08:07 – We got what looks like a couple inches (~ 5 cm) of wet snow through about midnight, followed by rain and freezing rain. The temperature is now hovering right around freezing, which is going to make Barbara’s morning commute a mess. Colin is enjoying the snow. He’s never seen much of it.
Even with everything else going on, we’re managing to keep up with the demand for science kits. All of the kits are in stock, and we’re building more as fast as we can. The problem is, this is supposed to be a slow time of year, and I’d planned to spend this slow period doing things like pre-labeling thousands of bottles and otherwise preparing for the rush. Our goal for this year is 500 kits, but at the current run rate we’re doing close to that now on an annualized basis, not taking seasonality into account. Factoring in seasonality, if our current run rate holds up, we’d easily do 1,000 kits this year–our goal for CY 2014–and we might do 2,000. That’s why I’m kind of hoping that this mini-rush is an anomaly. If it isn’t, we’re going to be covered up all year long.
11:28 – I certainly don’t always agree with Ambrose Evans-Pritchard–he’s much too Keynesian for my taste–but his articles and blog entries are usually worth reading. Here’s an interesting one: A new Gold Standard is being born
I agree with him that returning to the Gold Standard is a bad idea, but not for the reasons he thinks. He favors fiat currency because he wants governments and central banks to be able to fiddle with the money supply. I don’t. I’ve always been a hard-money guy. Giving any government the ability to create “money” out of nothing always, without exception, ends badly. And, as he points out, central banks and governments are fully aware that the value of the Big Four fiat currencies–the US dollar, the euro, the GB pound, and the Japanese yen–are going to have their value inflated away big-time. No one wants to hold any of them, given a choice. The dollar is still by far the best of the four, and it’s pathetic. Gold and other commodities can’t be inflated.
But gold is a very poor choice of a value store, for two reasons. First, there’s not enough of it. At $2,000 per troy ounce, a kilogram of gold is worth only about $64,000. A tonne (1,000 kilos) of gold is worth only $64 million, and a kilotonne (1,000,000 kilos) only $64 billion. The other, and more important, reason is that a value store should be valuable because of what you can do with it, not merely because it’s rare (in an economic sense). Gold does have many practical uses, but certainly none that require it by the multi-kilotonne.
I would like to see the US dollar become a hard currency again, as it hasn’t been since 1964 (or 1970, depending on how you look at it). But returning to the Gold Standard isn’t the way to do it. Instead, the federal government needs to remonetize our currency by holding a defined basket of commodities for each dollar issued. The value of a dollar might be defined as a combination of so many milligrams of gold, so many milligrams of copper, so many grams of wheat, so many grams of petroleum, and so on. The actual value of those commodities will fluctuate with market conditions, but having the basket contain 100 or 1,000 different commodities minimizes the effects of such fluctuations and would keep the value of the dollar stable. But the key issue is that the government must actually hold the required commodities in the required amounts for each dollar it issues, and must redeem those dollars on demand by accepting a dollar and handing the depositor that market-basket mix.
Of course, you wouldn’t be able to walk into a bank, hand them a dollar bill (or even a $1,000,000 bill) and expect them to cough up the appropriate amounts of 100 or 1,000 different commodities. But the market would take care of that. You would be able to hand over $1,000 or $1,000,000 and receive the appropriate commodity or mix of commodities in the amounts that reflected the current market prices of those commodities.
We’ve just had our hottest January day on record, 41.6 C. Not much snow around here…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-18/act-total-fire-ban/4470436
Tomorrow’s range is a comparatively mild 14-27 C.
I hate to nag you, and I know I’ve said this before, but you really need to outsource the kid assembly line. That way you’d have time for interesting and enjoyable stuff like writing…
Zero degrees here this morning, and not much above that through the day today, and then tomorrow the weather liars tell us we’ll be a bit warmer with a few inches of snow, and then Sunday and next week back down below zero. January Thaw is history.
