When two out of three dogs came back inside this morning, I didn’t think much about it. For a while. But after patiently waiting for Bud (who we probably should have named “Bart”) to turn up, I decided to step outside and have a look. Sure enough, there he was, patiently waiting – OUTSIDE the gate. It’s been a while (a couple of years, I think) since he made a break for it so I was kind of hoping he’d outgrown that tendency, but once I got him inside I realized what he must have been up to. Mainly, chasing a skunk.

I don’t think he took a full shot, but he got enough to make the bedroom (and my hands, since I of course pet him) stink. And probably the rest of the house, too, though by then I was desensitized to it. Should smell great walking into the house when we get back home today.

Of course the first thing I need to do is go walk the fence perimeter and see if I can figure out where he got out. It was too dark this morning to see anything. Thank goodness it’s supposed to be warm today, at least.

If only things only literally stunk, it wouldn’t be so bad. After all, I’m sure everybody’s got a favorite skunk-smell mitigation recipe, which, if it doesn’t work, at least give you something to do while you get used to the smell. Unfortunately, there’s no magic elixir that will take the stink off this country while he-who-shall-not-be-named is President. I mean, thinks weren’t smelling all that rosy BT.

But now, well, let’s just say it looks like I picked a bad year to quit drinking.

Having had enough of Drumpf stories for one week a lifetime, I’m turning my attention to this feel-good story about a mother and her puppies rescued from death row in Texas. We get a lot of refugee puppies from Texas up here (pro-life state that it is), and the batch in this story were brought up to the same rescue – Helping Hounds – where two of our varmints came from exactly five years ago today (not coincidentally, both they and Fritzi were rescued from Southern states as well. Like humans, I guess they don’t go for that birth control stuff, but once they’re born, they’re on their own).

To celebrate, I finally got eyeglasses to replace the half-dozen or so pairs that they inflicted destruction upon a pair at a time (most completed destroyed, though I’ve been able to wear a chewed-up and pieced together – with electrical tape, vinyl tubing, and coat hangers – pair for driving and watching teevee) within the first six months or so of their arrival. I finally lost the last, best pair I had left and had no option other than to bite the bullet and get another pair (free exam and glasses thanks to the godless union benefits I have). I could’ve gotten a free pair every year, but at first I figures there was no point until the puppies grew out of their chewing phase, and then it was just pure laziness and my disdain for leaving the house unless absolutely necessary. Now that I have a prescription, I also ordered a couple of cheapo pairs online – just in case the pooches redevelop a hankering for spectacles.

Mother Nature (that bitch) also decided to celebrate by dropping about two feet of snow on my house during the early-morning hours on Friday (which we weren’t actually supposed to get). That made for a very early bout of snow plowing, followed by a somewhat treacherous drive in to work. A wonderful way to end the week. After a bit of a respite, they’re telling up to expect another storm today and overnight into tomorrow, though the amount and type of precipitation are still up in the air. They say it’ll be rain, then ice, then snow, but the exact proportions are up in the air (so to speak). If it’s mostly snow, we’re looking at 14″ or so. Or, Syracuse is. We typically get more than that out in my neck of the woods. What a difference 20 miles or so makes.

Right now, there appears to be some light, wet snow falling and it’s relatively warm out. I’m trying to decide if I should go out to the grocery store (to get what I managed to forget at Costco yesterday), or just say the hell with it and stay inside all day. I guess I’d better hurry up and decide.

So, we’ve now completed week one of the Trumpian Era, and there hasn’t been a nuclear war yet, so I guess that’s good. And it looks like we’re gonna get that shiny new fence across our Southern border. To paraphrase Saint Ronald Reagan, “Señor Peña Nieto, put up that wall!” Unfortunately, along with all this good stuff comes some bad, and people have been dropping like flies this week – Butch Trucks, Mary Tyler Moore, and now Mannix himself, Mike “Don’t Call Me Chuck” Connors. So many of the great TV detectives of my youth are dead now – Rockford, Columbo, Paladin (both John Dehner on the radio, and Richard Boone on the teevee – does Paladin count as a detective?), Banacek, Hec Ramsey (speaking of Richard Boone), Amos Burke (Gene Barry in Burke’s Law, remember that one?), Kolchak, McMillan, McCloud…. At least we still have Andy Sipowicz.

