quick! put it together!

A quick update. The Caps won their first round series in seven games and there’s much happiness about the Metro area mixed with the knowledge that the Penguins are up next. I’m newer to D.C. but Washington and Pittsburgh sports fans (particularly hockey fans) despised each other. This is real border war stuff. The biggest stars in the NHL will be clashing over the next week to ten days; I think I’m ready.

There is a herd of transport involving G this evening. He’s due at the public library at about 5:30pm to put his Bionicle collection – actually, his own Bionicle creations built from the six million parts he owns – prominently on display in a fancy display case.* After that exhibit I’m running him to drama lessons (just he and fifteen cackling girls in the club) and finally to Gungfo lessons to finish the day. I don’t know how I got roped into being the suburban “soccer mom” dragging kids all over town in the Mercedes wagon. It’s really quite embarrassing. Sure, I offered to do it while X meets up with folks for Happy Hour after work but that doesn’t mean I can’t complain loudly.

The boys have been hired to walk and play with the dog of the former occupant of our house; he’s only moved down the street. I think he’s giving them $10 a day for the five days they’ll be working and all I can see in their eyes are spinning slot machine wheels and thoughts of new video games. I suppose I was like that when I took over some paper route that my brother had taken as a substitute and then passed on to me. Back then, I think I might have gotten $10 for an entire week – certainly enough to buy a whole box of football cards down at the Rexall.

We got a blast from a furnace front earlier this week and the weather was way too hot – just a warning about summer, I guess. It’s been rain and low 70s for the last few days so I’m much happier.

Nothing else on the horizon right now; at least not anything I can remember.

*Last minute development: Apparently the library has double-booked the display case and some five-year-old punk is already there with his “cars”. I told X to let them know that all they needed to do was walk over and tell the kid to pick up his stuff and head right on home. Easy enough, right? X said that what they really asked her was if, being the older and more mature entrant, G wouldn’t mind waiting until a later time for his shot at glory. Well, I don’t know…what does a five-year-old care. Fine.

t

me and you too

Good gravy, I’ve been a bit heavy on the news the last few days. It happens. I found out this morning that one of my favorites, Todd Snider, is coming back to D.C. over the summer and this has nudged me off the news for a bit. While I’m in the vein of musical thought I figured I’d throw out a video I’ve watched a number of times over the last month. I think I latched onto it while watching U2’s weeklong stand on Letterman when the new album was released last month – while searching youtube, I came across this gem. I haven’t bought a U2 album in well over a decade – no grand reason, I simply haven’t been moved – but I was a huge fan throughout the 80s and just maybe into the early 90s. This song, With or Without You was on the Joshua Tree album that was released during my time in Monterey at the very opening of my military career and I remember listening to it over and over on the Mazda 323’s cassette deck; Joshua Tree was a fantastic album. I still love the band, I think they’re one of the greatest to tread the stage, and Bono’s voice can still rivet the listener. Here’s the live version of With or Without You that closed a show at Slane Castle, County Meath, Republic of Ireland. Put on some headphones, crank it up, and enjoy one of the great bands doing one of the great songs…



“We’ll shine like stars in the summer night.
We’ll shine like stars, it’ll be alright.
One heart, one heart, one heart.”

t

we'll just fix that later...or not.

It’s not like this is much of a surprise. (There’s loads of Web chatter today on the same subject.) George Tenet was a seriously incompetent DCI; first with the ‘slam dunk’, and now this peek further behind the curtain. I don’t know much more about him, but I have watched and listened to a bunch of his ‘avert the blame’ interviews, and this simply cements his lowlight resume. This caper that led to the CIA, and military members, to torture would be comical if the result wasn’t so heinous. I was trained by one the psychologists named in this article – two or three times – and it’s hard to believe that the SERE leaders didn’t fight back harder. Even with that mark against the SERE record, the CIA, legislators, and OLC were delinquent in doing in even the most basic investigation or background work on what they were proposing. Could it be true that they had no idea about the history and success, or lack thereof, of these techniques? Did they not understand that what we use as training on US forces (and I had all of these done to me, barring the water board) was done in an academic environment with training provided and after-the-fact review? There were timeouts allowed. Very little was a surprise to us and there was a clear timeline for the end of each training session. No matter where one might stand on the issue as a whole, if you were in this situation and decided you needed to call in the OLC for an opinion on legality then you better have done your homework. What your mind is telling you is that this walks, talks, and smells like torture yet all you do at that point is sit on your ass, at a desk, and make up whatever suits your needs. It’s not a lack of knowledge that’s embarrassing - knowledge can be gained – it’s the straight-pipe sense of moral right that’s the problem. I don’t care if this was during a time when people were worried and scared – that’s why we have laws. It’s during times when common sense fails that law gives us guidance.

