The Teachers Should Strike

I have been a member of a union twice. Both times it was forced upon me. Both were for different summer jobs while I was in college. I was a supervisor in a union plant and I saw how the union stifles productivity, rewards mediocrity, and protects bad workers. I hate unions as a dinosaur of past times. I’m am certainly not a fan if f teachers unions and I am against teachers strikes. Until now..

The teachers at the Newport News Schools should walk out on Monday in solidarity and protest. After a first grade teacher was shot by a six year-old earlier this school year, I’m sure you remember the case, the school district says it A simple workman’s comp case. Seriously, teaching a violent, murderous kid and getting shot is “a routine part of the job”? 

Administrators had reports this kid had a gun and failed to adequately search him or call the cops. Is it worth $40 million, that I don’t know, but it is certainly not a simple workman’s comp case. 

This is why people hate lawyers. 

I want to talk to the manager

Not feeling all blogity these days. Regular programming will resume when it does. 

In the interim, let’s listen to some ProgRock::

Ex-Wives

 Tim decided to tie the knot with his long-time girlfriend.

One evening, after the honeymoon, he was organizing his golfing equipment.

His wife was standing nearby watching him.

After a long period of silence she finally speaks:

“Tim, I’ve been thinking, now that we’re married maybe it’s time you quit golfing. You spend so much time on the course. You could probably get a good price for your clubs.”

Tim gets this horrified look on his face.

She says, “Darling, what’s wrong?”

“For a minute there you were beginning to sound like my ex-wife.”

“Ex-wife!” she screams,

“I didn’t know you were married before!”

“I wasn’t,” he replied.

Adventures in Babysitting

SIL just picked up the youngest granddaughter. My wife was doing the granddaughter’s hair and noticed red spots on the back of the girl’s neck. Upon examination, there were spots on the backs of her knees, her belly and all over her waistline. I said “yup, chickenpox”. The wife thought so too. The doctor asked for pictures and said “Don’t bring her in, but I don’t think it is chickenpox.”  I don’t know how you can tell from pictures, and isn’t the doctors job to look a sick patients? 

Anyway, she may or may not have the chickenpox (she does I don’t care what the remote doctor says). 

Here is some music to get you over the midweek hump. You can never go wrong with the King. Who doesn’t dig the spoken word lament in the middle?

This sucker would clog the waterspout

We pulled into the garage and the wife climbed out of the Escape. I walked around the back and towards the door into the house. “Look at that spider “ said the wife. There, in front of the garage refrigerator, was the biggest wolf spider I had ever seen. It looked like a tarantula. 

I walked back around the car to a shelf next to the ‘fridge. Yeah, I wasn’t walking over that thing. I grabbed the industrial sized bug spray and zapped that sucker. He ran under the refrigerator to die. 

Yes, I know, benefits of spiders, blah, blah. Nope. A giant arachnid like that needed to be gone. 

True confession, I am wet my pants scared of snakes. I slightly less afraid of spiders. 

Now, every time I go to grab something from the garage ‘fridge I worry the evil, certainly poisonous, spider is waiting to crawl out from under the appliance and bite me on the foot. 

We both know it is a very real possibility. 

I suppose I am going to have to pull out the refrigerator and look for the body. It is the only way I can relax.

If wishes were horses we would all ride

Reports indicate the EPA is set to release new emission standards for electric power plants that will make it virtually impossible to use fossil fuels to generate electricity by 2035. Plants will have to use “renewables” or burn hydrogen to comply. Get ready for electricity costs to skyrocket.

I should not have to point out an immutable law of economies. The higher the demand, the higher the cost.

2035 is also when the new EPA rules will also make it nearly impossible for automakers to produce and sell an internal combustion engine vehicle. We will be forced into inefficient electric cars. That means more demand at the time when electricity will be very expensive. 

I hope the heck it doesn’t get cloudy or the air is still (or too windy) in 2035. We will have to choose between electricity for our everyday life and for a vehicle, providing we can afford either. 

My goodness a lot of Americans are stupid. How could you vote for this future? 

