Thought For The Day – Now With “That’s No Moon! Well…Yeah, Actually It Is” UPDATE

Greetings, my fellow port swillers!

Father took a short detour in his homily today to make mention of tomorrow’s big solar eclipse (which will reach about 82% coverage in the neighborhood of Port Swiller Manor).

“Now there’s no particular issue of Divine Intervention regarding tomorrow’s eclipse,” he said.  “It’s just the moon’s shadow crossing Earth in the ordinary course of celestial dynamics, easily predictable, and without any mystery.

Of course, if the eclipse doesn’t happen…then, perhaps, we’ll need to go back and reassess this.”

I chuckled.

UPDATE:  Watched the yclpse.  Fortunately, Middle Gel, off her own bat, had procured a set of glasses from Lunt Solar Systems to allow the Family Robbo to check out the Moon’s wanderings across the face of Sol without burning out our collective corneae.  I was bemused to note that the glasses – she paid 30 bucks for five sets that couldn’t have cost more than a few pennies each to produce – contained the solemn printed assurance that said glasses “Meet the 2015 Transmission Safety Requirements of ISO 12312-2 for Direct Solar Viewing”.

Who knew Big Brother cared so much?  You see? If you knuckle-dragging cretins would just stand down, relax, and allow the Experts to run your miserable, pathetic lives, why, all would be just ducky, now, wouldn’t it?

Anyhoo, when viewed through said glasses, the sun looked like a glowing, peach-colored pea.  And the moon tracking across it was certainly interesting, as was the semi-shadow effect created in the middle of the afternoon.   But the truth of the matter is that, for shear natural theatricality,  Ol’ Robbo actually appreciated the thundershower we got here on the heals of the thing much more.

 

On Passings – Updated

Greetings, my fellow port swillers!

Ol’ Robbo is home from his hols up tah Maine.  Normally in this apres-vacatione post, I’d go on about the relaxing time I had and various quirky incidences thereto, but I feel compelled this year to go straight to a more somber note.  You see, my mother died last Saturday, and if the hols weren’t exactly overwhelmed by this, they were certainly affected.  Private burial on Wednesday, Memorial service on Thursday, and of course, the general topic of discussion in between.

Yes, although “only” 81, she contracted Lewy body dementia some time last winter – a condition my brother (the doctor) tells me is 100% fatal and also incurable.  I knew something was wrong earlier this year (and perhaps began bracing myself) when she started repeating herself during our weekly phone conversations and then later seemed increasingly disoriented about various basic facts.  What I didn’t know is that her motor skills were also cutting out and that she was taking tosses.  The last one, two weeks ago, resulted in her landing on her head.  They rushed her to the ER, but she never really regained consciousness.

The good news is that all our family were planning to congregate for the hols anyway, and that we all got up tah Maine in time to see her before she went, even though she was unconscious throughout.  The grandkids all spent time in her room Saturday morning, talking to her and to each other.  My sistah, brothah, and I eventually shooed them and our spouses out, and spent the last hour or two quietly talking to her and each other.  I’m pretty morally certain that she waited to hear all our voices before slipping away.

Requiescat In Pace.

Anyone who has hung around here over the years will remember that she used to comment regularly under the handle of “The Mothe”.  She was the strongest person I’ve ever known, and grounded me in everything I’ve learned about life, humanity, religion, and civilization.

For some reason or other, an anecdote about her keeps popping into my braims, perhaps because it is so illustrative of her character:

Some time in my misspent yoot, early on in my Awakening to the Outer World, I said something to Mom about how unfair “sex discrimination” in employment was.  I don’t remember exactly how I teed it up, but I vividly remember her explosive response:

“The first woman to get her medical degree in this country, Elizabeth Blackwell, did so in 1849.  Since then, no woman who really wants to be a doctor has had any excuse not to, dammit!”

Yet for that, she often used to say that she’d gladly give up her right to vote if it meant no other woman could do so.

I guess you had to be there.

A remarkable woman.  And that’s about all – in the end – I’ve really got to say.

