Wednesday, Wednesday 02APR2025

Ah, the Spring Honey Do List.  The most fiendish accumulation of annoying indoor and outdoor chores imaginable to the fevered brains of wives.  I had just finished what I thought was my chores for the day and had taken a shower when I saw Camera Girl raking the leaves off of the edge of the woods and her flower beds.  Now there is no more useless pursuit than raking leaves out of a forest but what can I say?  Female fastidiousness is as powerful as it is inexplicable to the mind of man.  When I saw the piles of leaves she had raked I foresaw her stooping to pick up all those leaves and painstakingly haul them to the other side of the property to her mulch pile and knew it would take days and break her back.  So, I rushed out and told her to leave the leaves(!) to me and I’d chop them with my push mower.  Hearing that I would be doing this she then proceeded to finish off the other woods for the sake of completeness.  Ah Chihuahua!  Well, no good deed goes unpunished.

But honestly chopping leaves with my trash mower is kind of fun.  After four to eight passes (depending on how wet they are) the leaves just about disappear into thin air.  It’s remarkable what steel and kinetic energy can achieve.  And I did get to see all the plants she uncovered along the woods.  The day lilies are about four inches tall.

The hostas near the woods haven’t appeared at all and some small woodland plants are already out and about.

After she left, I spent another half hour disintegrating the remaining leaves.  When I returned inside Camera Girl came running over and thanked me profusely for sparing her all that stoop labor of moving the leaves to her mulch pile.  And I thought to myself, “I am a good person, amn’t I?  Why else would she be so happy.  So, over the course of the evening several times I reminded her of how nice it was of me to come to her rescue and take care of the leaves.  But what I noticed was that after each iteration of my reminder her gratitude seemed to diminish.  And, in fact the decrease accelerated.  At the end I believe it tailed off sort of like the curve of y=1/Xn where n= the number of reminders and y= her enthusiasm for the reminders.  So, her enthusiasm approached zero as a limit but never quite reached it.

I brought up this observation to her.  She used some Italian hand gestures from her distant past and went back to the cooking tasks that she was busy with.  It’s a shame that her high school back in Sheepshead Bay didn’t do a better job of preparing her mathematically for her life ahead.  Being able to graph and recognize the various curves of common functions is a basic requirement of our technological age.  But we all have to be flexible and adapt ourselves to people as we find them.  And that is a tenet of my relationship with her and I remind her of it from time to time.

April Fool’s Day 2025

No thirty inches of snow!  No ice storm!  No baseball sized hail stones!  April Fool’s Day didn’t punish us here in New England.  It’s a bloomin’ miracle.  It’s a pretty nice day so Camera Girl handed me her “Honey Do” list.  The one item I’m stalling on is walking the property with a garbage bag and a stick with a nail on it picking up all the trash that has blown into the wooded areas.  As Sergeant Snorkel told Beetle Bailey, “If it don’t walk, if it don’t talk, police it!”  But it’s annoying.  It makes me feel very uncharitably toward the whole human race when I see what kind of stuff they toss out the windows of their cars.

So, I was driving down the main east-west road in Dunwich in a section that is full of blind curves and rolling hills when up ahead about a quarter of a mile I see something in the road.  I see it’s moving but it’s too short to be an adult human so I slow down.  “Could it be a child or is someone sitting or kneeling on the road?  And then I can see.  It’s a huge tom turkey with his feathers and wings all puffed up.  He’s in the oncoming lane and he’s staring me down!  So, I creep past him looking for his harem.  But I couldn’t see them.  Either they were shielded by the trees or they were gone.  But Tom was sticking to his guns and wasn’t afraid of me.  So, I left him there and in my rearview I could see him still standing there like some blithering idiot trying to act as crossing guard to an invisible flock.

After cutting down the raspberry canes last week I’ve been hoping to see some leaves sprouting up from the dirt.  So far nothing.

But the hellebores are coming up.  More confidently in the sunnier areas and tentatively in the shade.

And likewise for the daffodils.  We have three different stages of development depending where they are on the property.

The hostas near the house have just broken ground.

And this little crocus is bravely showing its colors.

So winter is climatically over.  I will now stow the shoe spikes, snow shovels, ice scrapers, snow blower, snow boots and all the rest of the paraphernalia that litters the mud room and move forward into the growing season.  And now that the ground is completely thawed, I can begin things like fixing fences, gates, damaged wood and all the other weather-beaten components of my poor house and adjacencies.

