An Open Apology to My Neighbors

Hello, neighbors. Hope you all had a good holiday. You may have noticed a bunch of white stuff floating around the neighborhood lately. No, not the snow. This stuff:



See it there on the ground? Here it is a bit closer:



Yeah, that stuff. It's all over my lawn, and blowing downwind into yours as well. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what it was, until I noticed that one of the cushions on our porch furniture had been chewed open by some critter, and the stuffing had been pulled out. So I tossed the cushion, cleaned up the fluff on the lawn, and called it a day. That was a week or so again.

But the fluff keeps coming back. And I keep cleaning it up. And then it comes back again. And every time it comes back, it blows on down the street into your yard. Where the heck is it coming from?

Then yesterday I looked up and realized who had chewed through the cushion and where all the fluff was coming from. It's all up there:



See that white, fluffy-lined squirrel's nest? About 60 feet up in the tree? Yep, that's where it's coming from. I'm not about to climb 60 feet up a tree and do battle with a squirrel in the dead of winter over his warm nest lining. He can keep it. And I will try my best to pick it up as it continually blows back down. But in the meantime, my apologies for the inconvenience.

Then again, if it snows a lot, you may not even notice.

Deck The Halls...

A little musical interlude for everyone: Abra and Lily play a duet of Deck The Halls on the piano. Listen here.

Merry Christmas, all

The girls are in bed, dreaming of Santa. They left out treats for him, and carrots for all the reindeer except Blitzen. Blitzen gets a sprig of broccoli, since a few years back Santa left the girls a note saying that Blitzen was a big broccoli fan.

Anyway, presents are wrapped, stockings are hung, dog is walked (just before midnight, with sleigh bells ringing), and it's time for us to retire so Santa can come. And so the cats can mess around with all the wrapping on the presents while we sleep.

Have a wonderful Christmas, everyone.

Gingerbread Follies

Abra brought home a gingerbread house that she had made at school, and started working on some renovations. It was very cute, right down to the little marshmallow snowman and the shredded coconut that she used to make the snow around the house.

Healy was quite interested in helping Abra with her house:



Helpful cat. Raise your hand if you can see what's coming next.

In the middle of the night (3:11am, to be exact), we woke up to the ugly but common sound of a cat barfing up a hairball.

In the light of the morning, when we went in search of the hairball, we found it not to be a hairball but in fact a coconutball -- a small compactified blob of regurgitated shredded coconut. And the gingerbread house was... well... it wasn't pretty. Let's just hope the gingerbread family had full replacement coverage on their insurance.

Life with cats and kids.

My academic colleagues need a bit of help

So whenever I go visit another university to give a talk, one of the necessary stops is at their department administrator's desk to pick up the travel reimbursement forms. At that point, the person usually describes in incredible minutiae how to fill out these forms. I've always listened very politely to the description, the whole time thinking "It's a travel reimbursement form. You don't need to explain this. I've seen a million of these things, it's not exactly rocket science to fill them out."

And I would always fill them out, send them in, and get reimbursed. No problem.

I was amazed, however, at the response I got after filling in my reimbursement forms for a recent trip to another university. I got an email from their administrator which said:

Thanks for the great job filling out the report. You are my first speaker ... to complete it with no mistakes.

Really? REALLY? Come on, people, how hard is this? All these smart academic folks running around and none of you can properly fill out a travel reimbursement form? Yeesh.

The whole episode reminded me of this Far Side cartoon:

The cheapskate's guide to online Christmas shopping

OK, so it's time to do a little Christmas shopping, cheap-cheap-cheap style!

For about 5 years, I've been wanting a new jacket. Finally decided it was time (my current jacket which I've worn for at least 10 years now is not all that warm, the seams have frayed out, and just last night Tango peed on it while we were asleep). Since it's getting close to Christmas, I figure I can get the jacket and Brenna can give it to me for Christmas. I get the jacket I want, she doesn't have to shop, we all win.

We also need tights for the girls. Since even in the dead of winter they insist on wearing dresses, tights are a must. And as cheap as I am, even I understand the importance of actually getting decent quality tights -- the dime store ones wear out after 3 wearings...

So off to Land's End we go. This jacket looks pretty good:


It also came in a red/black combo which looked pretty nice, but that was way too close to Ohio State colors for me -- I imagine I will be wearing this jacket quite a bit in Michigan Stadium, and I don't want to be mistaken for some intellectually-challenged Ohio State "graduate". So blue and black it is.

Then off to the girl's tights section: white tights for each of them, plus a purple snowflake set of tights for Thalia and pink butterfly tights for Abra.

Hit "checkout" and the order comes out:

• Jacket: $99.50
  
• 4 pairs of tights: $38.00
• Tax: $8.12
• Shipping $13.95
• Total: $159.57

And now, time for the cheap magic!

• Jacket on sale: -$27.90
• Tights on sale: -$4.68
• Apply free shipping code: -$13.95
• Apply 3 Discover cashback bonus Land's End vouchers: -$79.57
• New total: $33.47

On top of that, by ordering via the ShopDiscover/Land'sEnd link, I should get another few bucks credited to my Cashback Bonus total next month, depending on how Discover does their convoluted accounting.

So we're looking at knocking a $160 order down to about $30. Boogie.