We also have heard that around thirty or so people have fallen through the ice on the Lake this winter so fah; I find that hilarious, except for the folks who have to rescue them, of course. We have had nowhere near enough cold temperatures to be safe enough for going out on the ice on what is really an inland sea, with tides and surf. The mean IQ of the people in this country continues to plummet drastically, along with literacy, numeracy and any knowledge of history or geography whatsoever.
I mentioned again to Barbara this morning that depending on how things go volume-wise, I might want to subcontract some bottle labeling to Jasmine this summer on a piecework basis. We have thousands of labels printed, and I told her that this weekend I want to formally time how many bottles she can label in an hour. I can use that number to calculate a piecework rate that’d be fair to Jasmine. She normally works summers for something like $8/hour with no benefits, although her employer does pay her Social Security. I’d calculate her piecework rate to come out to $10/hour or better. We won’t need her anything like full time, but she can label bottles in the evening while she’s listening to music or whatever and make some nice extra money.
The thing is, Barbara really doesn’t want me to subcontract the stuff out. She actually enjoys labeling bottles while she’s sitting in the den watching TV series that I don’t watch. We’ll see. If Barbara can keep up, great. But there’s also stuff she does that requires more care and attention than labeling bottles–such as assembling small parts bags and other subassemblies–and that stuff needs to be done as well. Also, there’s no way that I’ll have Jas filling bottles or otherwise exposed to chemicals, both because I don’t want to risk Jas getting hurt and because that would open me up to OSHA and other regulatory issues. Barbara can fill bottles or help me do so.
I confess that I don’t know how they do things in Oz (other than upside-down), but I preferred being involved in my kid’s assembly. The driving force, one might say.
It’s zero degrees here, too, only in Celsius, so really not that cold.
Isn’t there a saying along the lines of “20 seconds of pleasure, 20 years of bills and aggravation”…
It’s 1C here at the moment.
Which reminds me of the nasty trick I played on Barbara one time. The Weather Channel site gives the option of displaying temperatures in Fahrenheit or Celsius. So one day I changed it from displaying F to displaying C. Our lows were to be around 28F, which is about -2C. She did freak out a bit when she saw the lows and highs, until I told her I’d displayed Celsius. Then she smacked me.
So a couple days later, I left it set to display F, but I called up the forecast for Nome, Alaska and then scrolled down until the city name wasn’t visible. When I pointed out the forecast lows and highs, she said, “You can’t fool me again”. So I said, “No, no. Look. These are in Fahrenheit”. So she looked and freaked out again. Then I scrolled up to show her that it was the forecast for Nome. She smacked me. Again.
Never learn, huh?
“Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me.”
Practical jokes don’t go over real well up here at the OFD household; the female members of the household have a rather different sense of humor than ol’ OFD for the most part.
Although I have to admit I have a pretty dark sense of humor.
Example: I think Don Rickles is a scream and probably the best standup and tee-vee comic of the late 20th-C and early 21st-C. They do not find him funny at all.
They find the Colbert Report and Jon Stewart hilarious; I find them mildly amusing, at best.
Etc.
Foster Brooks roasting Don Rickles may be a comedy watershed moment:
http://youtu.be/FQgxS-R8TzA
Regarding labor for kit production: Around here they go to the local Home Depot and grab up some of those guys standing out front.
It is not politically correct to profile them as illegal aliens, or crimmigrants.
My guess is that they may be illegal but probably not criminals if they’re standing out there willing to work scut labor for peanuts and no bennies. Which many of *us* may come to before too long at the way things are going in this country. We have a bunch of them up here working at the dairy farms and they even have a Spanish Mass for them at one of our local Catholic parishes.
I’m pretty “right-wing” conservative on immigration to this country but geez, a lot of them are evidently willing and able to work their asses off for shit pay and to escape the total failed cesspools they came from, so caint hardly say as I blame them much. I mainly blame our own gutless and criminal overlords for screwing around with this for decades and doing everything wrong, particularly the late T. Kennedy, a blot on American political history if ever there was one.