Seeing the people I grew up with croak always makes me feel old. Not quite as old as I felt this morning, though, as I walked up with my wife to her office to kill some time before the shuttle came. We followed a gaggle of student nurses, and either you only need to be about 12 years old to go to nursing school these days, or I’m getting really fucking old.

Unfortunately, based on how I feel trying to get out of bed in the morning (and by morning, I mean what I used to think of as the middle of the night – another sign of age, keeping old man hours), I’m pretty sure I know which one it is.

I guess I probably don’t need to tell anybody here, but this getting old stuff kinda sucks. It’s strange to look in the mirror (which I frankly try to avoid as much as possible) and see that I’ve got that old man chicken neck thing going on and crow’s feet around my eyes when I smile (which, as my wife will be happy to tell you, I rarely do – she seems to think it makes me look “surly,” but I tell her it’s just that I’m not some brain-damaged grinning moron – not that there’s anything wrong with that).

And of course my hair is grey and thinning (not as bad as it could be, of course, and maybe not even all that noticeable – the thinning part; I’m reluctantly forced to admit the grey part is eminently noticeable – but compared to the way it used to be I certainly notice).

Hard to believe that my time is winding down now. I mean, I’m not quite ready cash in my chips just yet, but the roller coaster is on the down side, and it’s definitely picking up speed.

When you’re ten years old, one year is a pretty substantial percentage of your life experience. Now, though, one year is all but indistinguishable from another – unless something bad happens, but even that fades a bit with time – which I guess is a good thing.

And your brain decides it’s gonna remember whatever the hell it feels like remembering, not what you want it to remember. Middle school locker combination? 18-37-29. What you went out to the garage for? Sorry, you’re on your own with that one, pal.

On the bright side, at least it’s Friday. And if there aren’t any late-in-the-day crises that arise, I’m hoping to skip out ahead of my normal quittin’ time and take the early bus home. The earlier the better, because Monday will be here before you know it.

OK, maybe “the end” is being a little over-dramatic (though this headline: Trump Is Getting the Nuclear Football is pretty nightmare-inspiring). Either way, it’s finally here. The day we’ve been dreading since at least November (or maybe longer if you saw the handwriting on the bathroom wall pre-election, but were trying not to think about it). Personally, I know I’ve been living in denial for quite some time (a plan I intend to continue to the extent possible for the next 4 – 8 years, if not longer when President Pence gets sworn in). Not that I wanted this to happen any sooner than it already has, but it seems like it would have been more appropriate to hold the inauguration a week ago – on Friday the 13th. I hope this doesn’t turn out to be as bad as it seems like it’s gonna turn out. Sure makes you miss Dubya though, doesn’t it?

I don’t know about you guys, but for me 2017 has picked up right where 2016 left off – shitty. After a rather cold and snowy start, things warmed up for my first day back at work last Tuesday. Theoretically, that would be nice. But what it actually involved was trudging to (and waiting at) the bus stop in 36 degree pouring rain. To say it was miserable wouldn’t be doing justice to the level of suckitude. Never fear, of course, because then things got really fucking cold and snowy – so it was back to plowing the driveway a couple times a day and freezing nearly to death waiting for the bus.

Yesterday it got slightly warmer, though still in the mid 20s, which gave us the opportunity to experience about 12 hours of freezing rain driven by 40-50 mph winds – which started up a couple of hours before I left work. I managed to walk from work to the bus stop without falling on my ass (years of putting up with this shit has me pretty well versed in the intricacies of doing the icy-sidewalk shuffle, but a few particularly nasty blasts of wind nearly took me down nevertheless)

Needless to say, the bus was late (I mean, it’s late when the weather’s nice, so an ice storm isn’t exactly gonna speed the process up) and by the time it showed up I’d spent about half an hour out in the elements. That doesn’t sound so bad, I guess, but by the time I got on the bus I was a shiny ball of ice. Well, maybe not a ball – I’m not shaped quite as spherically as I was a few months ago, though I would have welcomed the extra padding last night – more like an iceberg, I guess.

