The Neverending Holiday

This is neither surprising nor untypical of our family. A little more communication would probably help, at least in keeping down expectations, but wouldn't really change anything.

We were expecting the family (Other Brother, niece, two nephews) down here for Christmas. My brother bought a nice standing rib roast for Christmas dinner.

Our Other Brother called--on Christmas Eve--to let us know he and the niece would be coming down the day after Christmas and the nephews would be showing up three days after that. We cut one third off the roast and I cooked that up on Christmas Day just for the two of us. We opened presents.

Other Brother and niece arrived Thursday afternoon with enough time to visit for all of two hours before my brother had to go to work. We opened presents and played games. They were going to come back later in the evening to look through my new telescope but the sky clouded over. Last night they came over and we all got to look at the moons of Jupiter, the Pleiades, and the stars Procyon and Betelgeuse. The niece wants a telescope. She also thinks Betelgeuse is a hilarious name for a star (and she's never even seen the movie). Today they've gone kayaking for manatees.

When the nephews arrive on Sunday, they're all going up to Busch Gardens for the day after which Other Brother leaves for home. The niece is staying with the nephews at least until their mom shows up and then will go home with her. Not sure when that will be. The nephews may be here through New Year's but who knows when, or how often, we'll see them. There are still presents to open and the rest of the roast to cook. If I get enough notice, I'll be able to make a New Year's dinner for everyone. If not, my brother and I will finish it off ourselves.

Also, my brother and the niece were the only ones to ask for (and get) anything specific in the way of presents. The rest of us just give and receive random stuff. It's kind of the way we roll. It's actually exciting in its own way never knowing ahead of time whether the recipient's reaction is going to be joy, satisfaction, let down or, "WTF were you thinking?!"

I got two joys and a let down this year. Not bad.

Reversion to the Mean, Or: Coal For the Kitties

Now, this is more like it.

I came home Saturday to surprise Paribanour in the Christmas tree. Technically, leaping from the Christmas tree, about a third of the way up. There were four ornaments on the rug, none of them broken. I reattached them and we stopped the tree from turning in hopes that would lessen the cats' curiosity.

My brother reported that after he had kicked Mittens out of his room for some infraction he went into the living room to check up on the F.L.A.C. and noticed under the tree one penguin, a lump in the tree skirt, then another penguin. Mittens had crawled under the skirt. He also had to reattach a number of ornaments from a previous incident.

After I took away their lizard last night (I don't know where they found it. Jasmine and Paribanour were staring intently barely a nose-length away while Mittens played with it on the rug. I was surprised to find it was still alive and put it outside.), they all became agitated and, frankly, a little pissy and I had to keep chasing them away from the tree until they finally all curled up together on the kitchen table.

This morning, there is a branch bent down to the floor, one of the lower ones with no ornaments but strung with lights, and no one is admitting to anything. The skirt is all scrunched up around the trunk.

My brother has packed up the trains and track. Even he admits there are limits and is not willing to tempt Fate further. Instead, he spent the afternoon putting out Santa, snowman and penguin inflatables on the lawn and lights on the house and fence.

Doubling Down On Good Behavior

The tree now has ornaments. It does look much better.

My brother went out and bought several packages of cheap, solid-colored glass balls of different sizes. Most are more or less traditional colors: shades of red, green, gold/yellow and white. But some are just weird. Gray? Brown? Maroon? Seriously?? I can't even imagine on what sort of modernist artificial tree those might be appropriate. We did put up some of the darker traditional colors, but those stayed in their plastic cradles. (They came packaged with the nicer colors. Otherwise he would never have bought them in the first place.)

We refrained from hanging anything on the lowest branches, which does look a little weird but, overall, the tree is better for having ornaments than not. The cats have not taken the bait and are still behaving themselves, although Jasmine gets a longing look in her eyes whenever she sits under the tree and gazes upward. It's the lights.

Paribanour has been especially good considering she's the electronics nut of the clan. Whenever the TV goes on, she has to run over and hop on the table, pressing her nose against the screen and standing as tall as she can to bat at the picture. She crawls around behind and peers around the edges to discover where the sound and imagery comes from and where it all goes when it's turned off. Ditto with my laptop. She's the one who remapped my keyboard for me. Of course, it's not just electronics; any sort of tech fascinates her. She comes over to inspect the faucet whenever the water is turned on or off and has to stick her nose into the flow when I pour water into their drinking dish. I frequently catch her in the sink, inspecting the tap. The Christmas tree lights, however, she is content to lie under and just stare up at.

The train tracks still lie in great piles on the kitchen counter. Moving trains under the tree will be more temptation than any of them can stand, I'm afraid.

And, yet, who knows what my brother may dare next.

The Eternal Optimist Dares All

The Christmas tree is up.

I came home to find my brother had taken it out of storage and assembled it, with lights, while I was gone. A few other heavy and/or unbreakable decorations (the penguins and a couple of Santas) are also scattered around the house and under the tree.

He apparently spent some time, while assembling the tree, cowing the cats with various threats, both physical and psychic. Mittens seems suitably traumatized. Jasmine and Paribanour will occasionally sit up and sniff at the lower branches but are otherwise content to curl up on the festive under skirt beneath the boughs and nap. Paribanour worked herself into a tight little ball but, apparently, was still dazzled by the lights over her head. She slept with one paw raised up over her eyes. Jasmine tried to pick a fight with a penguin but, when it continued to ignore her, eventually gave up.

There are no ornaments on the tree and, despite my observation that it looks just fine the way it is and my recommendation to leave well enough alone, my brother still intends to buy some cheap unbreakables to gild the lily and tempt Fate.

He also retrieved the train set(s) that had been set up and forgotten (because unseeable) on the top of the barrier wall separating the kitchen from the cathedral ceiling living room. He's cleaned off most of the twenty-odd years of dust and grime and now has two complete trains and some three dozen pieces of track which he intends to set up around the base of the tree. He expects the cats to respect the layout.

There is a fine line between unwarranted optimism and outright delusion.

Just As We Suspected

Our smoke detector started going off on short random bursts the night before last. I figured the battery might be low so I retrieved a ladder from the lanai room and attempted to change it.

Attempted, I say, because the ladder was only eight feet tall and the alarm is set a good 14 feet up in the cathedral-ceilinged living room, right next to the air conditioning vent and just outside my brother's bedroom door. I'm not really happy with heights as it is and, standing on the top rung, I could barely reach the plastic disc only to find that it is not battery operated at all but attached firmly to the wall by the electrical wires that power it. I found this out by twisting the disc in a manner that would unscrew a normal battery powered model but succeeded only in wrenching it from the wall to hang dangling.

My brother came home to find the vandalized alarm hanging in a most accusatory manner, the ladder in the living room and cats resting on the lower rungs. I had thought that he, being taller than I, would want to fix the thing since the alarm was still going off on a random, if less frequent, basis but he said he had a larger ladder outside and would take care of it in the morning so I shook the cats off the rungs and dragged it back out onto the lanai.

When I came home last night, he had pulled the thing completely off the wall which means we have no smoke detector now although that doesn't bother me all that much since the only times it has ever gone off, other than this instance, is when my brother burns his supper which we already know because of the smell. (It didn't go off the night Mom draped a nylon top over her quartz heater. I woke to the smell of burning plastic, went into Mom's room, and managed to unplug the heater and pull the melting shirt off it before anything actually caught fire. Mom, who otherwise would have slept through the whole thing, was duly embarrassed and promised never to do anything like that again which, to her credit and despite the increasing dementia, she never did.)

My brother had, by then, moved the bigger, 15 foot tall ladder into his room so he could clean his ceiling fan but, before he could start, the cats found it. Mittens climbed all the way to the very top. And was obviously stuck there. The look on her face said there was no possibility of her
ever climbing down that steep slope (and this is the cat that climbs screen doors all the way to the top and back down again). Paribanour started up after her, very slowly, and only got about two thirds of the way up before she, too, froze. My brother climbed up to retrieve them but they maintained death grips on the rungs. He almost lost his balance pulling Paribanour off. He couldn't climb back down holding the cats and had to toss each one down to me as he pried them loose.

