Yesterday was school budget day, and the budget where I live passed. Not that I voted. I suppose I should have, but, well, I should have done a lot things in my life. In our school district, this year’s proposed budget was actually lower than last year’s (partly due to a capital building project last year that didn’t exist this year, and also due to the reduction of 21.7 FTEs – 14 of those layoffs of peons; don’t worry, as far as I know, no upper mucky-mucks were harmed in the creation of this budget).

Thanks to Governor Snotball’s (or Mario Junior, as I like to think of him – or as I’d like to think of him, but I can’t ‘cuz he aint one tenth the man his dad is) slashing of State aid to schools, though, my property taxes are going up by 3.9%. This, as you may recall, is so that Andy’s buddies on Wall Street can keep all their tax cuts.

Folks in the district also approved the purchase of three new short school buses and a van. Personally, I say let the little bastards darlings walk, but you know, if you don’t vote you can’t bitch, right?

I should probably say something like, “speaking of little bastards…” and then mention Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I’m pretty tired of the whole story already (though I did kinda get a chuckle out of the clips of Maria on some talk show or another back in the past saying that she wasn’t “bred to ignore” her hubbie’s affairs; I mean, duh, it’s not the Kennedy genes that ignore the affairs – in fact, I would bet they’re extraordinarily attuned to affair detection, based on the Darwinian genetic principle of ‘it takes one to know one’).

“Maria, it vas ten yeeerz uhgo, voor chrizzakez. I zed I vas sorry – vhat more do chu vant? Und vhy don’tchu haff eh zandvich oor zomething? Yoo’uhr tooo zkinny.”

It’s back to the Mac this morning, and so far the trackpad hasn’t gone insane. I hope it stays that way, as I really do prefer it to the Dell Inspiron. Not the OS part (don’t really find them much different in that respect), but while they both have the same size screen, more or less, the Mac has a much larger keyboard, so it’s a lot easier to type on (gives it a bigger footprint, but that’s OK). The keyboard is also backlit, which I like (being somewhat of a hunter and, dare I say, pecker), and when the trackpad isn’t AFU, it’s nice because it’s a lot bigger (though I found drivers for the Dell trackpad to make it work like the Mac one – gestures, two, three, and four finger tap options, etc.).

Well, time to warm up the rest of yesterday’s coffee, and to get a fresh pot going.