Whatever it was, between the sleet and freezing rain and the 50 mph winds, I didn’t thaw out the whole trip back to where I parked my car. The car, of course, was covered in roughly half to three-quarters of an inch of ice, which I of course had to scrape off before I could go anywhere. When I finally got home (to find that the snowplow had creamed my relatively new mailbox), my hands and feet were pure-white blocks of numb ice.

I’ve really had it with this winter – and we haven’t even officially sworn in President He-who-must-not-be-named yet. To paraphrase Lloyd Bridges, looks like I picked a really bad year to stop drinking beer.

On the bright side, it’s supposed to be in the 40s today and 54° tomorrow (with 100% chance of rain because god obviously hates us).

This morning, though, while they managed to get the streets pretty well plowed and salted, my driveway (and lawn, and trees, and…) was like a skating rink. And then stepping off the bus, I was greeted by a plethora of cops all over the place – in particular State Troopers. I couldn’t figure out why, ’til I realized our esteemed governor is speechifying at the county civic center this morning. It’s apparently the penultimate act of his “state of the state” tour – which ends with a 2:00 PM performance in Albany.

Apparently he wants us to get behind his new agendas that I don’t really recall him being much of a champion of in the past. Like free college (not to be a selfish prick, but I’m not planning to go back to school and I don’t have kids nearing college age, so I find it hard to give a shit about free tuition. Sorry. Maybe if people didn’t hate state workers and public school teachers or cared about other people when it comes to their healthcare, and ability to retire, I could work up some empathy for their goddamn kids – who I already subsidize with my property taxes and by them getting income tax deductions).

Not that I’m bitter or anything.

Of course, if he wants to propose a heated bus shelter on every corner, I’m willing to listen.

Speculation is this is the unofficial kickoff of his 2020 presidential campaign (oh boy).

Speaking of kickoff, our former sleazeball US Senator Al D’Amato got kicked off a Jet Blue flight from Ft. Lauderdale to NY yesterday for being a drunk loudmouth asshole. Either that, or for standing up for the little people whose rights were being trampled (because they were asked to switch seats in order to balance out the load on the plane so it, you know, would fly right). There’s even video, which is rather amusing because it’s one of those “who’s with me gang!?!” moments that ends, predictably, with nobody being with him.

For those of you who don’t know, Al was almost single-handedly responsible for giving us NYers Gov. George Pataki, god bless him.

It would be nice if a former US Senator could show a little common sense and civility since, as you are no doubt aware, this is the same airport where Esteban Santiago opened fire last week, killing five people and injuring a bunch more. As fellow passenger Jeffrey A. Wurst put it, “What I find disappointing in the situation is that we were one terminal away from where a tragedy erupted on Friday.”

As Peggy Bundy used to say, “oh, Al!”

I managed to do something to my wrist last weekend. I don’t know what exactly but it got worse and worse all week until Thursday it was so swollen and painful I couldn’t make it to the end of the day and had to leave work early. On the bright side, I had Friday off already which turned out to be a good thing because it only got worse. In fact it hurt so much I went to the urgent care and anybody that knows me knows I never go to the doctor so that should tell you a little something about how much it hurt.

So the result of all this is that I’m wearing a splint on my right hand which makes it really difficult to type (or do much of anything actually) so I’m dictating this on my tablet. I don’t know how great a job this is going to do so let me apologize ahead of time for any typos or other mistakes this thing makes. It’ll probably be better than my typing.

Fortunately as usual I don’t have much to say anyway –  there certainly isn’t enough time to list everybody we lost this year  – but I did want to take the opportunity to wish everybody a Happy New Year. Considering who “real America” elected President, I don’t have high expectations for 2017 but I certainly hope it’s not as bad as it seems like it’s almost certainly going to be.