They're now banned from his room until he's done cleaning and the ladder goes back outdoors. Because they will not learn from experience. Mittens was so desperate to take a second crack at the ladder, she spent ten minutes clawing at his door to get back in.

So, yeah, after last night, I don't see a Christmas tree going up any time soon.

F.L.A.C. vs The Spirit of Christmas Present

Usually, by this time of the month our house is at least partially decorated. The tree may not go up until next week, but the crèche, the ceramic Santas, the carol-playing Christmas train, the various wreaths, candles and table ornaments and such should be out and on display. Not this year.

There is a glitch in our Christmas Plan. Three of them, actually.

The cats.

Bartleby, rest her soul, was never a problem with holiday decorations. True to her character, she preferred not to interact with, or even acknowledge, trees, lights, inflatables, statuary, really anything obviously temporary. Disdain was the order of the day.

The F.L.A.C.*, aka the Entropy Gang, are a different story.

Considering their willingness to sleep with zombies, steal pistachios to play floor hockey, race from one end of the house to the other at full speed leaping on and across chairs and tables and crashing into walls, wrestle each other to the ground rolling around before leaping straight up into the air, climb curtains and hang from screens, nest in the bookshelves, knock over trash cans, remap my computer keyboard, nest in the recycle bag, spread litter across the floor, and shred cardboard boxes before nesting in the wreckage, it's no wonder we're having nightmares about what they could do to a Christmas tree decorated with thousands of dollars worth of handmade European glass ornaments. They would look upon it as a challenge.

My brother has made several trips to the storage unit looking for any cheap, unbreakable ornaments he might have stashed away over the years and there are several boxes stacked up at the head of the driveway now, but we're still concerned about the tree itself. We just know there will be a contest to see which cat can climb the highest. Jasmine's too fat to win that one but she will compete and might bring the whole tree down.

It will be weird if we end up with no tree at all, but this year we may decorate in extreme minimalist style.

*Furry Little Agents of Chaos

Immunized and Released By Order of the Judge

The County Clerk's office requires those summoned to jury duty to log in to the clerk's website the evening before the scheduled date in order to determine if attendance is really required. Out of curiosity, I logged in early and caught the requirements for last Friday. Numbers 1 through 81 were to show up Friday morning at the court house, numbers 82 and above were excused.

My number was 374, to check in Monday evening for a possible Tuesday call up. I figured my dry run last week paid off and I was as good as home free. Dutifully, I checked again after 5 p.m. for my cohort. The new instructions were: Numbers 1 through 891 to report. All higher numbers excused.

891?!

How many notices did they send out for today? I wasn't even close! I went to bed early, slept fitfully, got up in the dark and arrived with time to spare.

After going through security (slightly more efficient and less intrusive than the airport) I arrived in the large jury room which was hung with landscapes and already almost full. A quick count revealed fewer than 300 seats. The folks running the show explained that there were outside phone lines we could use, restrooms in the room and a cafeteria down the hall which they now decided to use as an overflow room. They moved close to 50 people down there and our room rapidly filled up again.

Just after 8 a.m., they began registering us by hundreds. They were extremely efficient but there also seemed to be a lot fewer than a hundred people in each hundred called. The man in charge kept repeating the phone, restroom and cafeteria instructions and asking if everyone had registered as some folks were still straggling in. One woman said she wasn't registered yet, but when she went up to the desk they discovered she was at the wrong court house.

Just after 8:30, they announced that at least one of the judges wanted to "get started early" and that the bailiffs would be coming down any minute for the first group. We would be assembled by our numbers and sent out with the bailiffs in packets of eighteen. When the first jury was assembled they called the numbers randomly so, once we were in the waiting room, high or low numbers meant nothing anymore. My group was the third or fourth called and, for some reason, had 25 in it. We speculated that was because we might have an important or controversial trial with a possible large number of challenges. The order we called was the order we lined up and left the waiting room and the order in which we entered the courtroom. The trip between, however, was akin to herding cats and required a third elevator when two of our stragglers missed the one they were supposed to take. I felt a little sorry for our bailiff who was an older gentleman.

We were each handed a questionnaire at the entrance to the courtroom and warned that the judge would go through it with maybe the first three or four potential jurors but, after that, the rest of us should just expect to rattle off the answers when called on. In addition to personal information (name, residence, occupational and marital status), it also asked whether we'd ever served on a jury before, whether we had family in law enforcement, and whether we or anyone close to us had been a victim of, or accused of, a crime. I was appalled to find almost half my fellow potentials answered, "Yes," to these last two, some with multiple incidents on both sides including, shootings, armed robberies, auto thefts, home invasions and one arrest for theft of chocolate milk. I hadn't realized I led such a sheltered life.

The judge introduced everyone in the freezing court room, including the uniformed bailiffs, the court reporter, the state's attorney, the defense attorney and the defendant, who was a young man looking very respectable in khakis, an Oxford shirt with tie, clean shaven and hair cut. Who knows what he might have looked like on the date of the alleged crime, but his lawyer had him spiffed up and he tried to keep an embarrassed "Hey, I don't know why we're all here, either, it must be some kind of mistake" look on his face. With some success, I must say. He was charged with three counts: On the 4th of July last, 1. Breaking and entering a dwelling, 2. Breaking and entering a conveyance, and 3. Petit theft (less than $100). So much for the important, controversial case.

The judge explained the general workings of the system and the legal definition of Reasonable Doubt and interrogated us in turn from the questionnaire. The gentleman one over from me really didn't want to serve and claimed he was biased against the entire system and didn't believe the state should even have prosecutors but should leave everything up to the police. The judge was exceedingly skeptical. I thought the guy was trying too hard and expected it to backfire on him. When asked if he could turn up the thermostat, the judge explained that the county works on some sort of Stalinist centralized HVAC system involving a large facility somewhere in the county resembling a NORAD or NASA launch control center and if the one guy who controls that is happy it doesn't matter what anyone else feels.

Then the state's attorney questioned us individually, generally on the theme of "Do you hold any sort of grudge against the state or the police that might prejudice your judgment?" (The gentleman one over from me claimed he did by virtue of a previous arrest.) He ended with an explanation of the minimum he had to prove in the case using a hamburger analogy (if the judge defines a hamburger as bun, patty and ketchup, the fact that you prefer bacon, cheese and mushrooms is irrelevant as long as the prosecution provides a bun, patty and ketchup) which was unfortunate as it was getting on toward noon and breakfast had been a good seven hours ago.

The defense attorney then took his turn questioning us. He had fewer questions for select people but ended by expanding on the DA's hamburger, explaining that even if the state did give us our bacon, cheese and mushrooms, if they left off the ketchup we must acquit. I think even the bailiffs were salivating at that point.

We were ushered out of the court room while they made their selection, which took less than half the time they warned us it would, and then back in again to hear the results. Seven jurors were chosen, four white women, two white and one black men. No explanation was given for their selection. They were sat down in the jury box, sworn in then and there with promises to "truly and faithfully try" right out of Gilbert and Sullivan's Trial by Jury, and the rest of us were sent on our merry ways with the declaration from the judge that we were "immunized from this date for the next 364 days" from any further summons to duty.

We broke out of there into the hot sunlight like kids on the last day of school. I hope the kid really is innocent of the charges. I'll have to check the newspaper over the next few days.

Close, But Still Not the Jetson's Car

I've been a little disappointed in our collection of catalogs this year. The usuals have arrived on schedule and a couple of new, although not terribly interesting, new ones have shown up but, overall, and with the obvious exception of Hammacher Schlemmer, they're pretty bland this year.

