10:17 – Barbara is off to meet her parents and sister at her parents’ house, where they’ll be cleaning out stuff, deciding what to move over to their new quarters, what to donate to charity, and what to discard. That’s a pretty massive project, so they won’t finish today, but they have to get it done before they can start getting the house ready to go on the market.
Meanwhile, I’m doing my usual Saturday tasks, starting with the laundry. The seasonal burst in science kit sales is starting to taper off, which gives us some breathing room. If the past is any indication, we’ll have another, smaller peak in sales at the end of this year and the beginning of next, as people buy kits for Christmas and the second semester. Then it’ll quiet down again until April, when people start ordering kits for summer session. And then around the first of July the craziness will start again, as people start ordering kits for the autumn semester.
During this slower period, we can go from building kits almost constantly to building batches once a month or so. Basically, we’ll build batches of 30 and start a new batch when we get down to a dozen or so. I’ll take advantage of that time to do things I haven’t had time to do since early summer, including designing a couple of new kits and writing the manuals for them. I’d like to have at least two new kits available for 2013. I may also take an occasional day off. Then, next March and April we’ll place large orders for components and start building inventory again for the crazy season.
13:37 – Wow. Will people never learn that when you’d prefer something be ignored, making a big deal about it isn’t the best way to accomplish your goal? So the British royal family threatens to sue the French newspaper that published images of Kate somebody or other, Duchess of something or other, topless. Big deal. If they’d just said “no comment”, no one would have paid any attention. The images are so blurry and indistinct that it’s difficult to say anything more than that they appear to be images of a dark haired woman with her boobs exposed. Incredibly, the spokesman for the royal family for all intents and purposes confirmed that the images were real and that Kate somebody or other, Duchess of something or other, was in fact the subject of those images. So now the world knows that the probable future Queen, if indeed the position still exists by then, has boobs. I was certainly shocked to learn that.
deciding what to move over to their new quarters, what to donate to charity, and what to discard
Estate sale; if they can tolerat the annoying people that show up early, dicker over a $0.50 item, attempt to deceive and otherwise be obnoxious. Did that with my aunt’s stuff. Made about $3K. Probably could have made more on some of the more obscure stuff but I did not have time to have it appraised. I just wanted the house cleaned out.
Good idea. I just called Barbara and suggested it. She says they don’t want to bother. They’ll just take what they want, throw out the junk, and have Goodwill come and haul everything else off.
Tell Barbara good luck! I watched my mother and her sisters part out their parents home of 40 years. It took 3 months! Someone would run across something from the deep past, announce it to the other sisters and they would all cry for a while. I did not see this in person (I have better sense than that) but male members of the family, who were captured XXXXXXX helping, reported the progress back to the rest of us. Of course, it was also a way of grieving for my grandmother.
Cleaning out a house efficiently takes discipline. You just can’t take time to reminisce over every item. When I did my mother’s place two years ago, it was two weeks of 12 hours days: trash, keep, trash, charity, trash, keep, trash, trash… A few things I sold to second-hand stores, but really, you don’t get much money even for reasonably nice stuff. There were only about 2-3 boxes of stuff I really didn’t know what to do with, mostly old family photos and papers. These are now sitting in my attic…
Yeah, but at least there aren’t any family vultures around.
My mother’s father died years before I was born. He was a manufacturing jeweler and a gun collector. My mom and her mom ended up with just a few small trinkets of jewelry. Neither of them was a shooter, so they let the family vultures fight over and then carry off his entire gun collection. That collection, from what my mother told me of the specifics, would have been worth probably hundreds of thousands of dollars now. He had, among many others, a mint-condition M1921 Thompson (purchased new at the local hardware store when they first came out), an M1918 BAR, a Winchester 1873, and numerous handguns that are now very rare.
It’s unfortunate that his love of guns skipped a generation.
And my mom remembered as a young teenager shooting the Thompson. I wish I had a picture of that.
I just called Barbara and suggested it. She says they don’t want to bother.
I can certainly understand. It was five day ordeal to go through my aunts stuff. But she was a packrat. She was still alive when I did all of this so it did indeed feel strange.
Goodwill come and haul everything else off.
