08:09 – Barbara called around 8:15 last night when she arrived at her dad’s place after having dinner with her friend. Her dad is doing pretty well, and she said her mom is doing better. Frances is staying with their dad tonight, so Barbara will be back home this evening.
We had lots of rain last night, starting around 7:00 and lasting through about midnight. The expected strong storms never arrived, in the sense that there wasn’t any lightning or thunder to speak of, but the winds were pretty high. Apparently, some places locally had gusts of 60+ MPH (96+ KPH). I didn’t get much sleep, because every 10 or 20 minutes through the night Colin would start barking like crazy, jump down off the bed, and run to the front door.
Good news, at last! Hope it continues.
Except for the loss of sleep; our mutt also gets nervous with the high winds; which rattled the windows pretty good at our place overnight; high wind advisory continues through today up here as temps drop and snow flurries arrive later.
I sleep like the dead through rocket and mortar attacks but Mrs. OFD wakes up if a leaf drops to the ground miles away in the forest and then stays awake.
You sleep through what you’re used to. It annoys Barbara that I can sleep through the worst thunderstorms. But when a dog alerts, there’s usually good reason for it. Colin was, no doubt, alerting when he heard branches falling and so on. I can’t blame him for that. In fact, we encourage him to alert when in his opinion it’s warranted.
True, that; I did not mean to imply that I have continued being used to rocket and mortar attacks; luckily those have not occurred within range of me for a very long time now. I was merely using hyperbole to illustrate my dead-or-in-a-coma sleep state. Mrs. OFD and I probably should find a happy medium; I need to be more alert these days and she needs her sleep.
We closed on our new home yesterday. We got a 30 year mortgage at 3.75%. I cannot believe the interest rates nowadays. I’ve got a feeling that they will be sending us letters in a couple of years offering to refinance for free at a more “realistic” rate.
Now we have to fixup our existing home for selling. New paint inside and out, granite in kitchen and carpet. Maybe new appliances. And my realtor wants me to replace all the door knobs and drawer knobs in the house with dark bronze.
I didn’t figure there were a lot of VC in Vermont.
Still, I’ll bet the instincts would return fast if you needed them. My dad flew as a navigator on a B-17 in WWII. Even 20 and 30 years later, he was still very uneasy flying commercial. As my mom said, he was constantly on the lookout for German fighters. Couldn’t help himself.
For those that don’t know him, Major General Peter Cosgrove is an Australian.
General Cosgrove was interviewed on the radio recently.
Read his reply to the lady who interviewed him concerning guns and children. Regardless of how you feel about gun laws you have to love this! This is one of the best comeback lines of all time. In a portion of an ABC radio interview between a female broadcaster and General Cosgrove who was about to sponsor a Boy Scout Troop visiting his military Headquarters.
FEMALE INTERVIEWER: So, General Cosgrove, what things are you going to teach these young boys when they visit your base?
GENERAL COSGROVE: We’re going to teach them climbing, canoeing, archery and shooting.
FEMALE INTERVIEWER: Shooting! That’s a bit irresponsible, isn’t it?
GENERAL COSGROVE: I don’t see why, they’ll be properly supervised on the rifle range.
FEMALE INTERVIEWER: Don’t you admit that this is a terribly dangerous activity to be teaching children?
GENERAL COSGROVE: I don’t see how. We will be teaching them proper rifle discipline before they even touch a firearm.
FEMALE INTERVIEWER: But you’re equipping them to become violent killers.
GENERAL COSGROVE: Well, Ma’am, you’re equipped to be a prostitute, but you’re not one, are you?
The radiocast went silent for 46 seconds and when it returned, this interview was over.
Congrats, Lynn! Nicely done.
“… constantly on the lookout for German fighters. ”
I haven’t flown on commercial aircraft since 1994 but would probably still be a tad nervous about ground-based small-arms fire on takeoffs and landings esp. if any turbulence. Not worried, hopefully, about Russian MIGs.
“I didn’t figure there were a lot of VC in Vermont.”
Yeah but ya gotta stay alert; Charlie can come through the wire at any time. His idea of great R & R is cold rice and a little rat meat, ya know. Though I’m guessing northern Vermont in wintuh is not his cup of tea.
I’ve seen that interview quote before, Ray; it’s a keeper.
http://www.snopes.com/military/reinwald.asp
Shit. Oh well, I still like it.
Just once I would like to hear an automated phone response system say:
For English press 1
For Spanish go home
Well, OK, it’s not a keeper. Not a reliable one, anyway. And it gives more potential ammo to the anti-gun crowd.