And I will move the lawn mowers to the front of the shed and contemplate that fateful moment when I drive the mower over the grass for the first time this year.  Right now, it’s unimaginable.  Some of the grass is overly long and soaked with winter water in the soggier areas of the west field.  Some areas are worn away by snow, ice and rain.  Other areas are dead and brown.  Cementing the whole thing over sounds like a better solution.  But in just a very few days the darn thing will revive and life will return.

And in honor of this projected return of life I have put out ten preying mantis egg sacs.  I purchased them from an American company that said they are Chinese mantids.  Well, why not?  Apparently, they’re already outcompeting the Carolina mantis right here in New England.  Who am I to stand in the way of Darwinian selection?

The only thing left to cap off the beginning of spring is the reappearance of the pond turtles.  They have not made their reappearance but Camera Girl will keep me apprised of their status.

“O brave new world that has such people in it!”

They’re Good Company

Today was a tough day.  Very sad things going on for some friends of mine.  But, let’s see what we can talk about that’s not too sad.

Penny is our basset hound.  She’s one and a half years old so Camera Girl considers her a “puppy.”  Really, a psycho is what she is.  She attacks our German shorthaired pointer relentlessly.  I attribute most of this insanity to Camera Girl’s criminally lax dog training.  But I don’t rule out congenital brain abnormality as part of the answer.  Anyway, this dog dotes on me.  If she had her way, I’d spend twenty-three hours a day scratching her enormous ears and the voluminous folds of skin on her throat.  Suffice it to say she follows me around the house hoping for an ear rub.

But today I had to get into a suit.  White shirt, tie, suit jacket and pants, black leather shoes.  The whole thing.  I come down the stairs and she takes one look at me and goes berserk; barking and growling at me.  She doesn’t recognize me!  She’s dancing back and forth looking like she either wants to bite me or run away.  I’m yelling at her at the top of my lungs trying to get her to recognize my voice and calm down.  I’m also worried she’ll shake her jowls and splatter my suit with basset drool.  Finally, she runs into the living room while I go out through the kitchen door.

I came home four hours later and almost the same thing happens.  She’s barking and howling and carrying on.  So, I go upstairs and get changed and come down in my regular clothes and she stops and looks at me and acts confused.  She won’t come near me but she isn’t barking.  Slowly she shuffles closer, sniffing at my feet and looking hesitant.  Then finally she snaps out of it and accepts that it’s me.

Bassett hounds are supposed to be second only to blood hounds in their ability to recognize scents.  So, what the hell is wrong with this dog?  Now, sure I wear pretty much the same shirts, pants, shoes and socks every day.  But if I put on another suit of clothes, I’m unrecognizable?

What goes on in the tiny brain of this dog?  Apparently, I’ve become a very stable pattern in her mind and any small change to the details of my sensory image, whether scent, sight or sound immediately convinces her that it’s not really me.  Maybe she’s been watching one of the various versions of that classic of cold war paranoia, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”  Apparently today I became one of the pod people walking the streets, disguised as her favorite ear scratcher.

Well, all is forgiven again.  I spent the requisite five minutes scratching her gigantic heavy ears and telling he she isn’t a psychopath.  It’s all lies of course but we somehow have to get through the day as a family.  So, I’ll make believe she’s a good dog.

But I will say she helped me get out of the funk I was in.  Dogs are useful, even crazy ones.  They take your mind off of big problems at least for a few minutes and from what I’ve heard petting them even lowers your blood pressure.  Well, all the yelling I did probably had the opposite effect but either way she was good company.

Update

 

Ed Brault In reply to photog.

I’m the same way. My “Wedding and Funeral” Suit and my “Military Funerals” Class-A uniform hang in a zip-storage bag in the back of the closet.

As for the Basset, well, it must vary by the dog. I visited my folks after a tour overseas, and their St. Bernard, who hadn’t seen me in nearly four years, shot straight to my car, expecting me to take her to the beach, just like my last visit.Brault0000001A

reply by photog

Yes, i think you’re right. It varies by the dog and this particular canine is a little high strung. Or just plain crazy, depending on your literary style.

18MAR2025 – How the Week is Progressing

What’s to say today?  I guess the most interesting news event is Musk’s Space-X stepped in and brought the astronauts stranded on the International Space Station home after Boeing stranded them there six months ago.

