Just wondering...

While I'm totally at sea about what's happening at home, at work & in the world, how is Tom Waits doing?

Get offa my lawn?

I've been going to this restaurant for 20 years. Let's call it the "John Harvard's Brewhouse". I've rolled through the changes - they took away the salmon salad, raised prices, improved the beer. But some things have stayed steady : always the Pale Ale, stained glass, TVs, free bread plates.

Go in this evening, everything looks fine. We even get a booth with a nice view of a TV, FSU vs Duke.

First sniff of trouble is the menu. Nearly 6, but there's a page of lunch items, and no beer page. Still, all the usual dishes. 2nd trouble : the only 2 beers they have are both heavy.

Yadda, yadda - you don't need the details. In the end, my meal is spoiled by

1) The beer wasn't very good and a pitcher cost $20, which price wasn't on the menu
2) The fish & chips were a tiny portion
3) The ribs on the menu were a half rack for $14.99. The bill was $19.99, since we seem to have had the wrong menu - apparently the 4 mediocre ribs I got were a whole rack.
4) The bread never arrived. When we finally managed to ask, we were told it was now a $3 extra (not shown on the menu or mentioned)

At the end, I did get the waitress to admit there was new management. She offered to bring them over. I fled.

All pretty trivial, right? But having aggravated my groin injury jumping a slushpuddle, facing a painful 2k shuffle home, does being pissed make me a grumpy old coot?

Nah. I was just as annoying 30 years ago.

Fakelore Rulez!

Danny Boy is, of course, not a Real Irish song.



I no longer care.

The Greatest Postage Stamps Ever

This sucker has it all. That it came out right at the start of Colony Collapse disorder & White Nose Fungus makes it sad. Still pretty, but we are so screwed.

A serious post

on a Sunday? fuhgeddaboutit.

Turtles all the way down

Watching Willard the Undead clanking about the country trying to fill the emptiness of his soul by satisfying ambition is going to get even more painful in the next 10 months, so, on this reasonably nice Saturday morning - time to wake up small one.

I'm shutting down.

Clarifying the prior post

& trying to move some of the drop down from in front of the picture

Knowing my place on the internet

In case anyone wandering by here wonders why there is so little content - that's not what I do. Short pieces, either correcting a fact or making a joke, work better as responses to somebody else's well wrought (or better yet, inept) major opus.

New Years Assessment

Oil 98.83 WTI - $107.38 Brent
NG - $2.989 (Never expected to see that!)
Wheat-$652.6
Dow -12,150

Which I'm putting here because it's a nice, quiet untravelled place.
Goals for this blog, this year: 20 posts, 1000 views, 1 comment.

Goal in real life : get through the move without landing in the ER.

My Career as a Street Performer

Started & ended last night. Passing by the pit after dinner we paused to watch a chap in a green kilt with a unicycle and juggling act. The little pup spotted some of her friends, so we were stuck.

Then I got drafted as backup dancer/bagpipe holder.

Fortunately, the other 2 draftees were capable of holding the unicycle.

10-11-11

42 as of yesterday.

Planning on 50 by Christmas.

A blustery day

They warned us not to go outside, but the wind wasn't enough to stop a game of MOOSE*.

*Horse, but more fun to spell.

Would you believe a post a month?

I plead tax season.

Mostly I'm scared to post about oil. Either I post something that will look foolish in a month, or something useless.

Anyhow, to be useful:

NEW or EXTENDED for 2011

• The American Opportunity Tax Credit for tuition expenses was extended for 2011 with a credit of up to $2,500.

• Employees will pay only 4.2% payroll taxes for 2011, while self-employed individuals will pay only 10.4% on income up to $106,800.

The Child Tax Credit of $1,000 per child has been extended for 2011 for married individuals earning less than $110,000 and for head-of-household filers earning less

So go somewhere exciting

A Post a Day

And maybe I'll be able to beat a 10-year old's MAP scores -
http://pickens.it.schoolfusion.us/modules/groups/homepagefiles/cms/374410/File/MAP/Norms2008.pdf?sessionid=14d1e9266e4482d198ebc39c6e6bc9c3

They really make it hard to find what these things mean.

Anyhow, it was a nice quiet day in the fall of civilization.

Since I have been linked

& may now be getting as many as 2 hits a week, might as well finish the story of ANWR oil.

Y'all remember how this was one of the big clubs against treehuggers? All this oil that could save us? And they were keeping it off the market?

Latest estimate is that it could supply all the US oil needs for about 45 days.

Which is to say, we had a temp at work a few months ago. Somebody ran into her socially yesterday. Turns out that in 2 weeks of being ignored while making copies & suchlike, the woman had learned pretty much all there is to know about our operation.

In case you were wondering.

The Hunting of the Snark: Honeymoon Hints

The Hunting of the Snark: Honeymoon Hints

(Blogger is getting weird. I have no idea where/if this will post)

I liked in the comments where she said no to the Carribean because it's June & hurricane season.

How can Megan be so clueless on so many subjects?

EIA weekly, 4/17/09

Crude oil in storage is up to 370 million barrels. US consumption of oil is down over 10%, to just over 18 million barrels a day.

Aint got no more room. And 10,000,000 additional barrels a week need someplace to sit.

So this is still here

And I haven't had anything to say for almost 2 years.

Still don't. So I'll look back at the oeuvre.

I was wrong on natural gas- we were just about to ramp up into a new era of increasing production, & a major price crash. Looks like that era is going to end fairly quickly, because the increase was built on really expensive production.

I was right about the market about to crash. Big woop.

Tax seasons haven't gotten any better. Custodians just don't give a shit anymore.

Looks like 2006, or maybe 2007, was the peak for holiday traffic. 2006 was the last time we took a long car trip. Might take another in 2012.

I think I'll turn this into a cooking blog. Dinner today is a chicken & chickpea stew that'll take at least 2 hours. It also requires a lot of wine, a small amount of which may end up in the food.

Rock of Love. cold sober

I let the house go dry, forgetting that tonight is the big finale.


Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Assessment time

The start of second grade for the little one is proving to be a very weird time. The class is getting lots of tests, & there's a plan to install some sort of math rich environment.

The weirdness is that her teacher has already decided that shes about 2 years ahead, and is haing her do multiplication & division instead of the addition & subtraction on the papers. It makes for for very weird homework.

At least there's lots of reading time. Harry Potter, what else?

No learning curve

So when my ankle was feeling better we went to Salisbury Beach. It's September, so I can't burn, right?

Wrong, but that was the minor issue. The big one was that I shouldn't be getting into competitive hole digging. Should be able to stand up stright in 2 or 3 days.

Today's PSA: Browns on 286 has gone downhill. Get your clams elsewhwere.

Still, yesterday was a fine day at the beach.

Move-in day

This is the day every small truck & van in the world converges on Boston. Best ever! The little one & I spent all morning tooling around on bikes. We hit 4 yard sales & the school garden. Nothing but smiles. Our loot was OK - tomatoes, hot peppers, parsley, 750 pc puzzle, paper doilies, a bowl, & a really bad Ray Charles cd.

Back to growling in a few days.

First the embarrassment

Then the pain then the nuisance. I'm way too damn old to be trotting thorugh subway stations, but cant help it, so when I made a loud show falling on the stairs, there was nothing to do but get up & show the stiff upper lip.

Looks like the ankle will be messed up for a while. No serious damage.

Its my birthday, dammit

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