UPDATE:  Thankee very much for your kind words, my friends.  I truly appreciate them.

 

On Mother Gaia And The Litterboxes Of Doom

Greetings, my fellow port swillers!

I mentioned below my philosophy that politics is a false god.  Fortunately, it’s also a fairly stupid one, so if you’re at least half awake and paying attention, you can generally avoid the snares it sets for the credulous.  To wit:

It seems that “researchers” have discovered yet another aspect of your miserable, planet-killing, bourgeois lifestyle, Mr. & Mrs. Un-People of Jesus-land.  That’s right, it’s your pets’ farts:

Pet ownership in the United States creates about 64 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, UCLA researchers found. That’s the equivalent of driving 13.6 million cars for a year. The problem lies with the meat-filled diets of kitties and pooches, according to the study by UCLA geography professor Gregory Okin.

Dogs and cats are responsible for 25 to 30 percent of the impacts of meat production in the United States, said Orkin. Compared to a plant-based diet, meat production “requires more energy, land and water and has greater environmental consequences in terms of erosion, pesticides and waste,” the study found.

And what goes in, must come out. In terms of waste, Okin noted, feeding pets also leads to about 5.1 million tons of feces every year, roughly equivalent to the total trash production of Massachusetts.

[Ed. – So let’s get rid of Massachusetts, no?]

Well, Ol’ Robbo certainly doesn’t enjoy cleaning up after the dog and three cats that make up the Port Swiller Manor menagerie, but I’m certainly not going to send them off to the liquidation camps because of this.  Especially when, right on cue, with the inevitability of a blizzard at a global warming event, yes,  AlGore the Slayer of ManBearPig is in the news again:

Al Gore has been accused of hypocrisy by a conservative think-tank claiming his estate uses ’21 times more energy’ than the average American home.

The climate change expert and former vice president is accused of ‘guzzling more electricity in one year than the average American family uses in 21 years’ in a new report published by the National Center for Public Policy Research.

The center – a self-described ‘conservative, pro-liberty, pro-Constitution think-tank’ – claims the former vice president consumed 230,889 kilowatt hours at his lavish, 20-room, 10,070 square-foot mansion in Nashville.

The Energy Information Administration states the ‘average annual electricity consumption for a US residential utility customer was 10,812 kilowatt hours, an average of 901 kWh per month.’

And that’s just his mansion in Tennessee.  Don’t forget that he’s got numerous other residences, a ginormous yacht, and a fleet of SUV’s, and that he jet-sets all over the world to castigate us miserable knuckle-draggers for our wasteful ways.  I know that Big Meat is already among his numerous talking points, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Spot and Kitteh now work their way into his stump speeches.

Hypocrisy? Why, no, there’s no hypocrisy.  Why? Because shut up, that’s why.

As the folks over at Insty’s place like to say, I don’t want to hear another goddam word about my carbon footprint.

(Oh, speaking of footprints, I don’t believe I’m going to have access to the Innerwebs while on hols, so I’m not going to bother bringing along my laptop.  I’m sure you’ll all manage to do just fine without me for a week or so.)

 

 

 

 

Gratuitous Pre-Hols Hump Day Random

Greetings, my fellow port swillers!

On the eve of his last day of work before a very much needed summah hols, Ol’ Robbo finds himself mulling this and that:

♦  Long time friend of the decanter Diane asks:

– How did it get to be August? Seriously, I feel as if July just poked her head in the door to say hello, then disappeared. I realized this morning that in another week, maybe two, I’ll be driving to work in the dark again. Oy.

Ain’t it da troot?  At least  for myself, I have a ready explanation:  In the past six weeks, I’ve had to make three trips out west for work, including the two-week trial-prep/trial one I just finished up.  Still scary to contemplate how quickly it goes by.

And now we’re rolling into another interesting Fall of Things: Eldest Gel starts her sophomore year in college; Middle Gel is doing the college application thing (with her sights set on early admission at one place in particular which I will go into at another time); and Youngest starts her sophomore year in high school….well, staying out of trouble and hopefully realizing now that if she hopes to get good grades, she’s actually going to have to, you know, earn them herself.