In re: English vs. Spanish: OK, we live within a half-hour of the Quebec border. In Quebec, French is the dominant language, although most folks are bilingual and use both English and French daily. In one of the towns down here the publik skool system got rid of its French teacher and course and brought in Spanish. WTF??? We have some Latinos in Vermont, sure; they’re immigrant laborers on the dairy farms, and rarely seen or heard. (because, shhhhhh….they’re illegal immigrants.) But a quarter of the state’s population and that of our neighboring state of New Hampshuh are Franco-American and we’re plumb next door to Quebec. Again, WTF? Even some of the highway signage is in both English and French.
The mind just boggles and then bogs down in the face of imbecilic crap like this.
It could be worse. You could hear:
Para los españoles, pulse uno
For English, press two
It could be worse. You could hear:
Actually I have heard that before. I think it was when I called a county office in southern California to get a copy of a birth certificate. The Spanish option was first, followed by English.
Well, what companies want to do is their own business, but I think all government entities should be required to use only English. People who don’t speak English should be responsible for getting their own translators.
California passed an official English proposition(63) in 1986. The courts upheld it. The government ignored it. Now Obama says learning English should be part of immigration reform. Really?
California. The land of fruits and nuts. I am not surprised. (There are exceptions Slim but you are outnumbered thousands to one.)
Hey we resemble that!
Yet we’re settin’ ourselves up for the joke…
http://www.kcmuseum.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=menu&menu_id=40
Bob’s an old softy; I say learn English or die.
And that goes triple for current legal resident American citizens; I will be working up a test (hyper-literate bastid that I am) and maybe SteveF can help.
“California. The land of fruits and nuts. I am not surprised. (There are exceptions Slim but you are outnumbered thousands to one.)”
Slim and dkreck are outnumbered by a lot more than that out in Kalifornia. I know; I was living there courtesy of Uncle for eighteen months in the early 70s when it was getting going real good. Right smack in the Bay area, too. Only time in my life when a guy tried to pick me up, and he really tried, too. I have a friend (and fellow ‘Nam vet, brown-water swabbie like Liveshot Kerry) down in Delaware and he grew up in the 50s and 60s out there; family were early settlers. He is a sad and bitter exile now over how bad it has gotten.
Even what’s-his-name the golfer is thinking about leaving.
I’d move but I’ve been to Texas.
Well partner, I’ve been all over this planet and to many other states. I like The Great State of Texas the most!
Ask me again in August.
It was 39 F this morning, it was 70 F a little while ago. Last weekend we did not drop below 70 F, even at nighttime.
I’ll stick to northern New England and the rural Maritimes, thank you.
And more on the women-in-combat fiasco:
http://takimag.com/article/women_in_combat_another_nail_in_the_coffin_jared_taylor/print#axzz2JaqQivmw
Central California has very hot summers too but we don’t have the humidity. I’ve been in Dallas in the summer. No thanks.
I’ve always thought of Kerouac (and the other Beat writers) to be quintessentially American. On the Road could only have been written by an American and located in the States. The characters are universal but the story is pure Americana. I was surprised to find that Kerouac’s first language was not English. He spoke French (or more likely Joual) with his mother all his life. Spanish does not seem to be a smart choice in the north-eastern parts of the Excited States.
Spanish would be a fairly smart choice for a second language in southern New England, particularly in the urban areas, and of course NYC/NJ areas. Not up here.
Kerouac grew up in a cruddy Maffachufetts mill town, Lowell, ironically named after one of the original Boston Brahmins. Although he’s been touted as some sort of left-wing hippie-dippy beatnik character and a precursor to The Glorious Sixties, he was actually quite conservative and a faithful Roman Catholic throughout his life. I consider him a lesser light descendant of Twain and Whitman and honor his memory accordingly. Also a fellow drunk who didn’t stop in time.
Here he is with Ginsberg (asshole) and others in NYC in 1959 when your northern correspondent was in the first grade: a lost world now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn9CdLKBDVE
“Para los españoles, pulse uno
For English, press two”
This actually filters more than what I think you intended to filter. Only Spaniards would be invited or allowed to press 1.
It should be:
Para español, pulse uno
For English, press two
I will assume you used a translation engine… Regardless, the problem with computer translations is that they mostly provide some reasonable translation but they seldom provide an accurate translation. Try using Japanese on either side of the equation…
What I *thought* I wrote was, “For Spaniards, press 1”. Is that not right?
Lynn said
“Now we have to fixup our existing home for selling. New paint inside and out, granite in kitchen and carpet. Maybe new appliances. And my realtor wants me to replace all the door knobs and drawer knobs in the house with dark bronze.”
I have mixed feelings about this, and I’ll soon be facing these sorts of decisions. I intend to have the house painted inside and out and some of the lights replaced, but I’m not sure it would be wise to spend too much money doing up the place when I may be doing something potential buyers don’t want. I’ll just get it looking presentable and let them make decisions like that.