Goodwill may not take some of the stuff. Had that problem with my aunt. Had to take it to the dump.
I am sure that there was stuff in my aunts sale that was worth much more than I got for the items. The sale was not until 7:00A but the vultures were showing up at 6:00A and I told them to just wait. They bitched but I did not care. Had one lady start to carry out stuff without paying and I herded her back. She was pissed. I am sure there were some others that skipped out with small items, something that would have cost them $0.50. Losers.
But we had to get it done within the week. Everything had to be out of the house as we lived in TN and the house was in WA. Flew in on Saturda, started Sunday morning, and the sale the next Saturday. By Sunday we were on the plane again.
I also had to sell her car during that time. Took it to a dealer and took their second offer. I had no real time to haggle over price. Also rented a cargo van to haul the stuff to the dump. Gallons of paint, one ton of clothes, thousands of transparencies, assorted items that were worthless, and all the food from the freezer (full) and refridgerator. The canned and package goods we gave to a local food bank, two pickups worth as they came and picked it up.
I am also sure that some of the stuff would have had meaning to her sister but she did not want to come participate so it was all tossed. Hundreds of photographs of people that I did not know that were probably long lost relatives.
But we got it done. Had to pay about $200.00 in dumping fees in the process, $300 for the cargo van. The cargo van was much better than a pickup as you did not have to cover anything, just toss it in.
House went on the market the following week after we had a cleaning crew come in and scrub the place down. Took them a full day and cost another $300.00.
“Hundreds of photographs of people that I did not know that were probably long lost relatives.”
This has bothered me for years now; didn’t anyone back then write names and/or dates on the backs of them? I have many dozens of turn-of-the-century black-and-white snapshots of people I am pretty sure are family but I have no clue who they are.
We have been leasing an old farmhouse here for the past six years and when the owner, a 94-year-old retired veterinarian finally died a couple of years ago, there was a memorial service for him at the Episcopal church downtown, as many old-timers around here knew him from decades ago when he took care of their large livestock. He had kept bees, sheep and chickens here, and originally back in the 1800s this place had supplied the produce for the big hotel in town by the Snake House. Also reloaded his own ammo and hunted and fished. Anyway, his lovely daughters and grandchildren were over there THAT afternoon rooting through the garage and outbuildings and carrying stuff off, including messing around with OUR stuff. Nothing valuable, just pissant stuff, like Ray has mentioned, damn loser buzzards.
We are given to understand that they can’t possibly sell this place for what they want for it, about six times what it’s worth, and will simply let it disintegrate and fall apart and sell the land for what cash they can screw out of it and divvy up. A 206-year-old house, probably one of the two or three oldest, if not THE oldest, in town, a going concern while both Jefferson and Adams were still alive.
What a country.
RBT wrote:
“And my mom remembered as a young teenager shooting the Thompson. I wish I had a picture of that.”
Wouldn’t that be enough to put a female teenager into orbit?
No, not really, as long as you keep it to short bursts. (Of course, the M1921 Thompson has a very high cyclic rate; something like 850 to 1,200 RPM). The Thompson fires the .45 ACP round, which in a 2-pound pistol is a handful for a small woman, but in an 11 pound (5 kilo) Thompson it’s quite manageable. And that’s empty weight. My grandfather had both the 100-round and 50-round drum magazines.
I’ve never fired an M1921 Thompson that I can remember, but I have shot the M1928 (~750 RPM) a fair amount. The main problem with the Thompson in terms of recoil is the fact that the stock isn’t in-line with the barrel. That means that with anything more than a short burst, the muzzle climbs and pulls to the right. That said, I’ve shot Thompsons with guys who could literally sign their names with one.
Yah, I saw that about Kate Name-sounds-vaguely-familiar and thought Who? and Who cares? Then a couple hours later saw the news about the White House — er, no, that’s not right; the White House is where Michelle Antoinette lives when she’s not on vacation at the people’s expense — anyway, wherever the useless actual royalty, not the useless would-be royalty, lives, issued some statement threatening something or other because Kate Name-sounds-vaguely-familiar has boobs.
In other news, Useless Prince Something-or-other was naked in Vegas, and then Obuttboy flies out to Vegas. Coincidence, or was Obuttboy hoping to get some? After all, you can’t spell Madrassa without “ass”.
didn’t anyone back then write names and/or dates on the backs of them?
