Well, we finally got the rain they’d been promising yesterday afternoon. After getting up to 93 degrees or so, a line of pretty impressive thunderstorms came through yesterday afternoon. Since God hasn’t lifted his veil of protection from us (unlike the Midwest, South, and Southwest), we didn’t have any tornadoes or anything like that. Just some power outages here and there. Now it’s quite a bit cooler out.

Sad news that Doc Watson passed away. Aside from his phenomenal guitar playing, he was a veritable encyclopedia of Traditional American Music. And he was a pretty darn good carpenter, from what I’ve read. This is pretty amazing, considering he was blind since he about a year old (though if you saw some of my carpentry work, you’d probably guess that I was blind, too). We’ll miss you, Doc. Say hello to Merle.

As expected, it was very difficult to get out of the house and go to work today. I’m mentally ready to retire. Financially, however, I’m not even close. So off to work it is. It might be just as well. I got a lot of sun over the weekend, and I think I need a break from it. Plus it’s supposed to be 90 again today, and that’s just too darn hot. Unless you’re hanging out in a swimming pool; then it’s not so bad. Tough on the dogs, though, who seem unwilling to jump in the pool. Oh, a stinky frog pond is no problem (and I did take Fritz to go play with his cousins, so he got to go for a swim in the pond), but I guess clean water is just too icky. Probably just as well. I don’t need any holes poked in the pool liner. Oh well, another seven hours to go to get this crappy day over with.

Happy Memorial Day. I hope everyone’s having a nice weekend, and is going around remembering all the people (and critters) that you’ve known and lost. Despite them saying there’s a chance of rain, it’s been dry and very sunny (and warm) around here (though it’s a little cloudy at the moment). And today it’s supposed to get into the 90s. I haven’t been accomplishing much, but I have gotten a lot of pool time in. The thought of going to work tomorrow is pretty depressing, so I won’t think about it. Enjoy what’s left of the day.

Finally, it’s Friday. Good news for most of us, with what in America passes for a “long” weekend (I think three days is barely adequate; four days might qualify as long, and two days are just plain way too short). Not so good news for my wife, who told me last night that she has to work tomorrow. That makes six days this week (quite a few shifts for a part time job, no?). Too bad, ‘cuz she has a lot of work to do this weekend.

I’ve got an awful lot of things I need to do this weekend, too. Not sure how much my foot will allow, though. It was hurting like hell by the end of the day, yesterday. I think it has something to do with wearing shoes, so I’m sitting here at my desk with one shoe and sock off. Maybe that’ll help. Hopefully there aren’t any critters under there.

Oh well, time to get back to getting this week over with.

It may only be Thursday, but my brain has already left for the Memorial Day weekend. This is unfortunate, given that I still have the better part of two days to get through. It ought to be a real challenge. And when I’m facing a challenge, it’s clear that I need to do at least one thing to get through it: buy beer. So that’s what I’ll be devoting my lunch time to today. I even brought the thermal bags filled with fake ice packs so it’ll stay fairly cold in what is supposed to be 80+ degree temperatures this afternoon.

I’m not really looking forward to limping around the grocery store with my half-painful, half-paralyzed foot, but whattya gonna do?

Speaking of the paralyzed foot thing, I was looking at some stretches to do to help it out. The first one said to spread my feet shoulder width or more apart, then bend over and put my palms flat on the floor without bending my knees. Once I got done laughing, I gave it a try. I’d be pretty pleased if I could get my fingertips on the ground.

But, since I’m alone in the office today (my roommate had the good sense to take both today and tomorrow off; I wish I’d done that), I’ll give it a try once in a while. If nothing else, it ought to kill time ’til Friday.

It was a bad foot night last night, and my half-throbbing, have numb foot kept me awake for pretty much all of it. This is what happens when I don’t drink. The other interesting thing is that, where my foot is numb, it can still feel itchy. Even better, though I can feel the itch, I can’t feel the scratch, so there’s not only no relief, but a tendency to claw it raw.

