Commercials

Another reason I'm not watching TV is some of the annoying commercials.

No, I'm not talking about the Sham Wow guy or the Progressive Insurance chick or even the Aflac duck. Although, they are pretty damn annoying.

No, the ones that really bug me lately are the ones for "male enhancement" and "erectile disfunction" and such. How the bloody blue blazes did folks get through life in the past without these products? And don't tell me "oysters". What does it say about a society when this becomes a major medical break through to be trumpeted on the aptly named boob tube every afternoon and evening?

Another commercial that has real raised my hackles is the one geared to reducing income tax payments to the IRS. You've probably seen it. "We owed the IRS $20,000 but only had to pay $5,000." And the couple standing in front of their opulent home that says, "We owed $3 million but only had to pay...." I don't know what they had to pay because I've usually found the remote by then and switched channels or, at least, hit the mute button. If there's anyone I have absolutely no sympathy for right now it's the person who has found a way to not pay his or her share of income taxes. Now, if there was a mistake in the filing, fine. You recover what you can. But if the book keeping is correct and you owe a certain amount...then pay it. And if someone owes millions then what, exactly, was their gross income? And what did they do with it instead of paying their taxes? Whenever I see that particular commercial I just want to squeeze the living sh*t out of those people. What I would like to do to whoever is running the ads to help people avoid their taxes I can not write about. Just in case.

No TV for me!

I've stopped watching TV. With the football season ended there's not much I want to watch anyway. You can only watch so many episodes of "The Deadliest Catch" or "Axe Men" any way. I was getting very, very jealous of the folks on the Outdoor Channel. I mean some of those deer they've killed look like they were on 'roids for years! There's Michael Waddell and the Bone Collector crew and Jim Shockey's Hunting Adventures and others who are out here living a dream. And just how do a young couple like Lee and Tiffany Lakosky (and here) make enough money hunting full time to, well, hunt all the time? I don't want to watch...I want to BE these guys.


As for "24",the only show I watched regularly last year, well, as soon as I heard that Garifolo was going to be a regular(?) I kinda lost interest. Good thing, too, as The One has preempted the show a couple times already.

See that's a problem. If I'm watching TV, I'm usually channel surfing during the commercials. If I hit the wrong button at the wrong time I could end up seeing The One or one of his sycophants like Chrissy Matthews or Keith Olbermann. And that could cost me a TV. Luckily, the cable system I'm tied into has nearly all the news channels at the high end of the numbers so it's unlikely that I would accidentally stumble upon MSNBC or CNN. Even Fox News is not on the beaten path (i.e. between Outdoor Channel and ESPN and ESPN2).

So I sit and read (I'm going through the entire Terry Prachett library--or at least the Discworld portion there of. (Quite the distinguished looking author is Sir Terrance. Handsome devil.) I'm up to Maskerade right now) do crossword puzzles (from books as I don't buy the newspapers) and surf the internet.

At least that's what I'm doing when I'm not in the workshop. I've got a couple of projects lined up. There's some bird houses to make and a few Christmas presents to start on. (Intarsia can take awhile.)

Musings/Ravings

Another glorious day at the Aerie with the sun shining and the temperature reaching 45 degrees. What?

Why am I giving another weather report?

There's no football, no baseball, I don't like/follow hockey, Rutgers basketball (men and women) is terrible. The hunting season is over. The fishing season has yet to begin. (I like ice fishing as much as I do hockey.) The birds in the yard have been the same ones for the past month. There's too much snow on the bike trails to do much birding or riding. And it's not yet time to plant a garden or work outdoors.

That leaves only food, sex, and politics. I'm not going to talk about sex. Terry's been doing all the cooking. So that brings us to politics and, damn it!, that raises my blood pressure too high.