*do you understand that windmills and solar panels have a limited lifespan? Do you understand that China controls the essential minerals for batteries? 

A little of this a little of that

I see Bud Light has a new VP of marketing for some reason (about 5 billion reasons, I suppose). I don’t think it will help. Bud Light drinkers have moved on to Coors Light or Miller Light and decided the beers don’t taste that different anyway. Budweiser cannot repudiate the Mulvaney ads, the left and he media will persecute the beer company. If they do not, the average Joe will continue to get their beer elsewhere. 

The Cubs blew a perfect game - no hits, no walks, no errors, no Dodgers on base at all - in the eighth inning yesterday in completely Cubs fashion. I felt awful for the pitcher. There have only been 23 perfect games in baseball history, so the odds of Smiley getting through the final two innings were slim, but to have it end on a broken bat squiggler that traveled about ten yards is heartbreaking. 

It looks like we are in for an extended cool period weather-wise. Lots of temps in hen fifties ahead. Jeans and jacket weather. So it goes. 

Have a great Saturday.

Copacetic

Sometimes life is weird. Take this blog, for instance. Anyone reading here casually will readily admit I have been mailing it in of late. Content has been less than riveting. I am sorry for that. I have fewer posts, far less political ranting, and often put up bad jokes or music videos. Yet somehow, I have more hits now than I did when I put significant effort into writing a given post. 

I might say you don’t like politics and appreciate me not offering my opinion, yet often a political post gets the most views on a given week. The upshot is I throw up words and you read them. I suppose that is all that matters. Thank you for reading. 

Late last month my “blogoversary” occurred unremarked and frankly, not even remembered by me. I have been writing here for eighteen years, more or less five days a week. A significant number of bloggers, each far more talented, entertaining, and erudite than I, have come and gone. Yet here I sit, tap, tap, tapping one-fingered at the old iPad keyboard. Sometimes it is best not to question”why”? 

Hey, look! More words. Another minute of your day wasted. My job here is done. 

Maybe I’ll have decent content tomorrow. You never know. For now I will go the lazy route and post some Friday music.

And I quote

So the granddaughter was trying to choose what to take for pre-school show and tell this morning. She narrowed the decision to two items and fell back on the centuries-old process of elimination. 

Sort of.

“Eenie  minee  meanie  moe catch a tiger by the toe. If you ever saw it you say it glows. Meanie eenie minee mo.”

It worked, she chose one and headed to the car. 

She will be four in a couple of weeks. 

ba-doomp

What do you call a happy cowboy?

A jolly rancher

I'm tired of words and I'm too hoarse to shout

Here we are on a chilly Monday. I stumbled downstairs to make coffee this morning and glanced at the thermostat. It was 63F in the house. I turned the furnace back on with a distinct air of disgust. It is sleeting against my office window as I type. It was 80F Saturday! 

We had a great weekend. Our good friends came down to visit Saturday evening. We ate dinner on a restaurant deck overlooking the reservoir, then came to our house to play some cards and enjoy some laughs. It was typical old boomer entertainment for sure. Yesterday was uneventful. The wife did laundry, I made tacos for dinner. 

It is now back to work Monday. I have to prep for a customer visit tomorrow. I will be traveling to the greater Cleveland area. It has been a while since I visited The Mistake by the Lake, and this will be a quick in-and-out affair. I will drive in for my appointment and return home in the same day. I have a great audiobook ready to go and it should last most of the drive. 

I have Two out of Three Ain’t Bad  by Meatloaf bouncing around in my skull this morning. i don’t know why. I haven’t heard that song in years. 

Have a great Monday.

Big Thrill Saturday

The youngest granddaughter has her first soccer game this morning. It is hard to believe she will be four in a couple of weeks. 

Soccer should be interesting. She is a competitive little girl. It will be a case of extremes, either she will coast along like most little kids playing at that age, running to and fro,  or she will erupt in a total anger meltdown the first time someone kicks the ball away from her. I don’t think there will be a middle ground. I hope am wrong. She is the sweetest, happiest, good natured little girl. Until you play a game and then she really likes to win. Insists on it, even. And she likes to be right about things. 

