I thank God for the prolific orange trees in the back yard, which despite being battered by hail and hard frost still provide enough vitamin C to kill an army of rhinoviruses.
Too diseased today to write anything original. So let’s entertain ourselves with a cruise through a page of the endlessly entertaining Google News.
Tragedy strikes in Appleville: writing for The Telegraph, British columnist Christopher Williams bemoans the shortage of iPad 2 parts, some of which emanated from Japan. Needless to say, the dwindling supply of Japanese compasses and ultrathin batteries threatens the future of personkind. One commenter on this effete little piece remarked drily, “Until iPads become edible, they are of no real importance in the current circumstances.”
BBC observes that the doctrinaire demagogues in the U.S. House of Representatives have voted to cut funding to National Public Radio. Public media being s-o-o-o-o-o-cialism and good investigative reporting invariably being LIBeral (nevermind that it’s scarcer than fur on a chicken’s egg these days), we should all be grateful for this heroic effort to get rid of all that, so more voting Americans can cast ballots without bothering their sweet heads with things like facts. It might be noted that public broadcasting is not just for the intelligentsia; more than half of Americans access it every month. The Senate has yet to vote on this issue, and so it’s not too late to write to your elected representatives. Go to 170 Million Americans for more information.
If you weren’t already afraid, very afraid, get ready for real terror: America is becoming a Hispanic country! Oh, the horror. Just as it became an Irish country after the potato famine, a Polish country during the waves of Eastern European immigration, a Chinese country while the railroads were being built, a Welsh country while we were importing miners to rip ore out of the earth…heaven help us!
In Japan, a country in no danger of turning Hispanic (yet!), 7,000 people have been confirmed dead, the government has raised the danger level at Fukushima a notch, and Prime Minister Naoto Kan calls the situation “grave.”
That notwithstanding, the Japanese stock market is recovering as the Bank of Japan and G7 countries intervene on the falling yen. Just the other day, Frugal Scholar was worrying about the ethics of taking advantage of investing as markets tumble in response to a disaster. Now’s the time, folks, to buy stock in companies that produce the supplies that will be needed to rebuild Japan.
Citizens of the globe don’t put much stock in their governments’ soothing words about the potential meltdown of not one, not two, not three, but four nuclear reactors. Despite world leaders telling their people don’t worry, be happy, consumers as far away from Japan as Great Britain are racing to buy potassium iodide, a substance said to block the uptake of radioactive iodine. Better buy some stock in the companies that make that stuff, too!
Speaking of the Brits, the Prince of Wales is spending a great deal of energy saving a variety of red squirrel native to Great Britain.
Faced with the threat of invasion by UN forces to “protect civilians,” Libya has declared a cease-fire. It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out.
Stem cell research, that bane of the right-threaded wingnut, is now poised to save many right- and left-wing lives. Injecting stem cells into the hearts of cardiac arrest victims can bring scarred heart tissue back to normal. This astonishing development promises to relieve untold suffering and restore health to millions of people.
Now…if only we could come up with a cure for the common cold…
Thank God for Social Security! Without it, I’d be spending my old age in real poverty.
Busted because I spent over $200 yesterday, just sitting here in the house. Disgusted because after KJG left, I came down with a roaring sore throat. And cain’t be trusted to show up at the weekly trade group breakfast meeting because of the roaring sore throat.
{sigh} I hope KJG doesn’t catch this bug. At least I’m not exposing my friends in Scottsdale to it. And thank goodness it’s spring break and I don’t have to entertain 50 freshmen today. Ugh!
Some spring break, eh? It starts out with three solid days wasted doing battle with the unholy Blackboard and ends with a nasty cold.
After I paid Gerardo twice as much as his usual fee for the extra work he and his sidekicks performed by way of cleaning up after the recent hard freeze, he lost the check. His pocket had a hole in it. Actually, all his pockets have holes in them, as we discovered when he resurfaced here asking for another one. So I had to stop payment on the first check. That will cost me fifteen bucks, so, bitch that I am, I wrote him a new check for $15 less than the first one. Maybe that was ungracious. But…I really shouldn’t have paid him double his usual amount to begin with, and to add a hefty bank fee on top of that when I’m trapped in my house because I can’t afford to buy gasoline until next Monday was a bit beyond the pale.*
*Update: This turned into a pricier adventure than I imagined at the time I was writing. The credit union has upped its stop-payment fee from $15 to $32!
