Weekend Report

I have been quiet this weekend.  Some weird bug. I came home early on Friday and have slept and slept and not eaten much.  Interesting digestive adventures that I won't go into.  I am back eating a little and I think I will survive. 

Good week at the office.  I found a student intern.  I had lost her. I had interviewed her in March,  by video from home on a snow day and agreed she would spend the fall semester with us.  When I got back to the office I lost her resume.  In May when I tried to confirmed fall interns I couldn't find her.  And her classmate backed out.  She emailed me,  so I guess she found me. We pushed the paperwork through.  She starts Tuesday. 

I am making progress on planning a teaching trip to Hawaii next winter.  Two tickets to paradise and someone is going to pay me to do this.  And it is work I love doing.

The little conference I have been working on for the past few months,  SOLD OUT the venue on Friday,  six weeks before the program date.  I was worried that we would not sell enough seats to break even - blew that out of the water. 

Caves

I like the DC metro rail system.  I moved here in part to have access to a subway system.  I like leaving the driving to metro.   It is a modern system,  opening about 35 years ago.  The first clue to the age of the system is the extraordinary large underground stations.  Real caves. Atlanta and LA have similar designs. Much different than the older systems like Chicago and New York. 

Calling all muses

My muses seem to be out on a late summer vacation.  I don't have much to say and what I do have to say is frequently grumpy.  Late August has always been a strange time of the year for me.  It was end of the summer harvest season when I was growing up,   lots of work and lots of stress.  My father didn't deal well with stress.  My birthday is this week, and that has a history of stress for me.  There are unresolved issues from 45 years ago.  Hard to let go of some things.  I have to remember that forgiveness is something you do for you,  not the other person.  I miss going back to school. 

I had scheduled a meeting this morning to discuss a project.  Everyone and their pet duck showed up. Maybe they were prepared for me to be a bitch. I wasn't.  It was a walk in the park. 

Left my bag unattended for five minutes

I left my bag unattended for five minutes yesterday to say hi to a friend and when I came back some had slipped this into it. Wonderfully welcoming people.  I like this conference. 

Older Indians Conference

The last time I attended this conference, the earth moved - we had an earthquake.  A very welcoming crowd. 

Fading Away

This little guy has been fading away for several weeks.  I think he flew into the glass on the side of the shuttle bus shelter, he was pretty fresh when I first saw him 2-3 weeks ago.  The next day the aunts were having a feast.  He was still there a week later (I don't ride the bus often.) This afternoon he was still there, or at least the essence of him.  How far can he fade and still be recognizable as a bird.  Feathers, beak, his claw like feet, he still has the essence of bird. How much farther can he fade.  

I do research on aging.  We look at adults, fading, the same question, how far can we fade and still be recognized as the person we started out as? 

Better Day

There was nearly no one in the office today.  Fewer idiots around today. 

My Week With Stupid People

So, I am responsible for planning a national conference for this October 16 & 17th. We have made good progress, I have a strong agenda, great speakers (over 70 of them) and for the first time ever the majority of the workshop materials were submitted by the due date (1 August.)

Then there was this weeks's encounters with morons.

Tuesday morning I was on a call unrelated to the Conference and someone proudly announced that the White House is planning to sending representatives to the Conference to conduct a listening session to gather input for a conference they are planning sometime next year.  This was news to me, and I am THE person responsible for the Conference - I am personally responsible for the agenda.  One of my planning committee members had suggested it to the White House and then left town on vacation without emailing or calling me.  I am thrilled at the honor, but shocked that someone would add something to my program without asking if I had room in an agenda that has been packed to the brim since April.  I was mildly unpleasant to a couple of people.