The one I was looking forward to, Vermont Country Store (because it's the one catalog that offers old-fashioned metal ice cube trays with a pull-up release handle to replace our increasingly brittle, leaky plastic twist-the entire-tray-to-get-the-cubes-out ones) sent a truncated "gift" catalog without the usual old-timey necessity items--like ice cube trays.

Speaking of Hammacher Schlemmer, this is the first time my brother has ever tossed a catalog my way and said simply, "Want!" I don't blame him. The featured toy for folks with too much money is a helicycle, a three-wheeled, two seater, street legal enclosed motorcycle which converts into a helicopter. And it's only $295,000, including flight lessons. No telling what the insurance would run. Still, I think if I win the lottery, if I ever play the lottery, I'd rather just buy four or five Teslas and keep the change.

And, anyway, that's already old hat. The newest Hammacher Schlemmer (they come every two weeks this time of year) features a tricycle that seats seven adults in a kind of circular firing squad pattern. Only one person controls direction and braking but a fancy gearing mechanism means everyone pedals. And it's a much more reasonable $20K.

 

Now, if only it played calliope tunes and the seats moved up and down.

 

 

Dry Run, With Scenic Benefits

I went for a drive this morning, testing the timing and directions in case I really do have to show up at the county courthouse next Tuesday for jury duty. The instructions say to call Monday evening after 5p.m. to find out if my number's been called, and it may not be in which case I'm apparently off the hook, but if it is I'm supposed to be there at 8a.m. and I sure don't want to get lost or be delayed by rush hour traffic on the way.

I left the house later than I'd intended and without the written directions on the notice itself and missed a turn I know I should have taken, although the route I took seemed not to take any longer and may, in fact, be a viable alternative, and still managed to get there with time to spare. Frankly, I expected a lot more traffic for the middle of rush hour. The only really annoying part of the trip was driving directly into the sunrise.

On the return trip, of course, I had the road pretty much all to myself. The sun was at my back, the temperature was rising through the seventies on its way to a predicted 86F (eat your hearts out everyone else in the continental deepfreeze), the Mexican clover is in full bloom, coating fields and lawns in its pale purple imitation snowfall, the construction guys have moved noticeably along in their sidewalk building although I remain confident in my prediction we will not see them at our place until well after New Year's, and the local construction-related speed trap is up and running (fines are double for speeding in a work zone when workers are working, which is all the incentive the city cops need). It's a good day.

And the fact that I took the time to ensure my readiness for jury duty probably means I won't be called after all.

It Was a Species Specific Party

We seem to have survived our bout of giving thanks and are recovering nicely.

The day itself went well. I managed to coordinate myself well enough to be able to clean up as I went along so there was no huge pile of pots, pans and dishes at the end and, yet, everything came out done at the same time. Turkey, sausage/cornbread stuffing, sweet potatoes in a brown sugar/pineapple glaze, scalloped potatoes, sweet corn, carrots, tomatoes, homemade cranberry sauce (which somehow always impresses people even though it's the easiest thing in the world to make), fresh rolls and apple pie. Not sure I could time that all right again if I wanted to.

Our biggest challenge came as we were sitting down at table and realized all three cats were in the kitchen with better then half a roast turkey sitting on the counter. We spent the next ten minutes chasing them down and (gently) tossing them out into the foyer and closing the door behind them. They knew exactly what was up and were not cooperative but we got to eat in peace. They made up for it by digging out all their catnip mice from wherever they'd been hidden and bouncing off the walls and racing at top speed down the halls and across the furniture all weekend.

I refuse to shop at all over the holiday weekend but my brother went out once. All he got were a couple of air mattresses in case our Other Brother and the nephews come by for Christmas/New Year's. It took him a good four hours. He could just as easily have waited until any time this week, or even next, but I guess the urge struck him. He had another piece of pie to help himself recuperate.

Financial Wheeling and Dealing, Tax Division

The deadline for renewing my car's registration is here . . . so I bought a couple bottles of wine.

It's not that the re-registration process is something that could drive someone to drink. I have mentioned before that it's actually very quick, simple and relatively painless. Bring the registration notice to the county building, pick up a number, stand in the shortest imaginable line (there was one couple ahead of me), hand the notice to the clerk, pay the fee, receive the sticker and off you go. Fifteen minutes, including travel time (we live pretty near the county building).

No, the wine, or at least some purchase (I also bought dates, figs, tomatoes, onions, a wedge of brie and a pomegranate), is necessary because the county insists on tacking on a surcharge to all payments made with debit/credit cards and, since I still use my bank back in Salt Lake City, meaning all ATMs out here are out-of-market and charge fees for extracting cash, therefor getting said money requires going to the grocery store and adding on the cash-back option to my purchase.

Theoretically, I could just buy a pack of gum and still get the $60 cash back but that seems lame and Thanksgiving is here so we're going to indulge anyway.

And the car's legal for another year.

Miscellanea, Garden Variety

My brother brought home a huge semi-ripe papaya yesterday. It was a gift. It's sitting on the kitchen counter on the theory and expectation that it, like mangoes, will continue to ripen on its own. When he deems it ready, he intends to plant the seeds. I have no idea what his criteria are, but if he manages it, we'll have fresh papaya.

Meanwhile, our inconsistent lawn mowing has paid off in the sprouting of three new mango trees. Unfortunately, they are either directly under the current mango or off in the property line and need to be transplanted. Neighbor Mike, who ran out and bought his own mango based on how good ours taste only to discover he had gotten a different, and not nearly as sweet, species, has already claimed one sapling. My brother intends to give one of the others away. The third will be transplanted to an appropriate spot.

Meanwhile, the coconut palm has had a good year. A full dozen and a half have dropped so far with at least that many more still tucked up under the fronds. Of those that have fallen maybe seven are basically dead. Most of the rest slosh when shaken, meaning they are full of milk, and will be harvested for both milk and meat as soon as I can find where my brother hid the machete. The remaining two have sprouted. One will be planted as soon as we can find an open space far enough away from power lines so the electric crews wont feel threatened and trim it to death. The other will be given away.

The orange tree has grown at least a foot since planting and its top has opened up. My brother continues to feed and water it.

The last of the cherry tomatoes and sweet peppers are long gone. The banana tree is still in its tub and needs to be planted.

If we ever decide to go full Fruitarian, we could be pretty well self-sufficient. (Ain't gonna happen. My brother's a full-bore carnivore and I'll never survive without bacon.)

Job Security

The town work crews have started putting in the sidewalks they warned us about months ago.

I could tell because the local police set up a two car speed trap right in front of our house, which is still a couple of miles from where the crews are working, to try and slow people approaching the construction zone from our direction. The police station itself is only about half a mile from the construction in the other direction and there's a controlled intersection right there so not many folks are up to speed yet when approaching that way.

The construction is only on the southbound side of the street, at least so far, and considering where they are, the size of the work crew I saw and the necessary surveying, staking, grading, cutting, clearing, digging, forming, pouring, curing and clean up involved, I don't expect to see them down our way until well after the first of the year. Of course, now that we're safely out of Rainy Season and almost out of Hurricane Season, they can only be slowed down by Holiday Season. That's Thanksgiving/Hanukkah, Christmas and New Year in the next six weeks, more than enough to grind any public project to a standstill.

At least the cops can make their quotas without having to drive all over town.

Call of Duty

So it seems, between voting and donating blood, two weeks ago was my voluntary good citizenship week. My involuntary good citizenship week is next month.

I received a summons for jury duty.

It came with my exclusive juror number, directions and a map to the courthouse including exclusive juror parking lot, notification of food and beverage availability, warnings about punctuality and attendance . . . and a warning to bring a jacket because the courthouse is apparently hyper-air-conditioned and nobody can do anything about it.

