painting report

Well, we squandered a perfectly good weekend by painting the house, or at least the walls, not counting the top few inches below the trim (gotta use a brush for that) and the bottom few inches (gotta use a trowel and a brush to get down below ground level). Next after that: Paint the facia boards and soffits, grout some cracks in the stucco and paint that, and get rid of the "footprints" left by vines that grew up the walls leaving little tracks, and then paint that. Also, replace a rear door to the garage that was attacked by a gang of vicious ferns that grow around the edge of the pool deck, replace an outdoor light fixture, and replace torn screens around the pool deck. Ain't home ownership fun?

I would post a photo at this point but my first photos seem to have a slightly pinkish tone to them, as opposed to YELLOW.

The door and shutters are going to be purple - not like your typical grape but with a bit more blue. My wife, it seems, is trying to reproduce the University of Michigan colors as Versace would have done them.

peach to lemon

We are having perfect weather and I have Monday off, and I can't think of a better project than to paint our house.

Our house has been pink ("peach," she corrected) since the memory of man knoweth not to the contrary. (OK, maybe it's been 17 years, more or less, but you don't get to use that expression very often). One good thing about pink, er, peach, is that even when it's been faded by the Florida sun, it still looks pink . Here's a photo of the original color that's been hidden behind a shutter, and a sample of what the rest of the house looks like.

Today, the opening phase of the project was to rent a pressure cleaner and clean the walls, from the ground up. The "ground" phase involved a lot of flying mud and paint chips.

When we lived in Boca Raton, I cleaned and painted the entire house by myself one weekend. It was the weekend of the Liberty City riots down in Miami, if you want to look it up. My wife and kids were taking life easy over in Naples. I was pleased to finish that task before they came home, but my enthusiasm for house painting hasn't been quite the same since then. In fact, the peach paint was applied to our house by our church music director and his wife and kids, who sold their painting services at an auction that benefitted the church. They did such a fine job that I've not wanted to disturb it all these years. But, there's no getting around it, it's way past time to paint again.

The next color will be yellow ("lemon"). The door and shutters might be purple but that is a point of contention at the moment. Stay tuned.

watching the Olympics

I'm "into" the Winter Olympics.

My favorite event is the Alpine downhill, naturally. I have vivid memories of my limited time on the green and blue slopes of Buttermilk Mountain (a/k/a the "bunny slopes") but I can imagine what these skiers and seeing and thinking as they hurtle downhill. Good news: Bode Miller is no longer news. Couldn't the guy have at least pretended to have cared?

My second favorite event, believe it or not, is curling. I can't believe this game is an Olympic event. . .is badminton a Summer Olympics event? But after watching for a couple of nights (why does the network give curling prime time?), I am getting hooked. The players don't look like "jocks." They look like engineers, very serious engineers. The winners will take home Olympic medals of the same size and color as every other winner, without breaking a sweat. It looks like an event they must play at M.I.T. Sure enough, I see that M.I.T. has a curling club with its own web site. http://web.mit.edu/curling/www/ Tonight we saw women curling - no, not hairdressers, but women who look like engineers, only prettier, especially the Swedes. The NBC commentators are doing a lousy job of explaining what we are seeing, however. I have no idea how you score a point in curling.

My least favorite sport? Skating. I like the skaters but the commentators ruin it. The other night, the female member of the NBC commentating team actually said one of the skaters deserved to be choked for whatever the guy had done. Choked? I think NBC is choking in a sea of verbal air pollution. Shut up, please, and let us listen to the music.

Gotta go watch the snowboarders. . .these guys are certifiable lunatics but they put on a great show!

going, gone

My four regular readers know I've been complaining about the destruction of Calvary Baptist Church in downtown Clearwater, Florida, or what used to be "downtown." I've put off, until today, the pain of going by to see what the site looks like now that this historic and beautiful building is gone. It's ugly. Here's what it looked like before the wreckers arrived:

And here's what it looks like today:

what's fair is fair

This just in:

(CNN) -- An Iranian newspaper says it is going to hold a competition for cartoons on the Holocaust to test whether the West will apply the same principles of freedom of expression to the Nazi genocide against Jews as it did to the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, The Associated Press reports.

This will be a learning experience for those Muslims who have been so offended by cartoons depicting Mohammed. I predict that some Jews, and a few non-Jews who do not like to see history rewritten, will complain about the cartoons. I also predict there will be no riots, no burning of embassies, no cancellation of trade agreements, no demands that cartoonists be beheaded, and no other violent reactions.

The West is already accustomed to seeing Jesus and Moses being depicted by Rennaissance masters and by cartoonists with the mind-set of early teenagers. We have heard the "Holocaust never happened" nonsense. We have seen vile, anti-Semitic cartoons of Jews. We have accepted nasty cartoons about politicians as part of the price of being a politician. We in the West have learned to do something a huge number of Muslims have not yet learned to do, which is to shrug it all off as being essentially unimportant. Pictures of naked women bother some Westerners more than all of the foregoing, yet nobody has been beheaded thus far for publishing them (not counting Larry Flynt, who was shot because his magazine depicted interracial couples - the only victim of the First Amendment I can think of off-hand).

