Just like Christmas, only without presents, or Santa, or ...

It is opening day! The long winter between football and baseball is finally over!

I must use exclamation points! It is a law!

It is time to get the greatest tune into your skull:

I guess he really did vault those lazy dogs

The boy reports he was sitting on the patio last night smoking his cancer sticks and minding his business. He looked up and there stood a large red fox staring at him, about 10 feet away. The boy jumped and the fox did too, both thinking "What is he doing here?".

You might not think this so very strange, the 'burbs are populated by wildlife -- coyotes, coons, opossums, deer, chipmunks, and such. The neighbors reported a fox a few times last fall. What is unusual is that my backyard is surrounded by a 6' tall privacy fence. The boy said he wondered how the beast got in, only to get his question answered. He watched the fox turn and with a quick burst of speed the fox jumped the fence easily.

Now the boy is worried about letting his little corgi out in the night.

Whatever he says -- do the opposite

Is there anything more hilarious than Jimmah Carter giving out foreign policy advice? For those of you too young to remember look up 1979 and Iran.

Carter giving recommendations is akin to the guy who built that bridge that collapsed down in Miami telling you how to go about assembling a shed in your backyard.

Wake up Thalia, I've got blogging to do

Here we are on a cloudy Monday morning. The coffee is hot, my muse is still snuggled under the covers, snoring gently.  Clio, Thalia? Are you awake?

Oh well.

There was a big anti-Constitution march over the weekend. I guess it as good thing the Second Children's Crusade was targeting the Second Amendment instead of the First one.

Basketball happened. I guess hockey too. There was weather. Ive been waching old reruns of Miami Vice. I do not think that drama was too realistic.

Muses, wake up! Sigh. Sorry, maybe later.

Have a good Monday anyway.

Not everyone was a hippie in the 60s

Here is a rerun from 2012. memories of summer days can help hide my disgust over this early spring spate of winter? Besides, I'm feeling a bit nostalgic:

Saturday morning musings

He woke with a sneeze, quickly followed by two more. He blew his nose on the soggy, snotty handkerchief from under his pillow. His eyes were stuck shut with snot and gunk. Joe managed to pry open the right one as he stumbled down the hall to the bathroom. Warm water unstuck the left as well as a few eye lashes.

He padded to the kitchen. His pajama top was snapped crooked.  "Good morning sunshine" his Mom happily intoned.  She was sitting at the breakfast bar drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette. He got a bowl and the box of Quisp cereal from the cabinet. His Mom poured the milk. He could hear the washing machine running. He scratched his thick dark hair. He sniffed.  His Mom handed him a Kleenex, without saying a word.

After breakfast he brushed his teeth and pulled on cutoff jeans, the legs fringed. He remembered he forgot to take off his pajama shorts first and had to start over. He searched through the drawer looking for his favorite red tank top. Joe would wear it every day if he could.  He settled on a blue one. Snot was running down his nose.

"Mom, can I go over to the park?"  Yes to the park, no to the dime for the concession stand. He knew it was a long shot first thing in the morning. The spring on the wooden screen door stretched and the door banged closed as he went into the garage.

As he mounted his red stingray bike he heard his Mother yell at him from the laundry room "Joe, put on shoes if you are riding your bike". He pretended he did not hear.

He jumped the bike over the curb and tried to pull a "wheelie" as he pedaled faster. The sissy bar was too far back on the banana seat to help. No one was out playing as he rode the three blocks to the park. The park was likewise empty. He looked back across the wide open grass toward the railroad tracks and the drainage ditch. He rode towards the culvert that went under the tracks.

Dismounting, he crushed a few crawdad holes and poked a stick in another. None came crawling out. He squished his bare feet into the mud and soggy grass at the edge of the shallow water. No fish were to be seen.  There never were. He rinsed his feet in the thin stream. As always, he peered up into the murky depths of the large sycamore near the ditch. Billy McKenzie said he caught a bat there. Joe had seen the bat, wrapped in netting. Having a bat would be cool. None was to be spied.  The boy absentmindedly pulled up the tail of his shirt and blew his nose.  Only then did it occur to him he had a handkerchief in his back pocket. He used it to smear the snot on his shirt.