Update: when I fished my jacket out of the dryer just now after washing it as a result of the Tango-peeing incident, the zipper pull had broken off. So, yeah. Definitely looking forward to that new jacket....

The Misery Index

I have made a football misery index. Well, in principle it could be a happiness index, but right now it's not. It's definitely a misery index. So as most of you people reading this blog know, my happiness in the fall hinges largely on the success of the Washington Redskins and Michigan Wolverines. If my teams do well, I'm happy; if not, I'm crabby. Yes, this probably makes me a shallow and limited individual, but it is what it is.

This year has been rough for Michigan. Abysmally bad. No-bowl bad. Most-losses-ever bad. They've lost 5 in a row to Ohio State, and they've lost the last four games I've gone to. So naturally I've been cranky.

So I sat down to devise a way to measure my misery. Being a scientist and a numbers geek, this is what passes as an interesting diversion to me.

I started by simply averaging the winning percentages of the two teams. That's about as basic as you can get. But that doesn't quite capture things -- most importantly it doesn't quite capture expectation -- if a team has been consistently good, then a fall to 0.500 is bad; conversely, if a team has repeatedly stunk, winning half your games suddenly looks like a success.

So I revised it as follows: for each year, I calculate a running 10 year average and standard deviation of each team's record. Then I calculate the team's normalized deviation from the average, ie:

normdev = (win pct - average win pct)/stddev

For example, +1 is a one sigma good year, while -2 is a two sigma bad year (yes, yes, calculating a stddev from 10 data points which are almost certainly not distributed normally is a statistical no-no. Sue me. This isn't one of my scientific papers, this is a self-pity party.).

And then I average the two team's normalized deviation to get my net misery index.

So here it is, tabulated from 1987 (the year I got to Michigan) to today (click the image for a bigger view):

(if you think this is bad, you should see the other stupid charts that sit on my laptop...)

So what do we see?

1) THIS YEAR HAS BEEN MISERABLE! Yes, the misery index is at its lowest value in 21 years. I'm cranky. Michigan is off the charts (literally) bad, having a 6 sigma bad season.

2) The only time that things were close to this bad was in the early 90s, when the Redskins were suffering through back-to-back 3 and 4 win seasons. Ugh. That was awful, and got us the Heath Shuler era in Washington. The football gods truly hated the Redskins at that point.

3) I got out of that early 90s misery not by the Redskins becoming good again, but by them being consistently mediocre. "Consistently" being the key word here. After a while, you get used to being mediocre and the misery index isn't so bad. I would like that not to be Michigan's solution to the present misery issue.

4) There are good times there, too. In 1991, the Redskins won the Super Bowl and Michigan went to the Rose Bowl (and lost, of course. It was the next year that they won it). In 1997, Michigan had their undefeated season and won a share of the national championship.

5) Interestingly enough, the past few seasons Michigan and the Redskins have been see-sawing, keeping the misery index kind of flat. In 2005, Michigan had the (now superceded) "Year of Infinite Pain", but the Redskins returned to the playoffs for the first time in a while. The next year the Redskins collapsed again, while Michigan had a good season (with a lousy ending, but hey, it's Michigan). The year after that (i.e., last year), Michigan went through the Horror, and stumbled its way through through another down year, but the Redskins returned (briefly) to the playoffs.

6) Now, however, even though the Redskins are competing for a playoff spot, nothing can overcome Michigan's abysmal year. Sigh.

I hate football.

Thalia Reads

OK, this picture was just too darned cute to resist putting up. Thalia is reading, very carefully sounding out the words (wish I had an audio file to attach -- maybe next time) to her book "A Glob of Glue", while Wacko looks on.


Look at her little pink feet!

"Who's Bam-Bam?"

So today Brenna made the comment that Thalia was as strong as Bam-Bam. Thalia responded "Who's Bam-Bam?"

Upon hearing that, I immediately logged into the library's website and placed a reserve on a DVD of the first season of The Flintstones. The girls will watch every minute of that DVD.

Cultural illiteracy like that will not stand in my household.

Laundry

The concept of laundry sure has changed for me over the past two years.

As a bachelor, laundry was one of the things where you dumped clothes down the laundry chute, and then went down to the basement to do one load of laundry each week. Pretty simple stuff -- add laundry detergent, run washer, throw in dryer, fold, put away. Done for the week.

Now, oh my gosh. The whole weekend is spent on laundry -- Saturday and Sunday, full day job. And evidently there's this concept of sorting loads that needs to be done (to her credit, Brenna does not ask me to do this; however, I notice that the dirty laundry magically shows up in separate piles in the basement). There's pretreatment to be done on the I-really-don't-want-to-know-where-this-came-from-and-what-it-is stains on the girls' shirts. Some things have to be washed in hot, some in cold (this is actually important, as the hot water kills dust mites that give Thalia allergy issues). Dryer sheets have also suddenly become part of the process.

It's all very confusing to me. I think I need one of these things in the basement:


But what really has thrown me off stride is the folding and sorting. First of all, everytime I fold the underwear, and try to figure out whose is whose, I nervously look over my shoulder, sure that I'm about to be busted by the cops for pedophilia or lewd behavior or something like that for staring at little girls' underwear. (The first time I did this, it was in front of the living room picture window -- never again.) And then, well, I can't tell the difference half the time between Abra's clothes and Thalia's clothes, particularly since many of Thalia's clothes used to be Abra's clothes. So I'm constantly hearing "Daddy, why is Thalia's shirt in my drawer?" I solved this problem, though: now I just stack all their clean laundry folded but unsorted on their beds and say "Put it away, girls!"