There’s something ironic in this situation.  Boeing has been in the news for the last year because of defective aircraft that many have associated with DEI based hiring practices.  And now Space-X; an Elon Musk company that prides itself on merit-based hiring, steps in and solves a frightening situation with a can-do approach to space flight.  It’s like watching the two approaches to hiring compared face to face before our eyes.

I guess the other big story is that lousy judge trying to block the deportation of Central American gang-bangers by the Trump administration.  Afterward Trump said he should be impeached.  And so Chief Justice Roberts opens his big mouth and says that precedent doesn’t call for impeachment on a difference of opinion on a judge’s ruling.

As if that were what is going on.  These slimy leftist judges will stall and block everything the Trump administration wants to get done for the American people.  We will see this for the next four years.  If Roberts wants to be at all useful, he should expedite all requests by Trump’s administration to have these phony judges’ decisions reviewed by the Supreme Court and allow Trump to fix all these problems.  Of course, impeachment will never solve the problem.  We would need a supermajority in the Congress.  What we need is the Supreme Court to provide constitutional review of these awful decisions.

Today I finally got a handle on the impasse I’ve been wrestling with in finishing my book.  What I need is a good crisis/resolution to reach the endpoint.  So here is a situation where you know where you want to end up but there needs to be a struggle to make it feel satisfying.  But I don’t need another physical battle.  I need a popular revolt.  And I think I’ve figured out an angle.  I think I’ll withdraw the consent of the governed.  I’ll have a national guard unit revolt and then let it cascade across a state and then across the country.  Now I have to figure out the dramatic details.  I’ll have the national guard unit refuse to hand over my protagonist then when the Army wants to send in regulars, I’ll have the governors of the four states where Connors people are located close ranks with all of their national guard troops to deny the arrest.  And then I’ll let it swell from there.  That seems pretty good.  After that I’ll let the newly appointed president convene a Constitutional Convention to begin cleaning up the mess that the Deep State has caused.  And that will give me a nice breakpoint to allow my protagonist to be pardoned by the president.  And more than pardoned, exonerated.  And then I can allow him to ride off into the sunset which is something I’ve been thinking about for a while.

So that’s what I was doing today.  Thursday will be a long day when I’ll be working on stuff I hate.  But that’s life.  I have one of the grandsons coming over Saturday.  That should be fun.  Apparently, he’s voted for spaghetti and meatballs and mint chocolate chip ice cream.  So, I’d better do some extra time on the rowing machine this week.  But maybe I’ll burn some of that off with a baseball catch.  I hope my shoulder is still functional after a winter of chopping ice.  I wonder what movie he wants to watch?  I hope it’s “The Return of the King.”  I haven’t seen that one in a while.  I think the “Ride of the Rohirrim” is about due.

Well, that should be enough for now.

Dunwich Spring 2025 Has Sprung

Today is Camera Girl’s birthday.  But being a woman, she doesn’t want to play up the whole getting older thing.  So, we call it St. Patrick’s Day and celebrate by having corned beef and cabbage.  But since boiled corned beef and cabbage is kind of blah, she makes it her own way.  It’s kind of Italian corned beef and cabbage.  The meat and potatoes are roasted and the cabbage is sauteed separately in olive oil with minced garlic and seasonings.  It’s really quite good that way.  This was also the day that the mallards returned to the puddle.

And the last of the great southern glacier melted away and left the great southern mud field.

I also used the warmer weather as an excuse to cut down all the raspberry canes in our garden.

This was a controversial act because depending upon whether we have summer or fall plants we will or won’t get any berries this year.  Apparently, summer berries take two years to produce berries while fall berries are one year berry producers.  If we have the two-year type then cutting all the canes means we’ll get nothing this year.  This will make me decidedly unpopular with Camera Girl and Princess Sack of Potatoes because they are big fans of this fruit.  But a man’s got to do, what a man’s got to do.  I was at an impasse.  I couldn’t tell what we had and figured solving it once and for all was the way to go.  May the Lord have mercy on my soul.  Well anyway, I’ll put out a bunch of fertilizer and try to maximize the growth we get this year.

Camera Girl was out feeding Moe the Crow and his wife Flo the Crow when she noticed that a large raptor was in one of the trees over the puddle.  After being alerted I sprang into action and captured some poor-quality photos through the balcony door window and a lot of intervening branches.  I think it’s a black vulture.  So now carrion birds are joining the menagerie.  Only in Dunwich.