Then the locksmith charged $111 to install a new lock and make keys for it. That also was a bit beyond the pale for a job a handyman could’ve done.
Anyway, now there’s a lock on there that can’t be opened by someone who decides to break the windowpane.
The kitchen doors on these houses are the most vulnerable entryways, through which most of the break-ins happen. By and large the residents secure the sliding doors; although those are notoriously flimsy, a few simple tricks will make them harder to break through than most burglars like. But if you have an ordinary lock on the back door, which is the only egress in the event of a fire on the stove, then the burglar can just punch a hole in the window, stick his hand through it, unlock the door, and make himself to home. Because of the safety issue—trapped by a fire, a person could panic and not find a hidden key to a deadbolt—people tend to install single-cylinder deadbolts on those back doors.
During my cleaning frenzy the day before yesterday, I discovered a greasy forehead print on one of the backdoor windowpanes. It wasn’t that long ago that I cleaned those windows, so this must have happened fairly recently. Evidently the perp—or some other wannabe perp—cased the joint.
Don’t think this happened on the night of the event, because the motion-sensitive exterior lights were not on when I walked out to investigate. They stay on for about five or ten minutes, so, unless the guy waited until after they clicked off to try his luck on the side door, it doesn’t seem likely he peered into the kitchen at that time. Besides, what could he have seen at 4:00 in the morning by the light of the microwave clock? It’s very dark out there.
Charming.
As soon as I regain consciousness this morning, I’ll have to burn my last gallon of gasoline on a trip up to Home Depot, there to buy some prison bars for the back door. I just hate those ugly things—dammit! it’s the bad guy who belongs behind bars, not me!—but without a big, mean dog and now lacking the wits and reflexes of a younger woman, I just don’t feel safe anymore.
Well, I see one client sent a new chunk of technomaterial to edit yesterday, and the other called while KJG was here asking if I’d do a rush job, which she dropped in the mail yesterday. Sooo…. I’d better get to work. Sore throat or no, it’s gonna be a busy day!
Image: Human rhinovirus 16-coat protein at high resolution. A. T. Hadfield and M. G. Rossmann. Posted at the Protein Databank, an “archive of macromolecular structural data that is freely and publicly available to the global community.”
Racing around frantically since six o’clock this morning. My friend KJG will surface here around 11:00, for what I hope will be a relaxing day of hanging out. Whenever she gets here, things should slow down.
Meanwhile…
Gerardo the Lawn Dude Supreme left word on m[get up! fly to the kitchen, close the back door to block dust and fumes from Gerardo’s flunky’s blower]y voicemail while I was out last night, saying he wanted to come around to clean up the unholy disaster area that is my yard…like, this morning. Not knowing when he’s likely to show up or if, shortly after dawn blower the leaves off the patio and deck, roll up and stow the hoses. Scrub the dirt off the patio table.
Haul in the feather comforter I left up overnight on the clothesline; put it into the crippled dryer to bang around on air fluff. Fold and put away the cotton blanket left out to dry. Pull down the makeshift clotheslines and stow them. Try to clean the kitchen and fix breakfast and feed the dog at once.
Reach Gerardo on the phone around 7:00. Can you get in here and out before KJG shows up? We want to have a nice lunch outside. No problem!