Today's idiot encounter.
The Conference meeting space will hold 140 people, fire code that is the maximum number of chairs we can place in the largest room at the venue.  We have known this since January.  When we opened registration we set a cap of 125, a month ago we raised that to 132, and last week I raised it to 140. This week I noticed that the cap was back down to 132.  I figured it was an IT backup issue so I emailed asking for it to be raised back to 140 and the moron storm erupted.  Staff had lowered it (without talking to me) to 132 to allow for walk in registrations. We are nearing a sell-out 8 weeks before the program date(121 as of this afternoon,) and they want to hold seats for people who might or might not show up at the last minute.  I responded that I thought this unwise. I then received an email saying that when they thought about it we have not factored in last minute cancellation and no-shows. Could I please find statistics on what the average cancellation rate is for similar conferences (2% by the way.)  So we went from we need to hold back seats for walk in registrations to we need to figure out how much we can oversell the conference to factor in no shows. So if we go to the original cap of 140, and we have the predicted 2% no show rate, we have 3-4 seats for walk ins that may or may not happen.  Kind of back to what I asked for originally.  But it 2 1/2 hours of my life, that I will never get back went into getting back to the original point (and I have six people that I know of that are registered for the conference, but only showing up for their session and leaving - if anyone listened to me or read my emails they would know I have six people on the list who are not really attending.)

I only spent a few seconds pounding my head against the wall.  I have been home nearly an hour, and I have not started drinking.  A good sign of self control.

And I am thinking of working with these people for a repeat program in 2015.  Who is the idiot?

Better Day

Complicated week,  this was a better day.  In the words of Zorba we must dance

No Rubbish

No Rubbish, only the good stuff.  

Reeducation Camps

Progress continues on K's garage, the posting on FB this morning was watching cement dry.  I couldn't help myself, I was once referred to the concrete industry counsel reeducation program for blatant misuse of cement.

If your cement dries, before it cures, you have a problem.  Water mixed with Portland cement, causes a chemical reaction that causes the cement to "cure' or harden.  Cement, is mixed with aggregate, generally crushed or size sorted rock, to form concrete.  What K was watching was concrete curing.  It will cure underwater, but if it dries before it cures it will never reach it's full hardness.

Next lesson is cinder blocks versus concrete blocks.  Cinder blocks are made with "cinders" traditionally the incombustible left overs from burning coal.  Cinder blocks are kind of like popcorn glued together.  The are lite weight, brittle and have limited weight bearing capacity. Concrete blocks are made from Portland cement and aggregate.  Concrete blocks are heavy, have a high tensile strength and can bear significant weight.  Cinder blocks are used for non-structural infill such as partition walls, Concrete blocks are used in foundations, structural walls, in applications where the finished wall is exposed, and in weight bearing applications. Cinder blocks are in inferior substitute.

The Concrete Industry Council is very protective of the name and reacts unkindly to miss characterization of the product they are so proud of.  Apparently their reeducation program was very successful.  If we could only reeducate the drivers in this town as effectively.

Construction

Friends of ours are building a new garage.  They started last week by tearing down the old one.  K posted with several hours delay on starting tearing things down.  This morning it was waiting for grading and site preparation.  The contractor said they would start at 8:00. K kept posting on Facebook that they were due to start any minute, due 30 minutes ago, due to an hour ago, where the hell are they and why didn't I sleep in today.  I finally posted that I could translate construction worker. When a construction crew says we will start at about 8:00 am, it means that they will meet at Denny's for breakfast at 8:00.  They will wait for Joey to show up, he had a hot date last night, is a little hung over and his truck wouldn't start this morning.  Once he shows up it will take a while for his breakfast order and while waiting he will tell them about how he ended up leaving the headlights on last night running the battery down. After breakfast they have to head off to the building supply store for hammer bolts, then stop for gas, then drive very-very slowly to the job site.  They will be there in time to break for lunch.  If they say they will be there tomorrow, be prepared, they didn't say which tomorrow, it probably means this week, but likely not the day after today.  If they say they will be there next week and don't give you a specific day, start looking for another contractor.  

