I’ve been reading the label on a case of Clorox® for the past week or so, since it’s sitting on a table in the garage (and by “table” I of course mean “cube freezer,” which like most things with a flat surface in our house has been transformed into a table – but I digress). Mostly I’ve been looking at the part that says, “Kills 99.9% of Common Household Germs.” Some might find this comforting, but all I can think about is the fact that there are apparently germs (defined on the Clorox® website as bacteria and viruses) that are in my house, common, and cannot be killed by a 6.0 percent aqueous solution of sodium hypochlorite. I really don’t wanna run into the virus that can’t be killed by bleach in a dark alley (or my bathroom) some night.

Fortunately, I came of age in an era when the failure to sanitize your house to cleanroom levels and/or rush to the doctor for a course of antibiotics at the hint of a sniffle wasn’t considered child abuse (also, driving drunk was frowned upon, as opposed to actually being illegal). So I think I’ve developed a resistance to those bleach-immune bugs running around out there. Or course, I also grew up a time when eating right and exercising weren’t particularly emphasized, either.

So, like my father, my father’s father, and his father before him (not to mention my mother’s father), I’ll most likely die at a relatively young age (though I’ll probably feel a lot older than I actually am, so I guess that evens things out. My last thoughts will either be “I really should’ve taken better care of myself,” or “I never shoulda quit drinking beer” – my money’s on the latter).

Anyhow, to all my male progenitors who passed on their genes and then promptly stepped aside for the next generation, I say “Happy Father’s Day.”

Speaking of sodium hypochlorite, I’m fairly certain I did permanent damage to my lungs yesterday. There’s a big old bucket of 3″ chlorine tablets that’s been sitting out on the pool deck since last year. When I opened it up this season, I noted that there was was quite a bit of water in the bucket – with, as you might expect, a very strong aroma of chlorine. But many of the tablets in there (individually wrapped, if not exactly hermetically sealed) were still viable, so I was able to avert my nose and fish a few out every now again to add to the chlorine floaty dispenser thing.

The weather around here has been pretty crappy – rainy and not consistently warm – so I’ve had the solar cover on and before Friday, nobody had actually gone swimming (I try to to think about the waste of money). A few sunny days warmed the water up a bit, though, and on Thursday, out of the blue, they came and filled up the propane tanks for the heater (at roughly triple the cost of Natural Gas – one of these days I’ve gotta convert that over).

So, anyhow, I went to grab some more tabs and the bucket was filled with this yellowish water and when I pulled the lid off, the chlorine vapor damn near knocked me over. After about three tries, I realized I wasn’t getting any more chlorine out of that sucker and I gave up. Since then, I’m wheezing, my chest hurts, and I can’t take a more than about half a breath without coughing. So if you don’t hear from me for a while, it probably means I’ve succumbed (or am just too lazy to write).

In the event that I don’t die in the next 2-4 hours, I’m stuck waiting for people at work to complete some project or other. I’m not actually involved in it, other than they wanted to make sure there was a DBA around in case they had problems with the database. Since I’m the “on-call” person (in quotes, because without the quotes, they’d have to pay me something for being on the hook 24/7 all week – and what a pain in the ass week it’s been), I have to sit and wait for them to finish and fuck everything up (which they will), then wash their hands of it and pass it along to me to un-fuck it (which would be a lot easier – and less stressful – if I actually knew what I was doing).

So, no Father’s Day party for me today (I’m guessing the dogs didn’t actually have anything planned anyway). No golf, no trip to the ball park, no picnic, no barbecue, and – worst of all – no beer.

Hey, but don’t let that stop all of you from having a good time.

I don’t know if you’ve heard about this, but…

EXCLUSIVE: Seems Barack Obama is coming to L.A. this week for more than just Hollywood cash. After big-bucks fundraisers at Chuck Lorre and Tyler Perry’s not-inconsiderable Pacific Palisades and Beverly Hills pads on Thursday, the leader of the free world is going to spend a little bit of time on Friday morning in a garage in Highland Park doing a podcast. Of course, the fact that the garage is the HQ of the widely downloaded WTF With Marc Maron probably sweetens the appeal for the President, who is making his debut on the show.