I’ll go a little farther than OFD and say that while the people in question have come here in violation of the law, and therefore by definition are illegal, and our government isn’t doing anything about it, they are practically speaking second class citizens. The underlying problem is that it is far easier to come her illegally than legally. We need to make it harder to come here illegally, and then we need to make it easier to come here legally. I think we’re going to have real problems with having a second tier class of people, who can’t be upwardly mobile like my immigrant ancestors were.
I think we have many more than enough unskilled laborers already. I would happily accept any immigrants who are well-educated in STEM fields and grant them fast-track citizenship. Mexican, Indian, Chinese, it doesn’t matter where they come from. On the other hand, we don’t want or need any more low/no-skill people, all of whom including our native-born ones are a drag on our economy.
The ones who are already here, assuming they don’t meet my criteria, should be gathered up, bussed to the Mexican border, and expelled. Without trial. We should first have a specified grace period when illegals can voluntarily leave the country. After that, come down on them hard. Very hard.
Agreed. We need to weed out the criminals and terrorist sleeper cells, some of the latter having undoubtedly already long since entered the country. And we need to welcome folks who will work and want to become full-fledged American citizens who have something to contribute. As usual, our lords temporal have made it wicked easy for the scum to come in, and difficult from beginning and throughout for decent human beings.
I strongly suspect that the guys in front of the Home Depot and the people who show up at the Spanish Mass in northern Vermont in the dead of our winter here are folks we wanna keep. And truth be told, there are beaucoups current Americans that I would gladly ship the hell out with joy in my heart.
Whoops, Robert and I x-posted; I was agreeing mostly with Dave B.
Robert’s solution should have been enacted many years ago, but like firearms here, that genie is long outta the bottle. The State as it currently exists is not gonna do this. They’ll throw him and me out first.
Speaking of sleeper cells, I am looking forward to the new “Amercians” show on the FX channel about a KGB sleeper cell in the USA in 1980:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Americans_%282013_TV_series%29
http://insidetv.ew.com/2012/08/09/the-americans-fx-keri-russell/
It may be good. And Keri Russell adds credibility.
And “Justified” was freaking awesome this week. “I’ve got a deputy who was the most successful sniper in Iraq and likes to kill. I’ve got a deputy who just ditched her husband and I’m waiting for the blow-up. And then I’ve got a deputy who has been investigated by IA so many times that they have him on speed dial.”.
Hey OFD, so what does RUTHLESS do with my 1978 Harlem Globetrotters pinball machine that I have rebuilt once already? I just replaced the three cpu motherboard a decade ago (that was a bear!). I only play 4 to 5 games on it a year but it is upstairs where I don’t go very often.
I wouldn’t be able to watch that. Russell played the title character on the TV series Felicity, where the women were women and the men were women, too. Sensitivity just oozes from the dialog. Made me want to hurl.
OFD likes “Justified” a lot, and also the theme tune.
@Lynn; see what U can git for it on Ebay or craigslist. Then go outside and shoot hoops yerself. Or play “horse” with someone my or Bob’s size.
Keri is cute but way too short; one of my younger brothers tells me that all the hotties on the tee-vee are midgets in real life. I believe him. Mrs. OFD is 5’10” and Darling Princess is pushing six feet.
The problem is a bit more complex than that. The real problem is the people who hang out at Lowe’s are more skilled and more motivated than many of the native born people who are a drag on our society. Actually that’s not fair. The native born folks are probably more skilled at English.
OFD, don’t you mean they’ll throw you in the gulag first? Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot we don’t call it the gulag any more. Gitmo, anyone?
Speaking of which, when I was a teenager playing pickup basketball, you’d never guess which position I played. Guard.
Yep, we had three guys who were 6’8″ to 6’10”, so we little fellows had to do the ball handling.
Which reminds me of a winter day when all five of us were in a car that some punks snowballed. I was first out of the car and yelled, “You sons of bitches better run. I’m the smallest one in the car.”
I forgot “The Americans” promo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C67PNebjsdY
You should be so lucky to get sent to Club Gitmo:
https://members.premiereinteractive.com/store/28566/41864.html
The gulag that USA citizens get sent to is in Buffalo.