Today is Bob Moog’s 78th birthday (or would be, if he hadn’t croaked in 2005). If you’d like to play around with a Moog synthesizer, visit the Google classic home page today (using Chrome preferably, but anything other than IE should work).

This morning, I decided that my project for the day would be to paint my firetruck. It’s an olde tyme firetruck – no top, with the ladders hung on the sides. I thought I’d give it a nice new red paint job. Then, a couple of things occurred to me. First, it’s not the weekend. And second, I don’t have a firetruck, which is odd, because I was looking at it, and there it was. That’s when a third thing occurred to me: I was dreaming. I’ve been doing a lot of that lately. I’m not quite sure if I’m awake or asleep, but it feels like I’m awake, and I know I’m dreaming. More like daydreaming, really. It’s kind of strange. I’m hoping to get to the point where I can do things like fly on demand or something.

I used to think it’d be great if you could learn to segment your brain, so that half of it was on automatic, and used to accomplish the boring day-to-day tasks, while the other half could conjure up a fantasy world that you could more or less stay in all the time, unaware of what the other half was up to. I mean, you wouldn’t need much of a job – just enough to buy some food and rent a time little place to live, because you’d always be in a better place. You wouldn’t need to interact with much of anything outside of your imagination.

Yep, that’d be nice.

For a while this morning, I was in bed thinking it was Sunday. When I realized it was actually Monday, I was severely depressed. In fact, I’m still quite depressed. But, quick as it went, it was a good weekend. Very warm and sunny, and I got quite a bit done (though not everything on my list, of course). Now it’s back in my windowless cave of an office, wondering how the hell I’m gonna make it through the day (let alone the week).

If you missed 60 Minutes last night, and want to see Roger Waters, here you go….

I know I say this a lot (‘cuz it’s true), but this has been a long week. All I can think if is how much I need to do this weekend, and how I probably won’t get much of it done. My first goal is to get the pool open, and at least see what crawled under the cover over the winter. I’m really hoping there aren’t any critters in there. Especially mammals. Toads, frogs, and worms are bad enough, but mice and moles are really icky. Especially if they’ve been in there for a while. Then I need to take a trip to “the Depot” to get some more decking. There’s an endless job. The grass needs to be cut, the deck needs to be stained, the laundry needs to get laundered…. I’m sure there’s more. Two days just aint enough.

Remember that $2 billion loss JP Morgan had? Well, looks like that was a wee bit off. Now it’s said to be at least $3 billion. Oops. Of course, that’s just a pittance, and taxpayers are ever eager to help them out should times get tough. And, no, we certainly don’t expect a share of the profits when times are good. That would be socialism.

Republicans in the Senate joined their pals over in the House by voting for so-called Ryan Budget, a plan that…

…would phase out the existing Medicare program and replace it with a subsidized private insurance system for seniors; dramatically slash Medicaid spending and hand the program over to the states; cut food and nutrition programs for poor people; and allow interest rates on student loans to double; all while dramatically reducing taxes, particularly on wealthy Americans.

Hey, sounds good to me. Rich people need to lay less, and if that screws over poor folks and old folks, well, tough. They should have been born rich (and stayed young).

Another case of “unlimited” actually having a limit, this time at Chuck’s Place, and its “All You Can Eat Fish Fry.”

A Wisconsin man got cut off after he wolfed down a dozen pieces of fish at an all-you-can-eat fish fry, so he did what any red-blooded American would do: he made a picket sign and protested.

Bill Wisth — a fish-eating machine at 6-foot-6-inches tall and 350 lbs — was miffed when workers at his favorite local restaurant in Thiensville, Chuck’s Place, said they were running out of yummy sea creatures.

“It’s false advertising,” Wisth told TMJ4. “We asked for more fish, and they refused to give us more fish.”
[…]
But Wisth said he’s not done fighting the great fish fight, nor is he finished with fish-fry Fridays at Chuck’s Place. Heck, he still admits the food is irresistible.

“They do have like some of the best pizza in town, if you like deep dish pizza,” he told TMJ4.

He plans to picket every Sunday until the restaurant lets him eat all he can eat.

Go for it, Homer Bill!