Well things are moving forward and spring is in high gear.  We had a bunch of rain and so far, the Compound seems to have escaped any major winter structural damage.  And considering how much more and higher speed wind we’ve had in the last three or four years that’s encouraging.  This winter there have been nights when sitting in the living room and listening to the wind howling like some combination of a freight train and a banshee has been a little discouraging.  I mean I hate to be one of those old guys who claims that things were so much better when I was a youngster but honest to goodness, I think with the wind it must be objectively true.  And as a climate change denier this is inconvenient.  Although it’s as likely for the climate to be warming or cooling without the help of anthropogenic factors to blame.  So, it is nice that we can start to emerge from our winter cocoon and begin to enjoy the outside world again.

And so, slightly ahead of the calendar I hereby declare that Dunwich Spring has sprung.

Oh, Damn the Power’s Out

We now return you to your original program already in progress.

So yesterday Ithaqua, the Great Old One known as the “Wind-Walker” knocked out my electric power and internet connection.  What a vindictive jerk.  Well, the generator kicked in but it caught me flat-footed.  I hadn’t loaded my post for yesterday or the night before’s, “Photo of the Day.”  So, apologies.

I went through the whole dance.  I charged up an old flip phone I keep for just such situations and tried calling up my truly useless power utility and my truly useless cable company.  And spent about fifteen minutes with each trying to escape from their AI and get information from an actual human being.  Completely in vain.  The power company told me it was after their business hours so no actual humans at all.  The cable company had humans but they are actually worse than the AI.  They know nothing, they care about nothing and they sound so bored all I could think of was the, “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” monkeys.  I noticed that both outfits promised to call me when they knew something about restoration of service.

Power returned almost 24 hours later around 3pm today.  And ten minutes after restoration the flip phone rang and both companies called to say that service would soon be restored.  Words failed me.

Being cut off from television, the internet and any news of the outside world was at first annoying.  But by late this morning I think I was starting to enjoy it.  I watched a movie on DVD (Mel Gibson’s Hamlet) and some music on an MP3 player (Traveling Wilburys) and felt relief that I wasn’t entranced on YouTube or X.  But all too soon Camera Girl saw a convoy of utility trucks heading down our road.  So, she dared me to get up and follow them.  I drove about a mile up the road and there was a truly colossal white pine being sawn into manageable pieces and stacked by the side of the road.  An hour later the generator cut out and the phone started ringing and civilization had me by the throat again.  Oh Ithaqua, we hardly knew ye.

So now I have to find out what I missed.  As far as I can tell, nothing.  Democrats prancing around trying not to look irrelevant, ridiculous and despicable, but failing.  Trump and his merry band running around breaking stuff and calling out world leaders as losers.  Cable news companies firing their half-witted staff by the bucketful.  Check, check, check.  So basically, nothing happened while I was hurled back into the nineteenth century (well, kinda).

But there was some progress.  We got some warmer (if windier) weather and the majority of the ice melted off the bottom driveway.  So, I went out there with various shovels and hammer-sliced it off the blacktop and piled it on the grass.  And I went to see what condition the west field was in.  It’s the wettest area of the fields and in spring it can be 6-8 inches of mud that makes it a bad idea to walk on it.  But it’s drying nicely and maybe tomorrow I might go back there and cut down the older raspberry canes and put down fertilizer for their spring growth.  And I took out a pair of binoculars and looked at the trees and sure enough the buds are ready to bust open anytime now.  So, ignoring the world for a day was a great thing as far I can tell.    But I’m back and ready to chronicle whatever tomfoolery the usual suspects get up to.  But it’s good to see the world is finally shrugging off winter and Dunwich is ready for spring, renewal, new life and all that crap.

Wish Me Luck

Tonight, I asked Camera Girl what she thought I should write my post about.  She said I should write about the fact that Donald Trump doesn’t have a pet dog.  I countered, “But he doesn’t like dogs.”  She said that was weak and that if he got a dog, he’d be much more likely to succeed as president.  Well, what can I say?  She’s got me there.  Of course, exactly what kind of dog would be compatible with Donald Trump seems like a very complicated question.  Well, he’s kind of tall.  Maybe a Great Dane.  I explained to her that it’s sort of a moot question because Trump’s not going to change his mind at this point in his life.  Well, she rejected this explanation and stood by the idea that this situation spelled disaster for his presidency.  Oh well, agree to disagree.