Kitchen Adventures

On the way home from last weekends bear adventures, we stopped and picked blueberries and I bought half a bushel of tomatoes.  Monday evening I made 12 pints of tomato sauce and canned it.  I had never done that before.  25 pounds is a lot of tomatoes, the food-mill attachment on the Kitchen-Aid mixer did a wonderful job of separating the peels and seeds. This morning I decided to make a tart with the rest of the blueberries.  Sometimes bad things happen to good pastry, I dropped the first tart shell taking it out of oven.  After cleaning up the mess, I tried again  - sooner or later I will overcome my pastry-phobia.  I have a loaf of bread baking at the moment, it smells yummy around here today. 

Bah bah

If I had 10 acres in the country, I would want a flock of sheep, black-sheep.  So much warm fluffiness.  Why black-sheep - they are shunned from flocks, every family has one, they are the underdogs of the sheep world, and the wool has a wonderful color without any dye.  Bah-bah!

Copper Fox

Rick Wasmund and his wife own and operate the Copper Fox Distillery in Sperryville, Virginia, about 10 miles east and about 2500 feet below the Skyline Drive. Rick thought he wanted to be a distiller so he visited every distillery he could get to in the United States and then went to Scotland, ending up with an internship at a distillery.  He came back and bought an existing distillery, moved it and put his mark on it.  Copper Fox malts and kilns all of their grains.  Malting is the process of allowing grain to start to sprout, under carefully controlled conditions - doing this converts the starch in the grain to maltose - hence malt whiskey.  It is the only distillery in the United States that hand malts it's own grain, all of the others buy it already malted.  They grain is dried in a wood fired kiln and smoked with apple and cherry wood (a lot of Scottish distillers use peat smoke.)  The operation is in an old apple cider mill and the fermentation tanks are stainless steel vats recycled from the previous tenant. The distilling side uses pot stills, with at least double distillation.  Rube Goldberg would be proud of the configuration of equipment. The staff is young and creative.  The product is aged onsite, in about 300 full size barrels (Kentucky put 1.2-million barrels of bourbon into aging in 2013.)  They experiment with hardwood chips in the barrels for color and flavor.  They offer a couple of single malts, a rye, white spirit with age it at home micro barrel kits, a corn based American whiskey that does not meet the legal definition to be labeled as bourbon because of the innovative aging, and recently introduced an Anise based gin.  I sampled the gin and one of the single malts and bought two of the single malts.  The one I have opened is the younger and less expensive of the two single malts.  It is smokey and very woody - very-very woody.  It has a little bite and might benefit from a more time in the barrel - but it is an interesting sip and I would recommend it.  I sampled the other single malt at the distillery - it is aged in used wine barrels and was significantly smoother - I have a bottle of that to open one day. Based on the sample it is very good. I am a fan of juniper based gin - so I skipped the gin. The tour is free, they offer up to three 1/2 ounce samples, and sell the products on site.  The bourbon like whiskey sold out, they are expecting a new release in August, I will need to make another trip out to try that. 

Rye

Catoctin Creek distillery in Purcellville, VA

This is one of the two distilleries that we visited this past weekend.  The idea, was hatched in traffic, while commuting from the far outer burbs into DC (a nasty commute on a good day.)  Hubby went to his wife with this great idea, and she told him to come back with a business plan.  He did, she read it and it was good, very good.  She is an engineer by trade and it shows.  The place is neat and orderly, with a place for everything clearly planned.  They make a rye, bottling two versions, a gin, and three brandies, pear, peach and grape.  I will sample the pear sometime soon.  The rye is aged a minimum of two years, with select barrels set aside for an extra year.  This bottle is the three year.  It is good rye, not my favorite spirit, but well made. It is smooth, with a smokey finish. The stills are a hybrid, pot-column still.  The mash is heated in the bottom like a pot still, then rises through a column still.  Very technical, in keeping with the character of the owners.  It is a modest operation producing something like 150 gallons of finished product a week.  They recently moved into downtown, into a building that housed a Buick Dealership for 70 years. They do a nice tour and have a very nice tasting room.  