So, bring on those Holocaust cartoons. I'd like to see if Iranian cartoonists have a sense of humor. I predict they do not, but if they surprise me, I'll either chuckle or grimace and move on to something important.

in memory of Betty Friedan

Betty Friedan, who died today at the age of 85, was a leader in the women's rights movement. In 1975, she came to Tallahassee to campaign in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment. This photo of her was taken with my wife (the pregnant one to her right, or on the left as you look at the photo), parading towards the state capitol building.

the annual Kumquat Festival

This weekend we are running up to Uncle David's new house. One of the highlights of the visit will be the annual Kumquat Festival in Dade City. I'm not making that up - you can check it out here: http://www.kumquatfestival.com/

The kumquat is a small, bland piece of citrus fruit that looks much better than it tastes. I'm surprised their web site doesn't have recipes because you can make pies and other goodies if you add a lot of sugar and other ingredients to give it flavor. But, they have a link to a site which has recipes: http://kumquatgrowers.com/

They'll have a Kumquat Court and a Pagaent Queen, young ladies who look much better than the lowly kumquat. The point of the whole affair seems to be to give you an excuse to get out and traipse around downtown Dade City, a quaint place which is looking better to me as my hometown looks worse and worse.

living in a town with no soul

Some time ago I posted a photo of the beautiful, historic Calvary Baptist Church building in what used to be called "downtown" Clearwater (before the merchants defected to the outlying malls). The property was sold by the Baptists for an enormous "mess of pottage" ($15 million worth) and the City, which does not have an historic preservation ordinance, is allowing the site to be developed as high-rise condos. The ugly follow-up to that story is that the building has been destroyed. The demolition of this building is further evidence that everybody has decided what our city council is, and that what passes for "government" is merely haggling over the price.

feels like Spring already

It's feeling like Spring here in central Florida for several reasons: Our weather has been absurdly warm; the days are getting longer; whatever bug I've had is releasing its death grip on my back, allowing me to sleep and my energy level to rise; and the sap is rising in the punk trees we call "politicians" at the national, state, and local levels.

Florida actually grows "punk" trees, also called Melaleuca trees. They are invasive, noxious, pest trees, crowding out native trees in the Everglades and coastal areas. Their trunk unfolds like sheets of coarse paper but don't try to make a punk bark canoe out of one. At the age of 28 to 30 years, they sprout business suits and wing-tip shoes and join the Republican Party. Then they run for office and get elected in surprising numbers because of their pro-life, anti-gun, anti-axe, anti-chainsaw policies. They view the eradication of pest trees as an expansion of government and they are against that, too.

Some join the military. I heard one on TV the other night, explaining how the Bush phone-tapping program might have prevented September 11 because, if they had been tapping phones then, they could have discovered several of the participants. Obviously, he's never read Senator Bob Graham's book. (They don't read anything made of paper.) In his book, which has drawn a rather muted response from Bush apologists, Graham demonstrated that the feds had, in fact, without benefit of phone taps, identified several of the participants in time to keep them out or ship them out, but the feds didn't know what to do with them. Imagine how much more confused they would have been after sorting through all those phone messages.

The more I hear from our elected punk trees and their brass-hat counterparts, the greater my energy level rises.

spammers should be dragged out and shot

It's a Sunday morning and I'm not going to church today because my "virus" has settled into my latissimus dorsi (in this case, dorsus?) running down my right side, feeling like a pulled muscle. I've had to sleep in the recliner in the living room two nights in a row because, lying down, there is no comfortable position. The last time this happened to me I felt like I'd been stabbed in the middle of the back with a hot ice pick and a doctor told me it was a virus. May this never happen to you.

I mention this to explain why I'm sitting in front of a computer instead of attacking a long list of overdue projects. In checking e-mail, I see that I'll never feel alone as long as there are spammers out there sending me tons of solicitations for drugs and worse. What amazes me is how stupid the spammers are - and, by extension, how stupid some people must be because they wouldn't waste their time if they weren't selling stuff.

For example, I keep getting spam from "Doctor." Because Gmail lets me see the first few lines of the message without opening it, I see that "Doctor" is selling vliqagra, vloagra, vleagra, vitagra, and vlfagra, apparently in an (unsuccessful) attempt to defeat spam filters by misspelling "viagra." I also have spam from Overheard E. Supperannuat and Christmas Anderson, both selling misspelled pharmaceuticals (a word which is always misspelled, too) and Amandi Tomlin (whose subject line is "albumin, may wiretapping"). Just what kind of fools do they think we are?

This has me steamed up to the point that I've forgotten my sore back. Maybe I should put up the ladder and install that motion-detecting outdoor light. Or, finish copying songs from a stack of music CD's and return them to the library before the fines start racking up. That's a tough choice. Maybe I should ask my old buddy, Overheard E. Supperannuat, for his advice.