I was called to jury duty once in Utah and was fairly impressed by the efficiency of the system. The light rail Courthouse stop is one block from the actual courthouse so I didn't have to drive to downtown Salt Lake City. After registering with the clerk so they knew I existed and was available all I had to do each evening for a week was call the special juror phone number and see if my number was called for the next day. When the week was up, so was my exposure. Turns out I had a very high number (or it was a slow week jurisprudentially). I never was called.

This most recent notice doesn't say anything about a weeklong obligation, only my presence requested on December 10. I don't know if the system here lets you go after one day if you're not selected or if they keep you once they've got you.

Either way, I know I've got a jacket around here somewhere.

When the Air Went Out

I was driving home yesterday evening when my left front tire suddenly went flat. Fortunately, I was just starting up from a stop sign so my speed was negligible. I pulled over into the next side street and up onto the verge, although the left front of the car where I was going to have to work was still partially on the street. My "spare" was a donut and the jack that comes with the car is obnoxiously inefficient but I got down to the task.

This is one of the ways you can tell you're in the South:

In the fifteen minutes it took me to change the tire, four people (out of maybe eight passing vehicles) pulled over to ask if they could help. One actually passed me and backed up. One was a woman in an SUV who's idea of help, I suspect, would have been to call AAA or a towing company since she was not dressed to get on her knees in the street with me, but her heart was in the right place, bless her. The last one was the owner of the property in front of which I was parked who had just come home from work and, although I was nearly done, insisted on handing the nuts to me while I was screwing them back on and putting the hubcap back in the trunk with the flat for me.

Today I replaced both front tires. I'll probably have to do the rear ones after the first of the year. But, at least I know I won't be alone.

When Things Go Well

"Enjoyed" an exceptionally good platelet donation today.

I was in and out in an hour with hardly a protest from the machine except for a couple of minutes when the tubes connecting my vein to it suddenly started vibrating randomly, a sensation I could feel all the way into my arm. The phlebotomist (not my regular who runs the office but someone who has been there and worked on me before) assured me it was not me but the machine at fault and jiggled the plumbing around until it stopped which made me a little nervous seeing as one end of said plumbing was stuck in my vein but she was careful and everything worked out in the end.

At the start of each donation they run a test tube of whole blood down to the lab and in about ten minutes they're back with a detailed breakdown the one part with which they are concerned being, obviously, the quantity of platelets per given volume of blood. They let me see the test results, too. I was surprised to see two categories marked "high" and we spent a few minutes trying to figure out what they were and whether they were important.

It turns out the lab can measure not just the number of platelets and red and white blood cells but also the size (width) of the red cells and a slightly elevated number of mine were outside the standard deviation which is an indicator for anemia a problem which I do not, and have never, had. The other out-of-range reading was for monocytes as a percentage of total white cells, but nobody had any idea what that indicated.

I took a T-shirt, in addition to the usual cookies, as my reward mostly because it was humorously illustrated with a cowardly Thanksgiving turkey running away from donating. I stay away from the serious, especially the patriotic, shirts because they're not only preachy and propagandistic but tend to be maudlin and sappy. My favorite is still the giant mosquitoes chasing after the mobile donation bus. I have two of those.

For some reason, they wrapped the donation site with a leopard print bandage which is neither inconspicuous nor retro enough to be cool and can not be passed off as camo, either. That's definitely coming off ASAP.

We're Bombing in New Haven

In American theater, there are several degrees of importance. There is, of course, "Broadway." Major venues that are not literally on Broadway but still within the theater district are, logically enough, "Off Broadway." Those even further out but still in Manhattan (or at least New York City), and frequently experimental, are "Off Off-Broadway." And then there is "Off Off-Off-Broadway, sometimes also known as "New Haven."

We have the same thing with elections. We have elections around here every year for something or other. The big ones, of course, are the even-numbered year quadrennial presidential elections when we enjoy months of vicious mudslinging advertisements, day-long lines in the hot sun, eight-page ballots crammed with ridiculous proposed constitutional amendments the legislature was too craven to pass on their own, hanging chads, miscounts, recounts and court challenges. And the unrelenting attention of the national news media. This is our political "Broadway."

Two years later, in the intervening even years, we have our off-year elections when the federal House of Representatives, the state legislature, governor and the rest of the elected state officials, and the occasional U.S. Senator all stand for office. Fewer people show up for this one than the presidential elections but the governorship is important enough to attract a fairly decent turnout most years.

Then there are the off off-year elections. The odd-numbered year elections. The local races for mayor and city council and county commission and other even more obscure positions. The offices that generate the largest volume of most passionate, florid, ill-considered, barely literate and unintentionally hilarious letters to the editor of the local newspaper. This year.

Today.

And no one shows. I voted today. I went to my precinct just before noon. I thought I saw someone leaving as I entered but it could easily have been a poll worker taking some air. I was the only voter there during the time it took me to cast my ballot. There was a "guard" at the door, three people at the table where I showed my ID and received my number, another to trade me my number for a blank ballot, still one more to stand by and instruct me how to insert the completed ballot into the machine if I didn't know how or had forgotten since last time and two sitting attentively at another table watching the whole process. And that doesn't count the three people at the refreshment table on the way out offering to reward me with coffee and pastries.

I was outnumbered eleven-to-one.

People will bitch and moan about the president and blame him for things over which he has no control and are the Congress' responsibility. But they don't bother to vote for representative or senator. They complain about the governor but never vote against their state legislator. And for the politicians and offices that have the most effect on their taxes and day-to-day lives, the people who determine the property tax rates and manage the police and fire services, who run the sewer and water department and repair the roads? They don't even bother to vote.

But the letters will still be in the paper tomorrow.

The Night In Question

(The Wedding Party)

So, it turns out twenty (20!) bags of candy weren't enough, after all, and we needed to borrow one from Neighbor Dan who only bought 9 bags but his were three times the size of ours so it balanced out pretty evenly in the end.

Despite the last-minute nature of our decorating due to my brother's bout of the plague followed by his trip to the Bahamas and delayed return from spending an extra day with his girlfriend, we looked pretty good. A little sparse compared to previous years, but the trick-or-treaters didn't seem to notice.

(A Wedding Crasher)

The wedding party went over nicely. Several people even crashed it to have their pictures taken with the bride. Later in the evening, my brother joined them and sat very quietly until unsuspecting visitors came up close enough to collect their treats.

(Spot the Living Guest)

Reactions ranged from glorious screams to comments of, "Really?" (but only following a sideways jump of at least three feet), to one woman who got into a snit and just stomped off. Generally, though the responses were great, especially from the kids and foreigners. The kids, in particular, showed no fear. They posed with zombies and in front of the hearse and danced with the skeletons.

(Spiderman Does a Turn With the Singing Skeleton)

One German gentleman came up and, explaining that it was his first time here, asked me when the holiday normally occurred and how long it lasted. I told him it was always the evening before All Saints' Day and, although the decorations went up a few days earlier, the kids came by only on this one night. He seemed intrigued, yet bemused, by the whole concept. He especially didn't seem to understand the gorilla chasing the six-foot banana down the street.

Another German family came by later in the evening. They were relative veterans, it seems, as they were all dressed as pumpkins. I informed them they made a very sincere pumpkin patch but I don't think they got the reference. And the only beagle that showed up was dressed as a lobster. 

The giant banana came back later in the evening all out of breath. He took a couple of candy bars and said, "Thanks. That monkey's been after me all night long."

(Giant Lawn Cat Is Watching You Trick-or-Treat)

Final tally: 200+ kids of various ages and sizes plus almost as many parents/guardians (many themselves in costume), three dogs (one disguised as a crustacean) and the equivalent of 23 bags of candy. And lots of appreciative compliments. Guess we'll do it again.

(Y'all come Back Next Year, Y'hear?)

Show Time

My brother took an extra day getting home from his trip. Actually, he stopped by his girlfriend's house and spent the day with her before coming home.