Let’s just hope we’re all still here at this time next year – we’re gonna need each other to make it all the way through to 2021.

On behalf of the vast left wing conspiracy, I bid you all Happy Holidays from all of us here on the front lines of the war on Christmas. We’re not exactly exhibiting a festive atmosphere here at my household. The wife and I are both on call today, though hers only last until the end of the work day, and mine extends until tomorrow morning at eight AM, when I’m released from yet another week of unpaid after-hours servitude. My wife’s present to me today was to give me permission to not go with her to the in-laws’s house. Not that I don’t enjoy seeing them, of course, but I could get a call about a database-related emergency at any moment, and then I’d have to leave and spoil all the fun (because the only thing worse than being deprived of my presence is to be graced with my presence, only to have it suddenly taken away).

Instead, I guess I’ll just spend the day alternating between the Doctor Who Takeover Marathon (leading up to the highly anticipated Christmas Special) on BBCA and “The OA” on Netflix (started watching yesterday and stayed up past my bedtime last night). I’ve been watching Dr Who all week (or at least the past few days – not sure how long it’s been running), courtesy of a free trial of DirecTV Now, which ended yesterday (I cancelled it, but fortunately also cancelled the PayPal recurring payment, because the fuckers tried to charge me anyway).

DTV Now wasn’t bad, by the way, but with a bit of a clunky interface, a flakey Android app that kept crashing, no Android TV app (though you can cast it), no DVR capability, and no 5.1 streaming (except on some limited on-demand stuff and not via Chromecast), it just wasn’t worth the money. Plus the only thing I watch Live TV for is the local news (locals not available so I have to watch OTA anyway), SU sports (let’s just say there’s not much of incentive there), and football (also mostly on locals and every team I give a shit about seems to be a loser).

I’m now trying a free week of SONY’s Playstation Vue, which has an Android TV app and cloud DVR capability. Plus 5 simultaneous streams compared to 2 for DTV, though there’s still no 5.1 stereo, and SONY doesn’t have a deal with Viacom, so no Comedy Central and no CBS on demand stuff.

So I guess I’d better get going – all this teevee isn’t going to watch itself.

Whatever holiday you happen to be celebrating (or not) or whatever else it is you’re doing (or not), I hope you have a good day.

It’s the shortest day of the year (or at least the day with the least possible amount of daylight). Yes, the winter solstice arrived at 5:44 AM (EST), and tomorrow we’ll be gaining an astonishing 3 seconds of daylight in my neck of the woods. It’s always a thrill to see the days start to get longer again, even if it seems to take forever to get back to an even split between day and night (which won’t happen until the middle of March (just in time for St. Patrick’s Day). And although they call this the first day of winter, we have yet to see the real snow and cold (at least around here, which is kind of a scary thought).

Way back in October, I mentioned a band-aid that had been stuck to the sidewalk on my way to work for at least a couple of weeks at the time. Since then, we’ve had over four feet of snow and sub-zero temperatures. That sidewalk has been scraped down with a little John Deere garden tractor quipped with a snow plow and a salt spreader that’s probably dumped a couple hundred pounds of salt on it. It’s snowed, warmed up, rained, gotten cold, froze, and snowed some more. And through all of this, I’m pleased (and rather amazed) to report that that damn band-aid is still right there, stuck in the same spot it’s been for probably over three months.

Since this is a sidewalk next to the Roman Catholic Diocese and Cathedral School, I’m tempted to call this a miracle (all it lacks is a scab in the face of Jesus stuck to it or something).

This is second only to the miracle of the clock in my bathroom stopping only moments before the late Harold Camping predicted that the rapture would come on May 21, 2011 (as opposed to his previous prediction that the end times would happen on September 6, 1994) at 9:00 PM EDT (6 PM local “Camping” time at his home in Alameda, California) – thereby sparing all us heathen sinners God’s wrath (if only temporarily – you can’t cheat the Almighty forever, and it looks like we begin paying for our sins on or about January 20, 2017).

It was months before I replaced the battery in that clock, lest I usher in the four horsemen of the Apocalypse and Camping’s predicted five months of fire, brimstone, plagues and lots-o-death.