Yes, there were names on the back. And I still did not know who they were. Some of images I did keep because I knew who they were. I have subsequently scanned the images and thrown them away.
My grandfathers brother wrote a family history that begins before Utah was a state. He wrote about some of the incidents that happened including the stealing of land from the family. That document was type written and was deteriorating with time. I scanned that in and used OCR to convert most of it to text. Then I began the labor intensive process of correcting the scanning errors. Grammatical and spelling errors I left intact, including some racial slurs that in my opinion should remain in place.
I also enhanced the document by inserting pictures of family members where they were mentioned in the document. Some people had no pictures because there were no photographs that far back.
I attached a copyright to the document and sent a digital and physical copy to the Utah Historical Society and they were glad to get it. I also sent newly printed copies to all the interested family members, digital copies to some family members.
Outstanding, Ray; I gotta do something along those lines for my own family’s stuff that I’ve accumulated, being the only one actively doing so, and having to drag info and intel from others before they check out. Or before I do. Here is where the internet is a wonderful thing, because I’ve been able to get copies of discharges, birth and marriage certificates, and historical data from people all over the country who are linked in some way. FYI, everyone; if someone tells you boastfully that they are members of the Mayflower Society, well, that’s nice, but so are around forty million others, technically. The Mayflower Diaspora is amazing. Ditto with the DAR, and in my family’s case, the Nantucket Diaspora. I am related in some way or other, distantly of course, to Benjamin Franklin, the Macy store family, the Folger and Starbuck coffee families, and can also trace people back to late medieval England and France, thanks to very well-kept town and church records.
Sure would be nice, though, to have a slice of the Macy, Starbuck and Folger fortunes. Abigail Folger, by the way, was of that family, and one of the Manson group’s victims in 1969.
SteveF is wracking his brain trying to conjure up the full name of the gorgeous Duchess of Cambridge, the former Kate Middleton, now Windsor. It was the other nitwit princelet who was messing around out in Lost Wages. Most of the royals basically suck, but Charlie has turned out to have some interesting thoughts and even conservative ones; Phil the Greek has been a barrel of boffo laffs over the years; and you gotta admit the buggers will put themselves on the fucking front lines of whatever war their country is fighting in every generation. To the extent that sooner or later one of them is gonna get waxed. Last English monarch to die in battle, though, was the great King Richard III at Bosworth Field. That guy rocked.
The Obamas and Cambridges immediately before Michelle scratched Kate’s eyes out for being so beautiful:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Obama_and_Duke_Duchess_of_Cambridge.jpg
Another picture of the lovely Kate and some young chap ogling her boobs with the Royal X-Ray Vision:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-16/prince-william-and-catherine-in-borneo/4263876
Note even Steve F could deny that Kate is beautiful.
Attractive, yes. Pretty, yes. But beautiful?
Which made me think of the only instance I’m aware of where the actress, Katherine Ross, who played an historical figure was not as pretty as the actual person. Etta Place.
Eh? The fact that I had nothing to say about What’s-her-face’s looks doesn’t mean I could not say anything. And, in fact, I don’t think she’s particularly attractive. I’ve never seen a decent-quality candid picture of her, just stuff where’s she’s made up and dressed up. If all that a couple thousand dollars of clothes and a couple thousand dollars of makeup artists’s time can do is make her look kinda pretty, then I deduce that her natural state is what one would expect of someone marrying into a family of inbreds.
Well I deduce that she is kinda hot and if she gets tired of Prince wasshisname anytime soon she can still catch me while I got it goin’ on, LOL. After all, I, too, am descended from bloody Anglo-Norman royals. Like a zillion other losers.
Temp here right now is 51 and dropping and the leaves are starting to turn faster. Still technically summuh, too. Radio dude told us to harvest our leeks today. Back to hauling shit to the new place tomorrow and all week while trying to also work a full-time job where they just doubled up the load on me. Mrs. OFD back from Kalifornia in about a half hour and will be able to pitch in this week and then heads back out there for another week. It will be interesting to see if we can make our move final by October 1. And I have also been on-call with the pager all this past week and through Monday morning coming up.