Now if only I could get them to turn their tights right-side-out before throwing them down the laundry chute, I'd be in business....

Explaining the Electoral College

So on election night, I was trying to explain to Abra how the election results worked. At first she thought we would turn on the TV and they would announce immediately who had won. So I tried to explain to her that you win states, and that you get points for each state you win, and that the score would be changing throughout the night until somebody won.

She said to me "Oh you mean it's like a football game? Except not as important?"

That's my girl.

Halloween 2008

Halloween was low key this year. Abra went off to have a trick-or-treat sleepover at a friend's house, so it was just Thalia on the candy circuit tonight. Here she is in her pixie costume, ready to go.

Lily came over, which was nice since Abra was missing in action. Thalia and Lily posed for a minute...

...and then off they went, dashing down the street in search of CANDY!


After an hour or so of looting and pillaging the neighborhood (during which Thalia learned that if you are trick-or-treating at a house that displays a University of Michigan flag, when you say "Go Blue!" you get an extra handful of candy) we came back home when the pumpkin candy bag was too overloaded for Thalia to carry any more. At that point it was dark and we lit the pumpkins.


And then Thalia got to hand out the candy... with a little help from Mom.

Happy Halloween, all! I'll post a picture of Abra in her witch costume when she comes home in the morning....

Update: OK, here's the witch:

David Byrne - Then and Now

October 1983: I'm a college freshman. A friend of mine says that he's getting tickets for the Talking Heads show, do I want to go? I've heard a few songs, they sounded good, so sure. Off we go to Long Beach Arena, and... wow.



(from Jonathan Demme's movie Stop Making Sense)

I'm speechless after the show-- still one of the most amazing, fun, mind-opening shows I've ever seen. I'd never really heard music like that before, such a mix of rhythm, beat, and styles. It was so intricate and complex, and yet so wild and fun, and I was instantly and forever a Talking Heads fan.

October 2008: I'm a college professor. A friend of mine says that he's interested in getting tickets to a David Byrne show, do I want to go? I say probably not, sounds like fun, but too expensive and not sure I can make it up to Ann Arbor in time. He ignores my response and gets them anyway. Off we go to the Michigan Theater, and... wow.



(from a handheld camera -- not mine! -- somewhere in the Michigan Theater)


Where to start? First, the seats were spectacular: first row, we were leaning on the stage when we weren't dancing in the aisle. Watching Byrne play up close was a lot of fun -- I always had seen him through his videos and his onstage performances as an enigmatic persona, very different and strange. But he was very relaxed and chatty this night, laughing, interacting with the audience, he seemed like a guy who was having a lot of fun with the music.

And there was so much to watch. The show combined music and dance -- he had three dancers on stage much of the time, and three singers who were almost always in motion as well. The motion and music flowed together on stage much the same way as the Heads worked in that concert 25 years ago.

He played a lot of Talking Heads -- essentially the whole first side of Remain in Light. Here's the setlist, in fact. Crosseyed and Painless remains one of my all-time favorite Heads songs, and it was such a treat to see it again live. But it wasn't just Heads stuff, he did a number of songs from his work with Brian Eno as well, in particular Strange Overtones flowed beautifully throughout the concert hall.

So twenty five years has passed. I'm older and a heavier. David Byrne is older and white haired. The concert starts early for all us geezers. But other than that, it's every bit as intense and fun as it was back then. It's a spectacular show -- if the tour comes near you, go see it. You won't be sorry. And, Mark, thanks a million for ignoring me and getting the tickets anyway even after I said no...

Newspaper No More

So today I made a very momentous decision: I canceled my subscription to our morning newspaper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

I've always been a newspaper buff. I love waking up in the morning -- particularly on a Sunday morning -- getting the paper, and reading it while I drink my coffee. I grew up reading the Washington Post, the paper that will always set the standard in my opinion.

When I was a kid, I always started with the comics. Then when I got older, it was always the sports page to start. Eventually, I guess I matured enough that I moved on to starting with the front page, and then finally I started worrying about economics and investments, and that's when I moved to beginning my newspaper reading with the business section.

Even when newspapers put all their content on the internet, I still maintained my print subscription. Call me an old fogey, but I still read better (and enjoy reading much more) when I have a printed copy in front of me. I love the smell of newspaper, the texture of the newsprint, and just the act of reading the paper is a comforting ritual for me.

But now, over the past year or two, I've noticed something: I read less and less of it. In fact, I'm back to starting with reading the comics, and not much else.

So what happened? Two things, really.

The first is probably the obvious one: the Internet. As a national and international news vehicle, the daily newspaper is dead -- I get that news much faster, and from a much broader range of sources, using the Internet. So most of what I see in the morning paper is stuff that I knew the night before.

Still, though, there's much more to a newspaper than just breaking news. There's in-depth reporting in a way that just doesn't happen on TV, and again I grew up with a newspaper that (to this child of the 70s, anyway) defined investigative newspaper journalism.