Yesterday I sent a proposal for my unfinished novel to Ark Press to see if they are interested in this soon to be blockbuster story.  It’s almost twenty-four hours since I hit the send button on the e-mail and I’ve heard nothing.  As you can imagine, I’m crushed and dejected by the interminable delay.  I now question my optimism and see all of life as a hollow husk of what my hopes and dreams were.  I was planning on tying a lead weight to my ankle and tossing it into the pond thus ending it all.  But I realized the water depth is currently about three feet so it could take a long while to perish.  I need a better plan.

Plan B is to start a new career.  Currently the top contender is bare-knuckle-boxer.  My plan is to begin an intensive physical conditioning program.  I’ll start with road work and then add on a raw egg diet and finally I’ll find a good manager someone named Mick or Apollo or something like that.  I figure if I play my cards right, I’ll be ready for a title fight sometime in 2026 which being the 250th birthday of the United States will be sorta like what happened for Rocky Balboa only without the turtles named Bert and Ernie.  I told Camera Girl about my plan and she punched me in the stomach really hard.  It was sort of a foul.  I wasn’t expecting it after all.  But it really has affected my confidence.  I complained that, “Adrian never punched Rocky or did anything to discourage him from becoming the boxing champion of the world and aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”  She countered that Adrain was a doofus and Rocky was too short to be an effective boxer.  I reminded her that we saw the movie back in 1976 and she never said anything about those things back then.  She replied that she was still attempting to trap me into matrimony at that point so she let it ride for then.  But she claimed that she always thought Adrian was a doofus.  And as her final point she opined that boxers need very strong neck muscles and I have a bad neck.  Her point was that modern boxers hit so hard that my head would fly off my body after one punch and that would be gross.  Well, that was food for thought.

So, I guess I need a Plan C.  I haven’t really worked out all the details but maybe, possibly, I’m going to go pro in pickle ball.  I’ve heard good things.  But I haven’t bounced it off her yet.  Wish me luck.

Fat Tuesday

Well, let’s see.  Today is Mardi Gras.  Interestingly, it is celebrated in Dunwich but with a local twist.  Because the Great Old Ones are devout Roman Catholics (go figure) they forego eating humans during the entirety of Lent so tonight they have a wild party where they make an enormous cauldron of jambalaya (5,000 gallons) and garnish it with any local elected officials they can find within the town limits.  So, for that reason I’m currently hiding in an abandoned fallout shelter with the Elder Sign emblazoned on the bolted hatch.  Above me I can hear the screams of the Dunwich Town Clerk, Treasurer and Tax Collector as they’re paraded down Bourbon Street on the way to dinner.  Well, nobody likes them anyway.  They voted to increase taxes and wouldn’t let us put up that Trump sign behind the Town Hall so boo hoo!

It’s kind of boring down here.  All I have is an internet connection, a dart board and ten thousand sugar cubes.  I’m trying to build a pyramid with them but it looks kind of crooked.  It really adds to my respect for those Egyptians.  First off, I now see why they didn’t use sugar as a building material.  After all, the slaves building the pyramid might be tempted to lick one of the blocks surreptitiously.  Multiply that by a billion licks and now you’re looking at real issues.  I’m guessing type 2 diabetes would have been rampant, so there’s that.  It really makes you think.

But now Donald Trump is starting his speech.  He’s speaking to a joint session of Congress and the Democrats are all holding what look like ping pong paddles with catchy slogans like “Trump Sucks” and “Pelosi is Still Hot” emblazoned on them.  After a particularly provocative anecdote about how ugly Chuck Schumer’s wife is up jumps Billy Dee Williams and threatens Trump with a golden handled cane.

Trump jumps down from the podium and joins Billy Dee in a spirited fencing match.  I believe he borrowed an umbrella from Speaker Johnson.  Luckily for everyone involved the Sergeant at Arms trips Billy Dee from behind and put him in a full nelson hold before giving him the bum’s rush.  After taking a few bows, Trump returned to the lectern and continues his remarks on his photos from his trip to Las Vegas with Mitch McConnell.  Riveting stuff.

Oh wait, I made all that stuff up in my head.