The plan is that before Obama jumps on Air Force One on June 19 to head up to San Fran for more Democratic Party fundraisers, the pop culture-conscious POTUS will swing by the comedian’s garage studio in the morning for a just over one-hour sit-down. The White House reached out to Maron’s team a couple of weeks back to set up the interview, sources tell me. The commercial-free podcast with the President is set to be posted online June 22. As is fitting the office, and like most of the WTF episodes, Obama will be Maron’s only guest for Friday’s taping. Having teased something “massive” coming up the past few days, Maron will announce the presidential visit on Thursday’s podcast, which hits the Internet very early this AM.

I don’t know about you all, but weekends sure do seem to take a lot out of me. But it’s a lot better than going to work, which is why I’m glad I have today off. Especially since I neglected to cut the grass (though it’s kind of wet out there, so I’m not sure if I’ll get to it today, either). I also have a new $11 plastic mailbox to install. Kind of decided that since the snowplow’s just gonna take it sooner or later anyway, there’s no point in getting anything but the cheapest shit available.

Not that I didn’t manage to spend more money than I’d have liked to this weekend. When I went to buy a window to stick in my office, it of course turned out that they didn’t have what I wanted in the size that I wanted, so I was forced to spend more on something better. So my cheap little $120 air conditioner will probably wind up costing me close to $500 (of course, some of that’s paint and screws and stuff I can use for other things down the road) when all’s said and done. But, what the hell, I’ll never have to buy another one. And it improved my view greatly, for where once when I was sitting in my chair facing north, I was looking at a wall, I now see this:

So now I see trees on two sides of me, which helps compensate for the total lack of a view in my windowless workplace. Now I just need to finish finishing it.

Which I suppose I better get started on (easier said than done, because I seem to be surrounded by about 240 pounds of dog, and there aint a lot of room to move).

So, yesterday was the first day in a while when the weather wasn’t really, really sucky. It was actually sunny, not hot, and not humid. I celebrated by sitting in my windowless office all day (I did manage to get in a 10 minute walk across a couple parking lots to go look at some trees and the vestiges of the old Erie Canal, which is right by where I work. More accurately, I work next to what’s called Wide Waters, which are widened out areas they had every so often along the canal.

They used these areas to turn the boats around (at least, that’s the notion I have in my brain). I’m not really sure when or where I got that information (for all I know, it isn’t even true, but, as Stephen Colbert used to say, it sounds like it should be), other than to say that Erie Canal lore is one of the three things you most definitely learn about if you grow up around here – the other two being the glaciers, and the Iroquois (as we called them back in my day) or more specifically the Onondagas.

Anyhow, that was about it seeing daylight during working hours yesterday. By the time I got home, about all I did was fix the spring on the gate by the pool and then hang out with the dogs for a bit. I really haven’t been feeling well lately, and that was about all I managed before going to bed early (well, that and fiddle about with some teevee-related software). Oh, and I watched the latest episode or iZombie, which has become a guilty little pleasure of mine. It’s the kind of stupid, mindless diversion that comes in handy when you’ve quit drinking beer and your life now has a huge void.

I used to love sitting out by the pool, drinking beer and reading my Kindle. Used to be I thought it was because I enjoyed being outside and I liked reading. Turns out, I was really only in it for the beer, and bugs are really annoying when you’re sober.

Go figure.

On the bright side, my new little baby air conditioner was delivered yesterday. Even in the box, it looks tiny. I can hardly wait to get it installed. I guess.

I originally wanted to keep the install simple and just stick the thing in my window. Of course, I have crank out casement windows, so I can’t do that easily (god forbid anything should be simple). So I was planning on taking one of the windows out and cobbling some sort of seasonal installation fuster cluck. Then I thought maybe I should make it a permanent installation. But I have a really nice view out the window, and hate to lost half of that, so then I was thinking that I’d need to use clear Lexan™. But this is a west-facing window, and as hot as it gets on summer afternoon, it gets about a hundred times colder in the winter (the wind blows from the west all day, every day, all winter – aka, November to May – long).

