So, this is it – the last day of October. Hard to believe November is almost here. No snow in the forecast yet, but it’s only a matter of time. It’s a big day at work today. First off, the folks from employee health are coming out to do our Annual Health Exams. In an effort to bring my BP down to something approaching normal, I haven’t had a beer since Friday night in Las Vegas (really any in opportune time for a trip out there). I’m also taking lots of magnesium, which the wife tells me is supposed to help. We’ll see. I’ve been taking it regularly at home, and while it seemed to help for a few days, it was still relatively high yesterday. Oh well, I guess the worst they can do is nag me.

Besides the AHA, it’s also parking re-registration day, where we all have to bring our vehicle registrations in, show our IDs, and get new parking stickers. I then proceed to take mine and stick it in my glove box, because I only need it is if I ever were to go down to the hospital (and not really even then, unless for some reason my ID doesn’t work to get me out of the garage, in which case I guess I just fall back on the old, “oops, I guess I forgot to put it on” story). I never go to the hospital, though, which I reckon is a good thing because NYS has a new rule this year, intended to intimidate and embarrass healthcare workers. If you don’t get a flu shot you have to wear a mask if you go into a patient care area or to an area where patients might be (like the cafeteria).

Oh, that’s the other thing. Along with the AHA, those who want can get a flu shot. Though they push it every year, I continue to decline. I haven’t gotten a flu shot in years. In fact, I think the last time I got a flu shot was the last time I got the flu.

As if that wasn’t enough, it’s also “you can wear a costume to work today” (for a suggested – though not mandatory – donation of $5). You might think this would sound really stupid to a bunch of professional adults, but you would be wrong. For some reason this is a big deal. Go figure.

This year, I think I’ll go as somebody with high blood pressure.

Y’all have a Happy Halloween, and don’t eat too much candy tonight. As for me, I think I’ll have a beer.

I’m currently waiting on hold to get a copy of my hotel bill e-mailed to me. You know how you can tell that your call isn’t very important? When the f*cking recording keeps repeating “your call is very important to us” every 30 seconds. Never mind that they were supposed to e-mail me a copy of my bill after I did the express checkout via the teevee in the room. I know they have my e-mail address, ‘cuz they sent me a survey (which I foolishly already filled out). Oy.

Sad to say, we didn’t get to meet Mr. Farmerkat the other night. I think the screening must have been cancelled, as I didn’t get an e-mail from OKat letting us know what time the screening was. I also didn’t realize Monday was the 28th until my wife mentioned it to me on Tuesday (the 28th would have been my parents’ 67th wedding anniversary, which means my oldest brother, Tim, must be getting pretty damn old).

Come to think of it, I haven’t seen OKat around here lately – I hope everything’s OK.

Well, finally off hold with the hotel. I guess I’d better get back to work.

It’s good to be back home. Got here yesterday morning, and felt pretty wiped out all day. In fact, I still feel pretty wiped out. On the bright side, it took a while, but now that I’m home, I’ve finally adjusted to Pacific Time. I think what I need to do tomorrow is go to work on PDT, and leave on EDT. Hopefully I can get fully readjusted before I have to adjust to falling back an hour next weekend.

If I can get my shit together, I’ll put my snow tires on today. And maybe take the mower off the tractor. Odds are, the best I’ll manage is to get my laundry done so I have something to wear to work in the morning (just the thought of having to go to work tomorrow makes me want to puke).

Speaking of puke, I see that Ann Coulter is going to be on Bill Maher next week. I really don’t understand why he has people (and I use the term loosely) like that on. There just doesn’t appear to be any value added to having them on. This week was kind of nice in that respect, though it wasn’t one of the better shows I’ve seen. Bill likes to get on his “mooslams suck more than other religious types” a bit too much for my taste. He likes to say that the Kristian Krazies aren’t out there shooting girls for trying to get an education or beheading adulterers And that’s true – but it’s not that they don’t want to, they just haven’t taken over our government yet (but they sure keep trying).

Keep thinking that they’re more “civilized” than those radical Islamics, Bill, and you just might wake up one day tied to a stake and smelling smoke.

Damn, 11:00 already? Or is it 8:00? I’m so confused. Whatever time it is, I guess I’d better go see about accomplishing something. Like at least unpacking my suitcase.

