time writing my novel, which I’ll have to serialize online when I get enough written. Until then, have a good day.

Only one guest today on Press the Meat. Some Muslim terrorist guy named Osama or Obama or something like that. He’s married to Angela Davis, I think.

Over on Faze the Nation, Bush buddy Bobby Schieffer has Chuck Hagel and Jack Reed (not that you can tell by their website).

On Fux News Sunday, Weaselface Wallace has McCain lackey John “the goon” Thune, on to tell us how Obama’s trip to Europe and the Middle East was a disgrace, while John McCain’s stirring speech to dozens of people at the Ashtabula Rotary Club stole Obama’s thunder. Plus there’s Claire McCaskill, the still un-indicted Karl Rove, the usual Fuxheads, and this week’s “Power Player,” Ben “Bueller?” Stein.

Over at the Goebbels Network, George Snufalufagus will give grandpa McCain yet another chance to get his story – any story – straight. Then former Bush lackey and current ABC political “expert” Matthew Dowd joins a reunited axis of drivel as he huddles around the roundtable with Sam :omg: Donaldson, Cokie “the hag” Roberts and George :jerk: Will join George.

CNN’s Late Emission has both Obama and Grandpa McCain(and an extra special show on “the next president” at 7:00 Eastern tonight, for those of you who just can’t get enough of that Wolf.

Later, on 60 Minutes, it’s some mafia hitman, a story about sending people back to the moon, and Scott Pelley interviews The Boss.

Have a good Sunday. Oh, by the way, if birds have been eating your garden, this could be the solution.

Seems to work for me….

Well, nobody’s volunteered to write today’s opening screed, so I reckon you’re stuck with a “not much to say today” one. Oh well, nobody reads these on the weekends anymore anyway. Have a good one.

Finally, this week is over. It’s been a long one. There’s been a dark cloud following me around for about three weeks now. No horrible tragedies – just stuff to make my pain in the ass life a bigger pain in the ass. I think I need to take a week and just go off by myself somewhere. Maybe hang out in woods and camp someplace or something. Not today, though. Have a good one.

DirecTV 11 is up and running. Not putting out video yet, but it has 14 conus (national) transponders putting out nice strong signals. At up to 5 channels per transponder, that’s a potential for 70 national HD channels. Plus there’s a full contingent of “spotbeam” transponders aboard, meaning I’ll hopefully get local channels in HD in time for football season. You should see all the excitement over at dbstalk, where geeks from all over the country are sending in their signal readings.

Hey, what can I say? I have no life.

In big news for geeks, the DirecTV satellite moved to its final orbit (give or take a little minor tweaking) yesterday. Speculation is we may start to see new HD channels by the end of the month – and hopefully I’ll get my locals in HD before too long.

In other news, the Mega Millions jackpot is up to $125 million today. If you don’t hear from me tomorrow, you’ll know what happened.

You know, I’m the first to admit I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed. But I had pretty good public school education at a pretty well-respected public school here in Upstate New York (no ‘Intelligent Design,’ but they learned up pretty good). So why do I insist on calling it a ‘hot water heater?’ I really do know better.

Oh well. Mission accomplished on the heater replacement. I wanted to go tankless (just so could say it was a ‘tankless job’), but they were triple the cost, and given my fairly short life expectancy (and having to worry if there would be a problem using a common vent with the furnace – the install manual said not to do that, and that you should use stainless pipe; I doubt it would have mattered, but I didn’t have time to research it properly), and at $1,000+ vs. $369, I figured I’d go with the tank. If I’m still alive and living where I am now when this one goes (tried this; too many hoops to jump through, and none of the final results appealed to me), I’ll think it over.

Of course, while it’s a simple job on paper, it turned out to be a pain in the ass (and other locations). First, since I hurt my arm a couple weeks ago, doing anything that requires gripping and/or twisting hurts like hell. If you’ve ever twisted wrenches for a living (or for fun), you know how much fun it was to cut copper, clean fittings, and twist pipe wrenches all day with a crippled arm (in a the type of confined space that’s typical whenever doing a happy homeowner plumbing job).

And since it’s just the two of us here now, I went for a smaller tank, which meant a fair amount of replumbing (nothing too major – just enough to be a pain in the ass) of the water and gas lines (and the goddamn vent, too). It took me forever at the store to get the fittings I needed (it’s not like I needed anything out of the ordinary; back when I did this type of shit for a living, I had a much better parts collection), and a line of severe thunderstorms went through in the middle of things, so I had the dogs up my ass and quivering in fear while I was trying to solder without setting the house on fire.

I couldn’t get all the water out of the pipe for my final joint, so I wound up having to shut down all the water and drain the house (and pulling apart my half-soldered joint and cleaning it up again) to get it. Not a huge deal in the scheme of things but, as I said, annoying.

Only one leak when I filled the tank (and on a fitting that I bench soldered, so I’m pretty disappointed in myself for that one; at least it was easily fixed), and of course I added unions where there were none, and added a ball valve past the gate valve that required a pipe wrench to shut off. When you need to shut shit off in a hurry, you can’t beat a ball valve.

So, anyway, while my arm is aching and nearly unusable (typing this more or less one handed), I’m just glad I didn’t have to pay somebody to do it (on a Sunday, no less). I sure could use another day off, though.