Bear Video

I think I have made peace with YouTube, here is the bear video.  This was 250 feet from the hotel room we spent Saturday night in.

A night above the clouds

I spent most of the last 36 hours, sort of off the web.  We took a long weekend (not over yet) and went to the Skyline Drive and Shenandoah Valley area.  The trip was unstructured, with a few anchor points we wanted to see, along with whatever our paths crossed.  No hotel reservations were made.  Saturday we stopped at a hotel above the clouds in the mountains for lunch.  We asked, they had a room and plans were made for a night above the clouds.  We had time for the first of two distillery tours Saturday afternoon at Copper Fox.  Just before lunch we passed a small bear, eating along the stone wall on the side of the road, Saturday evening, 250 feet past our hotel we saw another young bear foraging (picture above, I have a nice video clip, blogger and I don't get along well enough for the video at the moment.) This morning there were two more bears, these mature adults, one crossed the road in front of us, and the other was climbing a rock face and munching on blackberries on the side of the road.  Amazing four bears in 24 hours. We left the National Park afternoon today and stopped for our second distillery tour of the weekend at Catocin Creek in Perceville, VA.  Interesting stuff, a classmate of mine asked me to partner with him on a distillery 15 years ago, I think I would have enjoyed it.  

I don't know who that man is in the pictures, remember DG is never appears on this blog.  

What is your favorite bird

Keeping backyard chickens is becoming quite fashionable in the USA. I would have a hard time keeping them in my backyard,  120 Sq ft of glass enclosed concrete on the third floor.  They do seem kind of simple minded,  maybe we should elect a few to Congress. 

Backyards

This is what your backyard might look like, if you had a few billion dollars and a full time staff of gardeners, can you imagine how fun it would be hiring the garden boys! I grew up with an unusual back yard. In the middle of World War II my Grandfather bought an 80 acre farm about 60 miles north of Detroit.  It was cheap, it was paid for shortly after the War, not the best farm land but he really didn't care.  He was looking for a place outside of the city to keep bees.  In the 1950's my parents moved to the farm, followed a couple of years later by my Grandparents.  I was born while my parents lived on the farm.  My Grandfather farmed a few acres of the farm for a few years, mostly tomatoes and strawberries. But for the most part it was his dream back yard.  30 acres of meadows and 50 acres of trees.  Eventually there were two homes, a pond and over 5 acres of grass to be mowed. My Grandfather's health failed when I was a teenager, and I assumed mowing duties, a riding mower and five acres to be cut all summer.  I hate mowing grass, I don't care if I ever have a back yard again, unless I can hire the lawn-boys.  

Happy Thanksgiving

I called my parents yesterday.  Mom answered the phone.  She thought it was Thanksgiving and wanted to know when I would be arriving.  I assured I would be there for Thanksgiving.

Fluffyness

Fluffy sheep are a recurring theme in my life.  We fell in love with the sight of a meadow full of sheep on a week in Yorkshire 7 years ago.  They appear so content and reassuring,  and properly cooked taste wonderful.  The US does not have enough sheep. We should start a campaign to expand sheep farming in the country.  I bet someone in DC would give me a grant for that.

Strawberry pie

I still have a pastry phobia. I am trying to overcome it by exposure.  In other words to get over it by making pastry until I feel comfortable. Hubby went shopping yesterday and brought home a huge box of tasty strawberries.  So I made a strawberry pie.  A basic butter pastry,  one quarter pound of butter,  tablespoon of sugar, pinch of salt, 1.25 cups of flour. Buzz it in the food processor.  Add a couple of tablespoons of cold water and roll it out.  Bake at 375 for 20 minutes.  For the glaze,  clean and chop about a cup of strawberries,  add half a cup of sugar, half a cup of rum, and a couple of tablespoons of corn starch. Cook over medium heat. Clean and half another 2 cups of strawberries and toss with powdered sugar. Chill the glaze and the pie shell. Mix the fresh strawberries in the glaze and fill the pie shell.