And this brings me to the second reason I'm dropping the Plain Dealer: most of its in-depth national and international stories have the following by-lines: "The Washington Post", "The Los Angeles Times", etc. In other words, it's a reprint service, reprinting stories that I read several days or even a week earlier on the website of the Post or Times. Who needs that?

So I would open up the Plain Dealer, and immediately throw away 90% of it. What's the 10% that's left over? Comics, local news, and coupons. Do I need those?

Local news: yes, this is important. But the Plain Dealer has a website, and I can get all the news there.

Coupons: as cheap as I am, coupons are less and less useful. The coupons are generally for overpriced name brand items, so why don't I just skip them and buy store brand, which is just fine by me? Lately, I manage to find maybe $1-$2 worth of usable coupons in the Sunday paper. Spending $20/mo to get $6 in coupons is a losing proposition.

Comics: Those also are almost all online. Yes, they come out a few weeks or a month after the printed version, but after a month away from the newspaper, the ones online will be new to me every day.

Anyway, after wondering for a while whether or not I really need a subscription, this month the Plain Dealer upped their subscription price by about 25% and that was the final straw. So long, guys. It's been a nice run.

So what will I miss?

• the plastic bag it was delivered in: that made a great poop bag for dog walks
• the newspaper itself, which was useful for putting down next to the cat litterboxes
• the crossword puzzle. Crossword puzzles are meant to be done on newspaper stock. It's not the same printing them out on my printer. I'll survive, but I'll miss the newspaper's texture.

So throw out its use as a barrier against pet waste, and all I've got left to cling to is the way newsprint absorbs ink while doing the crossword. And that wasn't enough. So there you have it, an end of an era.

I am a bit worried that my mom's gonna yell at me for doing this, though.

Sisters

Abra is helping Thalia sound out the words in her library book. This was wonderful to listen to.

All the News that's Fit to Print...

OK, it's been a long time since I've updated, so here's a compendium of news.

It's certainly election season. Living in good old democratic Cleveland Heights, the yards around us are filled with Obama signs. But while walking Wacko a few weeks ago, I suddenly saw a McCain/Palin sign on a neighbor's yard. As we walked past it, Wacko looked at it, looked up at me, looked back at the sign, and then squatted right in front of it and took a big old dump. Good Boy!

Meanwhile, last week our ballots came in the mail. I filled mine out (getting a little liquored up first made it more interesting) and sent it back in, so I'm done with the election. Next week for all I care, Obama can be caught in bed with David Bowie, a baggie full of cocaine, and naked pictures of Jack Abramoff and Osama bin Laden, and he's still got my vote. Woo, early voting rocks!

But it has been a rough few weeks. Two weeks ago, I managed to nearly break my toe when it impacted a wall rather violently (this was about 16 seconds after the Redskins gave up a punt return touchdown to the Eagles, but I deny any evidence of a cause-and-effect relationship between the two). After a week of hobbling around on it, and wondering if it actually was broken, it was starting to get better. But then I managed to drop a large freestanding freezer on the very same toe (well, in truth, Richard helped me drop the freezer!), and was sent back to square one of the healing process. I'm 90% sure it isn't broken, although I'm still kind of hobbling around on it.

Thalia's had a good week, though. She graduated to a new carseat -- she's outgrown the toddler carseat she's had for a while and is now in a brand new kid's booster seat. I drew the line at the pink seat with hearts on it, so we got her a gray carseat -- two in fact, one for each car. She was so excited by the new seat, and babbled away about it the whole time we drove to ballet the other night. Then she realized that she couldn't easily pull out the built-in cupholder and asked me if we could get her a new one. The disappointment of my "no" answer was tempered by...

...her reading her very first book! Yes, I got the book "Nell Gets a Pet" from the library last week (at the same time I got the "Grindhouse" DVD -- the librarian gave me a weird look about the juxtaposition of materials when I checked out), and last night Thalia climbed up into my lap and read the book to me. She needed help with a few words, but she sounded out many of the words she didn't know, and she read it from beginning to end (all 12 pages, heh). I was very proud of her. She later asked if she could go to work with me and read it to my students, and I told her that they would probably like that better than the usual class...

What else? Oh yeah, we are keeping our fingers crossed that we may have finally sold Brenna's house. We accepted an offer, it's passed inspection, and the buyers have had the final loan paperwork approved (I didn't think ANY loans were being approved). We're on schedule to close by the end of the month, and I'm just holding my breath waiting for those papers to finally be signed. Keep your fingers crossed. And if you are wondering, yes, we're taking a loss. *sigh*

We (well, Brenna) took care of Luca, the 3 month old neighbor baby, for an hour or so the other evening. The girls were very excited to have a little baby to play with... at first. Then Luca went on a crying fit, which totally freaked Thalia out. She didn't like that at all and wanted to take him back to his parents. Abra weathered it with a bit more patience. But later that night, over dinner, Abra commented about how loudly Luca cried, and asked me if that was why I waited until she and Thalia had gotten a little more grown up before I asked Brenna to marry me. I chose not to answer.

And finally, the HDTV went on the fritz last week -- wouldn't turn on. This happening during football season is a highest-threat-level alert in our house. The problem turned out to be the lamp, which needed replacing ($170! grumble, grumble). Now, those lamps are rated to last 6-8,000 hours, but a very generous estimate says this one only lasted about 3,000 hours. Gee, thanks Toshiba, you bums. So while we waited for the new lamp to be shipped, we used the TV that Mark and I bought 20 years ago when we were grad students, and it is still going strong. New technology is fancy and nice, but clearly the staying power needs improvement...