But the alternative sucks rocks.
Yeah, I know you’ve distinguished pretty, attractive and beautiful in the past but I use those words, along with gorgeous and cute and others, as near synonyms. To help me grok the difference would you care to post some examples of females who are one, two or all three of a/p/b? Don’t bother with the ones who are none of the above, I already know what Janet Reno looks like.
I’m with Greg on this one; I also tend to use those adjectives interchangeably realizing that there is wiggle room thereby for guys who are somewhere other than me on the scale. Apparently there are guys elsewhere on the scale who are sticklers for exact definitions, so OK, let it rip: who is merely attractive, cute, pretty, beautiful, gorgeous, stunning, etc.? And be careful posting links to the images: evidently some clever lad somewhere has been hooking them up to malware that infects peoples’ machines.
Well, let’s see. One example of a woman who’s all three is Sela Ward. That’s extraordinarily rare.
True beauty is the least common of the three. It has to do with underlying bone structure. A beautiful woman, like Sela Ward, is as beautiful as she ages as she was when she was young. Sela is currently 56 years old. Look at current images of her versus those of her in her 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s, and you’ll see what I mean. She’ll also be beautiful at 60, 70, 80, and beyond.
Pretty is a lot more common. A pretty woman is simply one who has regular, pleasing features. Prettiness declines with age. Kate is pretty, as are many, many other young women.
Unlike the other two, which are purely facial, attractiveness is a package deal. It includes not just facial appearance, but body proportions, voice timbre, sense of humor, personality, and so on. While beauty and prettiness are aesthetic qualities, attractiveness is all about reproduction. An attractive woman attracts men, regardless of whether she is pretty and/or beautiful. Men want to be with her. Young and/or foolish men may mistake beauty or prettiness for attractiveness, but biologically the function of those former two is merely to draw a man close enough to notice a woman’s attractiveness, just as the purpose of a flower is to draw bees.
Attractive is by far the most common of the three, which is why there are 7 billion people on the planet. Attractive is also the most variable of the three, again for biological reasons. A woman that I find extremely attractive you may find only moderately attractive, and vice versa. That’s because attractiveness being in the eye of the beholder operates subconsciously to match a male and female whose DNA is well-suited for reproduction.
And, as a package deal, it’s impossible to fully judge attractiveness remotely. For example, superficially I find Emily VanCamp and Amber Marshall extraordinarily attractive. But I haven’t met either of them. If I did, my opinion might change because one or both of them might literally smell wrong. Not consciously, you understand. Pheromones play as large a role in attractiveness of humans as they do for other lifeforms.
Again, it’s all about biology, and so-called “free will” has nothing to do with any of it. We’re all programmed by our DNA.
The way I always thought of it, which may well be wrong, is that beautiful women are beauty contest winners, whereas pretty women might win on a good day if there aren’t too many beautiful women in the contest.
I used to know two sisters, the elder was very pretty and the one I would have loved to become Mrs Ede, but she could be a bit smart-arsed at time, and threw a few putdowns and accusations in my direction – but was really nice at other times.
I never gave much thought to the younger sister even though she was a goddess. She was really great company, and very good to talk to. She was a really good listener but it was the elder that caught my attention.
An pal I shared a house with in the early Eighties was pursued by lots of women. Some dogs, some pretty/beautiful/attractive. He dated a very pretty/attractive dentist for a while but wouldn’t commit. The woman he chased was very beautiful but not good motherhood material. Eventually he got none of them so he won’t be passing on his genes.
No, beauty and prettiness aren’t comparable. That is, beautiful is not just a higher form of pretty. It’s possible, although not common, for a woman to be beautiful but not pretty, and it’s common for a woman to be pretty but not beautiful. Most beautiful women are also pretty, but by no means all beautiful women are attractive.
Again, beauty and prettiness are purely aesthetic. That’s why I might describe a horse or a dog as pretty or even beautiful, but only a pervert would describe one of those as “attractive”, at least in the sense I’m using attractive. On the other hand, I might describe a house as attractive in the same sense that I’d describe a woman as attractive: in either case, I want it or her to be a part of my life.
