We’re in Vancouver for Nancy’s annual convention. I’ll write more about that later, but we went into a coffee shop and I saw this. Couldn’t resist. When asked the barista insisted that it meant “homogenized milk. I suspect he was just looking for a date.
By the way, if you’re interested, the cafe was Moonpennies Coffee and Fine Foods.
Tomorrow, April 1st, is the day every 10 years where we are counted. The US Constitution (Article 1 Section2) mandates that an “Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.” The first census was completed in 1790 and we’ve done it every 10 years since.
This year we all received a form in the mail that we fill out and mail back, but it wasn’t always like that. It used to be that the Census Department hired people to go door to door and fill out a form. The questions have changed and some of the questions have led to funny answers. In my family the French spelling of last names drove some of the census workers crazy and we had some great misspellings. My maternal grandmother’s maiden name was Mailloux and is pronounced “My You.” In different places it was spelled “Mayhew” and (my favorite) “Mayo.”
But the funniest notation I found was in the 1920 Census for Gardner, Massachusetts, Supervisor’s District 3, Enumeration District 73, Sheets 6B and 7A. Here is where the census worker (Lucie Laurence) came to the French Catholic Church, Holy Rosary. When Lucie got to the rectory where the priests live, she listed the pastor as head of the household. That makes sense. But the other priests were listed as “servants.” Then Lucie went to the convent. Again, the mother superior was listed as head of the household, but the other nuns were listed as inmates. Clearly she wasn’t Catholic.
You can look it up yourself. Census records are made public after 73 years. The form you filled out this year will be public record in 2083.
OK this goes against the very grain of writing a blog, but here goes: I have decided on some issues to have absolutely, completely, entirely no opinion. I hope this doesn’t put my American citizenship in peril.
There are certainly many issues where I will continue to have strong opinions and this is far from a decision to stop blogging. But I’ve noticed that I’m oftentimes asked to weigh in on an issue and I have a hard time either deciding on the issue or caring about it. I’m now electing to vocally have no opinion.
I’ve often used the 24 hour news channels as a scapegoat and will do so here. My problem with networks like CNN, Fox, and MSNBC is that every 24 hours they need to find 24 hours of content. One of the ways they fill this content is to pit pundits against each other and argue; they also bring viewers in to participate through real time emails and phone calls. This results in all of us feeling not that we have a right to an opinion, but that we have a duty to an opinion. I’ve decided to just say no to this duty. Here are some of the areas where I have chosen to have no opinion:
There will no doubt be other issues and I’ll keep the blog posted.
OK, my Latin is really rusty and I have no idea if I have the right declension but it’s supposed to say “We have a cat” and it’s a takeoff from the “Habamas Papam” that is declared when a new pope is selected.
Yes, the long wait is over, and we have a cat. Pictures will follow, but for now she’s a short hair tabby that we got from the San Diego Humane Society and SPCA. Once we finished all the house stuff it was time to look at getting a new cat. As you remember, our last cat, Kirby, died in March and we’ve been without a cat since. Yesterday there was a Humane Society Adoption Center at the Ocean Beach Dogwash and they had 9 kittens. They were given names, grouped by litter. Ours was named (no kidding) Mint Chocolate Chip and one of her siblings was named Neopolitan. There was another group of three called Morticia, Uncle Fester, and Lurch.
One of our first jobs is finding a new name for her: Mint Chocolate Chip was just a placeholder name. We’ve decided to move past the vacuum cleaner names (ie, Hoover and Kirby) and we are thinking of naming her Missy. Suggestions are always welcome and we’ll keep everyone posted.
We had a good night with her last night but I still have this fantasy of inventing a time machine and going back to ancient Egypt. There I can find the person who first decided to domesticate a nocturnal animal.
First the good news: the project is finally completed. When our last cat Kirby died in March we realized this was probably our best opportunity to get some projects completed in the house. Our home was built in 1969 and has been well taken care of. The previous owner sank a great deal of money into the kitchen and that was one the things that attracted us to the house. We were, however, a little puzzled that the master bathroom had not been touched and had all the original fixtures. We’d known for a long time that we wanted to update it.
We also thought this was a good time to replace the flooring. Most of the house (except the kitchen and bathrooms) had hardwood flooring and while we like not having to care for carpeting, it was time for a new floor. We like the look and feel of bamboo flooring and also like that it is “green” (ie, more renewable than other hardwood floors).
We also had a good contractor in mind. They are friends (actually she is Nancy’s brother’s ex girlfriend, but “friends” is an expansive term). That meant we trusted them to work on our house when we were on vacation the beginning of May. We realize what a gift we had that we could leave town and know the job was getting done. The original hope was that they would start work the day we left and by the time we were back the floor would be complete and the bathroom would be mostly complete. We expected it to take 2 to 3 weeks.
We should have known better; it’s finally finished after about 5 weeks. In the interim it’s been a comedy of unforeseen/unforeseeable delays and errors on the parts of some of the suppliers. The bathroom pretty much went as planned and that wasn’t the problem. The flooring, on the other hand, was a different story.