OK, that's all the news that's fit to print. For now, anyway.

Jigsaw Puzzle

A good friend told me today that she had gone out and bought Beggar's Banquet, one of my all-time favorite albums.

I instantly tossed it onto the player, and was reminded again about the perfect lyrics spelled out in Jigsaw Puzzle:

Me, I'm waiting so patiently
Lying on the floor
I'm just trying to do my jigsaw puzzle
Before it rains any more...

What life is, simply expressed, absolutely correct.

Readers

So this is a great sight to see:


Abra is lying on the couch, quietly reading a book (Junie B. Jones, First Grader). She's doing very well with her reading, and was very excited this morning to go to the library and get a Junie B book (they read them in school as well).

And Thalia, meanwhile, has suddenly taken off and started sounding out words. The age spread is perfect -- the spelling words that Abra brings home from school are about the right complexity for Thalia to learn to read them. So we can study together, Thalia on her reading and Abra on her spelling.

I'm not quite sure what triggered Thalia's reading -- it really started in earnest this past month, and I'm not sure if it's that she's just at the right age to start, or if it's because she's started preschool. Probably some of both. But she's exceedingly cute -- when she sounds out a word and "gets it", she jumps up and down and claps her hands.

We still read the girls stories each night, of course (we just finished Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), but I often ask Abra to read the first few paragraphs before I take over, and Thalia will often interrupt and point to words that she can read. This reading stuff is really clicking for both of them...

Bailout, Revisited

OK, I've cooled off. Kind of.

So the Bailout post was clearly written in an irate moment. Do I really believe we should "let Rome burn?" *sigh* No. Obviously we can't do that.

It's kind of like when your stupid co-worker bungles a big assignment and leaves you holding the bag. You come home, and fantasize about all the things you could do to get back at them, all the things you'd really like to do to see them really get whacked for screwing you over like this. And then, you wake up the next morning, go to the office, take a deep breath, and try and fix things.

And that's where we are now. We've got to fix this thing. I don't know how, but I've been convinced by listening to enough people who know a lot more about economics than I ever will that some form of the bailout has to happen, or we will be in really, really bad shape.

So go fix it. Take my money. Give it to the irresponsible people who took on credit they couldn't afford, and to the greedy banks that bought those worthless loans. Clean up this mess. And then I'll start rebuilding my savings. And when you people screw up yet again, I'll still be here and you can come back for more. And you will -- mark my words. When you reward irresponsibility, you just ensure it will happen again.

*sigh*

Bailout

OK, I like to keep this blog lighthearted. But I'm just really really angry right now. So here's a warning:

If you don't like angry sanctimonious rants, leave now.
If you don't like potty words, leave now.
If you're just looking for cute pictures of the kids, leave now.

You're still here? OK, well, you've been warned.

So I'm really, really getting pissed about this whole financial bailout thing. I keep hearing "It's not just one thing that went wrong, there's plenty of blame to go around."

Well, you know what? That's bullshit. The blame doesn't go all around, and it certainly doesn't come here.

I didn't buy a house I couldn't afford.
I didn't take on revolving credit.
I didn't take out equity from my house for luxuries.
I didn't make stupid leveraged investments in narrow high-risk sectors to squeeze out an extra 3% in return.

People tease me about being cheap. Hell, I tease me about being cheap. But you know what being cheap has done? It's made it so that we can make our mortgage payments -- on both houses, including the one we can't sell because the housing market is so fucked up. It's made it so that we can pay the credit card bills IN FULL every month, so that we don't get deep into debt. It's made it so that we can save some for retirement, so that we won't have to live off our children when we get old -- I hope. And it's made it so that on top of all that we can save a little bit for college for the girls.

So what have we given up? Vacations, for one -- haven't been on one in years. I'd like to -- it would be nice to finally have a honeymoon, but not when we've got these expenses. Stuff, for another. The last time I bought a "toy" was in 2005, when I bought the HDTV. We don't have iPods, or fancy cellphones. We haven't decorated the house -- the appliances are old, the wallpaper's peeling, but everything is functional. The cars are beat up, but they run. There's no need to fix the cosmetic stuff. And there's no need to buy a flashy new car. I take my lunch to work, or just skip lunch. We buy generic. I pick up pennies I see on the sidewalk. What we can't afford, we do without.

Do I like it like this? Honestly, does it matter whether or not I like it? The important thing is that we live within our means. Thankfully, I've got a wife who fully agrees with this approach.

And because of all this, we've saved, we're not in debt, and we're not being foreclosed upon. Our reward? Bailing out the rest of the stupid motherfuckers in this country who didn't manage their finances responsibly.

Yeah you know what? I don't care that the banker told you you could refinance down the road. Buying more house than you can afford is stupid and reckless. Not knowing what you can afford is stupid and reckless.

I don't care that the credit card offered you a low interest rate. Taking on credit to pay for toys is stupid and reckless.

I don't care about what you "want". Yeah, I want things too. But a huge problem with society today is the inability to differentiate between "wants" and "needs". An HDTV is a luxury. A cell phone is a luxury. Yes, it really is. Eating out is a luxury. And there is no right to own a home. If you can't afford to buy, rent.