As a result, he is now (yesterday and today) scrambling around the front yard staking and inflating his scary Hallowe'en decorations. Despite not being able to find all of the extension cords, they seem to be coming together much better than Neighbor Dan's balloons a good half of which he replaced with all new items because they would not inflate properly. That was a big hit to his budget this year.

Ours still have a few problems. The headless horseman is slumped over by the mailbox although the hearse behind him is doing fine. And there's a ghost out by the main road that keeps falling over. Either a guy line or a spike keeps coming loose in the wind. And the giant black cat looks a little wobbly in the knees. Nevertheless, my brother seems confident all will be up and running come sunset.

On the non-inflatable side, over by where the trick-or-treaters will be coming up the drive, the zombies have established a wedding party by the recently established graveyard and are merely waiting for the groom to finish extricating himself from the ground. The bride looks positively ethereal.

And on the more mundane, but no less important, sugar front: We have twenty (20!) bags of assorted candy bars sitting on the dining room table being inspected by the cats. Our contribution to the continuing childhood diabetes epidemic is well established.

Let the pint-sized hordes descend. Let the pillaging and plundering commence.

The Cuddly Un-Dead

Well, my brother left for the bus to the boat to the Bahamas this morning and none of the Hallowe'en decorations are up, yet, although that's not entirely his fault.

(Paribanour and "Larry")

The cats, it seems, have adopted the newly arrived zombies and are much more comfortable cuddling with them than with the living humans who, y'know, feed them and clean their litter boxes and play with them and give them treats. Case in point: Paribanour snuggling up with both "Larry" and "Henry." 

                            

                                     (And with "Henry")

   (Paribanour relaxing in Henry's embrace . . .)   

I do like the way their eyes light up and match the zombies'.

We'll have to hurry to put up our decorations when my brother returns. Most of them are in storage and I don't even know where the storage company is so I can't do it myself. Neighbor Dan has his all laid out and was inflating them yesterday evening but he complained that the motors on several of them seemed to be wearing out and were just not pushing air like they should.

(. . . and sharing the love with Larry)

I wish we could trust the cats outside. They'd make a great addition to the cemetery section with their dark gray fur and glowing eyes. Maybe they'd be happy to curl up with their undead buddies out on the lawn. More likely, they'll freak out completely when a hundred or so costumed little kids and their parents wander up our drive.

That's the sort of thing that would bother them.

Baby Steps Abroad

My brother is leaving this weekend and I couldn't be happier.

And it's not because I will have the house . . . and the cats . . . to myself.

Seriously. I can not recall any time when he has ever taken a vacation. He had brochures for Alaska a couple of years back, before Mom died, and seemed serious about it once I was there to look after her while he was gone, but he broke up with his then girlfriend and the whole plan, what there was of it, just sort of disappeared.

This weekend is no where near as ambitious. His bowling league is taking a short cruise to the Bahamas. Tomorrow morning, early, they take a chartered bus to Miami. He'll be back Sunday night. I had assumed he would be taking his current girlfriend with him but he didn't start seeing her until after the arrangements had already been made and her schedule won't allow it anyway, this time, so he's sharing a cabin with a fellow team member instead.

He's got his birth certificate and other paperwork together. He's never left the country before, not even when he was in the Air Force, and has never had a passport so, even though the Bahamas aren't exactly exotic*, this is still kind of a big deal for him.

I hope he has a great time. If he does, he might be willing to try another vacation sometime. Who knows? He could develop the habit. And I promise not to get into the liquor cabinet or throw any wild parties while he's gone.

*Apologies to any Bahamians.

Critterman Redux

My brother claimed something was scuttling around in his wall again over the weekend, the same spot the 'possum was pulled out of recently.

I didn't hear it and the cats were not acting any more weirdly than usual (it was Jasmine's turn to sneak outside when no one was looking and when we did the headcount and realized she was AWOL my brother let her back in but she'd picked up some strange smell or something only the kids could notice and she hissed and snarled at them whenever they got close to the point where they were ready to forgo dinner rather than share the plate with her) although as just noted they were not acting any less weirdly than usual either. My brother scheduled the Critterman to come back today.

He was up in the attic for a half hour or so banging around and pulled at least one juvenile opossum from the same wall space the first one had occupied. He and my brother are now touring around the outside of the house identifying all the possible entry points after which Critterman will block them up as cheaply as possible.

I suspect this is merely a skirmish. The war may last all winter.

Another Monster For the Menagerie

Behold the "Pink Meanie."

(Attaching a radio transponder. To a jelly fish!)

It's a jelly fish. A jelly fish large enough to be tagged. They grow over 3 feet in diameter with tentacles over 100 feet long. And they're suddenly all throughout our coastal water. Again.

(Pink Meanie way too close to shore)

(Supposedly yummy Blue Moons)

Hundreds of them have been spotted in the Gulf. Apparently, they "blossom" in response to the presence in the water of their favorite food, the much smaller but even more stingier "Blue Moon" jelly which they eat literally by the dozens at a time.

There's been a bloom of Blue Moons this summer and so the Pink Meanies, which otherwise exist as inconspicuous bottom feeding polyps, have responded for the first time in about five years.

Between these guys and the lion fish, I'm surprised we get any tourists at all.

The Frightful Day Approacheth

The local newspaper has officially announced that Rainy Season ended last Wednesday. They may be right. We haven't had a drop of rain since then and hardly a cloud in the sky.

Let the games begin.

Neighbor Dan took an early lead by laying out several of his inflatable Hallowe'en displays over the weekend but he has yet to inflate them. I suppose he's just positioning to get a feel for balance and composition but he has also not mowed his lawn in over a week and his grass is already shoe-top high and raggedy. If he leaves the displays staked as is he won't be able to cut and will be close to knee deep by the time the big evening rolls around.

My brother, on the other hand, mowed yesterday afternoon. At least, he mowed the front lawn which, after all, is where the decorations go and the only part visitors will see. Actually, in best Redneck fashion, he mowed most of the front lawn, ignoring under the live oak and bougainvillea and around the coconut palm on the logical assumption that neither decorations nor visitors will go there and it will be dark anyway, after all, so who's going to notice.

I've only seen one other house with any decorations and they've been up since late September but the house is nowhere near us and their display consists entirely of smallish inflatable Disney characters leaning heavily on the theme of Mickey as Sorcerer's Apprentice. Not even also rans.

Paribanour's Might've-Been Excellent Adventure

The cats were "out" last evening when my brother came home. He informed me later that he'd let Jasmine and Mittens in but Paribanour was too comfortable where she was and didn't want to move. As I was getting ready to quit for the night, I opened the door to let her in.

No Paribanour.

I searched around in the house in case she had changed her mind at the last moment (they do that frequently) and slipped in behind my brother as he was closing the door. (Mittens is a master at sneaking into my bedroom or bathroom without me noticing and then dashing behind/under the bookcase, the easy chair or the commode where I can not reach her. The solution is always to leave the room and close the door behind me. Within a couple of minutes, she invariably wants to get out again and will sit by the door until I reopen it.) My search turned up only two cats.

The problem is the outer door latch no longer works. I purchased a new "universal" latch but our old latch apparently was not "universal" and so the screw holes for the new one do not match up. My brother claims to have a drill buried somewhere in the garage and has promised, in his redneck way, to find it for me but that's somewhere way down on his list of things to maybe get around to someday. And until last night it made no difference anyway since the cats were all perfectly content to just lie around in the foyer and watch the world go by.

Last night Paribanour figured out how to open the door.

I'm pretty sure it was an accident. I think she surprised herself. Nevertheless,  . . . curiosity and all that . . . out she went.

Being a house kitten, she has no concept of the big world out there and certainly no clue how to deal with the opossums, raccoons, dogs and cars we know are in the neighborhood let alone anything more exotic (coyote) that might come wandering by.

I don't know how long she was out. Fortunately, she either didn't go far or was just returning when I went out to find her because she was in the grass right at the edge of the walkway lights. Otherwise I would have been searching for an all-over dark gray cat in the night shadows. She made me chase her a little but wouldn't leave the walkway so that game didn't last long.