Suffice to say I am not pleased with my "Republican" Senator, Arlen Specter. Unless he turns around in the next 48-72 hours and realizes what a huge mistake he has made and votes against the "Stimulus" bill under consideration.... I've already emailed his office several times to express my disappointment and suggest he might as well put a "D" after his name. I tried calling several of the contact numbers for his offices through out the state and in Washington but could only hold a phone to my ear so long as the busy signals buzzed on and on and on....

Being pro-life and pro-guns are good positions to have but his understanding of Economics 101 and Immigration (he signed on to the Amnesty plan Bush and McCain were pushing) plus his deafness to his constituency on matters such as these are going to come back and bite him on the ass in 2010 IF he plans to run again.

And what the hell is in the water up in Maine? Snowe and Collins both are allegedly Republicans and yet they sign on to this Crap Sandwich?

I just may have to begin using the GuyK Investment Plan.

Well, the explanations being offered are about as lucid as this piece and don't sound nearly as pretty when read aloud:

Jabberwocky
by Lewis Carroll


'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

(from Poets.org)

Yet one more nice day

The day was nice but the eve before was a b*tch. Nasal congestion, aching lower back, tossing and turning and then a premature cat alarm goes off at 5:45 AM. I wish we had never gotten them in the habit of being fed first thing in the morning. But Julie came into the house when we were still working and heading out the door at 6 AM and we just continued with the schedule when Shadow and Chester joined the pride.

Much warmer today than yesterday. (Someone must have gotten the memo about Global Warming.)

It was 12 degrees when I got out of bed at 6 AM (bad night...don't ask) and rose to 33 degrees under a bright sun late in the afternoon. I got out to the wood pile at 12:30 and spent an hour splitting some logs even though it looks like I won't really need them for a week as AccuHunch says we're in for some warming. Might get into the 40s for a couple of days. Of course they also say it's going to rain for the weekend....

Terry's concerned because one of the AccuHunch meteorologists, Joe Bastardi (now there's a name for a guy in a profession that gets cursed frequently!), says there will be several weeks of very stormy winter weather between Valentine's Day and the Ides of March. She's supposed to drive down to Savannah, GA on the 24th and will head to Columbia, SC on March 1st and then turn for home on the 6th. She wants to take her little yellow Aveo but that thing doesn't travel well in snow. Bastardi says the storms will be mostly between I-80 (just south of us) and I-70 (approximately Washington, DC). I told her not to worry. These guys can't predict tomorrow let alone the next month.

Yep, it's just like that.

more animals

Redneck Artist

I got this in an email from my wife's cousin and my buddy, Joe. (It wasn't 'til later I learned it's been around YouTube for a long time.) Despite living and working in New Jersey all his life, Joe is more a country kinda guy. Hunting, fishing and anything outdoors are his passion. He's sorta a urban redneck.

Another beautiful day at the AerieBut cold...very cold

Another bright sunny day here at the Aerie. But it was colder than a well diggers'....

This morning's low was exactly 0.0 degrees and this afternoon warmed up to 17.2 degrees. It was both colder and warmer down in the valley but not by much. Where ever they have the Weather.com station located, the low and high were 7 and 21 degrees, respectively. The average high for that location on this date is 33 degrees.

You may have heard that Buffalo State College hosted the national teach-in on Global Warming Situations today. It was minus six degrees (-6) at 6 AM.

No to worry, it will warm up this weekend to around 40 degrees.

And Watts Up With That? reported that the RSS global temperature anomaly made a significant jump upward for January. That's supposed to mean the Earth was warmer. Maybe when you take the entire Earth into account it was--but not here!

Tomorrow I'll have to do some work on the wood pile. The stuff I had moved into the garage is currently in the fireplace and there are some rounds outside that need splitting. If I wait until just after noon, the sun will be shining on the area and I can actually get warm from doing the physical labor even if it is only supposed to be in the 20s.

Lovely day today...

...one of the Top 10 for February.

(Yeah, I know it's only the 3rd and that there's less competition for a position on the Top 10 list what with there only being 28 days in the month.... Point is, it was a damn fine day today!)

