Lead-free paint

Lead free as in lead-assed. Nothing got done this weekend at all.

I am supposed to be dieting from political news, but I'm a junkie and am trying to wean myself off by first de-coupling from the emotional response. Interesting things, though - read here and here.

Also, we may be ramping up to attack Iran.

But, I'm going to refrain from ranting or belaboring the idea.

I've taken a fancy to the idea of placing a large solar array on the back of my house, and making myself energy sufficient (with a big capacitor/battery pack for those night and rainy situations) and a fully electric car (which isn't really viable in the US just yet, but seems that it will be very soon with the introduction of an EV Mitsuibishi "i" here in the US after 2009. Or 2010.

What would life be like living in an urban environment but having no utility bill, no mortgage and no gasoline expense? Hmm. It sounds delicious.

I guess I must call my Congresscritters today and tell 'em that I hate the idea of nuking Iran.

Now it's Friday

And I don't feel like working. I think I'll work on some mortgage CE courses to justify my existence.

So, it's another tax cut. That will solve the sub-prime mortgage mess. Push down interest rates again (you remember that the Fed had the discount rate at 1% for 18 months? That's what primed up this housing bubble) and cut the taxes. 'Cause a tax cut solves everything.

The tax cut (I assume, based on my mortgage and tax knowledge) would lift the current 30 year tax deduction for the pre-paid interest charges on refinanced mortgages.

The head of a significant hedge/investment fund calls Bush's proposals "fluff" and insignificant.

Brian, who's wonderful and terrific and provides me with some fabulous things that I'd otherwise never see, sent me this post of a friend's experience with inter-Texas air/taxi travel. I know exactly which day this way, too.. although the whole cow thing didn't make the news, and one can't imagine it wouldn't have done:

I just spent 2 days in Texas where it was 99 degrees with 99% humidity. Now, before I tell you this story I want to plant 2 images in your head: first is the scene where Bambi falls on the ice with his legs splayed outward and he kinda spins along the slick surface on his belly. The other is any generic memory you have of a cat jumping onto a kitchen counter and not quite making it all the way onto the countertop.

Yesterday (Tuesday, Aug 28th), I was supposed to be in "A," so last week we made travel arrangements to go to A in Austin, but they canceled, so since I already had the travel arranged, my peer in Chicago asked me to come out to "B," also in Austin, to help him with this other meeting. Fine. Get to "B" and my company calls me and says, "Oh, 'A' wants to see you after all, but only if you'll come out tomorrow (Wednesday, Aug 29th)." Well... OK, I didn't have a hotel but I could get one, I could hit up a Costco to get a quick change of clothes--except it wasn't "A," it was "C," a subsidiary of "A" whose sole location was in Houston, as in: we have a problem.

OK, so after my meeting in Austin, I spent the next 4 hours trying to get to Houston. Here's a fun-fact for ya: even with a major rental chain (at least in Texas), you cannot rent a car at one airport and return it to another. Oh, oh, oh, one more thing: you cannot use a debit card, it has to be a credit card, and they need to be able to pull $350-$500 out depending on the chain.

So, picture this: me at 4:30pm Tuesday. In Austin, Texas, with an empty belly and 3.5 hours of plane behind me. 9000% humidity. No change of clothes. I have no cell phone recharger, no laptop power supply (this trip was supposed to be a hopper), and no way to get data off my stupid little external hard drive for the shindig at "C." I do, however, have a pocket full of fifties because I'm trying to combat the anti-debitcard conspiracy machine... and I need to be in Houston by 8:30 the next morning. What does the rational mind come up with?

The rational mind comes up with Greyhound!!!! Of course! What else would one do? I mean, come on, it's completely impossible to draw any other conclusion!

It gets better.

This is my third trip to Texas and I have yet to have a Genuine Texas Ribeye. I'll be damned if I come all the way to Texas again and have drive-thru.

The bus ticket costs $25 on the nose. I hop in at 5:15... and arrive in Houston's Greyhound station at 8:30pm. No rental cars around, plenty of steak houses down the I-10, and I have no way to get there... and they all close at 9pm on a Tuesday. I was fortunate enough to have travel get me a hotel a couple miles from the "C" client, but the cab ride there costs me $47.

soihadgoddamnedchinesetakoutinmygoddamnedhotelroom

Get up this AM, the hotel kindly shuttles me to the Costco, then to the client, all the while letting me charge my cell in his van-bus. "C" goes without a hitch. However, because I went seven minutes beyond my pickup window, the Super Shuttle (blue vans) refuse to pick me up for my flight out of Bush, and it's suddenly raining--torrentially. I call Yellow Cab, they come get me and the 18-mile trip to Bush Intercontinental Airport is eighty bucks!

But one problem: my flight from Austin wasn't cancelled, so when I arrived at Bush... I was stranded unless I could get back to Austin in the next 90 minutes (see above). They put me on a plane out of Hobby (another airport in Houston) because that's the only way they could transfer the ticket without some exorbitant fee. Another $80 later, I'm at Hobby, which is completely grounded because of all the flooding and the rains and the lightning. I'm there an hour trying to get my flight sorted out, and guess where they have me departing? If you picked our 41st president, you're a winner!!!