Okay, she is my little clone and my Mom is sitting in heaven laughing her butt off. 

True confession, I don’t care if it is my granddaughter, soccer is sooooo boring. It was when my kids played, it still is. 

Barefoot girls dancin' in the moonlight

 It is Friday. When I am king of the world, the week after a vacation will be a shortened week. I’m just sayin’

The beautiful weather continues today, though it is cloudy. Rain is forecasted for Sunday, then cool weather moves in next week. I suspect you have weather too and do not care about mine. So it goes. I don’t see you writing posts at this piece o’crap blog.

We had a long engineering call with a customer this morning and it scares me a bit that I understood pretty much everything discussed. After thirty plus years in the industry, I guess I am starting to know my products.

Have a great Friday

Just Charge It!

Biden and his gang have decreed that we need stricter environmental standards, so within a decade it  will virtually impossible to buy a car that isn’t electric. There you go, environment saved, climate change licked, sea levels lowered, life is good. 

Now how are we going to charge all of those cars? Where are we going to get the dramatic increases in electricity? Where are we going to get the lithium for all of those batteries? Where are we going to get the evil oil to make the plastic that electric vehicles take to make them light enough? 

How are we supposed to go anywhere when batteries last a few hundred miles at best under real-life conditions? 

Maybe we need real details instead of feel good policies. Good intentions are no way to run a country.

I welcome rebuttal in the comments.

Unabashedly Unashamed

Why did the banana go to the doctor?

He was not peeling well.

Like Mr. Rogers Says

It is a beautiful day in the neighborhood indeed. Temperatures are ranging into the seventies by the afternoon under a bright blue sky. I can dig it. Spring is in the air.

I may have to drag out the mower soon. That does not thrill me. I have so much yard work to do it is daunting.

 I am seriously contemplating having a cigar on the patio for lunch. Come on over, I’ll share from my humidor. 

Road trip

 I finally trudged through my emails from last week. Sheesh, sometimes it is not worth going on vacation. 

We have learned over the years that vacating Florida on a Saturday morning during spring break is not worth it. Traffic moves at a crawl on I-75 at least until Atlanta. We have started leaving Friday night and getting home mid-day on Saturday instead of O-Dark thirty on Sunday morning.

We left around 9:00 or so Friday night. I drove up the toll road and onto I-75. It started raining hard. The wife wanted me to keep driving until the weather got better. Finally its slacked off just short of crossing I-10 and I moved to the passenger seat. 

I woke just after the wife drove through Macon and she said she wanted me to drive through Atlanta. It was about 2:00 AM. As soon as I took the wheel it started raining again. 

I pulled into a rest park just after Chattanooga and slept for about 45 minutes. It was around 5 or so. I drove on toward Nashville since the wife was still snoozing. 

We stopped for breakfast near Nashville. After eating and coffee I was feeling good so I kept driving. We crossed back into Hoosierdom around noon. I finally got tired as we hit the south side of Indy, but I wasn’t stopping at that point. We pulled into the drive about 2:00 PM. The total drive time was 14.5 hours. Not bad at all.

Vacation is over and that is sad. But I am glad to be home.

He has Risen

 Matthew 28:1-10 

After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men. 

The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: 'He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.' Now I have told you." 

So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them. "Greetings," he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me."

Return

We ventured back to the same putt-putt course last evening after dinner. Amid the waterfalls and pirate decorations, the wife insisted on a rematch. And of course she beat me by five strokes. She won or we tied every hole but one. It was a complete mirror image of the last outing. Total, I still one the combined score by three strokes, but she insists the tally is tied at one to one. It doesn’t really matter, all was in good fun. As a bonus, my round last evening was free because I aced hole seven last time. 

Vacation week nears its end. We will load up the car this evening and head home, ahead of the mass exodus that clogs the highways in Florida and South Georgia on Saturday mornings in the spring. I don’t mind driving the overnight stretch. We have a hard and fast rule; the driver controls the radio. So one more day in the sun and back to Hoosierdom.

It is good to be me

It is about that time. I need to finish my coffee, mix up a giant Bloody Mary and saunter down to the pool. 