Diane also goes on to note:

– Something is up at my elderly neighbor’s. When I came home Monday, they had a trailer backed in to their parking bay, and a van pulled up in the center. One of their sons and his wife were loading things up, and I overheard bits of “Goodwill or toss?” conversations. As of today, the parking bay, which had been a sort of extra storage spot for the couple, is pretty much bare. Not sure if this is just a huge purge, a purge because they plan to move, or something else. Have never met the son and wife, so didn’t want to pry.

I’m guessing I know exactly what is going on there.  I won’t get into details in this post, but I expect that part of my upcoming hols is going to be devoted to the very same scenario.  The Mothe is not at all well.

♦  Well, okaaaay, then!

♦  Ol’ Robbo has come to a very succinct formulation of a belief that applies to his interpretation of much of what is occupying the headlines these days:  Government is a necessary evil, and politics is a false god.

Kinda covers the bases, don’t you think?  Aaand discounts most of them.

What’s that, comrade? Get my coat, we are going for a ride? Very well, but……..

♦  In the Department of Complete Random, yes, yes I just did indulge myself by purchasing a Sam Grant bobblehead.  Got a problem with that?  I pass his Memorial every day on my lunch-time walkies, and never fail to ruminate on what a decent, modest, but firm and clear-headed fellah he was.

♦  We just destroyed our first yellow-jacket nest of the year.  (Well, we had an exterminator do it for us.)  What would summah around Port Swiller Manor be without a yellow-jacket nest manifesting itself somewhere in the grounds?  At least this year I didn’t discover it by walking straight in to it and getting numerous stings as a result.

♦  Gimme.  No, I am not kidding….

Okay, that’s probably enough for now.

Gratuitous Random Summah Doldrums Observation

Greetings, my fellow port swillers!

Long time friends of the decanter will know that ol’ Robbo usually puts out a post some time in late July bemoaning how burnt out he is and how he hopes that his upcoming summah hols will recharge him.

For some odd reason, I’ve no inclination to put up that post this year.

I am burned out, in fact.  I’ve been working like a dog on this project that just finished for about 15 months now (indeed, I missed my summah hols last year altogether because of it).  I’ve also got all kinds of cares on the home front to wrestle with.  (Don’t worry, they’re nothing out of the ordinary for a responsible family man in his 50’s, but they’re draining nonetheless.)

Perhaps the big difference is that, at least so far as Ol’ Robbo has seen, we’ve been blessed with a relatively temperate summah so far here in the neighborhood of Port Swiller Manor.  This was capped off by a gen-u-ine cool front that rolled through here over the weekend, bringing positively September-like conditions for a few days.  (I’m sure that Big Climate will condemn this observation utterly and insist that we are STILL on the path to Mother Gaia being burnt to a cinder because I won’t listen to my betters and resist switching out my lightbulbs for LED alternatives.  Or something.  Because shut up.)

Well, I guess maybe this post is that post after all, but I still say there’s something different about it all this year.

Gratuitous Random Sunday Morning Book Thoughts – “Something Old, Something New’ Edition

Greetings, my fellow port swillers!

Ever have a book which you genuinely dislike, yet you still feel compelled not only to read it but to reread it?  My personal gremlin is Jeff Shaara’s The Last Full Measure.  It continues to bother the hell out of me (whatever the arrangements might have been) that he lifted the entire concept – story, style, language, and all – straight off his father; the book’s way too long-winded; and if I had a quarter for every time he mentions “the screams of the wounded”, I’d be a very rich man.

And yet, even though I’ve already read it four or five times, I tossed the damned thing into my bags when I went away on my recent trip, I’m now to the point where Grant is just investing Petersburg, and I know for a certainty that I’m going to feel compelled to finish it yet again.

I believe psychiatry has a term for this kind of behavior.

At least I’ve reached the point of familiarity where I can skim over great chunks without any sense of guilt or loss, but still……

Anyhoo, the good news is that I will be seeing my brother on my upcoming hols and he is promising to bring along a fist-full of Ian Fleming’s 007 novels.  I’ve never read any of them (although I heard a portion of Dr. No on tape years and years ago), and am quite looking forward to trying them out.