So then I thought I’d just stick it through the wall, though that would mean either taking down the fake Monet watercolor, or the Picasso print that are next to the window. Then it dawned on me that one of my walls is actually (mostly) an outside wall by the front porch. So I thought maybe I’d put the a/c through the wall there. Then I thought, hell, if I have to put a hole in the wall anyway, maybe I should just put in a double hung window that I can stick the a/c in for a few months of the year, and get not only a cross-breeze but a view of my front yard and up the driveway so I can see UPS and FedEx when they sneak in.

So that’s where I’m at. Goodness knows when I’ll actually get this in. I mean, I still need to do fence repair, paint the house, and do everything else that I have on my list that probably will never get done before I die.

Not the way I’ve been feeling lately, anyway.

Oh well, at least it’s Thursday, which isn’t Friday, but it’s the next best thing.

Well, at least it isn’t snowing. But it was friggin’ cold and rainy this morning (and all day yesterday, for that matter). It was hot and humid when I went to bed on Saturday night, but I don’t think it got much above 50 yesterday. Fortunately, having gotten the grass cut Saturday, I took advantage of the shitty weather to put an outlet in my office in anticipation of installing the little $119 air conditioner I ordered in there at some point (window or wall, I haven’t determined yet – I’ve gone back and forth on the idea, and am leaning toward a through-the-wall install at the moment).

This involved crawling around in my attic (which is a pain in the ass), and yesterday was about as good a day as it gets for it. I actually had just about everything I needed – all I needed was a double gang old work box for it, and what with Home Depot being on the way to Costco, I was able to get that and still get to Costco right at opening time.

Of course I inhaled a shitload of dust and fiberglass whilst farting around in the attic, but, hey, that was expected. Now I’m ready for phase two (maybe as early as next weekend).

My home office faces due west, so it gets hotter than hell in there in the afternoon (especially since I’m generally in there with at least 150 pounds of dog and a lot of electronics), and I can’t leave the window open when I’m not there, because if it rains, everything floods.

If it had been up to me, I’d have chosen the room on the corner of the house for my office – two windows and a cross-breeze. But of course it wasn’t up to me.

It doesn’t look like there’ll be much need for air conditioning this week, though. I suppose that’s just as well, though it might be nice to use the pool one of these days. It’s only June, but with all the projects that really (really) need get done before the snow flies again, I can feel the end of summer upon me already – hell, in three weeks, the days start getting shorter again.

It’s a full five-day (on-call, even) week for me, so it should be pretty painful (it’s been filled with headache and nausea so far – I looked possible causes for that; trust me, you don’t wanna know).

Oh well, at least Monday’s half over.

I don’t really recall despising good old Dennis Hastert. As I recall, after that asshole Newt Ginrich resigend as House Speaker, the Grand Old Hypocrites were going to elect some other dude speaker, but it turned out he’d been diddling a few females to whom he was not married, and what with them having recently elevated Bill Clinton’s extramarital indiscretions to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors, they felt they needed to appoint somebody safe instead. Enter former high school teacher and wresting coach, Denny Hastert.

Now, of course, we learn that poor old Dennis was being blackmailed by a mystery person from his past, and is apparently willing to face multiple felony charges (and nine years in prison – thoug of course we know that people like Denny don’t actually go to prison) rather than come clean on what he was up to all those years ago in Yorkville, IL. It would of course be unfair to speculate what would be worth a few million dollars in hush money but, well, I’m sure I’m not the only person out there in the world to add up the words “high school,” “wrestling coach,” and “Republican,” and come to the conclusion that Coach Hastert may have been hittin’ the mat with an underage boy.

Not saying that’s what he did, of course – it’s pure conjecture at this point.

Of course, we’ll probably never get the full story on any of this because, at the urging on the former Speaker’s attorney, prosecutors agreed to amend the indictment against Denny so as not to explicitly mention the nature the “prior misconduct” that led to Hastert trying to hide the illegal withdrawal of some $1.7 million from his rainy day retirement fund. Which of course is exactly how you or I would be treated in similar circumstances.