The boy picked up a thin stick and swished it through the air like a whip. He mounted his red bike and pedaled around the neighborhood, whipping imaginary horses. Mostly he liked the sound it made whistling through the air.. Bored, he threw the stick into old man Vice's yard because he knew the old man would freak out about it.  The old man yelled at any kid who came close to his grass. Old man Vice mowed every day and was a fanatic about his yard.

Joe noticed some empty Coke bottles tossed out from a car, near the stop sign. He skidded to a stop and studied them. Three bottles, that was nine cents in returnable deposit at the supermarket.. He tried wedging one of the bottles into the bike frame without success. He could not think of a way to carry three empty bottles on his bike. He left them beside the street and peddled on.

As he neared the Redmond house he instinctively stood up and pumped the pedals as fast as possible. As he zoomed past, their collie-dalmatian mix came tearing around the corner barking furiously at the bike rider. Joe was past before the dog got a good run at him.  The dog stopped, panting. The mutt gave a last bark, acknowledging today's winner.

It was just another summer day.

The answer is blowing' in the wind

SnowTeam ScareTeam is on RedAlert as a big snow storm bears down on the environs. As of now we may or may not get 2-5 inches of snow. Yesterday they were predicting as much as 8". By the time the storm arrives -- it is already late -- we may be down to a dusting. We also might get the hammering they expect. Who knows? In any case, I have bread, milk, and eggs. We are set.

Vroom, vroom

I had a 2018 Camaro for my rental car yesterday.  It was a pleasure to drive. It handled well and drove great in the city and on the highway. Gas milage was good. The car was remarkably comfortable and roomy inside. It sat low, so mounting and dismounting was not like jumping into the Wife's Escape. It had more than just a little bit of get-up-and-go.

5983

Here I am, up at 4:30 in the aye em yet again.  You don't care about that.

The GOPe just went on yet another spending spree. I guess we're living in the Bush years again. It seems every time the Stupid Party gets in charge they try to outspend the Democrats. It is working, if that was your strategy. We might as well vote for the Democrats in the mid-terms, at least they are honest about their intention to spend my money and your money and our great-grandkid's money. I suspect you don't care about that either. I'm tired of ranting about it.

Let's discuss even less interesting stuff. I forgot to point out that yesterday marked  13 years of blogging here at Fat in Indiana. I wrote my first mediocre post on March 22, 2005 and 5982 posts later we have this mediocre one. Some things do not change. That comes out to an average of...I don't know, probably pretty close to one a day.  I'm not a math whiz.  More to the point, it doesn't matter. I write the drivel. You read the drivel. We have our roles to play.

It seems I have an attitude problem today. Sorry 'bout that.

Seriously, thank you to all of you for stopping by. You have no idea what it means to me.

I’ve been missing you

One of my big customers has a new buyer, so I’m off to introduce myself to him this afternoon. Ho hum, but I am looking forward to getting out of the office. When I took this gig I had no idea I would be driving a desk 99% of the time.  I miss the road. 

I don’t miss being gone from my family, but I do miss the highways, the small towns, the old favorite restaurants in my frequent stopping places. I miss going into a new town and finding the best place to get a burger. I even miss the crappy hotel breakfasts. That last sentence was a lie. I miss picking up snippets of local radio, only to have them fade in a half hour as I drive away from the tower. I miss the audiobooks and podcasts over Bluetooth to the radio. I miss listening to ball games as I motor through the Midwest and southeast. 

Mostly, I miss the hotel and airline points. 

Prevaricate

I’m a liar, or at least someone is. I reported the start of spring yesterday. I woke up to light seeping in through the closed blinds this morning. At first I thought I might have overslept. Alas, the brightness was light reflecting from snow covering the ground. Beautiful thick layers of snow blankets trees, shrubs, streets, grass — everywhere. It would be a perfect Christmas postcard. Too bad it is March. A couple of inches of ugly nasty snow. There is probably even snow on that sentence fragment. What the heck, Mother Nature? It is supposed to keep snowing until mid-morning and then it will warm into the 40s this afternoon. I have nowhere to go this morning, the granddaughter is not coming today, so I think I will skip the shoveling of the drive and walks and let Ma Nature melt it off.  She caused the mess, she can clean it up.

finally

We have been waiting for months. It is here.