So all's well that ends well. And my brother promises to find the drill. Soon. He says.

And Hallowe'en Is Still Over Two Weeks Away

I went out this morning to the library and as I drove down our main neighborhood street (the one that had the  lane removed and turned into a bike way and is soon to get sidewalks) I passed a house with the most extraordinary--and scary--lawn display.

The entire frontage facing the street, from property line to property line, was piled literally five feet high (more in some spots) with furniture, clothing and large, bulging, black plastic trash bags. They made a wall, a berm, a blockade across the entire access to the house. There were a trio of pick-up trucks parked on the street and median (the driveway was blocked). From the size of the house and the sheer volume of the mountain range of trash out front, I can only surmise the occupants must be/have been classic hoarders. I can not imagine how it would be possible to stuff that volume of stuff into the available space.

I have no idea if this is the result of an intervention or merely the cleansing after an estate sale.

The funny thing is, the outside property itself has always been well cared for. Lawn mowed. Shrubberies trimmed. No litter. There was never any indication that anything might be amiss inside.

I feel the urge to recycle some old paperwork and magazines, now. And catalogs. They're coming in fast, now, too.

Hair and Back Again

Well, that debate may have been resolved.

I went for my monthly platelet donation today and both the nurse phlebotomist and her assistant not only noticed my haircut but complimented it. That's a first.

It had been my habit, on donation days, to fill the car with gasoline, get a haircut (if due), and go to the hospital since they are all in the same general direction from home and vicinity to each other. Yet, in spite of repeatedly coming in to the donation center with new hair, no one had ever said anything before.

I haven't fully made up my mind, yet (and it's going to be a while before I have to decide), but it's not looking good for semi-competent quirky weirdness right now.

Also, I found a cheaper gas station, run by a nice Pakistani family, in the complete opposite direction over toward the grocery store. So that's another factor.

A Visit From the Critterman

Last night the cats started acting weirder than usual. At first they were just tearing around the house with too much energy, racing each other (mom included) across the living room, sliding on the coffee table, over the couch, onto the recliner by way of the TV tray, into the kitchen and onto the window sill (or all the way up to the curtain rods). And then back again.

Suddenly, it became very still and quiet. When I looked around from where I was doing dishes I saw the kids trying to climb the front of the bookcase and mama all the way up on top, over six feet up where she had never gone before, and threatening one of Mom's ceramics. She backed as far away from the edge as she could and, although I could just reach her, I couldn't get the leverage to haul her down. There was a dull, rhythmic thumping behind her which I assumed was her tail against the wall.

I called my brother, who is taller, to help and when he came out of his room, which shares that wall, he took one look at Jasmine and said, "So that's what all the noise is about." He was wrong.

After we hauled the cat down, the noise continued. Jasmine, incensed at being forcibly removed from her discovery leapt from a side table to a small but slightly taller curio stand (knocking over a vaguely disturbing articulated painted wooden wizard/clown "doll" of unknown provenance) to the top of the old TV onto the bookcase, thus explaining how she got there the first time. Something was in the wall and she had dibs.

My brother, after yelling at all the cats sufficiently to keep them off the bookcase, spent the night listening to whatever it was skittering around.

First thing this morning he called an animal removal guy who came out, crawled into our attic and removed a smallish 'possum that had fallen inside the wall and couldn't climb out on its own. He also found and blocked up the hole that had allowed the 'possum to get into the attic in the first place although he warned that his fix will not prevent raccoons from gaining entry if they want because they have those nimble, tricksy fingers and can literally pull the patch apart.

The 'possum is now on its way to the local (semi-)wilderness where it will be set free to live happily away from people and near to the pythons and panthers and black bears and alligators and tegus and whatever else is hiding out there.

Good luck, little fella!

The Props Department Delivers

Fall is in the air and my brother has been into the catalogs again. Our newest semi-audioanimatronic props arrived yesterday. The UPS person apparently came while we were out.

Henry

Four large cartons appeared in our foyer. There is a life-size vintage Victorian animated dead bride and three zombies: two partial upper bodies to be placed to appear as if crawling from the grave and one animated full-body undead walker.

Larry

The company which offers these characters has also, for some reason, named them. That's a fuzzy shot of Larry in the suit while Henry is the dapper one in the bow tie.

I'm assuming my brother intends to retire some of the less frightening inflatable Hallowe'en displays, like the pumpkins and giant Bart Simpson and such as, in favor of the more, shall we say, naturalistic presentations he's been acquiring over the past couple of years. Otherwise, our yard, especially the driveway approach used by the trick-or-treaters, is going to become very crowded indeed. The life-size inflatable illuminated horse-drawn hearse with re-animating corpse inside will definitely stay as will the 20 foot tall black cat but some of the others will just have to move off to the side yard where they will actually be easier for passing traffic to see.

Hair Apparent

I cheated on my barber today. I felt bad about it before going into the new place but now I'm mostly perfectly O.K. with it.

I try to support local businesses whenever possible and the barber I've been going to is a local guy (or person, at least. He's still undergoing some sort of transition as far as I can tell.) He has six chairs and when I first started with him a couple of years ago he had a few old-time actual barbers renting space from him but, recently, it's just been the owner and a woman who is only marginally competent. I don't know whether the others left because business is slow, or because of the owner's vocal Tea Partyish political views (I was present for a couple of "debates" among the staff) but the result has been the same.

The last time I was in there the owner was out and she was just standing around so I made the mistake of letting her work on me. By the time it was over, we were both frustrated, she had taken too much off the top and not enough off the sides (I ended up trimming that myself at home a couple days later when I couldn't stand it any longer) and I wondered if I should even bother to go back again.

I'd been debating that on and off for a while as my hair grew too long. My phlebotomist nurse at the blood center told me about another local shop in town but, when I went by, the outside was enough to scare me off.

Then I received a coupon for one of the chain salons.

I really didn't want to use it. I held onto it almost until it expired. Today, I gave in and went to the mall with the big box stores and found the place. They were busy and someone was out sick so my ten minute wait turned into twenty but, when I finally sat in the chair, my stylist was friendly, attentive and competent. When I told her it had been six months since my last "trim" she dug her hands in and pulled my hair out to the sides saying, "Wow! She must've really cut it short." Indeed. And then proceeded to do a great job on my head.

I know it's a great job because the pretty African-American lady at the gas station where I stopped immediately afterward and who was very perfunctory with the two gentlemen in front of me suddenly got all smiley and talkative when I got to the counter and the young woman checking out the soon-to-be-discarded sale books at the library turned and smiled at me as I walked past, things which do not normally happen to me.

So here's the dilemma: Do I give my weird, quirky, filled-with-strange-characters locally-owned shop one more try next time? Or do I just give up and go with the decent haircut?

Mammals v. Reptiles

The cats love to go "out." "Out" means the screened-in front foyer which is barely more than a meter square. The screen door doesn't always latch properly and they could easily push their way out into the real world but they're happy in the sunlight and humidity. They just sit and watch the birds and the squirrel and the occasional car traveling by. And the lizards.

Jasmine (aka "Fat Cat" due to packing it on because her metabolism slowed considerably after she was fixed but her appetite didn't) caught a lizard a few days ago. She has a habit of racing out the door into the corner of the foyer where she'd seen a lizard on her very first outing. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred there's nothing there. This was the hundredth time. She ran out, snagged the lizard and turned just as the kids raced out to join her. She actually half-growled, half-hissed at her own daughters as if to say, "My lizard. Mine. Back off." She'd never done that before and the kids were shocked. But the best part was, in trying to express her claim, she had to open her mouth slightly and the lizard took full advantage skittering off into the inaccessible crease between the foundation and the screen.