Anyhow, one of these days I’ll stop and take a picture of that band-aid (as soon as I can figure out how to do that w/o looking like an idiot – it’ll definitely have to wait until I don’t need to wear gloves) and post it here.

Until then, better get out there and get your Xmas shopping done. After all, there are only five days until the big after-Christmas sales start.

Technically, it’s been a short week for me since I had Mon, Tue, Wed off. That was because one of my stepdaughters was in town and staying with is, so I thought I’d do her the honor of taking a couple days off to hang out. Of course, I’m not exactly a thrill a minute so I doubt she cared much, but I’m always happy to have an excuse to take time off.

She left yesterday and I guess managed to catch her flight prior to the onset of some pretty nasty weather. By the time I got out of work yesterday and headed to the bus stop, it was something like 12 degrees out, with winds somewhere north of 30 miles an hour, and plenty of snow. It was a whiteout as I waited for the bus, which was 40 minutes late. The wind had me caked in an inch or two of snow, and my hands were like icy stumps of frozen sausage by the time I got on the bus, and they were still partially frozen by the time I got to my sleepy little village – which is kind of surprising, given that it took over an hour to get there.

I was literally shivering as I brushed the snow off my car and drove at a snail’s pace (being still in the grips of a whiteout) to my house. Since the snow was showing no signs of abating, there wasn’t much point in plowing the driveway last night (plus I was too damn cold and too damn tired), so I sequestered myself in my office in front of a space heater and tried to thaw myself out as much as possible before finishing the process in bed with a heating pad (many thanks to Earl Richardson for inventing “El Warmo” – the first heating pad – in 1911).

The Warmo was one of Earl’s many “El” (for Electricity) products, which included El Perco (an electric coffeepot), El Chafo (chafing dish), El Tosto (electric toaster), El Stovo (hotplate), El Eggo (egg fryer), and El Teballo (electric teapot).

Earl’s first invention was an electric iron, and he also made a crockpot called “The Jug Cooker.” Not sure why he gave up on the “El” name for that one.

Anyhow, it did nothing but get colder all night long, and as I plowed the driveway at the 5:00 AM or so, the temperature was well on its way to breaking a 99 year old record cold for this date. It eventually got down to -2°.

So it was a little nippy standing on the corner waiting for the bus once again this morning, and there’s more snow in the forecast for next week.

I’d say I’m sick of winter already, except winter hasn’t actually started yet. It’s starting to shape up to be another shitty year like the one when we moved into our current house. That year started out cold with septic problems, too.

Right now, all I want is for this week to be over so I can go home and take a nap.

I’m working from home this morning, which would normally be a happy time for me. But today, it’s because I’m waiting for the shit pumper to come and pump out my septic tank. And things have gotten rather dire here, as we’re now into zero-output mode. No flushing, no showers, not even any brushing of the teeth. I really hope we’re the first stop on his route today, because I’ve got a little something saved up that’s getting rather desperate to get out.

In retrospect, I should have recognized the signs of this impending issue and gotten it taken care of sooner. But I’m rather new to the ways of the septic tank, and in six years out here this will be the first time getting it pumped out. Live and learn, I guess.

Even more exciting, it’s taken a turn toward colder weather and it snowed last night, though not all that much. We’re supposed to wind up with 6-12″ when all is said and done tomorrow, but of course you never really know what’ll happen. It’s all about which way the wind blows when it comes to Lake Effect.

Speaking of Lakes, I was said to hear of the passing of Greg Lake at the what seems way too young age of 69. And then of course John Glenn died as well. I guess at 95 that isn’t a huge surprise, but it’s sad anyway. I’ll miss him on Westworld. But he got to ride on the space shuttle at the age of 77, so maybe there’s hope for me to get a ride into orbit before I die. Though I think space tourism will still be something reserved for the ultra-wealthy during my lifetime. Oh well, I can dream – at least until January 20th, at which point all dreams will automatically turn into nightmares.

Not that a plugged up septic tank isn’t a nightmare.