Tomorrow, I have to leave for Las Vegas via Charlotte. That means I’ll be stuck at an airport and/or on a plane from about 7:00 in the morning until something like 4:00 in the afternoon my time (or 1:00 PDT). It’s not something I’m really looking forward to, especially since it’s a United Airways flight. Few things are worse than flying United Airways (no bags, no food, no entertainment – but for $20 they’ll let you board sooner than everybody else, which means you get to sit in your crappy, cramped little seat that much longer).

On the bright side, they have WiFi, which I can buy for $14 for the day. It was also more expensive than tickets I could have purchased on Jet Blue, but because we have to go through a specific travel agent, I’m not allowed to do that (this is how NY State works, apparently). Even worse, because I was not able to handle my own travel arrangements and the person who did it dropped the ball, I’m not sitting with the person I’m going with, and on the flight back I’m stuck in a middle seat. Good thing it’s a red eye – maybe I’ll get some sleep).

I’m not really looking forward to going, to be honest. I find flying to be a pain in the ass, and I’m not especially excited to go to Las Vegas and I don’t really think this thing I’m going to is gonna be all that worthwhile, either. Basically, I only agreed to go for two reasons – it’s free (though free trips always seem to wind up costing money), and it’s better than working (but not by much).

Speaking of work, I guess I better get back to it.

My condolences to our friends in the Bay Area, now that the BART workers are on strike. Sounds like a good week to take Friday off. The worst part of the strike is probably that now Sgt. Tom Haymond will have to drive to work (hope his black Jag is in OK enough shape to drive). Good luck to striking workers, but they seem to be in kind of a tough position, PR-wise. I don’t know all the details, but from what I’ve read, the union has already agreed to increase employee pension contributions from the current 0% to 4%, and have already agreed to about a 56% increase in healthcare costs (from $92 to $144 a month).

The two sides are about 4% apart in terms of pay, however, with BART offering 12% and the union asking for 15.9% (this is where the bad PR comes in, I think – hard for some schmuck who hasn’t had a raise at all in a few years or has had to take a cut to feel sympathy for somebody turning down 12%, especially when they have to walk to work or are sitting in traffic ‘cuz the trains are shut down).

BART is also refusing to allow a neutral arbitrator to rule on a package of benefits that workers currently get, but which BART wants to get rid of (call in sick, work four days and get paid overtime on the fifth day, leave projects in the middle of a job to go work on something else, get paper check stubs instead of electronic notices).

Personally, I could live without the paper “advice” I get, even though I have direct deposit (not only do they have to print the damn things, but they then actually mail them to me at home, which seems dumb), and I’m not sure about leaving one thing to go do another. Doesn’t seem like a “perk” to me – seems like responding to the most urgent needs. As for OT, although I’m not personally eligible for it, it’s always been my opinion that OT should be paid for anything over 8 hours in a day, not based on how many total hours you worked that week.

Anyhow, good luck to both the BART workers as well as the folks who have to find a way to get to work. I hope this is over sooner rather than later.

No commuting for me today, thank goodness. But I suppose I ought to get back to work.

All indications are that today the Senate will pass a bill re-opening the government and raising the debt ceiling (unless Ted Cruz or some other Republican asshole decides to put a 30-hour hold on it), and then presumably John Boehner will allow it to come up for a vote in the House and pass with almost all Democratic votes.

We shall see, of course, but if it actually happens and there’s nothing too terribly stupid in the bill, I would like Democrats (especially the one in the White House) to take a step back and reflect on what happens when you don’t cave in to these terrorist thugs. Then I’d like them to think about what might have been, had they stood up to these bullies from Day One.

Of course, even if all this goes through the way we hope it will, I hope everybody’s prepared for whatever fresh hell these assholes are probably already preparing for after the first of next year. ‘Cuz you know damn well, they’re not gonna learn a lesson from this (anymore than they did from the last election), and we’re gonna see all this nonsense again in a few short months.

Still, this is a start, at least. Or, hopefully it’s a start. I wouldn’t put anything past these teabagger types.

Yes, it’s that day where we celebrate everybody’s favorite disheveled LA detective, Lieutenant Frank Colombo. Of course, whenever I think of Columbo, I can’t help but think of McMillan and Wife, which was also part of the NBC “Mystery Movie” rotation (along with McCloud, but personally I think Dennis Weaver’s career peaked with Chester in Gunsmoke, though he did of course give a compelling performance in Steven Spielberg’s “Duel” where he was pursued by a killer truck). Mostly, I thought Susan St. James was really cute. And who knew that John Schuck would make such a good Klingon. Anyhow, whatever the holiday, it’s good to be home, especially knowing that I get to work from home tomorrow, and only have to make two appearances at the office this week.