But if he wasn’t engaged in a bit of man on boy love, then his attorneys didn’t do him any favors, ‘cuz let’s face it, that’s what everybody’s gonna be thinking.

Speaking of thinking, I think I’m awfully happy that today is Friday. As I’ve mentioned before, these short weeks seem to last longer than the full ones.

And goodness knows, this is gonna be one really short weekend coming up.

It was really nice to have been off for the past four days. I hope you were able to get some time off (sorry you had to work, Andy) and enjoy the holiday. I got about a quarter of the things done that I’d hoped to do, which means it was unusually productive time off. I’d really like to see this country go to a rotating 4/3 work week. Four on, three off, three on, four off, etc. That seems fair to me. Things were pretty warm here on Monday, but it was ungodly hot and humid yesterday, so our pet deer spent most of the day relaxing in the shade by the driveway.

Since the air conditioning here at work seems to be functioning, I’m almost glad to be back today. Almost. If I had a window (even one with a view of the parking lot), I’d be reasonably content. But I don’t, so I’, not. Thank goodness it’s a short week.

In other news, our Governor has scored a bit of a coup, if the rumors are true. It seems that he’s about to have the NY State Board of Regents rubber stamp MaryEllen Elia as the next state commissioner of education. This is a woman that was too incompetent for Florida, if you can imagine that.

Elia was fired by the Hillsborough Board of Education last February in a 4-3 vote…. [C]ritics complained about micromanagement, a top-down style, lack of transparency, and complaints from parents of students with special needs. One board member who voted to dismiss her “accused Elia of creating a workplace culture of fear and bullying, and failing to pay enough attention to minorities, including Hispanics.” Others, including parents, said that her disciplinary policies had a disparate impact on African American students.

Fear and bullying? Lack of transparency? Gee, I wonder what Cuomo sees in her?

Hillsborough County received about $100 million from the Gates Foundation to design and implement a value-added measurement system for evaluating its teachers. Its plan apparently included a promise to fire the 5% lowest performing teachers every year. Florida has a harsh style of accountability, launched by Jeb Bush and carried forward by Governor Rick Scott and the Republican-dominated Legislature and state board of education.
[…]
She is a strong supporter of the Common Core.
[…]
So, New York, once a bastion of liberalism, is getting a state commissioner who supports value-added testing and school choice, like John King. This aligns with Governor Cuomo’s agenda of “breaking up the public school monopoly” and using test scores to evaluate teachers.

The biggest news in the state in the past year was the historic success of the Opt Out movement. Last year, 60,000 students refused the state tests. This year, nearly 200,000 did. If MaryEllen Elia is state commissioner, will she raise the stakes on testing? If so, don’t be surprised if 400,000 students refuse the tests next year.

So, Sue, sounds like a good time to come out of retirement, no?

It’s a beautiful Sunday morning here. Not especially warm, at the moment, but a lot warmer than it was yesterday morning, when the day started off at a near-record low of 34 degrees. But it’s sunny out there, the sky is blue, everything else is green, the grass is cut and the weeds have been whacked so everything looks nice (which won’t last long), and as I write this, a young doe is strolling around in the yard outside my window.

This isn’t all that unusual (though since winter ended, they’ve typically stayed outside the fence), but this particular deer (well, I mean, I assume it’s the same one – she isn’t’ wearing a name tag or anything) has been hanging around here for several days now.

I got home from work Friday evening and saw her laying down in the tall grass in the shade just outside the fence. As I said, this isn’t all that unusual, so I didn’t think much of it, other than to make a note to make sure she was gone before I took the dogs over to that side of the house. She was there for quite a while, and at some point I saw her up and walking around, when I noticed her kind of nuzzling a couple of bunny rabbits, which seemed pretty strange because I’ve never seen a deer making friends with bunnies before.

Upon further review, I realized that these weren’t rabbits, but little baby deer. I didn’t want to get too close and scare them (plus it was really cloudy and dark out and nobody seems willing to buy me this 800mm lens), so I couldn’t get any really great pictures.