So I don't want to hear about "Main Street" being screwed by Wall Street. Main Street took out the loans and took on the credit. Main Street bought into this culture of consumerism and pretended they had money they didn't have.

So Main Street, eat it. You lived high off the hog off someone else's money, now you have to pay the bill. Don't lay it on me.

And of course, Wall Street is a bunch of crooks, too. They closed their eyes to the obviously fabricated loan applications. No, I take that back. They fabricated the applications themselves. They made stupid investments in sub-prime mortgages because they were greedy, and made even stupider investments to cover their losses on the stupid investments. They created and flourished in this ponzi scheme of debt. They pushed the culture of debt and convinced people that they needed more, more, and more. And it worked for a while, until finally people started noticing that, you know, they didn't actually HAVE that money that they'd been spending. And so that train just came crashing to a halt.

So Wall Street, eat it. You took the profits in years past, now you can take the loss. Don't lay it on me.

And politicos, left and right? Just stifle it. This isn't a Republican or Democratic issue. Both political sides closed their eyes to this problem, and indeed both sides made it worse. Sure you can point at one specific or another that one side did, or the other didn't do. But the bottom line is that this is a bipartisan fuckup of gigantuan proportions. Both sides have been in the pockets of corporate America. So spare me the political talk -- I'm just not buying it. Obama's not going to get us out of this, and neither is McCain.

This bailout nonsense is just that -- nonsense. I'm not inclined to bail out the companies that made this mess. Let them fail. Sure it would do awful things to the economy, but you know what? WE'RE ALREADY SCREWED. Yes, it could get worse. But I've seen nothing that makes me believe that this bailout is going to make things better. It's a band-aid. A huge, expensive flimsy band-aid that rewards the ones who fucked it all up to begin with.

And I'm not inclined to bailout the homeowners who are losing their houses, either. You chose to take on the mortgage that you couldn't afford. Don't come crying to me.

So those of us who lived within our means, didn't mismanage our finances, tried to actually save something for the future -- we're the ones who are now going to be called on to prop up the greedily criminal banks and investment houses, and to cover the mortgage payments of the irresponsible, ignorant people living in bigger houses than ours.

This isn't about rich vs poor, about haves vs have nots. It's about greed and irresponsibility, and the rest of us paying for it.

SCREW. THAT.

No bailout. Let Rome burn.

Why I Love My Wife: Reason #441531

So Abra is having a sleepover tonight. We have a total of five, count'em, five young girls upstairs screaming and hollering right now. The decibel level is truly amazing. It's a constant stream of "we want more popcorn!" "abra's bossing me!" "emma wants the light on but i want it off" "waaah!" "i want to go home" "i'm thirsty" "can we have some juice" "can we put on our pajamas" "screeech" "i need a nightlight" "abra's mom!" "abra's mom!"

And Brenna, bless her heart, is dealing with all of this while Healy and I are cowering in the TV room watching LSU-Auburn.

And there was much rejoicing

So the wife got her first new client today. She's back to earning an honest living as a defense lawyer, making the streets of Cleveland safe once again for the criminal element.

Life is good -- here's to higher crime rates!

My Diabolical Plot

(Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Between travel, beginning of the semester, and a nasty bug, I've been buried. I've got a backlog of things to post, will try and catch up over the next week or two. And if you didn't see in the comments to the missing cat post, Pearl did in fact come home. --Chris)

Like all children raised in the electronic era, the girls like to watch TV and play on the computer. If left to their own devices, they would plug themselves in from breakfast to bedtime. Not that I ever did that. ("Here's the story... of a man named Brady...", "Juuust sit right back and you'll hear a tale...", "Here we come.... walkin' down the street..." Naah, I never watched TV as a kid.) And when we tell them to shut off the TV or log out, then we get a lot of "can we watch TV now?" or "can we play on the computer now?" And I'm getting a bit tired of saying "NO!".

So we're trying a third party regulator: a digital "screen time" timer. In the morning, I set it to the total daily allotment of TV/computer time. (I'm not telling the world what it is. It's embarrassingly long. But good for my sanity.) Then, while they are on TV/computer, it ticks down. They can pause it while not watching, but if they start again, the timer goes back on. And when it hits zero, that's it for the day.

I explained the rules this morning, and hit start on the timer, and they were off like Usain Bolt to run up to the TV so that they didn't miss precious seconds of TV time while the timer was going.

So here's where the diabolical plot kicks in: if they are watching SPORTS with me or mom, that is "off-timer" -- they get that for free. My hope is that this will provide incentive for them to watch sports and continue molding them into die-hard sports fans.

I am even considering instituting a rule that says if they are watching Michigan football, the timer runs backwards.

We'll see if this works. It should be good for some comedy if nothing else.

Diabolical plan update:

Two comments from Abra while watching football today:

- "Why does he have to turn to watch the ball?" (which led to a discussion of cornerback play)

- "So Notre Dame is bad?" (which needed no discussion)

Missing Cat

So we woke up this morning to discover Pearl was nowhere to be found. A bit later I found that the screen on the front storm door had been ripped open near the bottom, and so the likely conclusion is that Pearl escaped during the night.

And she has not yet come back.