Home Again, Home Again – UPDATED

Greetings, my fellow port swillers!

Ol’ Robbo is once again posting from the comfort of Port Swiller Manor’s back porch, a nice big cup o’ kahfeh at his side on this gloomy Saturday morning, after getting back yesterday afternoon from his nearly two weeks on the road.

Thank Heaven.

And what was ol’ Robbo doing all that time, you may ask? Why, he was first chairing a bench trial in federal court out west, that’s what.  Last week, we put nearly 900 miles on the rental car roving hither and yon to prep witnesses, and then this week we had the actual trial.  (No news on the results likely for another couple weeks, but we were pretty pleased.)

Ol’ Robbo’s braims don’t yet seem to have come to the realization that it is all finally over and done, as I kept having dreams last night about the next witness we need to call.

In the course of things, Ol’ Robbo managed to pick up a very nasty head cold which quickly got into his ears and  lungs as well.  I spent so much time hacking and gasping this week that the judge himself remarked on it, albeit sympathetically, and the clerk practically buried me in cough drops and kleenex.  (The court reporter told me that this sort of thing happened a lot in their court, apparently as a result of the combination of stress-induced exhaustion and high altitude.)

In a way, the sickies actually helped me out, insofar as yesterday when we flew home, we landed in the middle of a thunderstorm.  All the way down from the point of our initial descent, we  bucked and pitched all over the place.  Under normal circumstances, I would have been in something close to heart-attack mode, but I was just too tired and miserable to give much of a damn anymore, so I calmly kept working on my crossword (or at least staring at it blankly) even as people around me were grabbing on to the seats in front of them to keep from being pitched about too much.  (Although once, after a particularly violent lurch, I did mutter, “Next time, Jack, write a goddam memo!”, much to the bewilderment of the woman sitting next to me.  (Spot the quote.)

Also, the change in pressure coming down caused me to go something close to stone-deaf, giving me a wonderful sense of detachment from the whole biznay.  That’s the key to controlling fear, by the bye.  You can’t be afraid of something that doesn’t engage your attention.

Now here’s something I didn’t know:  Just after we landed, lightning bolts started coming down all around the airport.  As a result, they wouldn’t let us come in to the jetway, but made us loiter around for about 45 minutes on the tarmac.  Apparently, although the plane itself and the main terminal are safe enough, a lightning strike on a jetway is bad biznay for anyone who happens to be in it, so there is a “rule” that they have to wait 10 minutes after the last bolt before letting anyone on.  (That’s what the pilot said.  Nonetheless, just after they opened the hatch and people started filing out, there was a hell of a bang nearby.  We kept exiting nonetheless.  Go figure.)

Aaaaanyhoo, it’s good to be home again.  There’s a country song from the ’90’s called “Just Another Day in Paradise” – I’m too lazy right now to look up the singer – which “gets” the particular “felicity of unbridled domesticity” in all of its manifestations.  And so it is here: When I got home in the middle of said driving thunderstorm, the driveway was flooded and water was getting into the basement again.  Half the first floor lights don’t seem to be working (despite my ardent flipping of circuit-breakers last evening).  Eldest Gel was in her usual sass mode.  Youngest Gel was in her usual too-noisy mode and had chosen that evening to have a friend sleep over.  I had to kybosh Middle Gel’s plan to drive down to King’s Dominion today because the weather threatens to be as bad as yesterday.  The dog was barking at shadows.  The cats were fighting each other for the right to jump into my lap.  Mrs. Robbo, fearing infection, booted me on to a downstairs sofa for the night.

And I smiled.

It’s also lovely (although strange) to have nothing in particular to do, for once.  The only item on Ol’ Robbo’s agenda today is to retrieve La Wrangler from the shop where she’s been having her rear differential rebuilt.  Otherwise, I intend to do nothing but chill.