Race to pull in the bathroom and dog rugs I left on the lines and draped over the hammock last night. Three of them are still wet. Put the two dry ones in the fluffer (we can no longer call it a “dryer”) to plump them up. Figure out where the hell to put the soggy shag rugs out of the men’s way. Continue trying to clean the kitchen and jump in and out of the shower and clean the shower and scrub the dirty pan left to soak overnight in the utility sink and dodge the dog’s ball game and scour the tired stained kitchen sink and polish the brightwork and talk Gerardo into pulling the dead fronds off the moribund 30-foot-high queen palm and persuade him to dig up the endlessly annoying frozen cape honeysuckle by the pool equipment so I can replace them with some frost-resistant Lady Banks roses and keep an eye out for the locksmith and pay Gerardo an extra $75 for the bone-crushing extra work he did and [get up! answer the door for the locksmith] finish writing Gerardo a check and wave goodbye to him. Show the locksmith what needs to be done [stop! answer the phone, accept a new assignment from the client], ask about reinforcing locks on sliding doors, discuss (stop! answer the phone, discuss plan with KJG)] recommendations for security doors and locks.
Sit down and start blogging again (drop that! With Gerardo out, drag wet rugs back out to hammock to dry in sun] and [on the way back in put away the irrigation gear Gerardo needed to fix the line his flunky cut] and zap [rattle the canful of rocks at Cassie to interrupt her barking frenzy at the locksmith] the dregs of this morning’s coffee in the microwave. Stagger back to the computer and…
…and I forget what I was going to write about this morning.
Thank you, God, for the beautiful days and nights of an Arizona springtime.
.
The water in the pool is almost warm enough for a brave soul to take the plunge.
When I was 12, my mother used to take me to a “Rod and Gun Club” operated by my father’s employer, Standard Oil. It was somewhere in the East Bay, how far on the ’tother side of the Golden Gate Bridge I do not recall. What I do recall is that they had a pool whose waters were, on the warmest day of a Bay Area summer, about the temperature of the water in my backyard today.
That I would blithely dive into that refrigerator-chilly water, I’m sure, helped to convince my mother that her daughter was none too bright.
It was cold. The trick was never to just put your toe in. The trick was to throw yourself in off the side, in one bold, brave splash, a dive that could not be taken back. About two seconds later, the water felt like a cool spring breeze against your skin. It was so fun you just lost track of whether it was cold or not, and you felt sorry for your poor, fat, benighted mother that she didn’t have the nerve to follow you into the drink.
Now the question that crosses my mind, as I stand on the step with the waterline lapping up against a belly about three times the circumference of that twelve-year-old waist, is this: “If I dive into this pool, will it freeze my titties off?”
So I trot over to Home Depot last weekend, there to peruse that august box’s limited selection of security doors. As expected, every single one of them looks like prison bars, except for the pressed-metal kitsch with the cut-out silhouettes of hummingbirds, coyotes, and sombreroed campesinos snoozing against saguaros. Good god.
Moving on, this afternoon it was over to Lowe’s on the way home from the credit union. The nearest Lowe’s is out by the West campus, where the nearest branch of the credit union resides, placing both of these institutions in a locale that cannot be called, with a straight face, “near.”
Situation at Lowe’s: even more ridiculous. The only door they had that didn’t look like prison bars with a slot through which the guard passes your plate of slop is a Titan: twelve hundred bucks!
Give me a proverbial BREAK!
At least the cheaper doors at the Depot come with insect screen. You can’t get that with the low-end models at Lowe’s. The hideous metal mesh, which lets mosquitoes in, is sorta OK in front, because the random door-to-door nuisance can’t see you through it and so can’t easily tell you’re alone. But in back, where one would like to gaze out upon one’s expensively appointed landscaping, steel mesh is just not gonna make it.
Sooo… It looks like it’s prison bars with insect screen and a double-cylinder deadbolt or nothing. Just now I’m leaning toward a .38 special.
Ohhhh well. While at Lowe’s, I did pick up a replacement for the impossible motion-sensitive spotlight in back, the one to which you have to take a screwdriver powered by male muscle to change the light bulb. When you get it open, you find it takes an exotic size and shape bulb that requires a special trip to HD or the electric supplier to track it down. Really. I wish to be able to change my light bulbs all by my pretty little self, thank you!
Also got a rather nice, not very pricey motion-sensitive coach light, which will go on the back porch. The little cheapie I installed when I moved in is looking pretty ragged already—it really was junk of the best you-get-what-you-pay-for variety. This looks sturdier, and I’ve come to really love the motion-sensitive coach lights I installed last year in front. They’re reasonably attractive, and what a luxury, to have them pop on when you walk up to them!