So one big question facing me today is whether or not to take the mower off the tractor. I cut the grass yesterday, but will I get one more cut, or is it time to get ready for winter? They say we may actually get a little snow towards the end of the week, and while it won’t be enough to stick to the driveway, let alone plow, I really don’t want to be futzing around with the mower if it’s gonna be cold out (for one thing, it involves groveling around underneath the thing to unhook the PTO, and then I have to clean it off and struggle with getting it into the shed (about a four-foot three-inch opening to stuff a five foot wide mower deck through, which means I can’t just drop it in there with the front end loader).

The other issue is that while I was in that shed yesterday, I knocked over a bucket of dirt that somebody left in there (not naming names, but it wasn’t me). Unfortunately, along with a bit of dirt that spilled out onto the floor was the remains of what I assume was once a very juicy mouse and on the order of 4,237,842 squirming maggots. A rotting mouse I can deal with – a writing maggot burger, not so much. I promptly exited the shed and closed the door behind me.

Ideally, I wouldn’t go back in there until either the person who left the bucket of dead mouse in my shed – yes, my shed, where I keep my outdoor tools, mower in the winter, winter tires (in the summer) and summer tires (in the winter) and various pool-related implements. There’s another shed which in my opinion should be the designated rotting mouse shed – or the maggots totally consume the mouse, turn into flies, and fly the fuck away.

Unfortunately, I don’t know how long that’ll take and I not only need to deal with the mower, but I also have to think about getting the snow tires on the car at some point. Hopefully I won’t need them anytime soon, but you never know around here. We could have a foot of snow for Halloween.

I have a few other things I ought to deal with, too. For starters, I need to clean out the pellet stoves and do my yearly PM on them. I should also fire up the hot water heat and make sure the pump and whatnot are working OK. I plan on using the HW heat more than the pellets this year, because I did the math and thanks to fracking (just not in my back yard), natural gas actually comes out a bit cheaper than pellets (plus I can pay as I go instead of having to buy $750-$1000 worth all at once, and I don’t have to clean out the garage – a never-ending struggle – to make room for more pellets).

I should probably start thinking about putting the storm windows on, and start plastic-ing up the western facing windows.

So I guess I’d better get busy and get to work. As Ned Stark would say if they hadn’t chopped off his head – winter is coming.

Much like House Democrats and their teabagger Senate sycophants, I am clueless as to how this whole debt ceiling/government shutdown thing is gonna go. It’s at least starting to sound as though we’ll get some kind of crappy, short-term debt limit increase, but not anything to open the government back up. I’d like to see this end with a solution that prevents this kind of hostage taking in the future – holding one half of one severely gerrymandered branch of government should not give you the ability to nullify the results of an election. But we’ll see. As a civil servant myself, I feel for government workers who have been furloughed and can’t pay their bills.

There seems to be some notion that public employees make millions of dollars a year and live extravagant lifestyles, but that just aint the case. Especially in DC, where the cost of everything is ridiculously high – housing alone is over 150% more that it is in, say Rochester NY. So, as I heard a furloughed federal employee say in an interview yesterday, many workers were living paycheck to paycheck before this nonsense. I don’t know what the hell they’re doing now (it’s not like the grocery store is gonna grant you a line of credit or your landlord will be OK with you sliding on the rent for a while). Even with the guarantee of back pay, people are gonna be running up their credit card balances and if this goes on much longer, well, it’s just plain gonna suck (never mind the all the shit that’s not getting done, like safety and health inspections).

I read an article this morning where one worker said she was applying for unemployment, and I was wondering how that works since they enacted a law guaranteeing back pay. Not that they don’t deserve it. I mean, they need to pay their bills now, not in a week or a month or god knows how long from now – the last one lasted 21 days (and that was over Christmas). But if they get benefits, will they have to pay them back? What an unnecessary hassle for everybody involved.

We’re in the midst of a massive tick invasion around here lately. I don’t know if it’s the combination of relatively warm weather with a bit of rain or what, but I’ve been yanking the damn things off the dogs constantly. My wife even had one attached under her chin (now I’m gonna have to get Frontline for her). Let me tell ya, that makes you pretty paranoid, ‘cuz the little fuckers’ bites contain anesthetic, so you can feel ’em. I’m constantly checking myself for the damn things. Icky.

