The Blog With No Name

More photos from the backyard mud pit. I mean construction site.

Sensing that my vehicle will soon be parked under a shiny new roof, the birds of the Quad Cities have decided to use my car for target practice. You know what I mean.

(coming later today – more photos from the mud pit!)

I’ve spent the past two days playing with AutoHotKey and Samurize, with the result that I’ve got a little text file that displays right on my desktop, no window or anything cluttered like that. The text file is an on-the-fly todo list, to which I can add items by double-clicking on one icon on my desktop. I now have such a long list of AutoHotKey shortcuts and hotkeys that I need to make myself a cheat sheet. On an index card, of course…

(Read more about Samurize here.)

This morning at 6:30 a.m.

Twelve hours later. Amazing what you can do with a backhoe.

Our garage is being knocked down tomorrow. Our daughter went off to camp today, thinking she was soooo clever not to have to help empty the garage. Little did she know that she was also therefore missing the chance to HIT THE GARAGE WITH A SLEDGEHAMMER!!! Bwa ha ha……

Monday morning bright and early the garage comes down. That means that we get to spend Sunday emtpying the thing. Such fun. I hope we can trash a lot of it, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

Must. Get. Photos!

• I finally got caught up on bills and so on, and we owe too much money to other people. I hate that.
• My kids are both brats. I hate that too.
• My bratty kids have too many things to do, so I don’t get my work done. Summer vacation should be ILLEGAL. Maybe then we wouldn’t have the stupidest kids in the world (“we” being the United States, losers at healthcare and losers at public education)
• My boss and co-workers are all trying to drive me crazy. I hate that a lot.
• My mother is possibly clinically depressed. I REALLY hate that. I understand it, but I hate it.
• We have TOO MANY THINGS in this damned house. If I had a gallon of gasoline and a match right now, I’d be vewy vewy dangerous…

There’s a lightning storm starting, coming over from Davenport. Maybe I’ll go outside and play in traffic or something…

Yes, it’s that time of year again – time for the Henry County Fair! Time to go have porkburgers at the Henry County Pork Producers tent. Time to spend an unholy amount of money riding terrifying rides (Are they terrifying because they spin around rilly rilly fast and sometimes go upside down, or are they terrifying because they creak and groan and look like they’re about to fly apart, and are staffed by inbred-looking carnies? Discuss.). Time to try to convince the kiddies, yet again, that all the games are rigged, and that paying $2 to fish for some prize is money thrown in the toilet (they’re still not convinced). Time also to watch the DEMOLITION DERBY. My mother the retired math teacher LOVES demolition derbies. Go figure.

We took two friends of the kiddies. They had never been to a county fair. We have fixed that. They had a great deal of fun, despite (at least the girls) feeling sick about half the time they were there. (Hint: don’t ride “The Cobra” two times in a row.)

I have had a terrible vision of our summer – my kids will spend it inside, arguing over the computer. There are at least four other kids in the neighborhood with whom they might possibly play, but they seem to have alienated my kids. Or my kids have alienated them. Sigh. It sure as hell doesn’t help that we, the most evil parents EVER, make our kids (prepare yourselves) wear bicycle helmets, and we don’t let them jump on the neighbors’ trampoline (missing the side nets) unsupervised. We also don’t let them wander around on the college campus that borders our street, or walk several blocks to the corner comic book shop without letting us know where they are going first. So you see, we are engaging in activity that borders on abuse. Needless to say, all the other parents on the block are way way cooler than we are; their kids don’t have to wear dorky bike helmets, and they get to go wherever they like and so on. Oh, and they each have their own TVs and Wiis and PlayStations etc etc etc blah blah blah.

Our main floor “representational” (as we used to say at the embassy…) rooms now have shiny new (and therefore CLEAN!) windows. We also have a new door on our basement landing. This is generally a positive development. The dining room windows especially were CRAP. One of them didn’t have anything in the frame but the outside storm window, not good from either a security or a weather/insulation standpoint, I think you will agree. We ought to be able to sit on the couch in the winter and not feel the gusts of air coming in around the frames.

I’m a little peeved at Charles’ new insistence on using the side door now as the main entrance. That’s fine if he wants to do that, but I refuse.

1. It’s dark (yes, there’s a light, but we still haven’t finished the walls on the landing and so to turn on the light you have to plunge your hand into the insulation looking for the switch, which means I will electrocute myself the first time I try. No thanks.)
2. The kids will inevitably leave it unlocked or lock themselves out. I can just guarantee that right now. And because it’s on the landing, behind yet another door, no one will ever remember to check at night to see whether it’s locked.
3. It’s out of the way. The back door is closest to the garage, for God’s sake, why would I want to tramp another 20 feet, carrying groceries/books/whatever. No Thanks.

Now I can see, in the winter, making the kids come in that way if they are encrusted with snow – they can walk down to the laundry room, divest themselves of wet clothing, and come upstairs without tracking snow etc all over the kitchen floor. I’m all for that. But I know how to wipe my boots on the mat, so I think I don’t need this particular arrangement, thanks.