I tend to wander off and leave that back porch light on. Then when I go out there by daylight, I’m peeved to see it was burning all night and half the morning. This thing will come on when Cassie goes out to pee during the pre-dawn hours but not burn kilowatts when it’s forgotten.
One sterling quality of the motion-sensitive light is that it clues you if someone’s outside in the yard. Or…if a moth flew by or the wind is blowing…
New sliding or French doors to replace the three rather sketchy sliders (like…maybe one that has an actual latch on it?) also appear to be prohibitively expensive.
Really, though: unclear whether functional doors are really necessary. After all, the door squealer and the stick in the slider’s track worked: the guy ran off without getting inside. The whole point was to alert me if someone tried to get in the house while I was here, and that was exactly what happened. Probably newer doors wouldn’t be a whole lot more secure than what I’ve got. They might save a few pennies on power, but how many years will it take to recover the costs from the power bills?
Well, not much: student papers will come in on Thursday, needing to be turned around by the following Tuesday. But all things said and done, reading 50 comp papers is one heckuva lot better than hauling back and forth across the freeways to Tempe ten times in the cheery company of my fellow homicidal drivers.
Spent the better part of the weekend in the company of my friend KJG, now also a certified escapee from the Great Desert University. She went over the wall a few months ago, and like me is only just beginning to fully unwind from the stress of working in a psychologically crushing environment. It truly takes a good year to recover from the effects of spending eight or ten hours a day in a place where management works at making everyone miserable.
You realize…? There are therapists in this city who specialize in counseling GDU employees. Is that or is that not amazing?
Saturday I drove out to her house, way on the far west side (halfway to California). She and her husband, a firefighter, have built a lovely home on an acre of land out there. She’s very, very good at gardening and housekeeping; now that she’s home all the time, the place looks gorgeous.
KJG worried, as the opportunity for her to retire approached, about no longer contributing to the household income. She actually felt guilty about the prospect. Yesterday, though, she remarked that she no longer feels that way: “We have plenty,” she observed.
Indeed. And as a matter of fact, to pay for the gardening, housekeeping, cooking, and homemaking services she does could cost them more than she was earning at GDU. Sometimes having one member of a couple not work costs the household a great deal less than it would appear at first glance.
We took the dogs for a hike in the White Tank Mountains, which was quite an adventure for Cassie the Short-legged Little Corgi. KJG has a well trained and mellow doberman, one of whose steps equals about ten of a corgi’s.
The day was so gorgeous, there were quite a few people out, although not so many that the trail seemed as crowded as those in town. We did run into one chucklehead with a gigantic bulldoggy looking critter, probably a mastiff mix. He stood aside and cooed, “Don’t worry, he’s fine!” Of course the instant KJG approached to pass them, his huge dog lunged for the dobe, who, though generally a laid-back sort, wasn’t inclined to take any guff. Fortunately, Kathy is a good dog handler and managed to get by without contact. As she and her dog reached the other side of this obstacle, the doberman turned around, glared back at the guy and his mutt, and emitted a deep, alarming growl: Make my day!
And so we see again the uses of a small dog that can be picked up. Because Cassie only weighs 25 pounds, I could pick her up, climb off the trail, and wait for the guy and He’s Just Fine to go on their way.
Why do people take animals like that on narrow public paths?
That notwithstanding, it really was a beautiful morning and a nice hike.
Later we junketed around to several big nurseries on the westside—the area still has surviving pockets of agricultural land, some of which are occupied by wholesale nurseries whose proprietors will allow the general public to wander around. Then we took it into our heads to look at model homes in the very few surviving new-home developments.