10 ways to reduce stress

1. Keep it all in perspective, if nothing ate you today, you had a good day
2. Laugh, there is humor in almost everything 
3. Use your vacation days, no one has ever sat on their deathbed and said, "I wish I had worked more." 
4. Get off the expressway, drive the back roads 
5. Do the important things first, put the rest in perspective
6. Decide what you will never do, and cross it off the list 
7.  Do your best and forget about trying to please others 
8. Don't worry about what other's think of you, most of the time they don't think about you
9. Tell the truth, it is easier then keeping track of the lies 
10. Love yourself 

If You've Seen One Fall

Back when I was in High School my parents and crazy cousin Bill and one of his wives, rented a plane a few to Niagara Falls for a weekend.  There are two sets of waterfalls at Niagara, nice ones on the American side, and spectacular ones on the Canadian side.  They landed in the US, looked at the American Falls and were headed for the bridge to Canada when Bill's wife of the day spied a shopping mall.  She suggested they stop and shop.  They said, well we haven't seen the Canadian falls, to which she said, if you've seen one fall, you've seen them all.  She didn't last long, as I recall she is the one who received a box of cow manure with divorcee papers attached for Christmas one year.  

This picture if of the smaller, upper falls at Lineville Falls in North Carolina.  The larger lower falls are behind me.  They are a steep half mile hike from the visitors center.  I did reasonably well, until the last 100 yards of the trail going back to the car, then there was the third fall, I stepped on something, tuned an ankle and went down in a heap.  Just superficial damages.  Onward! 

A little place in the mountains

We came to North Carolina to see a vacation house in the mountains.  What do you think?  A little large I fear. Anderson was not home. 

This is Biltmore, the Vanderbilt estate in Asheville.  It was built in the late 1800's. Very much an American Dowton Abbey.  It is owned by Anderson Cooper ' s mothers family. 

Local Brew

I am in Asheville North Carolina to look at a house.  It took three hours to drive the first 100 miles out of DC this morning.  The dinner beverage was made here in town.  Very good.  I really needed that after 9.5 hours behind the wheel. 

March to the beat of your drummer

I would love to be a musician,  but I can't read music.  I tried to learn for a couple of years.  I played the tuba in middle school.  But musical notes all look the same.  One step up or down the funny lines, they all look the same to my brain.  But they don't all sound the same.  I had to mark up the score, or I was hopeless.  Teaching music to the musically handicapped was how the band master described it. I don't known who was more relieved, him or I when I called it quits.

I do enjoy music, but perhaps to the beat of my personal drummer. 

Le Tour

I love riding bikes, and have developed a real love of watching professional cycle racing.  The Tour de France is the highlight of my summer, with most of the worlds best riders, spectacular scenery, and exciting competition. Someday I will stand on the side of a French road and watch 200 of the best of the best roll by. Yesterday's route was an unusual challenge with several segments on cobblestone roads.  The Tour rides on cobblestones every year, the finish in Paris is on a cobbled street.  The weather yesterday was rainy and miserable, even worse than my ride home from the office yesterday.  There were a lot of falls. Chris Froome, defending champion, (last year's winner) abandoned the race after numerous falls over two days.  The post race interviews were punctuated with  complaints about the cobblestone sections and calls to the organizers to not repeat the cobblestone sections - citing that Froome had been injured and had to withdraw.  They all seemed to miss one very important point, his falls and injuries happened on paved roads, not on the cobbles.  Many-many riders fell while racing on very wet and slippery streets.  Streets that were very difficult to ride on.  A few falls occurred on the cobbles, as always happens,  but for the most part the riders were cautious on the cobbles. What would have made yesterday safer, would not have been to bypass the challenge of the cobbles, but for the riders to agree to ride but not race in the very wet - very dangerous conditions.  Tradition is that the race goes on in all weather, they have ridden up mountains in the snow. But nothing stops the riders from all agreeing that they will not challenge one another today.  It happens, usually the day after a serious or fatal accident (yes people die in this race.) Why didn't the riders agree yesterday that it was too wet and dangerous to race, and agree to ride the course with caution and dignity leaving the racing for another day, on safer roads, with more riders healthy and able to participate.  I wish Froome a fast and complete recovery, but the cobbles were not the cause of his withdrawal from the race.