Actually, Trump’s address was quite effective.  He gave a long list of the frivolous causes that DOGE discovered that have wasted literally billions of dollars of taxpayer money.  One of the funniest revelations was of the age of some of the social security recipients.  I guess the most egregious was a man who was reportedly 350 years old.  Now this was just one case.  There were also actual millions of social security beneficiaries that were over 120 years of age.  Think of that.

He described the atrocities that illegal aliens have caused to our people; the murders and rapes and the fact that he has now closed off the border and is deporting illegals at a record pace.  Trump reported that the military with the aid of the Pakistani government have recently apprehended the leader of the group responsible for the suicide bombing of American troops during the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.  And he reiterated how incompetently Biden managed that withdrawal.

He announced his intent to end the Ukrainian war and revealed that Zelensky has sent him a message saying he is now ready to get involved in peace talks and also wants to sign the rare earth metals contract.

Trump highlighted the steps he’s taking to lower energy costs.  And he highlighted all of the failures of the Biden administration.  It was a very long list.

All in all, it was an entertaining talk.  The impression is of a President confident in his ability to make America great again.  The Democrats on the other hand appeared to be a bunch of petulant children.  Interesting.

The Old Man and the Afternoon

So, the tax accountant got back to me today and told me I owed Uncle Sam a couple of thousand dollars and because of that I had to pay some kind of penalty.  Well that really sucked and I had to go adjust my deductions on my paycheck and blah, blah blah … it ate up half my morning.  So, I was out of sorts today.

Because of all that, I needed to do something fun this afternoon.  Camera Girl and I decided to watch a movie we both like and haven’t seen in a long while; Ernest Hemingway’s, “The Old Man and the Sea.”  It’s the one with Spencer Tracy as an old Cuban fisherman who catches swordfish.  He’s recently become “unlucky.”  He hasn’t caught a swordfish in 85 days and the boy who used to help him has been told by his father to find a luckier boat.  So, the old man is all alone and he goes out to try his luck one more time.  And the story is a folk tale about a three-day odyssey to land and bring home a giant swordfish, bigger than his little sailboat.

In a way it’s a meditation on life and old age and fate.  It’s a simple story and mostly takes place between the old man and his mythic prey.  Most of the dialogue (or soliloquy) is the old man talking to the fish (or himself).  Occasionally he remembers (or dreams about) his past, when he was a valiant man of great strength and skill.  And often as the strain of fighting the fish becomes unbearable, he exclaims, “I wish the boy was here.”

And slowly and painfully the story unfolds and the old man finally plays the fish in and kills it with his harpoon.  But because of the size of the fish, he must lash it to the outside of his boat and eventually sharks are drawn to the smell of blood.  The old man fights them off the fish with his harpoon until it is lost, then a makeshift spear, then the gaffe hook and finally a club.  But as his weapons become cruder and less effective the sharks increasingly mutilate his prize until finally all that is left is the head, tail and a naked backbone.  When he reaches home on the morning of the fourth day, he is utterly exhausted and defeated and barely crawls back to his hut to sleep.

That morning the other fishermen are astounded at the colossal size of the carcass and remark to the boy how amazing the fish must have been.  The boy brings coffee to the old man and tells him that despite his father’s order not to fish with the old man he will defy him and bring his luck to the old man’s boat.  So, the story ends with the continuity of life as the torch is passed from the old to the young.  But in this case youth partners with the heroic efforts of the past instead of pushing it out of the way to replace it.

It’s a very strange story and plays out as something of a fairy tale.  Mercifully, the fish never speaks but the old man treats it as if he wouldn’t be surprised if it did.  The old man taught the boy to fish and so they have a mentor/pupil relationship but it appears more like a grandfather/grandson bond between them.  And that is the only major character dynamic going on in the story.

There really isn’t that much to this story.  Most of it takes place in a boat on the water with only one person present.  I really don’t think I could justify why I like this movie that much.  Maybe because I like watching it with Camera Girl.  Her father was an avid salt water fisherman.  And I think the movie is evocative of that connection.  Well, anyway it brightened up our day.

Growing Pains at OCF

I’m upgrading my plan with my site host.  Of course after I approved the plan I get a message saying it’ll take two day to implement and by the way, don’t modify the site in the interim or the changes may be lost.  If in the next couple of days you notice any monkey business this is likely being caused by “progress.”

Well, what did I expect with AI is “helping” me. I’m starting to wonder if there really are any human beings on the other side of the wire.