She caught another one last evening. Or possibly the same one. Could be a slow learner. My brother let them all out and almost immediately I heard him yelling, "Bad cat! Put that down!" Jasmine ran back into the house with her mouth full and it took both of us to trap her under the bar chairs. My brother took the lizard from her and put it outside in back.

Jasmine was pissed and sulked for a while. The kids had no idea what was happening. They play with bugs and spiders they find but they've never killed anything and never eaten anything that didn't come from a can or bag. Mom, on the other hand, despite being half-again as large as when she first came to us, obviously still remembers her foraging days.

The Recession Must Be Over

I found a notice from the city hung on our front door knob this morning. They're planning on installing sidewalks on both sides of the main road past our house.

The road, when originally built, was two lanes in each direction with a large median separating oncoming traffic. The lane widths, however and in keeping with the typical cheap design of the entire town by the original developers*, were too narrow, although technically legal (the best kind of legal) which meant cars traveling in the same direction, if one tried to overtake the other, would literally come within inches of each other in the process. And this was before SUVs. Forget about trucks.

In the case of our road, a decision was made** to make the next-over parallel through road into the major thoroughfare and to remove a lane in each direction from our now-secondary street. The remaining lane was widened and the leftover paved right-of-way was turned into bike lanes.

Now they're going to put in sidewalks, although the few people I see out walking around use the bike lanes without any conflict from the (just as few) bicyclists. Still, considering the amount of rain we've had recently and the soggy condition of the ground, a hard surface to walk on further removed from traffic might be a good idea.

In fact, the major problem I see is the continuing rain. We had a couple of glorious sunny, low humidity days right at the equinox. Since then it has been continuous overcast and downpour without sight of the sun. The ground is mush and our swale is a fully qualified moat. Any digging the road crew does is going to have to be between the swale and the road and is still going to be all mud. I can't imagine any concrete they pour is ever going to set properly before mid-winter.

In any event, it will keep the city workers busy and our driveway doesn't open on to that street. Also, I think the palm on the corner is far enough back (our side of the swale/moat) to not be affected by the construction. So have at it!

*Many of the major roads have since been widened but the bridges over the canals, being much more expensive to upgrade, are still the original width and can cause quite the adrenaline rush when multiple vehicles attempt to use them at the same time.

**This happened when the powers finally admitted the entire city's transportation infrastructure was completely inadequate for the population and bulldozed a limited access crosstown boulevard clear through the city about a 1/4 mile south of us. The next street over got the full intersection and traffic signal, we got a westbound only entrance/exit and no light.

In Which I Respond to the Bureaucracy

I have received, collated and sent off to the State of Utah, with my attached explanation of why I do not owe any taxes to the State of Utah, the income records I requested from my former employer.

I will now sit back and expect to hear nothing from the State of Utah, Tax Commission, Audit Division regarding the information I have just sent them. On the assumption that, at least when dealing with government tax authorities, no news is good news, this silence will be a welcome thing.

Best wishes to them and may our paths never cross again.

Know Your Market

Facebook doesn't know I have not been in Utah for some time now, and I am fine with that. There are a lot of things I prefer Facebook not know. But what that means is the random ads appearing on the right side of my page are often, when they are not national or Internet-based, still geared to Utah. (And while I suppose it is nice to know a couple of my friends claim to "like" Walmart, that is not sufficient reason for me to ever set foot in there.)

A few days ago an ad appeared for a local (Utah) mortuary.

Irrelevant aside: "Mortuary," the preferred term of art in Utah, always struck me as being exceptionally cold and clinical, perhaps because I hail originally from New England where we had funeral homes and funeral parlors, phraseology going back to before the Civil War when it was customary to set up the casket for viewing in the parlor at home. Professional funeral homes generally didn't appear until after the war when the  practice of embalming (originally becoming more widely used in order to be able to transport soldiers' remains long distances from the battlefield to home) gained acceptance.

Anyway, aside from the fact I have no need for, or interest in, their services their pitch otherwise seemed exceedingly well-placed.

They were offering a seminar on their plans and options, to be held at the local Golden Corral. I simply can't imagine better demographics than a herd of retirees loading up on all-you-can eat cholesterol. I wouldn't be surprised if they had some business right there before the evening was over.

I hope they appreciate their marketing guy's genius.

Bureaucracy Blues

A couple of months ago I received from the State of Utah, Tax Commission, Audit Department a very polite letter claiming they had no information regarding an old state income tax filing of mine and suggesting that I probably owed them money because, hey, they had no evidence that I didn't and, by the way, they had destroyed all the old documents going back including from the year they were now interested in.

Unfortunately, because half my paperwork was left behind when I moved to Florida, I also had no evidence that I didn't. And I don't.

I contacted my former employer back in Utah and, after some searching around, they were kind enough* to send a copy of my W2 from the relevant year with which I was able to cobble together an ersatz return I hoped would complete the records held by the state that they could then destroy since they were beyond the official "keep until" date. As long as they made themselves happy first.

Unfortunately, I never noticed (because I didn't think such a thing was even possible) the replacement W2 the old employer sent me, although having the right year on it, had the (substantially different) income numbers from the previous year. How is that possible? They swear they simply pulled it from my file**.

The State of Utah, Tax Commission, Audit Department has now contacted me a second time to inform me that the numbers I submitted with my ersatz return don't even come close to the numbers on my Federal return. They want to adjust the numbers up to match, which is reasonable. And they're still being extraordinarily polite.

Unfortunately, the Federal return doesn't show the amount of tax withheld by the state and adjusting the income numbers up without also adjusting the state withholding will result in a very large (and not at all reasonable) tax liability for me.

I have now requested my former employer to send me copies of all my W2s so I can figure out what happened and how to build an argument acceptable to the State of Utah, Tax Commission, Audit Division. Politely, of course.

*Technically, they're legally obligated to provide it but they were very nice about it all considering it's not really their problem.
** O.K., now it is at least partially their problem.

Civic Calories

I voted yesterday in our city's non-partisan open primary for mayor and one council seat. It was a pathetic turnout, only 8%--seriously 8%--bothered to turn out. I think more than that write in to the newspaper every week to complain about the mayor and city council; they just won't get off their lazy butts to actually do anything about it.

One of the advantages, as I see it, to participating in a low-turnout election is that, proportionately, my vote carries more weight than it does in the general election (when people do show up to vote on the candidates already selected for them in the primary). Even so, my candidate for mayor came in second behind the incumbent although my choice for council member did win (the right to run in November).

The other advantage to a low-turnout election is that, since the polling place is usually stocked with edible goodies as a little reward to voters, the poll watchers still had mounded plates full of cookies, doughnuts and brownies when I came in a half hour before closing time. They insisted I take large quantities with me when I left. I obliged.

Free snacks are always a good thing as they go but the cookies at the hospital blood center are objectively better. And since I am scheduled for a platelet donation tomorrow . . ..

I Am Legion

I have lived most of my life under the assumption, based on anecdotal evidence, that I am, in fact, only one of an indeterminate number of identical clones, although I like to flatter myself by thinking I am the original template and all the others merely copies.

My awareness of this situation began shortly after I went off to college. On my first trip home, Mom reported that she'd seen me in the local supermarket three weeks earlier and, wondering why I was AWOL from school, had approached to within six feet before realizing whoever it was was not me. Six feet! My own Mother! It happened again a couple of years later when she almost stopped to pick "me" up hitchhiking along the highway before remembering I was over 500 miles away. (I do hope that clone eventually got to wherever he was supposed to be.)

There were a number of times, when I had my game company, when I was mistaken for the owner of another game company and I do have to admit, at the time, the resemblance was uncanny.

I have been accosted on the street more than once by friends of my clones, calling out to me in their names, and inquiring as to the latest news. I have invariably both disappointed and fascinated them.

It happened again today. A woman with a gaggle of young children coming down the hallway in the library tried to shepherd them aside to make room for me and as we passed she called out, "Hello!" and then to the kids said, "That's Mister So-and-so." I was so startled I turned the corner before realizing her greeting had been addressed to me and when I turned around again she and the flock had moved on.