"you'd bitch if you were hung with new rope" - my mother

This interesting little nugget has somehow caught commentators and the public (as if commentators aren’t public) by surprise. During the President’s first complete cabinet meeting he told all his department heads and agency chiefs to cut back spending (or find savings) by a total of $100 million: basically, find some administrative areas they can be more efficient and make them so. Now, I’ll simply point out that there is a massive difference, in monetary value and importance, between the spending programs, budget, and the economic recovery bills so ridiculed as waste by Republicans; and efficiency of an operation or organization. If the military is going to have a budget of x trillion dollars and the big budget cut is going to be the $550 toilet seat then we've got some comedy. But, this $100 million dollars is a matter of streamlining what is required for administration and management for the departments and agencies – nothing more, nothing less. This isn't meant as a move that adds or cuts programs in the big "budgetary" manner – we’re not talking about cutting a fighter aircraft order; we’re talking about saving money on the process that orders the aircraft, see the difference? And it certainly isn’t a pathetic effort or ploy as assessed by Andrew Sullivan or Greg Mankiw. Going back to the $550 toilet seat that everyone hoisted in the air as an embarrassment back whenever that happened: we wanted – we needed – to complain about the $550 in the vein of pure waste, but now we suddenly find it laughable that $100 million in waste can be saved…and someone is willing to do it?

Look, this has been Obama’s character since the campaign. Remember way back when he commented that ensuring that your tires were properly inflated could contribute – along with other programs he sponsored – to increasing mileage and saving energy? Regardless of the fact that it may only increase mileage by 3 -4%, being that we import more than 20% of our oil used for gas/fuel, it’s a nice amount of savings. He’s always been focused on building a process that leads to an end goal and not dicking around with lightning rod tomfoolery. Remember the Clinton and McCain support for the summertime gas tax holiday? He didn’t bite because removing a gas tax for ninety days isn’t any type of fix or leadership, it’s pandering. What he’s building in his administration is the idea that we’ll spend money wisely from the very top down to the smallest agency. If they can spend $100 to do something that an agency has been spending $300 to accomplish then why should we guffaw at them merely because our economy is in the shitter? That’s some really crappy analysis by Sullivan and Mankiw. You know what you could do to make it really funny? You could relate it to a cup of expensive liberal coffee and then it’ll really get a laugh! Hijinks!

How about this one: that funny total of $3 in the average family’s savings over a year would only save you enough money for 10 more rounds of .22 ammunition for your rifle. Man, that is so funny!

Here’s the breakdown: this savings idea is the equivalent, in your household, of buying a plain label brand of NyQuil or plain label pain reliever. It always makes sense; in good times and bad times. We get the same actual ingredients for less money. That is a totally different animal then saying that you can’t afford a $60,000 luxury car and then settling for something in the $55K range. Can I put a percentage savings on the plain label medicine that makes it look funny in relation to a $55,000? I can. If you are saving $4 on medicine but buying a $55,000 car then it’s only a matter of about .007%. That person is such a damn fool.

Buy the NyQuil.

catty corner

We don't need to talk about the two opening playoff games the Caps lost at home this week.

Lemon went missing sometime on Friday and hadn't been seen or heard from until this morning. Needless to say, Pumpkin has been very distressed and on constant watch for the return of his best friend. We finally sent the boys out this morning on a reconnaissance mission - via bicycles - in order to eliminate a cat v. car incident. They weren't gone for more then ten minutes before H. sent word, via G. and his bike, that Lemon has been found - unharmed - not a block from home. There are some other folks who keep cat food outside and we think they probably she can't follow through on the wooing. X told me a few yarns about how their childhood mother cat would wander off for days in the springtime only to return knocked up and back to normal, so to speak. I went down and had a little talk with Lemon and she's seems pretty well crazed about such stuff but wasn't coming home with me. She'll no doubt work her way back home over the next few days and then I have a little talk with tramp cat. Unfortunately, we have no way of explaining to the distressed Pumpkin that she's fine and will eventually return to him and the huge couch.