And that was something to see. If you’re in the market for a new home in the Southwest, now is the time to buy! They’re practically giving the things away. We went into a set of Shea Homes models—Shea is reputed to be one of the better tract builders in Arizona—where we found several very attractive designs in what appeared to be pretty decent construction. Interestingly, the lots in this tract were sized for human beings living in single-family homes, with enough space between the houses to allow air to circulate. For $177,000, you can buy a large, intelligently laid out house with lots of big, bright, airy rooms, a kitchen to die for, and a master bathroom best described as “sybaritic.” Of course, by the time you added the amenities that made the models desirable, you’d be pushing three hundred grand… But it was clear that for about what my house would sell for, you could get the basic floor plan plus a few upgrades that would be hard to retrofit—the top-quality cabinetry, for example—and then over the next few years make the improvements you’d like as you could afford them.
For me, the disadvantage (besides the noise from the F-16s flying out of the nearby Air Force base) is the enormous distance from everything I like to do. It’s almost an hour’s drive from the central city. Moving out there would mean the end of choir participation, the end of the regular jaunts to AJs and Whole Foods, and the beginning of impossible drives to the nearest community college.
But it was fun to look at the houses. It really would be perfect if you could get Shea to build one of those places on an infill lot.
Sunday KJG drove into town, because we wanted to go on the Willo Historic District tour. This has become quite a shindig! They’d blocked off the feeder streets one street south of where I used to live, and the street where my son’s two babysitters used to live was filled with vendors’ booths. We came across one of my choir coconspirators, a lovely alto who owns Ecocentricity, an environmentally conscious shop right in the middle of the Willo commercial fringe.
She was selling a big purple purse one of her suppliers had made from a 1970s leather skirt. It was incredibly cute, and the leather was so soft and light the thing hardly seemed to weigh anything. The price was a bit stiff, though—ninety bucks. Coveting it, I set it aside to think it over while we were walking.
The day grew warm, though, and before we could get back to the Ecocentricity booth, we faded. Ended up going to lunch at our favorite uptown restaurant instead of wandering back whence we’d come.
In the real estate department, I really do miss my beautiful old house in Willo. Occasionally, I think I’d like to move back there. However, the historic district designation and the huge demand from affluent DINKs has pushed the prices out of my range. Oh well. It’s a lot of work to keep those old places up, anyway.
At Evensong my choir friend told me that the purse had almost sold three times, but she still has it! So I’ll probably drive down to Ecocentricity today, after I call the arborist to see what he can do about the trees damaged by the idiot roofers.
I intend to bill Crown Roofing for the cost, and also to post a report about the tree assault on Angie’s List. Every time I look at my poor tree in front, I could just cry.
The afternoon rising to the high 70s, had a nice snooze on the hammock before heading out to Evensong, where we listened to another of our music director’s awe-inspiring organ recitals and then sang a couple of really nice pieces for the service. That was fun.
After Evensong I went to the wine and cheese reception, where whom should I meet but a fellow who works for Pearson Publishing. This outfit contracts to my partner in business crime, Tina, who does project management for them. Turns out this guy writes science and tech textbooks for Pearson—he’s got a fulltime job with them, but because they allow him to work from home three days a week, he’s able to live in town, instead of out in the sea of houses that is Chandler, where the megapublisher’s Arizona quarters are located.
The guy started as a high-school teacher in one of the top science and technical high-schools in the Washington, D.C. suburbs. He says the school was outperforming most other schools and had a nationally top-ranking science program. When the No Child Left Behind legislation kicked in, the faculty were informed that they had to stand down from what they were doing and instead focus on getting their kids to pass the standardized exams—whose standards were lower than what the kids were already achieving.
This lock-step dumbing-down degraded the school’s quality—it no longer ranks at all in science and technology—and so demoralized staff that many people quit. He said that the year he left, 25 other teachers also departed.
Pearson pays quite nicely…given the cost of textbooks, they can afford it. You can be sure this guy is earning more than he did at teaching, and pretty clearly America’s school system lost some talent. Ohh well.
Anyway, the guy has a fair amount of music background. Maybe he can be persuaded to join the choir. He seemed like a nice man who’d fit in well.
Then it was back to the Funny Farm for a 9:00 p.m. stroll through the neighborhood with Cassie, a nice wrap-up for a fun weekend.