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behold the noble pig

Our good friends in St. Petersburg hold a pig roast in January every year, usually on what seems like the coldest day of the year but not this year. Below, the two main characters are Joe the Pigmeister and Mary P., daughter of the hosts. This year's pig weighed 135 pounds, bigger than last year, although he didn't weigh that much by the time he came off the fire. Once he goes on, sombody sits up all night (not the same somebodys) turning a boat steering wheel attached to the end of the stainless steel pole to which the pig is firmly attached. They keep a bottle of Mezcal on hand to keep the pig driver warm. This little piggy was over the fire for nearly 18 hours. It is good to have good friends.

new computer!

Where I work, they replace computers every three years. We depend on computers a lot here. I'm now looking at a 19-inch monitor, which is spectacular. I could roll my chair back a foot or two and read documents without glasses. Did I say spectacular? It is amazing. I'll have to upload a photo to see how it looks. My old monitor at home is due for replacement!

coming down with - - something

If there's anything I hate worse than coming down with some bug, it's coming down with some bug at the beginning of a weekend. The only sympton has been getting chilled. It started last night. I thought two aspirins had cured it this morning but right now I feel like a cold compress is covering my back and my energy level is about 50 percent. This will settle into my chest and stay there for a week. Meanwhile we have two children and a daughter-in-law who will be skiing in Colorado this weekend. Jealousy!

poll update: 2 yea, 0 nay

So, two of my children like his hat. I think they have good taste. This confirms all of my suspicions, considering how long the "poll" has been here. Ah, well.

Poll results: 0 yea, 0 nay

My poll on Jack Abramoff's hat (see below) has drawn zilch for results so far. This tells me that (a) my readership base is closer to zero than I suspected, (b) my readers don't give squat about the hat one way or the other, (c) they don't know how to post comments, or (d) they have better things to do with their lives. I hope the answer is (d) and not (a)!

the law and common sense sometimes coincide

Does an unborn fetus count as a passenger, when the mom-to-be is driving in a lane reserved for car pools during rush hour? Here's one definitive answer:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/01/11/fetus.carpool.ap/index.html

sunlight: a reminder

For our friends in Colorado, and Boston, and faraway Scotland, who are apparently suffering from sunlight deprivation, here's a reminder of what it looks like when viewed at sunset. And for our special friend who doesn't even like putting her toes in the water when she goes to the beach, contemplate that this was taken from a sailboat about 20 miles out into the Gulf of Mexico, west of Naples, Florida, when the wind was barely strong enough to budge the boat and the water was as smooth as a baby's bottom.

I broke the rule about horizons (upper third, lower third, but never across the center) but in this case I like the result. Don't ask me what was breaking the surface in the foreground. If it was a sea critter, we didn't catch it despite our best efforts.

The return of the hat - or not? A poll.

This has become a famous photo of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, seen walking away from a federal courthouse after pleading guilty to fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials. He was wearing what some journalists have called a clownish black fedora and a guilty look.

I'm not so sure about the guilty look, but I definitely do not think this hat is "clownish." I think it is an elegant hat of a style that deserves to be resurrected in men's fashions.

I'm taking a poll. What do you think? Is this a clown's hat, a costume from a Mafia movie, or a seriously good-looking hat that real men should wear more often? Leave a comment and let me know.

Epiphany Day in Tarpon Springs

Up the road from where we live is Tarpon Springs, Florida. This is where we moved when we came down from Kentucky when I was a kid. Tarpon Springs has a Greek-American population (they always include the "-American" part when referring to themselves) descended from divers brought over from Greece a hundred years ago to work the Gulf of Mexico for sponges. The sponge industry was a big deal in Tarpon Springs until the "red tide" killed most of the sponge beds in the 1940's. They made some valiant attempts to revive the sponge industry but now the old docks are lined with shrimp boats, not the classic old Greek sponge boats.

They have a beautiful Greek ("Eastern") Orthodox church in the city, and every year on January 6 they celebrate Epiphany, the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. This year is the 100th year that they are doing this in Tarpon Springs, and the patriarch of the Church flew in from Istanbul to lead the ritual.

My fondness for Tarpon Springs and the Greeks stems from my parents. As school teachers, they were immediately accepted into the community. Back in Kentucky, you could move to a new town and still be referred to as the "new kid in town" after living there for ten or twenty years. They fell in love with Greek food, the people, and the traditions and trappings of the Greek Orthodox Church. Keep in mind that they were Southern Baptists, so this was a major cultural event in their lives.

Our local paper has a nice section dedicated to Epiphany. Check it out. Scroll down to the gallery, which has some great old photos and a narration:

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/webspecials06/epiphany100/index.shtml

Uncle Bob turns 80

Here's our Uncle Bob at the old and decrepit age of 80 years, with his new wife, Pam.

We should all look so good and be so healthy and vibrant when we are 70!

Obviously, life in the Marine Corps followed by a second career in the Sheriff's Office agreed with him.