Oh well, I suppose it’s almost time to sign on to work for the day. Friday working from home is the absolutely best day to end the week – especially since the weekend is supposed to be warm and sunny, Monday’s a holiday, and I’ll be working from home again on Tuesday. I don’t have to suffocate in my dark little cave again until Wednesday. Sweet.

My inbox greeted me with a message from Amazon this morning, imploring me to “treat myself” with an ACDelco 18A1490A Advantage Front Brake Rotor. Oh yeah, baby. That’s how you know you’re life’s become exciting – a brake rotor’s considered a treat (though I’m wild and crazy enough to probably “treat” myself to two of them). Apparently I put this on my Amazon “wish list” when I was shopping for brake parts. Out of all the shit on my list, they picked that? Why didn’t they go with the Kubot​a U25R​1T4 Exca​vator (other than the fact that Amazon doesn’t actually sell those).

What I’d really consider a treat (and almost as exciting as a brake rotor) would be a cab for my tractor this winter (nothing fancy, but if somebody wants to throw in a hard cab with a heater, windshield wiper, and radio, that’d be cool). Sadly, I don’t reckon there’ll be many treats in store for us once the government defaults on the national debt. I heard Obama’s presser yesterday, and he sounded sane and rational and all that, but I don’t really know who he thought he was trying to convince. Anybody with a brain can understand what the deal is, and anybody without a brain is either a House Republican or somebody who voted for one. What I really wanted to hear him say was, “hey, you don’t negotiate with terrorists.” That woulda stirred up a shitload of fake outrage (John Boehner probably would have even cried).

Of course, Obama has himself to blame for much of this. If he hadn’t been Chamberlain to Boehner’s Hitler in every “negotiation” leading up to this, they wouldn’t think they could blitz their way over him. It doesn’t help that a fair number of Democrats are about as gutless as the Vichy France Premiere Marshal Pétain (you might need to look that one up).

I don’t know what’s gonna happen with all this, but if my life experience is counts for anything, my guess is that things will get worse for regular people, probably get a lot worse for poor people, get better (or at worst stay the same) for rich people, and things won’t be quite as horrible as the media makes it out to be (besides, quick, look over there! It’s a nipple slip!). And then we’ll do this all again in three months (or six or whatever), because if Vietnam or Prohibition or Iraq or the “Financial Crisis” of ’07-’08 proved anything, it’s that America’s collective memory is shorter than the decay rate of a Higgs boson particle (fun fact – that’s less time than it takes light to travel from one side of an atom to the other) and even if it wasn’t, we’re too stupid to learn from our experiences anyway.

Not that I don’t love people, mind you. I am, at heart, a people person – ask anyone.

Today is my late day, which means I have to sit in the office until five o’clock for no apparent reason, other than it’s “the rule” (seriously, nobody has ever been able to articulate a reason – other than “because” – why we can’t monitor things from home until 5:00 – as if our customers care whether we’re sitting at a desk in a windowless office or a desk at home with fresh air and a view of the trees and the sky and maybe doggies chasing each other around the yard). So, even though I’ve been out of bed since before 4:30 this morning, I’m sitting here waiting to go into work, ‘cuz I’ll be damned if I’ll sit there any longer than I absolutely have to.

I mean, I’ve read the Internet (as much of it as I plan on reading for the moment, anyway – after a while it’s just the same old shit), cooked something for lunch, did the dishes, filled up the dogs’ food bowls, and done everything else that I could think of (well, except for, like laundry or cleaning the house or proofreading this post or something, but, hey, that’s not gonna happen), and now I’m just sitting here for, like, another couple hours. And all I can think of is how stupid this is.

It’s like…. Have you ever been out in the middle of nowhere, sitting at a red light when you can see for miles in all directions, and there’s absolutely nobody else around? And you’re just sitting there waiting for the goddamn light to change, thinking, “WTF? This is stupid.”

That’s what this is like.

Speaking of WTF, if you have Netflix, Maron has a 90 minute or so Netflix exclusive show called “Thinky Pain” that we watched last night (I might possibly have drifted off before the end – I’m a little vague on exactly when and how I got to bed), and it was very good. At least, from what I remember.

And speaking of Netflix, if you’re looking for something to add to your queue and you like somewhat twisted British sitcoms, I recommend “Snuff Box.” Also, Ricky Gervais has a Netflix exclusive show called “Derek,” which I also found quite enjoyable. The wife liked both of these too, so it isn’t just a guy thing.