It sucks sitting under an azure sky reading, listening to music and watching life go by, often in revealing swimwear. 

I am up to the challenge. 

Soon it will be next week. Real life. I am not thinking about that. 
 

Eighteen

not the Alice Cooper song, rather the number of holes of golf the wife and I played yesterday. I will brag and say I won, that is not always the case when competing against her. I can admit it. More remarkable was my score: one under par. I had three holes-in-one. I aced holes one, seven, and twelve. I had a couple of bogies to compensate. If the wife and I had scored match play, I won 17 of the holes. 

Of course it was mini-golf. 

The proprietor did look at me a bit askew when I asked if the green fees covered cart rental.

Not so much getting caught in the rain

I am 

am bored hearing the breathless Trump coverage. He got on his plane. The plane landed. He ate fruit loops. Gah, get the political theater over with. 

Copyright someone

The wife loves her a Pina Colada. It is her drink of choice on the rare occasions she tipples. Often, if she decides to have a drink, it is a Pina Colada or nothing. Good for her, she knows what she likes.

She will swear the best Pina Colada she ever had was at a hilltop bar overlooking the harbor in St Thomas. I posit it was the location. I will admit they were pretty darn good. I think we had more than one.

Some years ago we bought a little speed blender for making smoothies. It is a perfect one drink size. It makes terrific Pina Coladas. i used it yesterday.

Enjoy your Tuesday.

The funny thing is you think I am kidding

This image is copyrighted by somebody

It is the start of a new work week. The weekends seem to fly by. It is as if they are only like 2/7th of the week or something. 

Is it just me or does the coffee taste terrible this morning?  I need a Bloody Mary to wash the taste from my mouth. 

When I was a young man I had dreams of becoming a member of the Secret Service. In those days (maybe still) there was a height requirement and at 5’9” I was too short. Now I wonder; if the Trumpster goes to jail, will a retinue of Secret Service Agents have to go behind bars to protect the ex-POTUS from harm? I am no expert on prison, but I would think someone has to protect The Donald from being some goon’s backdoor girlfriend. 

I worry about details. It is who I am. 

Good news! I do have a bottle of vodka. Better news! I have a bottle of Bloody Mary mix! I also apparently have an excess of exclamation points! I don’t have celery or other stupid garnishes that belong on a brunch buffet. I don’t need them. I will have a granola bar. Now that is breakfast. 

Edit:

I want to add a serious comment. For those of you excited/worried about the Trump indictments, you need to understand about grand juries. I served on a grand jury for over a year. We met a couple of days a week and heard many cases. I was on a Federal Grand jury, but the system works pretty much the same for a State Grand Jury. The prosecutor presents his case in a grand jury. The defense does not. It is a one-sided affair. In the federal jury I sat, votes were majority opinion. The prosecutor only need 50% plus one vote to get an indictment. The target, or future defendant, does not get to give testimony. In other words, it is a pretty poor government attorney who cannot get an indictment. The prosecutor tells you what the law says, gives his version of events and then asks if you think there is enough evidence to charge a crime. You are not asked to consider reasonable doubt, that has no bearing. You are not asked to determine guilt or innocence, that has no bearing. The only question is there enough evidence to charge a crime. Getting an indictment against Trump isn’t that hard. Winning the case, that remains to be seen. 

It is that time of year

 Tornadoes to the north, tornadoes to the south. Storms and beaucoup winds in between. My hometown got some damage. My best friend and generous owner of a nice pool where we spend many summer weekends found his fence knocked down and a tree uprooted. It takes a strong wind to snap off treated 4x4 posts at the ground. To the south of Indy, Whiteland sustained a direct tornado hit. That community is about 15 miles from where we lived until 2013 when we moved to the north ‘burbs. Storms rolled clear through the south and Midwest. We were safe and I offered prayers of thanks for that. 

The youngest lives very close to the Whiteland area, but his apartment suffered no damage, cyclonic or wind. 

The wife and I missed much of the storm. We were down the road arguing with this witch who was trying to take our nieces’ little dog.