Rain, freezing rain, sleet, and snow are in today’s local forecast. I guess Mother Nature forgot to check her calendar.

gears a-turning in my head

I should have kept one of the posts I combined yesterday and canned it for today. Here we are on a Monday morning and I should be cramming instead of blogging.  I have just a few hours to learn all I can about shaft couplers. I’m off to do some homework.

Sunday Morning deserves a really good title. I hope someone uses one on their blog

I pre-wrote a Sunday post Saturday. It will go up in a bit, at a completely arbitrary time I pre-entered. That is unless I stop it and post this instead. Or I might can this one. Confused? Me too (and not in the hashtag* way).

I woke up around 3 AM and catnapped until 5:00 or so when I got up. I’ve been surfing the web since then, drinking coffee and listening to music quietly. I am enjoying the Amazon Prime 60s rock station this morning. There is a little too much Hendrix for my taste, but he goes away with a simple “Alexa, skip”.

Here is a heresy for you: I think Jimmy Hendrix is remarkably overrated. There, I said it. I will admit his version of  All Along The Watchtower is far superior to Robert Allen Zimmerman’s. You know — Bob Dylan. Who, by the way, is another overrated icon from the sixties. Yep, I just wrote that. I expect the Rock and Roll god will strike me down with a bolt of lightning shot from the tip of that ugly-assed pyramid in Cleveland. I don’t hate either musician. I have select tunes from both on my iPhone. They are nowhere near the top of my list of loathed artists such as Steve Miller. I will turn off The Joker as soon as the first notes sear my eardrums.

It is OK if you want to be wrong and disagree with me. I have eclectic taste in music. What I like probably isn’t your cup of tea.  My wife and son both really hate The Doors.

Here is a tune I can dig:

From the original 60’s lineup of Fleetwood Mac, long before Lindsey and Stevie turned them into a pop powerhouse.

I like both iterations of the band: the blues driven, and the rock pop version.

Just to update you on the status of things, I took the canned Sunday post and merged it with the fresh one to give you a semi-fresh version. Think of it as the equivalent of making homemade salsa with canned ‘maters.

I think I have wasted enough of both of our time (times?)** on this Sunday. Have a great day.


* when did “#” quit being called a pound sign or more accurately, the octothorp?

** I don’t think either is correct — the sentence is just awkward but you probably get the general meaning and I would rather waste time writing a pointless post script that rewriting the sentence. I’m stubborn like that.

A minute here, a minute there, and you have a whole different sport

I’m trying hard not to curse these days, but what the hell, baseball? This is perhaps the stupidest idea in sports. I do not understand this obsession with shaving minutes from the game of baseball. MLB could save that same two or four minutes by cutting a couple of commercial breaks*. If they want to shorten the game, get rid of the odious designated hitter rule. Pitchers strike out more often than position players and hitting specialists. Starting extra innings with a runner on second is an abomination.

Baseball’s charm has always been its idiosyncrasies. The defense possesses the ball. There is no time clock. There is no sudden death overtime. Why do we need to change it? How about, in the name of speed, we just make the game into home run derby. Every guy gets two pitches to hit the ball, fail and you are out. Use a pitching machine to guarantee strikes. We could blow through nine innings in about an hour.

We have all been stuck working late. There is nothing more disappointing than to have the boss show up and tell you you have to put in some extra hours. Too bad baseball. Extra inning games are memorable. Imagine the 2016 World Series with this idiotic “ start the extra innings with a runner on second” rule. Why not start the 10th and subsequent innings with bases loaded and two outs? The next hit wins. Poof extra inning games are over in a flash.

Spit. I did not possess the vocabulary to adequately express my disdain.

* extra innings mean more commercial breaks, thus more money, so why cut the length of games?

H/t Dustbury

You have four days to get it together Mother Nature

Yesterday looked great: bright sun in a cloudless sky, little wind. Temperatures creeped into the low 50s. I made some macaroni salad, microwaved a can of baked beans and threw some burgers on my decrepit grill for supper.  I doubled down later in the evening by pulling out the freezer and made some homemade ice cream. Even if spring is slow to arrive I’m going to act like it is here.