I'm hoping tomorrow it's Friday because I'm ready for the weekend.

pop the cap

It’s the opening game of the playoffs for the Capitals tonight. The NY Rangers invade Verizon Center for the first two games (the second is Saturday afternoon) of the best-of-seven series. Nerves abound in the nation’s capital even though this shouldn’t be much of a test: the Caps should wrap it up in five or six games. But, therein lay the problem; the expectations are so high that anything other than a convincing win will be met with the end of times; or some such. The Caps system is very wide open offensively and they are susceptible to defensive breakdowns every game. The harangued poster boy for the team’s defensive miscues is always the goalie, Jose Theodore. I’m not one of the haters, even if X thinks he’s cute, so I won’t be overly hard on one player. Even with that, Jose will be on the hot seat throughout the playoffs. I’m calling for a shutout tonight to open the series.

Wish us luck.

state your case

I have no recollection of how this little debate got started last night. Really. I know that X didn’t have a book to read before bed – as if we don’t have books all over the house – and somehow we ended up determining which states had “distinctive shapes”. I, of course, ended up defending my home state as a distinctive shape. She, of course, declared everything west of Massachusetts as square. Here’s a collection of states. I’m not claiming “most distinct”, I’m merely claiming distinct and not square-ish. Damn east coast liberals.

planted seeds

Here’s a little insight into Justice Clarence Thomas. This may be the most I’ve ever heard uttered from him in any setting. I’ll leave my analysis to this: there is a difference between rights and the awe reserved for the dishwasher.

We had a pile of rain on Saturday (and I was working at the Library of Congress) so we didn’t get the square-foot garden* in order until yesterday. As the WonderTwins made a run to Baltimore to pick up children and mother I pulled out the tools and started getting the wood cut and ready for the frame. At one point I called X to see how she wanted the box configured – I knew it was to be 8’ x 4’, shush – and out of nowhere Corey showed up at the house with tools and tool belt in hand; sort of like a superhero. No real bother. I would have gotten there in the end but it’s much faster when the woodworker shows up on your doorstep. All the seeds have been planted and we’re hoping to take a weekly picture of the doings; if they’re interesting then maybe you’ll get a time lapse series of shots.

I flexed my manliness by sharpening all my kitchen knives and cleaning and restocking my spice and herb rack with a fresh batch of Penzey’s.

The NHL playoffs start this week – Wednesday for the Capitals – so the city is abuzz with anticipation. And, by “the cit”y, I mean the hockey weird-os.

It’s been awhile,

T

*As an aside, 600 lbs of top soil will give you about 6 inches deep over 32 square feet. I guess we could call that about 16 cu. yards of coverage. A train departs station A at 35mph at 1pm and a second train departs station B….

cubes of stuff

On Saturday night I created a stunning version of Campbell’s tuna casserole. Maybe stunning is too strong a word – I followed the recipe, sans chopped pimentos – and the boys set upon it as if a horde of locust. I don’t normally have luck with them when it comes to any mixed dish that doesn’t have easily identifiable parts and pieces. (I will admit that I added some shredded mozzarella to the recipe in order to tempt them with something a bit creamier; I’m always trying to sneak about the place.) There may have been a day’s worth of hunger hidden inside them but I have a different theory. Casserole. The boys have some upper Midwest (Wisconsin) DNA running around in there and I think this is just the first sign of those Midwest / Great Plains roots blossoming. X mumbled something about liking casserole when she was young while running the woods of western Mass but that’s just silly. They don’t do casseroles (or hot dishes) in New England; not like we do in Middle America. It won’t be long before I’ll try again on the meatloaf with a side of green bean casserole; the classic green bean casserole didn’t make much of a dent the first time around a few years back. Maybe I can round out the menu planning with scalloped or au gratin potatoes. Oh, I can open up with a lettuce, cottage cheese, pineapple ring, and mayonnaise salad. Those Midwestern eating desires will eventually catch up with them. The next time I make the tuna I think I’ll add the Ruffles across the top in lieu of my healthier version with just bread crumbs - chips on food!

While I was trundling about yesterday afternoon the little missus swung out to various points in NoVa and gathered 640lbs. of topsoil, peat, some wood, and some other junkity-junk I don’t remember and now we prep for some square-foot gardening at the top of the driveway. I’m planning on unloading the Merc this evening – so it’s at least drivable – but the rains have come and that may be on hold. Over the last week there’s been a good bit of arranging of seed envelopes on the kitchen peninsula and mumblings about whether capsicum and alliaceae can co-exist; some strange alchemy that sometimes escapes her mind. I’ll tell you my opinion on that, no idea. I am, however, quite interested in working the garden of little one-foot cubes.