Boats

My crazy uncle owned a boat when I was growing up and a wild ride on the Lake Orion, if the boat would start, and if we could pump all of the water out was the highlight of a summer visit.  I've never owned a boat, a whole in the water into which you pour money.  My X refused to let me own one, I can swim, X couldn't, apparently I was not trusted.  When I lived in Hotterville, we were miles from water to boat on.  I keep looking at the Potomac and thinking I should own a boat someday.  Something small, and dry.  

Tarts

I have a pastry phobia, it is rooted in deep criticism of my early attempts. Mom could be quite critical when I had made a mess of her kitchen. For years I avoided making pastry, then for years I faked it with Pillsbury from the dairy case. Last summer I tired once, with the simple butter pastry, a couple of weeks ago I made a cherry pie, this week a blueberry tart.  I still have rolling fears, and need to vacuum the kitchen floor when I am finished - even if the floor is clean. This appears to have worked.  It came out of the mold easily and was nice a flaky. J liked it, but he had never met a pastry he didn't like. I need to find a more judgmental audience, but not mom.      

Lunch View

Once the Tour stage finished yesterday, it was time to get out of the house for a couple of hours - we went out for a walk and lunch.  Nice lunch, nothing spectacular, but a nice view.  The parking lot across the street and the marina are the Old Dominion Boat Club at the foot of King Street in Alexandria.  The boat club has been there 130  years.  There has been an ongoing debate with the city about drainage and access to the waterfront.  After a couple of decades of debate, they have reached an agreement to sell the property to the city, for a nice chunk of cash and a piece of waterfront property 500 feet south of the current location. They clubhouse and docks will be moving.  The old parking lot will be incorporated into an adjoining park and the city will fix a drainage problem that causes local flooding when heavy rain and high tide happen at the same time.  And the city will be able to open up a wonderful section of waterfront at the end of King Street.  When the city wants to buy property the question is not, can they buy it, but how much will they pay for it.  30 years ago a wise man taught me to negotiate not litigate this issue.  

Stop

Stop, don't go there, or stop, don't do that anymore.  I was riding to work the other morning and decided to take a picture of the fireworks set up for A Capital Fourth, and came up against a fence. down along the reflecting pond between the World War II memorial and the Lincoln Memorial, they have set up the fireworks, and the path is fenced off with a STOP.  

A comment on Facebook this morning brought me to one of my other favorite Stops, stop doing that.  Five and half years ago I accidentally left my alarm clock off one morning.  I woke up in a panic and then realized that I would make it to the office on time without being shaken from my slumber.  Over the next few days, I started leaving my clock off, and to my great surprise I was making it to the office on time.  And I was sleeping better and feeling better about waking up.  Last year I set my clock three or four times, when I had an especially early meeting or flight..  So, STOP alarming yourself awake each morning.  The world won't come to an end.  

Getting Noticed

Few things will get you noticed in Old Town Alexandria, we are so use to seeing politicians, power brokers and minor celebrities that they get bumped into without being noticed.  But the little boat at the end of the pier is getting noticed. I saw her yesterday evening on my bike ride home and went back this morning for a closer look and a picture.  She was built in 2007 and christened Mr Terrible, she changed hands a couple of years ago and was renamed Usher.  The registered owner is a holding company, you have to pay a fee to access the database that will tell you who owns the holding company, and I am not that curious.  She is about 150 feet long, cruises at 20 knots,  has a crew of about half a dozen and accommodates 10 or 12 guests in comfort. She is available for charter out of Florida and the Caribbean for $175,000, plus expenses, per week. I wonder how many gallons to the mile? It is a way to arrive in style and get noticed and I am due for a real vacation.   