“…so we little fellows had to do the ball handling.”
That always used to flip me out; still does, actually, seeing guys that much taller/bigger than me. One of my former cop partners many moons ago was 6’7″ and 410 pounds; he was pretty fast within about twenty feet or so, but after that he couldn’t catch ya. He didn’t get much guff from anybody. Also did semi-pro wrestling. And I was *really* flipped out once when I saw a chick at the supermarket a few years ago who had to be 6’7″ or 6’8″ herself. Towered over me; I was sorely tempted to ask her to get something off the top shelf for me but discretion was the better paht of valor then.
Yeah, Club Gitmo don’t look so bad. Three hots and a cot, your own special diet, a tee-vee, gym, a nice book to sit and relax with; but guys like me and Bob they’ll send to a stockade in freaking Buffalo, snow capital of the Northeast most winters. Wanna bet they don’t let me have a Bible or a Playboy? They wouldn’t let our troops have either one in the goddamned Sandbox or the Suck.
Do they deny the “morale officers” Bibles as well, or are they simply excluded from the region?
WTF is a “morale officer?”
We got told to “Go see the Chaplain and get your TS Card punched.”
But the diet includes no bacon or ham. And everyone but Lynn would complain that they don’t serve decent barbecue. Them Texans is nice folk, but they have completely different ideas about barbecue. Actually, I like barbecue whether beef or pork, I just ain’t got what it takes to cook an edible beef brisket.
No bacon or ham would be a stone bummuh. And I don’t care for all that glop they call falafel or whatever and don’t care for the taste of lamb or goat or small boys.
“…an edible beef brisket.”
SLOW is the key there, son, SLOW. A nice dry rub and then keep it mopped good with a nice sauce. Ten or more hours on a low setting, preferably on the grill or in a smoker.
I may be a city boy and a Yankee, but I already knew that part. (I know I’m not a Yankee by Nova Anglia definition.) I’m just saying pulled pork is a lot easier to get right.
True, that. Also, a lot depends on the cut and condition of the brisket. We’ve done both, and man, do they come out nice on a lightly toasted kaiser roll with the sauce and some type of slaw on the side. Plus corn on the cob.
And agreed with Bob (again) on his hard-money proposal; the sooner the better, but we shall not hold our breaths. The Master Plan is to keep printing worthless paper backed up by nothing until the Great Default and then we shall (“we” meaning all us Mundanes and peasants) reap the whirlwind.
Maybe after the dust settles and all the blood has seeped deep into the ground, we can visit this hard money currency regime and make it work. But I doubt it will be in our lifetimes.
Bob,
Got a new series on Netflix which you and Barbara might enjoy.
To Serve Them All Our Days
http://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/To-Serve-Them-All-My-Days-Disc-1/60034693
BBC 1980 or so.
You mentioned a couple weeks ago your appreciation for good writing, or at least good grammar.
This has that, and more. It’s a spare, sparse and I hate to use the word, elegant, production.
Done on a tiny budget but that doesn’t matter because the writing is terse, the plotting excellent and the acting is a wonder!
Those damn Brits know how to act; none of the modern 15 second cuts here. Scenes go on for minutes with nary a hitch!
I think I appreciate the production as much as the content. It’s a fancy-free, straight narrative and yet also compelling.
Plot my not arouse your interest: WWI survivor goes on to become headmaster at a public school; and the theme does get a little soapy. I’m only half-way through, but I think you guys would like it.
We’ve seen it, but thanks.
The Master Plan is to keep printing worthless paper backed up by nothing until the Great Default and then we shall (“we” meaning all us Mundanes and peasants) reap the whirlwind.
We are we have been called through the ages, serfs, to them. When the money collapse does happen (this is 10 to 20 years away, mind you), we serfs will be viewed as a cost, not an asset. To get rid of us will enrich the world, at least in their minds. After, it is for the greater good!