For those of you not on Facebook, I took some quizzes last week and apparently if I were a Supreme Court Justice, I’d be Ginsberg; if I were a legislator, I’d be Pelosi; if I were a movie star, I’d be Grace Kelly. Take those for what they’re worth.

Hey.

consider your license suspended

So, here’s my daily issue – eventually, it had to come to this. When I drive to work I go through this intersection every morning (pardon my crap drawing, I did my best). I’m traveling in the lanes at the bottom of the picture and moving from right-to-left toward the #1, #2, and #3 lanes from where I’ll turn right: #1 and #2 are both right-hand turn lanes and labeled as such on the road. Also, when you’re sitting at the light there are signs above the signal that indicate that lane #1 is right-turn only (available on red), and #2 is either straight or right turn (no right on red, just so all the drivers know). The issue here is what happens through the turn? Or, more pointedly, what the hell should happen through the turn? Everyone, and I mean everyone, that is turning right onto this three-lane road that disappears to the right of the picture knows that the #1 lane ends pretty quickly and will push you onto I-495 (the Beltway). What they're doing in the #1 lane is using the available red light to turn right when there’s an opening in oncoming traffic; the light here is very long and they are in a business casual sort of hurry. That’s fair enough, I’m cool. Unfortunately, once the right turn signal comes up for both lanes #1 and #2 we’re now ensconced in the full double right-hand turn lanes. I’ll tell you right now that I’m always in lane #2 awaiting to turn right because I need to go straight through in lane #2 and I don’t want to get pushed onto the Beltway. I also have no need for #3 - as if some dumbass would be turning from #2 and ending up in #3 – if that’s you, you’re a problem; also, #2 let’s me eventually merge into a new #1 begins shortly after that first one ends. So, here’s the damn problem: every time I turn from #2 and stay in #2 I have some jackass from #1 who really wants to go straight ahead and is just fucking rolling into my car in lane #2 as if he owns the road; my turning parallel to him and staying in MY lane is apparently some sort of issue. I always end up giving said jackass a honk and he inevitably waves angrily at me for actually staying in my lane. Not one time have I ever had a #1 turner stay in #1 through his turn and then signal to slide over to #2…never. Am I crazy? Seriously. For those that are contemplating disagreeing with my tirade, I’ll ask you two questions: first, if this were a double right-hand turn onto a five-lane road, does the asshole in #1 get the first two lanes? The first three or four lanes? Second, If he can move from #1 to #2 during his turn, why can’t I just badass move from #2 to #1 through my turn and wave my fist at all the jerks in lane #1? Don’t you always remain in your lane through a turn…even if this were a single right-hand turn lane? The point is, is you’re turning on red from #1, while cars are coming at you in #2 and #3 from the left, you’ll stay in #1 to avoid getting t-boned. Doesn’t this all come down to the basic rule of not changing lanes in an intersection? I defy you to think about it and come up with any reason why you’d be changing lanes in an interaction, turning or not. I'm not saying you don't do it, I merely stating the obvious that you are wrong.

Damn it.

potting machine

(Sometimes you get archival stories...I keep them here for when I get old and crazy: read at your own risk)

I can’t believe it’s been eleven years since I hit the road with my friend, Buzz, for our first venture to the World Snooker Championships (we went the next year but it wasn’t the same staying in a cheap motel). About a year earlier I'd purchased an older Bedford caravan that looked a lot like this one with the intent of doing some caravanning around England; very English, indeed. Needless to say, the caravanning never happened and it mostly sat around – having completed only this journey before eventually being sold.

Way back in 1998, in order to attend the Embassy World Championships, I had to complete an actual paper application form for tickets; I’d mailed mine on the first eligible day in hopes of getting seats for the finish of the semi-finals on Saturday and the Sunday/Monday finals sessions (the second day of the final is always on the May Bank Holiday Monday). My ticket packet arrived a few months later and we were set – somewhat surprisingly – for all three days of snooker.