The good news is that I have today off. The bad news is that it starts out with a trip to the vet for two of the varmints, and continues tomorrow with the other one. The last trip was 3 weeks ago and it set me back $300, as Peggy tested positive for Lyme and therefore required not only the $30 yes/no test, but the more expensive $80 test that gets sent to the lab. Bud was already positive and still is, so he got his first lime vaccine, and gets his booster today, while Peggy gets her first one and her other vaccines, after having had 3 weeks of antibiotics. The it’ll be back to the vet in three weeks for her booster. Fritzi goes tomorrow, and I have no doubt that he’ll test positive as well, so I recon we’ll do it all again with him. I’m diligent with the FrontLine Plus and I check for ticks all the time but I guess that’s not good enough. I really hate ticks. We never used to have this problem up here, but I guess it’s just the way things are gonna be now that Al Gore has perpetrated the whole climate change myth on us.

Now that we’re fully into graduation season (because there’s a dearth of actual news around here, the lo-cal paper website is filled with prom photos – I guess I’m getting pretty old, because they look like a bunch of little kids playing dress up, except I don’t remember the girls looking like that when I was in high school. Must be the hormones in the beef), I would like to impart one simple word of wisdom to our new high school and college graduates:

FROM

From, as in “I graduated FROM college.” It’s not “I graduated college.” You don’t graduate college, the college graduates you. I’m not sure why this irritates me as much as it does, but for some reason the words “graduate college” are like fingernails on the blackboard (do they actually have blackboards in school anymore?). If they include this in the common core test, then the test is 100% worthwhile. In fact, I don’t don’t think you should be allowed to graduate from high school (let alone college) if you don’t understand this.

Two things: it’s “NEW-CLEE-UR” and “graduated FROM college.” That’s it – everything else is just extraneous information.

Oh well, time to go check the skimmer basket for frogs, I guess.

Oh, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY VERNON!

It’s not only the start of a glorious work week, but it’s also the start of National Hospital Week (though I’m sure everybody’s already aware of that). For those of us who work for hospitals, this means a couple of things. First off will be a series of daily e-mails from our “C” level administrators (what the “C” stands for is a matter of individual interpretation) telling us how vital our institution is to our community, and what a wonderful and vital job we all do (as opposed to the other 51 weeks of the year, when we’re all a bunch of assholes, I guess). As if that weren’t enough, they also force the mucky-mucks to distribute trinkets to the little people while personally thanking us for the jobs we do.

This morning, I saw a group of them gathered in front of the entrance to my building, so I immediately headed for the alternate entrance. Sadly, there was another group of the fuckers lying in wait at the other, so I was trapped into saying good morning and thank you very much for this plastic travel mug. Nothing says we appreciate you more than a plastic travel mug – and, hey, just because I have about 50 travel mugs and really neither need nor desire another one (especially some plastic piece of shit), it doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate it. At least this year’s trinket was made in the the USA (first time I’ve seen that since I’ve been here). I’ll give it a place a place of honor in my otherwise sterile, windowless office.

In other news, we actually got a little rain yesterday evening! Not a ton of it, but enough to at least temporarily knock some of the pollen out of the air, which is much appreciated. Things have been really dry around here – our sump “pond” is just a pit at this point, and last week we have about five brush fires in one day (and when we’re getting brush fires around here in the beginning of May, you know things are bad). Plus, it’s been hotter than hell.

In order to cool things off, we decided to get the pool open. This seems to have worked it’s magic, as a cold front is supposed to come through tomorrow, with a predicted high temperature of 58 on Wednesday (which, coincidentally, is the temperature of our pool water). It’s the first time in the five years we’ve been doing this that the water wasn’t thick with green algae (not counting the first year, when it was literally black – I was expecting the Gill-man to reach out and grab me). It’s just a bit cloudy, but that should clear up well before the water is warm enough to swim in.

I also got the grass cut for the first time this year, and we put a small dent in our piles of mulch and stone, but not much. I have so many things to do before winter, I’m a bit overwhelmed at the thought of it all. So I’m not gonna think about it.

Oh well, time to get back to work. On the bright side just two weeks ’til Memorial Day!