Now, towards the end of Mr. Obama’s second term, the interest rates will be higher, maybe in the range of 10 to 15%. Then we will be asked, nay told, that the children of the world XXXXX nation need our help in these dire times. Then our 401K plans and our IRAs will be “invested” in helping out the 50% unemployed. Just a little at first and then a lot, maybe all. Maybe even our cash assets will be “liberated” in the great struggle to end poverty for all time.
Do it for the Children!
Keri is cute but way too short; one of my younger brothers tells me that all the hotties on the tee-vee are midgets in real life.
It’s helpful for your career in Hollywood to be a short woman, as many big stars are short. Tom Cruise is 5’6″ or so, as are Pacino & Downey Jr. The title character of the Jack Reacher movie out now that Cruise stars in is supposed to be 6’5″.
One of my brothers was working as a dolly grip on a film and was laying out the track for a long dolly shot (this was before Steadicams) that was to track the male star and woman. After they laid it out a trench was dug along side for the woman to walk in so she would be shorter than the male star.
“My guess is that they may be illegal but probably not criminals …”
How can one be here as a result of illegal entry and not be a criminal, or crimmigrant?
@Lynn: I figure ten years, tops. And every once in a blue moon, the serfs revolt. And heavily armored knights get pulled off their horses and chopped to bits. Or shot through with arrows from longbows and bolts from crossbows. Extrapolate from that to the 21st Century.
@ech: Yeah, I realize that. Still comes as a surprise once in a while when I discover just HOW short some of the women are in RL. And Mrs. OFD and I busted our guts laughing when we found out a while back who was gonna be the star of the new Jack Reacher flick. I am the size of Jack Reacher but about forty pounds heavier so I didn’t get the call. Bastards.
@Slim: Yes, I know. I’d sweat ’em a little and make them earn the right to stay and with the intention of becoming citizens. I can’t see how we’re gonna round up fifteen or twenty million people and ship ’em back down into a failed terrorist narco-state. As I said, as with firearms, that genie is outta the bottle now. Thanks to generations of craven rat bastard political hacks like Kennedy. The time to have been hard guys about it was quite a while back, about fifty years or so.
But don’t get me wrong: I’d sure as hell seal off our borders and coasts now; close the 1,000 or so overseas bases, stations, and facilities and bring all troops home to do the job. And keep our Guard forces in their respective states. While they’re busy doing that, they’ll be too busy to go door to door to grab firearms from regular law-abiding citizens like they’ve done in the UK and Oz, leaving them in the hands of criminals and cops, which are more and more often interchangeable these days. As they were in the early days, in Sir Robert Peel’s London.
Getting rid of the illegals currently here is a non-issue. If I were Prez, I’d announce that I would issue presidential pardons to anyone killing an illegal alien. I’m pretty sure they’d self-deport lickety-split, at no cost to the taxpayer.
Re the ruling class, I’m biding my time. I know where a few members of the ruling class live, and law-and-order are declining even as we speak.
Ditto. But if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather do members of the ruling class than illegals even worse off than us.
OFD says:
Yeah, Club Gitmo don’t look so bad. Three hots and a cot, your own special diet, a tee-vee, gym, a nice book to sit and relax with;
plus all the water you want, and then some.
I’ve heard that it’s so much water that you get board…
Oh Bill, don’t be such a drip!
Of course, once you get there, best policy is to just go with the flow…
…bah-dah…bing!
Lynn wrote:
“The gulag that USA citizens get sent to is in Buffalo.”
One of my nieces spent six months in Buffalo as an exchange student. From what she said I don’t envy anyone who lives or even visits.
OFD wrote:
“And I was *really* flipped out once when I saw a chick at the supermarket a few years ago who had to be 6’7″ or 6’8″ herself. Towered over me; I was sorely tempted to ask her to get something off the top shelf for me but discretion was the better paht of valor then. ”
Was she wearing a mini? >:->
ech wrote:
“It’s helpful for your career in Hollywood to be a short woman, as many big stars are short. Tom Cruise is 5’6″ or so, as are Pacino & Downey Jr. The title character of the Jack Reacher movie out now that Cruise stars in is supposed to be 6’5″.”