If you've been following my weather reports for the Aerie for the last week or so, you will recall that last Friday or so we started to get warnings about a possible storm to reach the area on Tuesday (that's today). AccuWeather had three computer models--call them A, B, and C. All the models called for the storm to form off the Gulf Coast of Florida and then head northward. Model A predicted the storm center would head up toward the junctions of Lakes Erie and Huron. Model B said the storm would take aim at Harrisburg and then Syracuse. Model C said it would skirt up the Atlantic coast line.

The prognosticators at AccuHunch said A and C were unlikely and that B was probably the best bet.

Well, if they did in fact place any bets, they lost their shirts today. True, the storm did not follow Models A or C either. In fact, the storm was further out to sea than they thought it would be.

Today's Aerie Weather was absolutely gorgeous! We did not get the inch of snow forecast for yesterday, nor the inch of snow forecast for last night. What we got was a bit of freezing fog over night that left the trees sheathed in crystalline magic when the sun came over the mountain. Then, when the ice and the clouds burned away, we had sunshine all day with temperatures rising to the mid-30s.

A glance at the Weather.com interactive radar map at 4 PM showed some snow coming off the Great Lakes to our west (mostly from Huron and Michigan since Erie is pretty well frozen). This snow was headed south. Then there was some snow on the east coast including New Jersey, NYC, Rhode Island, and Cape Cod. This snow was headed north. Here at the Aerie? The sun was shining and there wasn't much breeze blowing at all.

They (AccuHunch and Weather.com) are forecasting snow showers for the remainder of the week with high temperatures in the low 20s and low temperatures in the single digits. Then we swing back up over the weekend with possible 40s and some rain.

I don't know if I should believe a word they say or if I should go outside and hang a weather rock. (You know the one: If it's wet it's raining, If it's white it's snowing. If it's missing it's windy. Etc.) The rock may be most accurate.

NFL Fantasy Files:

Wow! Just wow!

This is about right...

more animals

...at least when they are awake.

Woodworking 102

Having seen Phil's forecast for more winter, I shuffled off to the workshop to do a little fixing up of the joint.

I mentioned previously that there were three exposed stud walls that I felt needed attention. One was the back of the basement bathroom and the fiberglass shower surround was exposed. Another was the short wall for the utility room. It wasn't in much danger of being damaged as the inside of the utility room was sheathed in plywood but it was a tad unsightly. The third was the wall that formed the stairwell from the first floor. It was sheathed in sheetrock and could easily suffer damage should I lean a 2 x 4 against it or make a quick move with any piece of lumber. Besides, the back side of the sheetrock is black and dark gray sucks the light right out of the workshop.

I actually started on Saturday to put up a tongue and groove wall on the studs behind the bathroom and nearly finished that job before taking Sunday off. It took just a few minutes to cut the last two rows to fit around the drain pipes from the upstairs baths and install them to finish the wall this morning.

The bathroom wall. Several courses of T & G had to be shaped to fit the pipes.
The light wood is a big improvement over the dark black
of the rear of the shower and the sheetrock.

Then it was on to the very rectangular utility room wall. This was the easiest of all since it was a rectangle and every piece of T & G was exactly the same length. I only had one electrical outlet and the thermostat to worry about. A couple of drilled holes and some work with the jigsaw and I was in like Flynn.

The utility room wall (center) was nice and rectangular,
which made installation a snap.

The stairway wall was a bit trickier because of the angle required on one end. (I wanted to leave the area under the stairs open. If I had enclosed them to make a closet or storage area, the job would have been as easy as the utility room wall.) Even so, it took very little time to get everything cut and installed. The angle required was a 45 degree one and that made using the chop saw and its fixed stops much easier than some random angle might have.

The stair wall had to have a 45 degree angle cut on one end.
The top two rows were installed after the picture was taken.
You can see the difference the light wood makes versus
the dark, dark backside of the sheetrock.