I hope, when she finally sees the "real" Mister So-and-so, he has the chance to explain why he was so rude as to ignore her today.

I wonder how many of me there really are?

That Time of Year

Well, we're finally recovered (mostly) from our Labor Day bacchanal.

My brother managed to get the lawn mowed and the bunting up along the fence by the path to the front door but the rain threatened and although it never did pour like it has every other day for the last two weeks, we wimped out and ate indoors.

I barbecued way too many ribs on the assumption my brother's new girl friend would be joining us which she didn't because she had apparently already made a commitment to her own kids' picnic (which was just as well because we didn't have enough corn on the cob, otherwise) so he and I ended up with basically a rack and a half each and, although we had left overs of the chips and dip and beans and potato salad and Cole slaw, we killed those ribs. (I suspect there may have been some Valium in the sauce because my brother collapsed and slept for six straight hours right afterward.)

So now Summer is unofficially over and Rainy Season is almost over and mango season is definitely over although its going to be next mango season before we manage to eat up all this year's harvest. What's next? Oh, look!

Catalogs.

Redneck Studies: Deadly Deja Vu Department

My brother called me last night to come out and rescue him. It seems he'd been turning into a customer's driveway when the left front of his truck collapsed onto the pavement.

Again.

Fortunately, he was only going about 5 miles an hour as he made the turn so he was not injured, but the left front still hit hard and looks like it might have bent the frame since he can no longer close the driver's door. I met him out by the side of the road and we waited for the tow truck to drag his vehicle back to the same guys who "fixed" the exact same problem (which only occurred after they "repaired" a different problem) barely four months ago.

He uses these jokers because he's a sucker for an underdog sob story and the owner claims to have quit the garage my brother used to use (and I still do) in a righteous fit because the other owner was doing something shady although he hasn't given any specifics. He now claims the old shop is in financial trouble which I certainly haven't seen whenever I've been in there. All this is hearsay and only one side of the story. My theory is bozo got fired for incompetence. He claims to have quit in a huff without giving notice. I say he was fired on the spot and told to get out immediately. Considering the quality of his work in my brother's case, I feel pretty confident in my assessment.

My brother does not take advice well. Nevertheless, I attempted, as diplomatically as possible, to explain to him that these bozos had already had all the chances they should be allowed and that he really ought to take his truck somewhere else lest they get another chance to kill him because, sooner or later, they might well succeed. I think I might have got through to him. At least, he was talking about going somewhere else and sending these idiots the bill. Whether he does or not, we'll see.

At leas it wasn't raining last night.

Saturation Point

Yesterday's thunderstorm may have put us over the edge.

It came on very strong with violent, close lightning (the power went out--briefly--before the thunder hammered through) but didn't last all that long. Nevertheless, it poured while it was here and, for the first time, we have some semi-serious flooding.

Our property does not abut a canal, but there is one at the end of the street. That end of our street was flooded and the entire next street over was as well. I don't know how deep because I had already driven through an intersection which I had never believed to be in a depression of any sort but which was covered by a 50 foot wide temporary lake that rose over my axles and I wasn't about to tempt fate again.

A couple of the canals near us were topping their walls and flooding onto the lawns of the houses backing up to them. The swale around the front two sides of our property has become a moat and the low spot in back is now a pond of sorts. Virtually all of our cherry tomatoes are splitting due to all the water being taken up after the fruit sets. (They still taste better than anything in the store.)

This morning, the streets were clear and dry again although low-lying grassy areas are still covered in standing water. The canals are back within their banks, barely. The ground is squishy to walk on.

One thunderstorm has rolled through already this afternoon but it was a light one. Another one like yesterday's just might be one too many.

How It Came To Be That Alfred Hitchcock and I Had the Same Housekeeper

Recently, a friend posted on his Facebook timeline the anniversary date of Nixon's resignation from the presidency. Normally, I do not comment on Facebook except for birthday congratulations but this prompted me to remark on how I happened to be in Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House, standing by Connie Chung and Dan Rather, partying with a few thousand others that night.

Which got me thinking about some of the other events/happenings/coincidences in my life.

It was in the last century, while Nixon was still president, and I was studying political science at a small private university in New Jersey. Our school, despite its size, offered several off-campus semesters including United Nations (International Organizations), Brussels (European Community), Washington D.C. (U.S. Government) and London (Comparative Government). I eventually took all of the off-campus semesters except Brussels thereby spending my entire junior and half my senior years away.

This story is about London.

There were about 40 of us on the semester, including about a dozen students from other schools, plus three of our professors and another handful of local professors and lecturers including a sitting Labour M.P. All of us, except the locals, lived in a five-story white stone Victorian townhouse in South Kensington a short walk from the Royal Albert Hall. The owner would occasionally lurk about in the corners with serious second thoughts about having American college students running loose. (Rumor had it a few years later he sold the place to some African country for an embassy.) In addition, this being London and all upstairsy-downstairsy, we had a full staff: cook, whose specialties included Brussels sprouts, ox-tail soup and eggs drowned in lard; three live-in maids, two homely Spanish girls who looked enough alike to be sisters and one incredibly cute Australian whose nickname was "Rabbit" and who has her own story possibly titled "How I got the Maid Fired for Fraternization," due in a future post. And the housekeeper. Mrs. Yardley.

Mrs. Yardley was in charge. Mrs. Yardley set the schedules for the maids and inspected their work. She kept the owner from freaking out. She could do nothing to improve the cook. She was barely five feet tall, broad in the shoulder and hip, with thick stubby fingers and a voice like a trumpet. Think short Julia Child with a working-class English accent. And, unlike the owner, Mrs. Yardley was intrigued by Americans.

One day four or five of us were sitting around one of the bedrooms enjoying a little afternoon sweet vermouth when Mrs. Yardley knocked and entered. She had a question regarding American timekeeping, specifically: Did the phrase "a quarter of the hour" mean fifteen minutes before or after the hour? Being Americans, it had never occurred to us that this could cause confusion but, after considering for a moment, we realized that, yes, someone unfamiliar with the Americanism could misunderstand and invited Mrs Yardley to partake of some vermouth while we explained. (It means before.) Turned out Mrs. Yardley liked vermouth. We had two bottles that day. We guys finished one and Mrs. Yardley did for the other.

Towards the bottom of her bottle Mrs Yardley started to reminisce about her experiences during The War. She'd been in London during the early part of the Blitz but late in the war got a position out in the Essex countryside as a housekeeper. In fact, she was on her bicycle, peddling home from market one day, when one of the first V-1 buzz bombs exploded in a field less than half a mile from her. She said her employer out on the estate was "Mr. Hitch-cock." That's how she pronounced it, with equal emphasis on both syllables as if it was two words.

We asked her if he was, you know, the Mr. Hitchcock. Oh, yes, indeed, she said. Himself. We asked what he was like. Mrs, Yardley turned her glass a bit, examining her vermouth, perhaps contemplating the propriety of discussing personal details of a former employer.

"He was a very quiet man," she said, finally. "Strange. But very quiet."

Well, of course.

What We Have Here Is a Failure to Mitigate

(A Fairly Typical Juncture of Two Canals)

I have noticed on certain trips about town, when crossing over some of our numerous canals, that the water level on one side (the inland, or "upstream," side specifically although they are all pretty far from either the river or the gulf) is significantly higher than the other. One in particular is so high it completely covers the culverts meaning any increase in water level is going to flood that area.

(Hmmm . . . Potentially Blockage Inducing Flotsam, There)

My assumption is the openings under the bridges I am crossing have been blocked by flotsam of unknown provenance. I do not know if the people living in the immediate vicinity of these choke points have noticed or notified the city. I do know I have seen no one doing anything about it.

The water is already up to the lip of the seawall in many places.

And look! It's raining. Again.