Here’s how it went from my memory:
Again, the end result was excellent and we are pleased with the flooring, but exasperated at how long it took. What was supposed to be finished around May 10th wasn’t done until June 5th. And again, to be fair, we were thrilled with the contractors and highly recommend them (let me know if you need a reference) and they have learned to stop using these flooring guys. Also, I was clear that I’d rather have it done right than fast and didn’t accept any suggestions of shortcuts.
We’re glad it’s over. Next step: a new cat. Stay tuned.
It’s the beginning of May and that means it’s time for Nancy’s annual PAS meeting. Last year was in Hawaii and we knew it would be hard to beat. While Nancy goes to meetings, I get to explore the city and do some genealogy research. Or at least I could if it weren’t raining the whole time. We’re planning to leave today and it’s been raining nonstop since we arrived.
Baltimore may appear to be a strange place to do family tree research, but there is a connection. Some of my ancestors were Acadians who inhabited present day Nova Scotia (I was called “Acadia” then). In 1763 the British deported them. My ancestors went to New Brunswick, many went to New Orleans (where they became Cajuns) and a few went to Baltimore. One of these was my 2nd cousin, 6 times removed, Daniel LeBlanc (1729-1810) who died in Baltimore. The chance of finding his tombstone is essentially nil (the original cemetery was abandoned and the bodies moved with the stone. Stones at that point were marble and would not have survived 200 years and a move) but perhaps there were some descendants I could trace. Alas, the idea of taking a bus halfway across town and tramping around a cemetery in the pouring rain didn’t sound very appealing and I’ll have to wait until my next trip to Baltimore for this.
The good news department is that we leave today for Virginia. My nephew Nathan is graduating from Old Dominion University on May 9th and I’ll be able to be there for that. I just hope the weather breaks.
As many of you know, Nancy and I are supervised by an 18 year old cat, Kirby. Lately he’s been showing his age and now every morning I have to give him blood pressure medication. Lovely. Anyway, last night he decided to “make friends” with a skunk who had gotten into the backyard. It didn’t go well for anyone, except perhaps, the skunk.
If anyone is interested, the old standby, tomato juice, does not work. The recipe for getting rid of the smell is not, as you may think, tomato juice. Here’s what you do: 4 cups Hydrogen Peroxide, 1 cup Baking Soda, 1 teaspoon dish soap. Now for the fun part: mix them together and rub them into the cat’s fur. That’s right: mix a liquid into the cat’s fur. It combines all the fun of giving the cat a bath with the added benefit of using a liquid that burns his eyes. Fortunately the skunk did most of his damage on Kirby’s paw and we didn’t need to do much to his face.
Now to get the smell out of the house….
The beauty of buying a car on St. Patrick’s Day is that it’s easy to remember the anniversary. It was two years ago today that I bought my Prius. As of today I have 53,900 miles on it. That sounds pretty substantial and I guess it is, but given my job and the miles I drive for work, it’s not bad. If you’re interested in the math, that comes out to 26,950 per year, or 2,246 per month, or almost 74 miles per day. I’m still getting about 45 miles per gallon and I have one of those coveted stickers that allows me to drive alone in the carpool lanes. All in all, not a bad deal.
I came across this the other day and have been itching to put it on my blog. At last the Bush administration has figured out what to do about the weak dollar.
It’s now a week since Super Tuesday and it appears that the nomination picture is slowly coming into focus. On the Republican side Mitt Romney dropped out of the race; that made some sense as he and Mike Huckabee appeared to be splitting the social conservative vote. Interestingly enough his exit speech talked primarily about Iraq and the War on Terror which was never a major part of his campaign.
This has essentially paved the way for John McCain who is now the presumptive nominee of his party. You would think this would be good news for the GOP but it isn’t. Long simmering hatred of John McCain has boiled over, especially with Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. I have to confess I don’t know much about what they are saying as I don’t have the stomach to listen or read very much.
I’m still trying to keep track of the delegates. It’s become dramatically more difficult and complicated than I thought. I’m writing this before we have the results of the Maryland, Virginia, and Washington D.C. primaries, and as I write (for example), NPR gives Barack Obama 994 pledged delegates and 160 super delegates (for a total of 1,154). CNN gives him 1,181; MSNBC gives him 958. Finally Fox News gives him 1,154. Perhaps the best irony is that Fox News and NPR are the only organizations who agree.
I’m using NPR numbers simply because NPR is the news organization where I get most of my news. Right now I’m attempting to keep track of delegates using an Excel spreadsheet. It’s a good way of keeping track but this type of spreadsheet doesn’t translate well into html or xml. In future days I’m hoping to translate these numbers into a table that I can post.
Speaking of the delegate count, I’ve been doing some reading about why this is so confusing. Earlier I talked about how some places are using projections. I’m also learning a great deal about super delegates and uncommitted delegates. The best explanation I’ve heard is from the NPR show Fresh Air on January 31st. Terry Gross interviewed David Rohde from Duke University. Here is a synopsis of some of his points:
Had enough? OK, this puts me at odds with many of my friends, but I love all this chaos and complication. It makes for a more interesting race. Hang on, we’ve got months of this stuff.