I am living proof that DNA differs. These dark-haired women you bring up, are not attractive to me at all. Give me some Nordic or German blondes with longer, not round faces, and that I find attractive.
I was amazed at how many (true) redheads there are in Germany and Poland. From my experience in the US, there were only a few in my high school of 3,200. But it was a regular occurrence to run into redheads on the street and in my classes in Berlin.
Sadly, here’s what a pack of cigarettes a day for 70 years does to a once ravishing beauty.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/31/Emma-Peel_Avengers-Intro.jpg
http://celebslists.com/images/diana-rigg-05.jpg
Chuck, German women get their red hair out of a bottle.
I’ll never forget the class goddess in year 11, a girl named Meredith with a Germanic surname. If Bo Derek scored 10 then Meredith deserved 12+. And she was dating the scruffiest looking guy I’d seen to that time. She must have “smelled” good genes in him.
You can tell which ones get it from a bottle and which ones are natural—and the plethora of kids with red hair, generally match the number of adults who are redheads, and you know the young kids are not dying their hair.
There is this very unnatural shade of red from a bottle, however, which a lot of 30’ish+ women go for when their hair starts turning grey. When we first moved there, it was a real turn-off color for me, but by the time I returned to the US, I was so accepting of it that I really began to miss that color. I have never seen anyone here using that color.
Colors are another cultural difference. There are lots of blondes in my US family, and all were told never to wear black. However, black on a blonde is considered the height of high-class dress in Germany. In fact, they are crazy about black over there, and more than half of all cars in Berlin are black.
My son brought his favorite yellow winter ski coat with him during his first long visit with us over there, the winter after he graduated from high school. While that color was common among kids in the US, NOBODY in Germany wore that color, except as a safety measure for people who worked on the roads. He immediately became embarrassed at being the only person in that color, and got a new winter jacket out of us on that trip.
Black seems to be incredibly popular for clothing here, for people of all ages. Dunno why. Personally, I like brighter colors, but I have a bunch of black stuff as well, just because it’s the way people here dress.
Dunno about the redheads: there is this one really fake color that too many women use. How many are natural, I can’t say. Less redheads and blondes here anyway; we’re enough farther south that there is a lot more influence from southern and eastern Europe.
Black clothing and vehicles is a survival color in the snowy areas. One of my partners who lives in Colorado told me to never drive my white Expedition into Colorado in the winter time as they would never find us in a drift.
I always figured blaze orange was the survival color in snow conditions. Except of course back when I used to go deer hunting. I wore camouflage then, because I didn’t want some moron shooting me. On balance, I figured it was better that he didn’t see me at all than that he saw a flash of color through the woods. Some of those morons will shoot at anything that doesn’t look like a tree or rock. Hell, some of them will shoot at trees and rocks.
Local farmer used to spray paint in blaze orange “COW” and “HORSE” on the sides of his livestock at the start of hunting season. I don’t know if it did any good.
And a park ranger mentioned to my mom, back when she was a deputy, that one down-stater (ie, NYCer) had shot a cow and not realized what it was. He thought it was a really big deer. You know, a really big black and white deer with short horns and an udder.
As for clothing, I agree on preferring invisibility to wearing something that catches the eye.
” In fact, they are crazy about black over there, and more than half of all cars in Berlin are black.”
Yeah we know how the Germans love black thanks to all the movies with SS and Gestapo dudes dressed in that color. And the “Sprockets” schtick that they used to do on SNL.
“…preferring invisibility to wearing something that catches the eye.”
Ditto. Low profile is the key. Although it don’t work too great with me or probably Bob. When you generally tower over most other homo sapiens most of the time it’s hard to be invisible. Of course on a basketball or football team I would be a midget these days. Probably be the kicker now, and have to scurry outta the way of the guys rushing at me who are twice my size. Saw one dude the other day who hadda be 6’8″ or 6’9″ and close to 450 pounds.
Diana Rigg still looked really good a few years ago but now not so much; sad.
And redheads rule.
I suspect our wonderful prime minister gets her hair colour from a bottle, although a family member has dug up pictures of her in primary (=grade) school with red hair. I knew her as a 20 year old when I’m sure she was a sandy blonde. She’s about 51 now, and 51 year olds don’t have that sort of red hair.