There is snow in the forecast for next week. Sigh.

And that is how you do it

Good morn...wait, I just realized my coffee cup is empty...

Fixed.

Good Morning. It is yet another chilly start to the day here in flyover country. It is probably no less than we deserve as backward, despicable, hate-filled rubes. I did score a pizza for $3.14 for supper last night, so all is not beyond hope around here.

If you stopped by for meaningful commentary I’m am sorry to tell you that you are going to be a bit disappointed this morning.

But I did post something. There is that.

living In the past

I’m sure you have already read about it, but isn’t it ironic that Hillary blames her whole election loss to people who are always looking backwards and living in the past.  Her comments were rehashing an election she lost two years ago.

Who is living in the past?  Who refuses to look forward?

When is Clinton going away? She was measured and weighed by the American people and she was found wanting. Seriously, I think we would be better off if she spent more time studying the bottom of her Chardonnay glass and less time trashing the American people while overseas.  Maybe Mrs. Clinton should look to her own words when reflecting on the last election — “What does it matter now?”.

Oh, we won't give in, we'll keep living in the past

Oh, we won't give in, let's go living in the past

Oh no, no, we won't give in, let's go living in the past 

it has something to do with the circumference and the diameter, I think

I have to go with apricot first, with peach a close second. I’m pretty fond of sugar cream. Apple ranks high on the list too. Key lime rounds out the top five. Pecan gets honorable mention.

I like any kind of pie, especially on pi day.

It is all about number 10

I have to be honest, I don’t really have my panties all in a wad because Florida decided to insist you have to be 21 to buy a gun. Mostly because it is Florida and I don’t live there. If the voters in Florida don’t like the new law they can simply elect different people to vote differently. It is really that simple.

I could be wrong on this position and maybe you will tell me why in the comments.

Contrary to popular misconception, the thing was not set up to be fifty (or 13) administrative districts carrying out the Big Government policies. It really was supposed to be the other way around; you know — a group of States united together. That was the plan. There was never any intention every State had to be the same.  Too bad they do not teach civics in school anymore. If I could go back in time and suggest a change, it would be that Amendment Ten would have been listed as number One.

Annual Boot to the Crotch Day

I woke up at 4:00 this morning. The wife must have been sleeping mouth agape: her CPAP sounded like a wind tunnel. I shouldn’t blame her though. I woke up because that is what I do. I read this morning that getting sleepy during the day may be an early sign of Alzheimer’s. It may also be a sign I’m only getting four or five hours of sleep at night and I need more. Take that science. What was I talking about?

I cooked up some smoked sausage in the grill pan and made a batch of homemade mac and cheese for supper last night. Since I was up early I thought a little of that leftover sausage would be good with a biscuit left from Sunday’s fried chicken dinner. Alas, it appears the boy ate the rest of the sausage sometime after I went to bed [insert sigh]. My loverly wife isn’t too fond of smoked sausage, so I only get it once or twice a year. I was kinda looking forward to the leftovers. Oh well, such circumstances are not major problems. Plus, I told him the leftovers were there. He also ate the rest of Sunday’s chicken. That boy has always liked his protein.

Here is my summary of the politics of the day. Republicans in the House say the evil Russkies probably tried to screw with the election but the Trumpster had nothing to do with it. The Democrats say that is because we didn’t find a way to force anyone to admit to it. I suspect both Hillary and the Trumpster looked for dirt on the other candidate no matter the source, whether that was the Commies or the Brits or anyone else. It is politics.

I suspect the Russians took delight in trying to screw with our election. Do you think we don’t do the same all over the world? Do you really think the good old white-hatted US of A would not do everything possible to help a candidate that ran against Putin? Some of you hand-wringing about mythical KGB agents working the polls are the very people saying the Government should help those poor souls protesting in Tehran a few months ago. The Obama actively campaigned in the last Israeli elections. Grow up.

I think there should be one day a year where every elected official receives a kick in the crotch from an NFL punter wearing steel-toed boots, just to remind them they are public servants. Maybe if occasional pain is involved some of the more asshole-types would forgo inflicting themselves on the  public. Ah hell, forget that idea, too many of the bastards would enjoy it.