Produce

Grain,  hops, water and yeast, not really produce. Even in a town where ketchup was classified as a vegetable for the school lunch program,  we play fast and loose with definitions.  There is a 20 page court opinion in this town on the definition of chicken.  But beer is not really produce.

Cherry Pie

We were at the farmers market this morning and the bear mentioned that he LOVES Cherry pie.  I have had never made one.  So I bought a bag of fresh cherries and looked for a recipe.  Step one is pit four cups of cherries.  The cherry pitter is in the other kitchen, so I did them by hand with a knife.  Really not bad, cut them around the outside from the stem to the stem, split in half and the pit comes out fairly easy.  The riper the cherries the easier the pit comes out.  Put them in a sauce pan, with a quarter cup of good brandy, check the quality of the brandy, no rubbish. heat over medium heat, as they come to a simmer they will release a great deal of liquid.  Stir in 1.5 cups of sugar and 4 tablespoons of cornstarch.  Let simmer for a few minutes,  The liquid will thicken into a nice sauce. Let this cool to about room temperature (30 minutes.)  For the pastry start with half a pound of cold butter.  I cut this into cubes and droped into the food processor.  Add 2.5 cups of all purpose flower, a tablespoon or two of sugar, and a generous pinch of salt.  Pulse the food processor to  blend, stop at a course texture - be careful not to over process.  While steadily processing add 4-6 tablespoons of cold water. The texture will change, though it won't form a ball.  Stop processing, over processing will result in tough pastry.  Turn out onto a work surface, press into a ball, divide roughly in half and put half in the refrigerator to stay cool.  Because this is a butter based crust, keeping it cool is critical.  Roll the bottom crust, line the pie plate. Fill the bottom crust with the cherry filling.  Roll out the top and crimp the edge.  I made four vent holes, but the bubble up comes where it comes.  Bake at 375-400 for 45 minutes.  It may boil over, I baked it on a cookie sheet lined with foil.  If I had known it was the easy, I would have done  this years ago.  

Remember When

Remember mechanical ice cube trays.  I grew up with these.  I didn't have an ice maker in the house until I bought my second house.  Would a teenager even know how to get ice out of one of these? Now this one is stainless steel,  how did we survive aluminum.  My mother would be shocked at the price,  $30.

Lunch

Lobster roll for lunch.  A nice treat.  There is a hole in the wall place across from AARP headquarters that does a nice lobster roll. It is hard to imagine,  but 100 years ago prisoners in Maine sued the department of corrections complaining about too much lobster.  Pennies short of $20 for a lobster lunch today. 

Ranting Ahead!

Okay, I have been trying to think of something entertaining, but the muses are on vacation (wish I was with them.) There are a couple of news stories from a couple of days ago that are bugging me, so here I go with a minor rant.

What is happening to our society? 

On Monday there were news reports of a major “rescue” – really an round up and arrest of teenage prostitutes, some as young as 13 in a couple of major American cities. The report was that most were runaways; at least half had never been reported missing by their families. What is wrong with our society when a life on the streets as a prostitute is preferable to a life at home, finishing middle school and high school? Why are officials excited about re-uniting these young people with families who either didn’t notice they were missing or couldn’t be bothered filing a police report? 

The second was a story about a couple in Texas who had a baby delivered by C-section while without health insurance and were billed about $50,000 by the hospital.  Why is acceptable in a country that spends as much on health care as a percentage of gross national product as the USA, fails to provide basic health insurance coverage to every citizen?  We spend more a percentage of gross national product on health care than England, Canada, France or Germany, and 20% of our population has no coverage. This is just not right.  

The news reporters hired a medical billing review service to look at the $50,000 bill, and reduced it by $30,000 by contesting charges for care that was never needed and by arguing for average cost of care charges – not charges that were 2-3 times the average for the area.  Medical billing is the Wild West. Why can’t we agree on what we will pay for treatment, tax incomes across the board to pay for it, cover everyone and run the profiteers out of the country? No American should face bankruptcy over necessary health care. 