Australian vertically challenged cutiepie Kylie Minogue’s first film was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Delinquents_%281989_film%29 where her co-star Charlie Schlatter was chosen specifically because he was really short.
“Was she wearing a mini?”
Nope, but she was wearing a t-shirt that said “Tall People Are the Height of the Party.”
6’7″ or 6’8″? I adore tall chicks, but that might have been bit tall even for my liking.
Sure has cooled down here. I’m not exactly freezing my butt off but it’s nothing like Friday’s nightmare high.
Sydney is making the nooz up here; 115??? Damn.
Tall chicks? I have found over my personal decades that while you would think tall women would gravitate to tall men, the opposite has been true; I couldn’t get the time of day from them. Yet I continually saw, and see, very tall men with short women. My first wife is 5’3″. Go figure.
And yes, 6’7″ would be too tall for me, too; that chick probably had to target b-ball players for dates.
In college, one of my roommates was Scott Calhoun, who was 6’10”. At one time he was dating a girl who was about 5’0″. It was so cute seeing them walking down the sidewalk around the quad, holding hands. It looked like a daddy walking his little girl.
Better to have loved a short woman, then never to have loved a tall!
Arrrghhh.
Oh, and I forgot to mention. This was the mid-70’s. She wore flats. Scott wore platform shoes that took him up to something like 7’2″. I guess it didn’t make any difference to him. Either way, he had to duck to fit through standard 6’8″ doorways.
“…standard 6’8″ doorways.”
That might be the standard now but it sure wasn’t when this house was built; I gotta duck, too. And next time you’re in Boston, swing by the Paul Revere House if you feel like crawling through doorways on your hands and knees. Our ancestors were hobbits. (except for guys like Washington and Jefferson, who must have seemed like Godzilla back then).
Must’ve been poor nutrition.
The other night my wife and I were watching something with the British actor David Jason in it. We commented on his short stature. IMDB lists him IIRC as 5’6″, but I suspect 5’2″ is more like it. He was born in 1940 or 1941, so he spent the entire period malnourished when he should have been growing. IIRC, the UK still had severe food rationing until at least 1950 and some rationing lasted until 1960 or thereabouts.
OTOH, check out the average height of Dutch people today. IIRC, the two of us are around average height for men born since WWII rationing ended.
Yes, probably average for that period and for us northwest European men. I’ve met any number of guys from Germany, Holland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark in our height ballpark over the years. The UK and North America throw it off due to massive immigration from other areas.
And Mills Darden, from our neck of the woods. He was an NFL Front Four all by himself, literally. (If he’d ever sacked a quarterback, the poor QB would never have been the same…) Darden was supposedly the inspiration for Paul Bunyan. The guy stood 7’6″ tall and weighed 1,100 pounds. Tales of his strength and power are legend. Supposedly, his yell could be heard for miles. His wife was under 5′ tall and weighed under 100 pounds. They had several children, presumably with her on top.
The Wiki entry sez no known photo of him but here is a blurred one that looks like it could be him:
http://www.thetallestman.com/images/millsdarden/millsdarden%20(11).jpg
Badly overweight, even for that height. And if wife died at forty, maybe she warnt always on top and got plumb wore out.
RBT wrote:
“In college, one of my roommates was Scott Calhoun, who was 6’10″. At one time he was dating a girl who was about 5’0″. It was so cute seeing them walking down the sidewalk around the quad, holding hands. It looked like a daddy walking his little girl.”
Back in the Eighties when I was playing basketball at a social level my club had a top ranked team in both men’s and women’s. The men’s team had an outstanding player who was very VERY short. The woman’s team had an outstanding player who was very VERY tall. (Over 7′ IIRC). One day the two teams had a mixed scratch match, and as they were competing for the ball the short guy ran right into the tall woman. I didn’t see it happen, but I’m told the guy ran face first straight into her crotch.
OFD wrote:
“That might be the standard now but it sure wasn’t when this house was built; I gotta duck, too. And next time you’re in Boston, swing by the Paul Revere House if you feel like crawling through doorways on your hands and knees.”