Oh, and some good news?  Ol’ Robbo’s long-awaited summah hols start this Friday!  (I missed vacay entirely last year due to this same case.)  We’re headed back to Maine, which I haven’t seen in three years, there to have a Robbo Clan Reunion.  Can’t.  Wait.

UPDATE:  Yep,  I’ve definitely put on my “Dad” hat again.

Fixed the lights.  It was the circuit breaker after all, but it was only this morning that I remembered what an electrician had once told me.  The proper way to make sure a tripped circuit really re-engages is to flip it off, wait about five seconds, and then go:  On……Off……ON!

Phil Vasser (or possible Vassar) is the name of the fellah who’s song I reference above.  Rascal Flatts (whom I dislike) also did a song on a similar theme around the same time, as did somebody else who’s completely escaped my memory.  I’ve long had the suspicion that Nashville songwriters keep an eagle eye out for what themes sell and then quickly try to get their own version up in order to get in on the profits.  This has probably been true of artists since the Dawn of Civilisation.

Picked up La Wrangler.  The horrible noise is gone, and she seems steadier on her pins, but it’s going to take a couple days of re-acclimation for me to finally decide if her overall ride is improved, since, as I say, I’ve spent the past two weeks cruising about in a tricked-out, comfort-heavy SUV.

By the way, I mistakenly referred to our rental last week as a GMC Yukon.  It wasn’t.  Instead, it was a Chevy Tahoe.  Very nice drive, but it reminded me of those awful Chevy commercials on the tee-vee these days with that nasty little Beta-boy pretending he’s Mike Rowe or somebody and trying to hang with the Bro’s and talk Truck with them.  Is anyone else put off by that, or is it just me?  (And I say this as a 5’10”, 160 lb., desk-jockey whose work with his hands doesn’t usually go beyond yard maintenance and minor home repairs.  It’s the pretense that bugs me.)

More Gratuitous On The Road Observations – Car Talk Edition

Greetings, my fellow port swillers!

Ol’ Robbo has spent the last three days logging something not far short of 800 miles in the rental car as he passes hither and yon across the landscape on his biznay.  This time around, I find myself driving a tricked out, new model GMC Yukon.  (There are four of us and we have a lot of stuff.)

 

The thing contains a number of features Ol’ Robbo has never encountered before, including some kind of sensor field that causes the driver’s seat to vibrate if the car thinks you’re drifting out of your lane or are about to back into something.

I can kinda, sorta see the benefits of such a feature, especially with a beast the size of a Yukon.

What I can’t see is the new semi-autonomy of some of the controls.  For instance, skirting through scattered storms this week, the thing would suddenly announce “rain conditions detected” on the dashboard and start turning the damned windshield wipers off and on all by itself.  Ditto the headlights.

This bothers Ol’ Robbo to no end.  A machine is supposed to do what I tell it to do, not the other way ’round.

Another weird feature:  Yesterday afternoon on the way back home, the center readout suddenly flashed out a fairly longish text that I couldn’t read at just a glance.  On a long, straight stretch of highway, I finally got a chance to focus on it.  “Danger,” it said. “Do not attempt to read long texts while driving.  Such distractions are hazardous.”

Was this some kind of sick joke?

By the bye, Ol’ Robbo can tell you one thing here and now:  I will never, ever, under any conditions whatsoever, get into a so-called “self-driving” car.  If I can’t control where it goes and when, I want no part of it whatsoever.

Do these designers not realize that Skynet was supposed to be a warning, not a “how-to”?

 

 

Gratuitous On The Road Observations

Greetings, my fellow port swillers!

As promised, Ol’ Robbo made himself bring along his laptop on his current biznay trip, and so I am now posting for the very first time here from the comfort of my hotel room.

Ain’t technology wunnerful.

We were chatting with the clerk while we checked in this afternoon.  Without completely giving away my location, this town is right in the bulls-eye for the big solar eclipse that will move across the United States next month.

The usual rate for this place is $91 per night.

Know what they’re charging for that week?

$1100 per night.  And they’re booked solid.

So is everyone else.

Apparently, a lot of locals are also renting out their houses for the event – and charging similarly primo, not to say, ridiculous rates.