Phil Chevron of the Pogues passed away at the far too young age of 56. It’s really hard to find a live video of the Pogues where Shane MacGowan isn’t so drunk that you can actually understand what he’s saying. So I’ll just go with this old favorite (I mean, any Christmas song with lyrics like “you´re a bum you´re a punk, you´re an old slut on junk…you scumbag you maggot, you cheap lousy faggot. Happy Christmas your arse I pray god it´s our last” has to be on your holiday hit list).

RIP, Phil.

Just in case you lost track, the government is still shut down (well, the parts that are interesting or help people, anyway), and it looks like we’re headed for a credit default in, oh, nine days or so. They (normally I’d say “whoever they are” but it seems like “they” are pretty much everybody except for a few crazy teabaggers) say this will be devastating to the global economy.

Failure by the world’s largest borrower to pay its debt — unprecedented in modern history — will devastate stock markets from Brazil to Zurich, halt a $5 trillion lending mechanism for investors who rely on Treasuries, blow up borrowing costs for billions of people and companies, ravage the dollar and throw the U.S. and world economies into a recession that probably would become a depression. Among the dozens of money managers, economists, bankers, traders and former government officials interviewed for this story, few view a U.S. default as anything but a financial apocalypse.

Well, that doesn’t sound all that bad.

I suspect most of the globe will be OK in the long run – they’ll just learn once and for all that we have made ourselves irrelevant and they need to bypass us as much as possible, even if we are a little crazy and dangerous. We’re like that crazy uncle who used to be rich but now hangs out in a soiled t-shirt and boxer shorts sitting on the front porch with a shotgun threatening kids, birds and squirrels and telling stories about the old days when he really used to be something. You might have to keep inviting him over for Thanksgiving, but you sure as shit aren’t gonna give him the keys to your car or let him babysit your kids.

I feel as though I should care more about all of this, and be out there working hard to prevent it all (by which I mean “signing” e-petitions and all that other stuff that’s really pretty meaningless in the long run). The relative handful of crazy House Republicans that are holding the government hostage and are poised to make my life more difficult (and most likely make it impossible for me to ever retire) don’t give a shit about petitions. I’m not sure what it is they really care about or want, and apparently neither do they.

But man, what a feckless waste of spray tan that John Boehner is, eh? He wins the Michael Brown award for incompetence. It’ll be interesting to see if all this leads to the Democrats taking back the House in 2014. With the way Congressional districts are gerrymandered, that would be quite a legacy for Boehner and the T-bags (good name for a band). That’s assuming there’s anything left of the country – let alone the government – when all this is over.

The Irish just had a vote on whether or not to abolish their Senate (they voted to keep it). Maybe we should do something similar, though I’m not sure which part of the legislative branch of government we’d be better off without. On the one hand, it seems silly to me to give Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and Montana with a combined population of less than 28 million people a total of 12 votes in the Senate while California, with over 38 million people gets only two. Then again, that House elections can be so rigged that one party can be outvoted by over half a million votes and still have control (and, in turn, then be controlled by 60 something teabag nuts) is pretty shameful.

So here’s what I say we do. We get rid of both branches, and create a Senate of Representatives. Every state (and even the District of Columbia) gets one Senate Representative. After that, for every million people in your state, you get another one. So Alaska with 700,000’ish people? You get one. Delaware with 917,000? Ooh, so close. But you only get one. Maine? 1.3 million – congrats, you get two. And California? You’re the big winner with 39.

The other part of this plan speaks to how these Senate Representatives are elected – and that’s statewide. No gerrymandered districts drawn to keep one party or the other in office. This will make for some interesting ballots in places like California. I think what we’ll need to do is stagger the terms a bit, in order to avoid a crowded and all but incomprehensible ballot in states with a lot of people. So some of the initial seats will start with partial terms until we get this all up and running. Assuming we stick with 6-yr terms, in, let’s say, California, 13 seats will have 2-yr terms, another 13 four years, and the rest 6 year terms. That way, after the first time around, a third of the seats get elected every two years.

By my reckoning, at 2012 population rates, that gives us a legislative body with 335 members (as opposed to a total of 535 now – 435 House and 100 Senate). So we’d save 100 salaries (plus staff salaries), office costs, etc. It’s a win-win all the way around.