I adore black on women. And colours. White’s okay.
OFD wrote:
“And redheads rule.”
I knew that if only I lived long enough you’d say something I agree with completely.
RBT wrote:
“Some of those morons will shoot at anything that doesn’t look like a tree or rock. ”
Not a reference to Dick Cheney I hope…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Cheney#Hunting_incident
Since the “victim” was an attorney there weren’t any adverse consequences for Cheney.
The first girl after puberty’s onset who really wanted me and made it known, was a redhead. She managed to get a seat directly behind me in all the classes we had together. She was funny, loyal, smart, lovely beneath those gawdawful Dame Edna Everage glasses girls wore back then, a terrific friend, and to this day, I somehow see her in nearly every truly redheaded woman I see. Often wondered what happened to her. No way to find out. If there had been Internet back then, we probably would not have lost touch. All the kids I grew up with in Tiny Town left—and I do mean all. Same happened in Indy, as my old neighborhood took to ‘white flight’ not long after I graduated, and nobody knows where anybody went; they just left. By the time I had graduated university, all of my friends’ parents had moved. My high school class secretary has had a near impossible time locating people. Out of over 800, only a couple hundred have been located, and almost daily there is a query on our Facebook page asking if anybody knows what happened to somebody.
I was pretty much oblivious to whether girls were interested in me. I was dead keen on many *them*, but never could read what they thought of me.
When I was 16 there was a 17 year old black-haired girl at my church called Carol. She was gorgeous, but I never paid much attention to her. One day my brother told me “Carol’s really keen on you.” I didn’t believe it because she was such a stunner, until one day I noticed her giving me this really love struck look. Never did anything about that, and I’m not sure why. She won the Miss South Australia Sportsgirl competition the following year. I know those competitions are partly about fundraising, but you don’t win them if you have two heads.
Back then I looked a fair bit older than my actual years. I was with my 24 year old sister one day and she ran into an old friend. After some chit chat this woman glanced at me and asked my sister “This is your husband?” I didn’t know whether to be offended or feel complemented. I mean, I was 16 and didn’t look *that* old. I have the best of both worlds, in my 30s people would underestimate my age by 6-8 years. One health professional even thought I was 29 when I was actually 43… 🙂
I do not really want to live life over again, but if I did, I would definitely deal with girls differently than I actually did as a teenager before college. Like you, I somehow overlooked opportunities, due to my fairly narrow but dedicated interests. I suppose I made up for it in university, but I was a failure at girls prior to that. Fortunately, I saw to it that my son did not repeat my experience. I think it was also part of the times that parents in the same generation as mine, did not at all encourage teenage familiarity. All those early rock angst songs about disapproving parents were true—regardless of who the kids were. Actually, people my grandparents’ age were more tolerant than folks my parents’ age. My parents and their siblings started dating the people they married around age 14 to 15—even though they all went on to college. Strange that people my parents’ age then discouraged teen and high school romances.
Sigh…
I’d like to turn back the clock. Perhaps study harder in Year 12 and get into electrical engineering. Pursue this or that girl a bit more energetically. And just to spend time again with friends I haven’t seen for 30+ years. I’ve been scouring Facebook and Google for some of them, some seem to have vanished – especially the girls who likely got married and changed their names.
I don’t remember there being much interference by parents in their kids dating back then (mid to late Seventies). I asked agirl for a date in 1980 when she was six years younger than me. Not sure what I saw in her. She declined, and like so many girls at that fundamentalist Baptist church, went on to become a single mother.
I wish it was 1988 again when I had the best job in the world, was being invited to the 21sts of a number of attractive young women at my decidedly non-fundamentalist Presbyterian church. I was 30+ then and my friends wondered how I did it.
Go back and do it all over again, knowing what I know now? Hells yah! Say, to when I was a cute, innocent little boy. There are so many people who deserved to die, and no one would ever suspect a six-year-old.
When I was six I would have been the very first suspect they rounded up. I got sent home from school (mom had to come get me) in first grade and skool life continued pretty much along those lines through high school commencement. I guess they didn’t throw me into reform skool because I managed to get A’s in half my classes and I played sports and didn’t do anything really, really bad.