First, the Bedford. This little, old dinghy thing had the standard sleeping set-up with a dinette table turning into one bed and a second over the cab. The kitchen area had a small refrigerator (electric when in camp, propane when on the road), a two-burner stove, a small oven, and a radiator heater; all running on propane. If I remember correctly, we loaded up on Saturday morning with some bread, instant grits, eggs, milk, sandwich fixings, bottled water, butter, bacon, and Heineken: your basic guy weekend necessities. I also brought along the portable CD-player stereo since they didn’t apparently have stereos in Bedford caravans built in the 1980s. I stopped by Buzz’s to grab him – and his bevy of classic rock CDs – before heading out to the A1 and running north to Sheffield. The Bedford four-speed manual ran like a champ that day as we listened to some Sabbath (or any Sabbath family-tree band;believe me when I say I got a Sabbath family tree lecture) and imagined just how crisp the green baize would look when we entered the great Crucible Theatre.

The camp/caravan ground I’d found (I don’t know how…the Web was still a bit immature) was up the side of a steep and muddy hill on the northwest outskirts of Sheffield with nothing else around it. It took quite a bit of navigating to find - after driving past the bog at least once - and some quality driving to get the rig in and parked between the scrappy trees and mud. South Yorkshire is still a damp, cold place in late May and this was something we hadn’t really considered prior to the trip (see below: heater). The campground was probably half full with mostly tent and sleeping bag folks that were doing who knows what out in the cold and dirt. We had a power post for the caravan and a bathhouse about twenty paces away. Overall, it met our needs well enough since we were living large in the Bedford condo. I did feel a little bad each morning as we stepped from our warm cocoon – with the scent of toast and grits spilling out the door – and headed to the shower. The well-chilled and hardy north England campers would be hunched over small brews with hunks of stale meat in their medieval claws. Okay, not that bad, but it was dang cold in the mornings and I secretly admired their manliness as I ate my eggs and grits in the warmth of the camper.

Our first foray into the Crucible for the first Saturday afternoon session was amazing. The table is set in a pit so all seats have excellent views of the action; being that a snooker table is monstrous it shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise. You’ve got fully stocked food-and-drink vendors that ply a vast selection of sausage and/or ham sarnies and pints of beers – manna for snooker fans. Each session, which runs eight frames, can take anywhere between 75 minutes (if Ronnie O’Sullivan is playing) to 3 hours (if Steve Davis is very slowly ambling around the table). You can come and go between frames if you need to top up on beer but the place is absolutely quiet during play with only the occasional eruption of applause at difficult pots, great safety play, completion of a frame, and century breaks. We attended seven sessions over three days and watched on Monday night as John Higgins won it all for his first World title. We also managed, prior to Saturday’s play, to get then reigning World Champion Ken Doherty’s autograph as he entered through the player’s entrance. Damn snooker groupies.

Here’s what we learned on our first night of camping in the Yorkshire hills. The drinking of a good numbers of beers, playing Crib Golf, and listening to the Jerky Boys while sitting in a caravan in the north of England can be hilarity; maybe not to everyone, but trust me, it was stupid hilarious to a couple of half-loaded snooker followers. We were perfectly happy as our little heater kept plugging away and keeping us warm from the howling English winds while we played round after round of Crib Golf. The other thing is this: even though it feels nice and toasty when bed time arrives at 1am, don’t turn off the heat because you think you’ll be “warm enough” through the night. The Bedford is just a big sheet of aluminum bent into the shape of a box and boxy aluminum isn't warm. I was sleeping above the cab and Buzz was on the dinette-configured-as-a- bed and by about 3am it was freezing cold. Of course, neither of us were initially willing to get out from under any covers to save ourselves. I eventually, against the will of my shivering bones, managed to climb down and fire up the heater. Needless to say, the heater was hard at work all through our second night of camping.

By the time everything wrapped up Monday evening, with Higgins besting Doherty 18-12 in the final, we were packed up and ready to head home to East Anglia. We gassed the Bedford up, pointed south, and managed to make it home safely as the clock neared midnight. We made the trip up again in 1999 and 2000 (only having tickets for the Saturday semi-finals in 1999) but the Bedford was long gone by then. It didn’t have anything near the same feel as 1998 because we were limited to bars and the local Happy Eater for drinks and food – if you’ve never been to a Happy Eater in England, you don’t know garbage food from nothing. Looking back on that weekend in 1998 it was probably as much fun as you can have at a sporting event. I was at the Caps playoff games last year, and it was pretty amazing, but my love of snooker combined with a smaller venue and a crappy camper easily put it up at the top.

Maybe if the Caps win the Cup at Verizon this year I'll change my mind. Even with that, I might need to rent a camper and sleep out on 7th and F St. the night before to get it over the top.