Hey, when I was visiting family friends in Cornwall in 1990 I stayed a night, and the door to my bedroom was pretty low too. I saw it coming, told myself to duck down low, and *still* hit my head. That was a really low door. (ouch).
“They had several children, presumably with her on top.”
Damn, she’d wanna be *really* careful, or she might not be found for days.
In 1979 I stayed for a few months in an old house in West Sussex, UK. It could be authenticated back to around 1523 or so, though parts were newer.
I’m 6’4″. I can’t begin to guess how many times I hit my head on old beams. Going up the stairs, into the bathroom… most of the house laid traps for me. In one bedroom, where I had to sleep for a week or so, there was a beam above my bed that came down past my nose. There was a corner of the kitchen where another guy staying there hit his head once, and he was maybe 5’5″. Fortunately my regular bedroom was in the “new” wing where nothing threatened, at least once I made it through the door.
I’m tellin ya, we’re descended from friggin hobbits!
This house was built recently by UK and Euro standards, in 1830, and I still smack my head on the doorways occasionally. I have to remember to duck for every one of them. And the basement ceiling is a joke; I may as well just get down on my hands and knees immediately.
OFD, you are making me feel bad as I downsize from my 3,600 ft2 home to a 3,000 ft2 home. Especially with all the 10 ft ceilings and 6’8″ to 8′ doorways. And my two story foyer that is bloody scary to change light bulbs in (I won’t miss that).
Of course, I was just discussing with the wife how we need to be RUTHLESS. I am throwing away my stacks of old computer programming magazines that I have not touched in 10 years. And I am going to try to reduce my 4,000 scifi book collection by 1,000. RUTHLESS!
I was in Tokyo a decade or so ago. My agent took me and the misses to a basement restaurant. He was 72 or so at the time and is 5’2″. Tall for his time. I knew I was in trouble (I’m 6’1″) when the entry door was 5’8″. Inside was a little better, the ceiling beams holding the next floor up bottomed out at 6′. I nailed a couple of them before I started walking crouched over. The sushi and tempura were awesome though.
Hey OFD, BTW how is that 1200 ft2 two story working out for you? I was talking with a 67 yr old friend at church this morning. He was relating that he has to get up to go to bathroom every two hours, all night long. So, do you have a chamber pot or do you walk the stairs in the middle of night when you have to pee?
OFD wrote:
“I’m tellin ya, we’re descended from friggin hobbits! ”
Chuck *IS* a Hobbit. Just look at his feet.
Lynn wrote:
“And I am going to try to reduce my 4,000 scifi book collection by 1,000. RUTHLESS!”
OH NOES!
(Greg with the 1520 square foot 4 BR house that he considered enormous in 1985.)
“OFD, you are making me feel bad as I downsize from my 3,600 ft2 home to a 3,000 ft2 home. Especially with all the 10 ft ceilings and 6’8″ to 8′ doorways.”
Ah yes, Lifestyles of the Rich and Fye-mous, wiv Robin Leach. Do the servants speak English?
“Hey OFD, BTW how is that 1200 ft2 two story working out for you? I was talking with a 67 yr old friend at church this morning. He was relating that he has to get up to go to bathroom every two hours, all night long. So, do you have a chamber pot or do you walk the stairs in the middle of night when you have to pee?”
It is 1,426 square feet; I am only 59.5; most nights, if you must know, I get up once to pee and sleep-walk about ten feet to the bathroom. But I also drink gallons of water, juice, Moxie, etc. during the day so this could be a factuh.
And my advice remains, based on sad experience still being undergone by me, to be RUTHLESS, esp. when it comes to sorry-ass old programming rags and sci-fi books. You will not have a leg to stand on when you resume the conversation with the Mrs. about HER being RUTHLESS unless you first demonstrate your own RUTHLESSNESS.
I love noticing common words whose proper antonyms are extremely rare. I just searched Google for “ruthless” and got 27,100,000 hits. Search for “ruthful” got 67,500 hits. That makes ruthless 400 times more common than its antonym.