Ray wrote:
“GENERAL COSGROVE: Well, Ma’am, you’re equipped to be a prostitute, but you’re not one, are you?
The radiocast went silent for 46 seconds and when it returned, this interview was over.”
I love it when arch feminists get their cant served back to them. In around 1990 I was chatting to a couple of Christian young ladies (both drop dead gorgeous) who dabbled a bit in feminism. I remarked on how feminists, especially the Christian variety, loved to refer to God as “she” but never seemed to be anxious to refer to the devil as “she”. That got me a very indignant “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”, but they knew I’d got them.
Yes, Peter Cosgrove is pretty good value.
Lynn write:
“Well partner, I’ve been all over this planet and to many other states. I like The Great State of Texas the most!”
I know a quite good Texan joke, but as this is a family forum I’ll pass.
Lynn, If you’ve seen An Officer and a Gentleman then you probably know a good line used by Marine Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley to one of the new recruits that could be applied to Texans. (In the movie it was applied first to an Oklahoman, then to an Arizonan.)
but as this is a family forum
Since when?
Gotta love lefty and feminist Christians; God is Her and the Holy Ghost (Spirit) is Her and it just sucks all to hell that there is no way around Jesus being a man, although the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Maffachufetts had/has a nude female crucifix, blasphemous apostates that they are. But Satan is always male, as are all the demons. Interesting, eh? (of course the demons are fallen angels so thus asexual, but medieval and later art works show them with enlarged male genitalia frequently).
And Greg, you didn’t get the word; the General Cosgrove thing was debunked with a link provided by our host earlier; gotta scroll UP, homes!
Yeah, I saw it. I read the posts I hadn’t seen starting from the top, but I didn’t read all of them before started replying.
I decided not to edit my post, although I was fairly sure I’d seen that “interview” before.
It doesn’t matter. Cosgrove is a really good bloke. I wish he was PM rather than the current atheist lefty bimbo we’re stuck with.
Hey, we’ll trade you our atheist lefty bimbo for yours! At least we’d have something halfway decent to look at then. We’ve got nothing!
I have mixed feelings about this, and I’ll soon be facing these sorts of decisions. I intend to have the house painted inside and out and some of the lights replaced, but I’m not sure it would be wise to spend too much money doing up the place when I may be doing something potential buyers don’t want. I’ll just get it looking presentable and let them make decisions like that.
Me too. However, the formica in the kitchen is coming up and the house interior, especially the wood trim, has essentially not been painted since the house was built in 1994. And I have about 20 rotted boards on the outside since I am so close to river, we get rot like crazy in that old paperboard crap that was installed on my house. Newer houses started getting Hardieplank in about 1996 – 1998 which is absolutely awesome unless you hit it. Your James Hardie was an absolute genius for building materials.
People named Hardie are probably from Scottish background, and the -y ending is usually English, and seem to frequently be engineers, craftsmen, inventors, mathematicians and the like. Dunno why that is. Oh, and one fairly well-known hyper-literate named Thomas.
Yeah, I understand now why you need to update Lynn. I was forced into it 10 years ago by a failed oven and cooktop. They didn’t make ovens and cooktops in those dimensions any more so I had to have the benches and cupboards replaced. The latter needed replacing anyway as they looked amateurish – I think the original owner was a *bit* of a handyman and did them himself. The requirements just kept growing until eventually it was easiest just to have the kitchen replaced.
People named Hardie are probably from Scottish background
Yup. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hardie#History
I thought it was James Hardie himself who invented Hardieplank, but no, too far back. He retired in 1911.
“What I *thought* I wrote was, “For Spaniards, press 1″. Is that not right?”
You thought “wisely”. (and executed correctly). I second-guessed poorly. 🙁
It is just that given the US context with the majority of Spanish speaking people living there not being precisely Spaniards, yours would be a very unlikely prompt. My version -horror of horrors- is certainly quite possible. Think Florida, for instance.
I was trying to be ironic, but I obviously failed. I don’t understand why Spanish speakers are favored over those who speak, say, Swahili or Chinese or Finnish.
Chinese is too complex for many of us to learn. Finnish is also unbelievably complicated, but like Swahili is not a major factor in politics. But there are lots of votes in kowtowing to the Spanish lobby. (I’m not complaining about people learning the language, which I like, but about the entitlement mentality.)
I was trying to be ironic, but I obviously failed. I don’t understand why Spanish speakers are favored over those who speak, say, Swahili or Chinese or Finnish.
Well here in California they are now projected to become the largest group by next year.
http://www.contracostatimes.com/breaking-news/ci_22490864/california-could-have-50-million-people-2049?source=most_emailed