Sadly, since she is (supposed to be) an indoor cat, and because she had a bad reaction to her last collar (her fur literally fell out around her neck, and never grew back), she does not wear a collar. So if someone finds her, they won't know where she belongs. So we have posted signs and alerted the neighborhood and the city, and we can only hope she comes back soon. Odds are, quite frankly, that she is holed up somewhere within 100 yards of the house, and -- we hope -- will just come back once she's hungry enough...

Of course it is no surprise that if any cat were to do this, it would be Pearl. She's a total stinker. But she's a lovable stinker, and we will be very upset indeed if she doesn't come back soon...

Thalia's New Obsession

Building card castles. And she is amazingly good at it.

And I figure it's very good for her building hand-eye coordination and motor control.

And meanwhile, #1 is getting good at rapid-fire teasing exchanges, like this one last night at dinner (much to Brenna's dismay):

abra: can i have a piece of bread?
me: ok
abra: can i have butter on my bread?
me: if you pay me five bucks
abra: no way. how about i give you a kiss instead?
me: ok, but it has to be on my butt
abra: did you wipe?

At that point I started laughing and gave her a high five (and Brenna rolled her eyes at us). No, I shouldn't condone it, but it was a pretty snappy retort, I thought. We then had a discussion about dinner conversations that shouldn't happen when we are at other people's houses.

Hall of Famers

Last Saturday I went to Canton and met up with my buddies Dave and Mike and Dave's cousin Mark to see the Pro Football Hall of Fame induct two of the all-time Redskins greats, Art Monk and Darrell Green.

Now, see, I'm getting old. Because I remember when the Redskins drafted these guys, and now some 25 years later, they're going into the Hall of Fame. In 1980, Art Monk was the Redskins' first first round pick since, well, Methuselah. Three years later, Darrell Green was this little guy I'd never heard of from a little school that I'd never heard of (no, it wasn't Texas A&M) that we drafted while I was still recovering from the Redskins first Super Bowl win.

They both turned out to be pretty good pickups for the Redskins. That Bobby Beathard knew what he was doing.

Anyway, so I drove down to Canton and met up with Mark, Dave, and Mike at the Hall. Here they are, with Murno wearing his special Joe Theismann home jersey. (As Murno will gladly tell you, anyone can get a burgandy Theismann away jersey, but you dont see many in the home whites....)

As it turns out, we weren't the only Redskins fans there. Not by a long shot. I'd say maybe 90% of the people there were Redskins fans, and I'm not exaggerating. It was like a home game at RFK Stadium. We had planned on maybe picking up a shirt or cap, but by the time we got there two hours before the ceremony, everything Redskins-related had long since sold out. Well not everything. There was quite a sale on Brad Johnson autographed helmets:

(You buy a helmet like this, I bet you get a free bowl of soup, huh?)

Ahh, Brad. I'm sorry guy, I know it wasn't really your fault, but if you had managed to control that errant snap on the field goal attempt back in 1999, maybe your autographed Redskin helmet would be worth more than $29.00.

So after wandering around a bit, we went on up to the stadium for the ceremony. The stadium was decked out with big banners of the inductees:



And when we got to our seats, here was our view:


Uh, yeah. Not exactly the front row. But the Joe Montana guy in the visor in front of us notwithstanding, it really was a totally pro-Redskins crowd; look at all this burgandy and gold (and white):


So they started things off by introducing a bunch of Hall of Famers that had come for the ceremony, including Redskins greats like Bobby Mitchell and, of course, Joe Gibbs. And among those Hall of Famers was none other than Michael Irvin. The whole stadium erupted in boos when he was announced, it was the longest, loudest booing I'd ever heard (and you bet your sweet bippy I was booing along with the rest of the crowd). When the booing finally died down, Chris Berman -- who was MC'ing the event -- turned to Irvin and said "Oh, they're just booing because they love you" and in the now-quiet stadium you could hear some guy yell out "No, we really don't." Heh, classic.

Then it was time to introduce the inductees. The first Redskin announced was Darrell Green, and just to give you a flavor of what it was like in the stands, here's a (rather low quality) videoclip:

Yeah, the place went bonkers. Now, I saw some ESPN clips of the ceremony, and I can tell you it was much louder in the stands than it sounds like on TV. And then the place went even more bananas when Art Monk was announced:

And here's Murno when Monk was announced:


And then it was time for all the speeches. Three-and-a-half hours of speeches can get pretty boring, Redskins or not. One amusing moment was when Eddie DeBartolo Jr introduced Fred Dean, at one point in his introduction speech he said "In his first game with the 49ers, Fred sacked Dallas Cowboys quarterback Danny White three times..." and then you couldn't hear anything else but the entire stadium cheering madly for about 30 seconds. Heh, Redskins fans do not like the Cowboys.

Now, people were pretty loud cheering for Darrell when he got up to give his speech, but it was amazing when Monk got up. The place went nuts. It was a four minute standing ovation (timed at 4:04, I read later) which, when you think about it, is a pretty long time. There was clearly some pent up frustration on the part of Redskins fans that it took so long for Monk to be inducted. Heck, even my Mom was mad about that...

Anyway, I'm glad I went. As Murno said, it was kind of closure on that era of the Redskins for us. We watched them get drafted, we watched them lead the Redskins to three Super Bowl wins, we watched them retire, and we watched them go into the Hall of Fame. Now we can get on with the business of rooting for our now-rather-mediocre team, heh.