I can already see the difference in the amount of light in the workshop and the walls aren't even finished. If I paint them with a white enamel or simply verathane them, the amount of light reflected off the walls will make the room considerably less dungeon-like. I still need to get some dust control machinery for in there. Something to collect the sawdust at the tools and an air filter to help me breathe a little more comfortably when I'm working.

Phil is full of it!

Okay, so Phil saw his shadow this morning and heading on back to his borrow for another six weeks of winter, the big sissy! Who needs him to tell us when spring will arrive anyway. We've got Major League Baseball to tell us that! (Can't trust NHL hockey or NBA basketball any more. Hell, they're still doing their playoff thing in JUNE for crying out loud.)

Let's take a look at the Mets' schedule. Yeah, pitchers and catchers report in about 10 days and that starts SPRING training, but the first official game isn't until April 6th in Cincinnati. And they don't have a home opener in the new Citi Field until a week later. April 6 is NINE freakin' weeks away!

Okay, okay. How about fishing season (and none of that ice fishing stuff unless it's for ice in a glass of Scotch)? Let's see....New York State always starts its trout season on April 1 come hell or high water, although there's more frequently a blizzard or two lurking in the wings. That's still EIGHT weeks away. What about Pennsylvania? Shoot, the trout season up here in the Northern Tier doesn't open until April 18...10 and 1/2 weeks from now. (It does start two weeks earlier in some southeast counties.)

Shoot, Phil's phorecast is starting to sound pretty good.

Pittsburgh 27-Arizona 23

It was a game marred by many, many penalties (not bad calls, mind you, bad play--especially on Arizona's part) but it had one hell of a finish!

When Fitzgerald made the TD catch and run to put the Cardinals ahead 23-20 my immediate reaction was to tell Terry that they (the Cardinals) had scored too quickly and left too much time on the clock. Indeed, 2:36 was more than enough time for Pittsburgh to march the field and regain the lead and the win.

Congratulations to the Steelers who now have won six (6) Super Bowls out of the 43 played.

Now to get through the next two weeks until pitchers and catchers report for spring training.

Damn! Damn! Damn!

It appears the AccuHunch folks got it wrong when they said we would have sunshine today. While the temperature did hover around the 32 degree mark as a low over night and shows signs of rising slightly today, the sky is a blanket of gray.

That didn't stop that overgrown rat in Punxsutawney, Pa. from spotting his freakin' shadow this morning, however, damn him!

The world's most famous groundhog saw his shadow Monday morning, predicting this already long winter will last for six more weeks.

Punxsutawney Phil emerged just after dawn in front of an estimated 13,000 witnesses, many dressed in black-and-gold to celebrate the Pittsburgh Steelers' Super Bowl victory the night before.

Probably just hungover from last night's celebrations.

Meanwhile the radio forecast says about 1 inch today, 1 inch tonight and they just say "snow" for tomorrow.

Even the Dark-eyed Juncos (a.k.a. "Snow Birds") have apparently tired of this snow cycle we've been having. Their numbers have thinned as those of the Pine Siskins (down from the aboreal forests for the season) have grown.

Sunny super Sunday

The wind here shifted around to come out of the south yesterday afternoon and the temperature started to rise. It was just 13 degrees at sundown, 29 at sun rise and got up to 45 at 4 PM. And we had a lot of sun today. A lot of sun.

Monday is supposed to be warmer than usual as well but Tuesday.... Tuesday is a cipher. Precipitation (snow) may or may not arrive. And if we do get snow, they are hedging their bets as to the amount although they have dropped our area out of the 6-10 range and back to 3-6 or 1-3. (The AccuHunch folks are always so precise.) But the temperature will definitely fall back into the 20s. Current maps show that the storm will move to the northeast while maintaining a position off the coast. The counterclockwise circulation will push moisture inland while cold air from Canada will move in from the northwest. How far off shore, how swiftly the center moves northeast, how far it can push moisture inland.... Like I said--a cipher.

Until then, however, I'll really enjoy a second beautiful sunny day tomorrow.