Catching a cab was easy; they were parading them through the airport like Manhattan at rush hour. I get in one (a Honda Odyssey), and we begin inching our way down the flooded street, like maybe 2 MPH because water is halfway up the tire--seriously, I was waiting for it to come into the van. We're going to enter this tunnel, where above is a service road that goes around the airport parking lots, it's mostly for decoration so they can have all the "Welcome To Houston" in flowers and all. Anyway, we're sitting there, looking at the cars slowly going through the tunnel. The driver and I are seriously concentrating on this, trying to figure out if we should wait for the guy in front of us to go all the way through, or wait for the oncoming guy to come all the way through, or--

W H A M !!!!

A Hereford COW fell from the service road above us and landed on the front half of the hood of my cab. As it twisted around, its front half was still on the hood while its rump was pretty much off the minivan, but cows apparently don't have reverse, so it was floundering around like a cross between Bambi on ice and the Countertop Cat, and my jaw is On. The. Floor. This was happening live in front of me, and I was shocked. The force of impact was so severe, I was thrown upward off my seat and my scalp smacked the headliner. If I hadn't actually seen the cow land on the hood, I would have thought we had been rear-ended at speed--it was that violent.

So while the Middle-Eastern cabbie (a nice guy) is opening the door in a frenzy to try and ascertain the carnage--W H A M !! Another cow fell on the hood--this one square in the center of it. I Swear to God. I throw my hands up, my mouth still hasn't closed and the cabbie screams at me:

"GET OUT! THE COWS ARE GOING TO KILL US!"

No way, Sharif, I'm not moving. I'm in such a state of bewilderment that there is no way in hell I'm giving this up--I want to die under the weight of a small herd of cows that slipped off a muddy service road above the entrance to Houston Hobby Airport. I'm concocting the headlines:

Hobby Hereford Crushes Cabbie.

It's Raining Cows And Dogs.

Steak-Seeking Traveller Eats From Buffet Of Irony.

All my life, I've wanted my life to mean something and I was in a sudden position to be a comical tragedy on Jay Leno. I could not move. I was waiting to see what happened next! I was wondering if I was going to sh!+ my pants if a sheep fell next, or if I'd start crying, or if some farmer would walk up and ask me if I'd seen his Bessie, or what. I was frozen!

COWS fell ON my taxi! And my cell battery was dead! I wanted to take pictures! The cab was immobilized! I had to wait there for the cops to arrive (it was actually only a minute), completely drenched, watching the rest of the cows meander off for higher ground while some KID with a flashlight was standing near the slippery part guiding the cows like they were aircraft. I had already heard the theme song in my mind: "Move 'em on, head 'em up, move 'em out--FLASHLIGHT!"

I got a community service officer to give me a free ride back to Bush, where I caught the plane I would have taken if they had just transferred my flight from Austin to Houston. Yes, in hindsight, I should have just purchased a $300 plane ticket, but cash + 1-way plane ticket + no luggage = body cavity search. Arrived in Ontario about 9:40 tonight, or 2 hours ago. I sat next to a First Officer from another flight who was hitching a ride to Ontario, and I tried to tell him the story, but all he did was give me a stoic look and said, "That's very funny. You should write comedy for a living." Stoic.

Anyway, it's just been...bizarre.

Nick came over last night, and hung out with me and OJ. OJ made some pinto bean/chicken dish that was yummy, and we watched "The Chronicles of Narnia" on DVD. Discovered I had knocked the center channel speaker wire loose, which explains why the sound hasn't been right for weeks. Got the front briar patch weeded and trimmed, re-arranged the garage (YAY!) and won my GM Factory accessory kit for the car that's been burning a conceptual hole in my brain since the car came to me.

OJ is patching the garage roof as soon as it looks like we'll go 36 hours without rain, and this weekend, I'm painting my bedroom, touching up all the damaged spots on the paint when we moved in, and .. stuff.

Nearly Friday

It's nearly Friday of Labor Day weekend.

Random thoughts:

* Photobucket nuked my account for violations of their TOS. No warning, nor explanation. Just "blam." Thus, all my picture links on my blog(s) are broken now.

* I'm painting my bedroom and touching up the entire house this weekend, finally.

* My attic insulation may (MAY) be laid out in place right now.

* I finally got the TV to the repair store to have them check it out.

* I think I'm losing the ability to communicate. I keep telling people things that I think are clear and unequivocal, and then I find later that the listener has only heard about 20% of what I said, then strung together the pieces into an incorrect understanding.

* I think my model trains may actually sell this weekend on eBay. That would be a relief.

* I'm going to work on my scrapbooks this weekend.

* I increasingly have a negative opinion of people who drive SUVs (again) Especially ones with the names 4Runner, anything by Lexus, Tahoe and Suburban.

* I'm sick to death of politics. It's an entertainment industry in itself. Whichever side there is generates as much stupid, non-productive chatter to validate its position and nothing is ever discussed or generated or resolved.