All this discussion reminds me of the limerick that finishes “he hit a bump and rode on ruthlessly”.
Interestingly, in the Merriam-Webster online, “ruthful” is a century older than “ruthless.”
And isn’t it sweet that Google has Saint MLK for its graphic today.
OFD wrote:
“And my advice remains, based on sad experience still being undergone by me, to be RUTHLESS, esp. when it comes to sorry-ass old programming rags…”
I’ve still got my first computer related book: Jensen and Wirth, Pascal User Manual and Report, bought in 1977. That is one book that will never go in the bin, not while I’m still breathing.
(I have managed to get rid of my old Windows 95/98/2K books).
Hi OFD, no servants here except yours truly. And my English sucks according to all who know me. Almost as bad as my German.
I’ve seen the rich (most of whom are not idle in the Great State of Texas), their homes are freaking humongous. Well over 10,000 ft2 on several acres of land behind great fences and armed guards. And usually two or three buildings on their property with a lake or creek dock. And that is just here in Sugar Land.
For some reason, I thought that your bathroom was downstairs. I could just see myself tottering down a set of stairs at 3 am (that might not go well). In your case, upstairs is much better. Oh wait, you were talking about adding a downstairs bath to the kitchen if I remember correctly now. Add two, more is better! You can never have too many bathrooms. Especially with women in the house and older guys who like to read the paper on the throne.
And yes, I am getting up a lot of nights also. And I am only 52. I recently had pleasure of driving to Dallas with my Dad and son. Many comments were made by both about my three pit stops each way. And Dad is 74 years of age and taking Flomax. BTW, both of my grandfathers died of prostate cancer. One was 87, the other 59.
RUTHLESS is not going well. One really needs to be careful around someone suffering from lyme disease. Off comments about too much stuff are not taken well at all and many tears flow. Many, many tears.
Three weeks until the move.
“you were talking about adding a downstairs bath to the kitchen if I remember correctly now. Add two, more is better!”
Yeah, someday we’ll add the second bathroom to the ground floor, displacing a closet that currently exists between the kitchen and living room, adjacent to the stairs. We should be OK with two, as even if both are occupied by fems, I can still manage, being, thank God, male.
“…comments about too much stuff are not taken well at all and many tears flow. Many, many tears.”
Sorry to hear that. Sometimes a household must temper RUTHLESSNESS with mercy.
We should be OK with two, as even if both are occupied by fems, I can still manage, being, thank God, male.
Many years ago, the FIL was visiting us in our two bathroom house. I was in one reading the paper and a kid was showering in the other. The wife came in and said that her father needed to go really bad. I told her to send him to the backyard, at which point she gasped and said “gross”. I said, in a manly voice, “to a man, the entire world is a urinal”, at which she departed and sent him outside.
And she still thinks we men are gross for peeing in the wild. I do not understand this. Her grandparents outside Binghampton did not get indoor plumbing until the 1980s.
I gotta remember that line about the entire world being a urinal to us; Mrs. OFD finds it both amusing and enviable.
One place that is not a urinal is atop high-tension electrical power towers, as one Darwin Award nominee found after he’d drunk two six-packs of typical American lager.
They found his boots about a block away and that was it.
Heh. In college, I worked summers for the PA Department of Transportation. One day our foreman, George Gunnett, a crusty old guy, peed on an electric fence. I’m sure his scream was audible a long way off.
How the hell did he get to be a crusty old guy being that stupid? I’m stupid, but not *that* stupid, and I am working diligently on becoming a crusty old guy.
The electric fence was just about invisible. As far as George knew, he was peeing on a few tall weeds. He was actually a great foreman, competent, fair, and looked out for his guys.
Try peeing on an electric fence? That would make ME crusty!
We gotta be careful up here watching out for electric fence wires due to livestock all over the place and not in other places but the wire still there, etc. You can bet not only am I careful where I put my hands and feet but also where I have to do my biz. Or whiz.