Oh, and a postscript: at breakfast the next morning back home in my neighborhood, we walked out the door of the diner and nearly walked smack into none other than Tony Dungy. I thought Murno was going to walk straight into a telephone pole, he was so flabbergasted...

Ding Dong! Arf Arf! Hush!

Our doorbell is old and cracked, and although it is still functional, I thought it would be nice to replace it with something a bit more welcoming and nice. (See, I'm not always cheap cheap cheap. I shelled out $6.99 for a fancy new light-up doorbell!)

So today I was on the front porch messing around with removing and replacing the doorbell. So, I'm testing it, wiggling it, bumping it, etc, etc, and every time I mess with it, it rings. Ding Dong! Ding Dong!

No big deal, except that we have a dog who barks every time he hears the door bell. Every. Time.

So for about 10 minutes, we had this going on at the house:

Doorbell: DING DONG!
Wacko: Arf! Arf!
Me: Hush!
(pause)
Doorbell: DING DONG!
Wacko: Arf! Arf!
Me: Hush!
(pause)
Doorbell: DING DONG!
Wacko: Arf! Arf!
Me: Hush!
(pause)
Doorbell: DING DONG!
Wacko: Arf! Arf!
Me: Hush!
etc.
etc.
etc....

The TV is on again

So tonight I turned on the TV for the first time in six weeks. There is football on. Redskins football. Life is that much better tonight.


(is it just me, or does that look like Dave and Mike?)

Bachelor days are here again

Yesterday noon I dropped the wife and kids at the airport -- they're off for a week at Gramma's in Kansas. So it's just me and a herd of animals kicking around the house for a while. I think this is the first time since the wedding (18 months ago) since I've had any appreciable time at home without the family. It feels a bit odd, to be honest.

So what wild plans do I have for my new bachelor life? Uh, work, work, work. Either at the office or at home. Yesterday I

• finished the photometric solution for the data we took at the telescope in May,
• made the flat field calibrations for that same data,
• stained the front door,
• caulked the bathtub, and
• cleaned the heck out of the kitchen.

And that was only Day 1! Just think what the rest of the week will bring...

Now I do have some fun planned for Saturday -- I'm heading down to Canton to meet up with my old high school buddies Dave and Mike and go see two of my all-time favorite Redskins, Art Monk and Darrell Green, get inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. So that should be an amusing spectacle -- overblown pomp and circumstance is what the NFL does best!

My Latest Photo

I call it... "Cats on a Diet"

A busy day

So there was a lot going on today. After the girls spent the morning over at Colleen and Dwight's house frosting cupcakes (more on this in a minute), we were off to Abra's dance recital. Here she is with Raven and Deandre doing their tap dance, with their dance instructor, Mr. Moodie, directing them in front:


Well, heck, it's a dance recital, let's see if we can get some action here! Here's a piece of the tap dance:

And here's part of the ballet

After the recital was over, we dashed home and had a quick lunch so that we could be ready for the giant BAKE SALE! Now this was no ordinary bake sale. Colleen had helped the girls (Abra, Thalia, and their friend Lily) figure out a budget and go shopping for ingredients, then they baked and frostened cupcakes, made lemonade and flower arrangements, and set up shop in front of the house.


Lemonade was 25 cents, cupcakes were 50 cents, and flowers (in recyclable bottles for vases!) were 25 cents each. You might also notice that with your treats, you could also help yourself to some free campaign literature the girls made:

(photo courtesy Dwight)

Then the girls went went with Colleen down to the corner and proceeded to direct traffic down to their lemonade, cupcake, and flower stand:

(photo courtesy Dwight)

Their first "get" was a gentleman driving a spectacular old car, who stopped and chatted with us and the girls while he drank his lemonade.


After that, Thalia started targetting Lexuses, smart child that she is:

(photo courtesy Dwight)

Now you are probably thinking "Lemonade, cupcakes, and flower, how nice!" But wait, there's more! While you enjoy your treats you get to listen to a cello concert by the talented Miss Lily:


In fact, let's take a listen. But first, an apology: I forgot that while you can rotate pictures easily, you can't rotate movies (if you know how, let me know!). So the movie of Lily was taken sideways, but you can just turn your head to the side and watch:

Meanwhile, Thalia is laying a trail of acorns to attract more customers.


Here comes our neighbor John to buy some flowers (John was a good customer: he made several trips to buy lemonade, cupcakes, AND flowers!):

(photo courtesy Dwight)

We of course had the rather unsurprising issue that the proprieters of the stand seemed to eat a bit into their own profits:

(photo courtesy Dwight)

And at one point, the four year old treasurer managed to dump the money bag into the grass:


But she managed to rescue the money, and by the time the bake sale was over, they had accumulated quite the haul. They had the shareholders meeting over at Colleen's and produced back their financial report:

• Gross Receipts: $47.50
• Less Baking Supplies: $12.00
• Less Workers' Salary: $3/each girl
• Net Proceeds: $26.50

The girls decided to donate the proceeds to Providence House, a shelter/crisis center for young at-risk children in Cleveland.

We'd like to thank all our friends and neighbors who came to the sale, and particularly say thanks to Colleen for helping the girls organize and run the event. (And thanks to Dwight for taking some of the pictures I've used here...)