The other clerk told us that somebody even called him seven years ago to see if they could book a room that far in advance so as to catch the festivities.  (The answer was no, apparently.)

Who knew a total eclipse was such a thing?

(Apparently, we’ll get about a 75% eclipse in the Port Swiller Manor neighborhood.  That’s plenty for me.)

Gratuitous Sunday Afternoon Random – UPDATED

Greetings, my fellow port swillers!  Ol’ Robbo finds himself lazing on the back porch of Port Swiller Manor this Sabbath, contemplating the cat sleeping opposite me and getting somewhat sleepy myself as a result.  Just a few thoughts to keep the braims cranking over:

♦  First thought is that, considering it’s already mid-July, Ol’ Robbo is really rather lucky to be able to sit out like this in comfort.  We had dinner on the porch last evening too, and it was quite pleasant.  (I’m sure the Meteorological Community will tell me this is all in my own head, 2017 is in fact shaping up to be the Hottest. Summah. EVAH!, and we all know who’s fault that is.)

♦  On travel this past week, Ol’ Robbo walked into a hotel with two of his biznay colleagues and beheld a sign by the registration desk that read, “Welcome, BLM”.  “Black Lives Matter?” I said, “Why would they want rioters?  Oooh, that must be Bureau of Land Management.”  (This was out West.)

My colleagues were……shocked.  Oopsies!

♦  So it seems that the Beeb announced today the 13th Doctor of the long-lived “Doctor Who” series and it’s……a woman.  Middle Gel, who is the big Whovian of Port Swiller Manor, is less than impressed with what she considers to be a pure casting stunt.  If the Gel is any straw in the wind to go by, this won’t end well.  (And lest you think Ol’ Robbo has some kind of problem with the concept of female Time Lords (or, more properly, Time Ladies) in and of themselves, I’ve got two words for you: Lalla Ward. Mmm, mmm, mmm…..)

♦  We had a handyman out yesterday to finally fix up the breakfast room ceiling, in water-stained tatters for months owing to the umpteenth overflow of the gels’ bathroom potty directly above it.  This was a new guy for us, recommended by a friend, and I’m here to tell you that it was a revelation to me.  I expected him to take most of the day banging and stamping about, but he had the whole job done, painted, and cleaned up in two hours flat.  (And he charged about half what our regular people had quoted us.)  I asked him about his speed. “Yeah,” he said, “We get a lot of calls from people having parties that evening and needing things to be fixed fast, so we just sort of developed this technique.”

Impressive.  Most impressive.

♦  Not so impressive was the way the next door neighbor dealt with a 3 to 4 inch diameter branch that had fallen out of one of the maples out front when he was mowing his yard yesterday:  He simply drove right over the damned thing.  Cut it to match-sticks (as it was quite rotten).  Now, Ol’ Robbo is hardly the kind of fellah who wishes ill on anyone, but by all rights this neighbor should have had his blades bent back about 90 degrees from pulling such a silly move.  (He drives over things all the time with impunity.  Why his mower hasn’t died a thousand deaths already, I simply don’t know.)

Whelp, I suppose I should be be-stirring myself, as it’s almost the cocktail hour and this is my last evening of freedom for the next two or three weeks (during which time I probably will post very little, by the bye).  I’ve organized a little family movie night for later – either “Megamind“, which I’ve seen and like a lot, or “Monsters University“, which I haven’t seen but heard good things about.  (And I recall liking the original.)  I’ll let you know later how it all turns out.

UPDATE: Went with “Megamind”.  A good choice, even though Ol’ Robbo doesn’t think much of the cynical tone of the movie or of most of the vocal talent involved.  It’s still pretty entertaining and a good time was had by all.

Oh, and what was really weird? Saying to the Elder Gels just before putting in the DVD, “Oh, by the way, can one of you pick me up at the Metro tomorrow evening? Thanks!”

Yep, I’ma gettin’ old.

Oh, BTW, I determined this evening that I’m going to bring my personal  laptop along on my biznay trip, so hopefully will keep up the blogging.  Just so you know.