What Makes You Happy

Find a way to do something everyday that you enjoy.  Life is too short to not enjoy yourself.  I keep being told that control is an illusion, but I try to do something that I can control for a few minutes each day. Color outside the lines, stretch the limits, enjoy the noise or the quiet, spend quality time with your favorite person - time alone, or join in the crowd.  Be the performance, or the audience.  Do what you want to do, and enjoy. 

The General

There was a running joke about George Washington slept here. In colonial times travelers generally found hospitality along the road and travel was slow so he slept a lot of places.  The steeple in the picture is the church in Alexandria Virginia that George Washington attended when he was staying in his townhouse a couple of blocks away.  Stop in for a tour and they will invite you to sit in the General's box. His house in Alexandria was torn down in the 1800's,  not uncommon. It was reproduced sometime in the past 50 years and is a private residence.  It is a common tour bus stop.  I don't think I would want to live there.  But what a nice neighborhood. 

Panda Horn

I commute by bicycle two or three days a week when the weather is nice.  It is about 11 miles each way.  It takes me about an hour each way.  Only 10 or 15 minutes more than riding the subway.  About 8 miles of it is on the Mount Vernon Trail. It is a well designed and maintained pedestrian and bike route that runs along the Potomac River.  It is technically a National Park.  The National Park Service posts a set of rules for cyclists.  On the list is the requirement that the bike have a bell or horn to warn pedestrians.  For a couple of years I had a simple bell, that no one seemed to hear.  We were in a bike shop a couple of weeks ago and Jay came up behind me squeaking the cutest horn, shaped like a Panda. People notice it and no doubt remember the fat middle aged man with the squeaky bear on his bike. 

Looking Good

So there she sits at the end of the car doing her makeup.  I don't know how women can do it.  Bump and rattle and they are sticking a pencil in their eye.  I would be blind and look like a clown if I tried that. 

Warm and Humid

Near 80 degrees with rain at 8:00 am. Welcome to summer in the swamp. I have been insanely busy in the office the past few days.  I keep reminding myself,  if it was easy,  they could hire someone cheap to do it.  I just wish I wasn't spending so much time cleaning up the mess. There are more productive things I could do.  But the mess must be cleaned up.  Failure is not an acceptable option. 

Hole in the ground or foundation

When you find yourself in the bottom of a hole, stop digging. 

Without a firm foundation,  great structures fail (just ask the guy's in Piza)

Which am I digging this week, a hole or a foundation? 

Incompetence

I had a nice "to-do" list for this afternoon in the office.  Then the emails started coming in.  A problem that I thought was resolved two weeks ago has not been, the person was told today that the simple solution we offered two weeks ago can't be done. She was told we can't do that, until you do what you can't do, despite the fact that we told you we could.  And that was the customer service department.  We are still making excuses for millions of dollars in new software that does not work after over a month.  My afternoon went down hill from there.  I spent three hours apologizing for screw ups by other departments that I have no control over and in one major case, don't even have a working contact in.  Then another issue with the same process, and another, and yet another.  Two people grossly overcharged, another undercharged in a way I can't understand (and all three work for the same national organization.) I finally did get someone to talk to me.  I told her "I understand why some departments contract with outside providers to do this work, I could cuss at an outside provider and not feel guilty about it." I didn't get anything done on my list. 

I need to change colognes, this one seems to be attracting morons. 

Farmers Markets

During the depression, my father's family started growing vegetables, and keeping bees to produce honey that they sold on the venerable eastern market in Detroit.  My father left high school during World War II to expand the family presence on the market (my grandfather was working 70 hours a week building Jeeps, my grandmother was working as a book keeper for a machine shop.)  Sometime in the 1950's the family stopped market gardening and shifted honey sales to wholesale.  Markets declined for 30-40 years and with them small family farms struggled. Over the past 10-15 years farmers markets and family farms have undergone a renascence. A google search will likely tell you where your nearest markets are.