Air Force F-16 fighters sit on the flightline at Nellis AFB, Nev. against the backdrop of the Las Vegas skyline prior to the start of a Red Flag training exercise. Jan. 22, 2011. (click for larger).
... but no one does anything about it. Or so the ol' sayin' goes. Well, I fully intend to do something with this today:
Doin' "something" means "put my awning down" for Happy Hour... in freakin' February, no less. I mentioned yesterday that it was almost too hot to sit outside in 72 degree heat; I fully suspect 81 degrees will be too much for me today. But we shall endeavor to persevere. It's our DUTY.
Update, 1515 hrs: We've been driven inside by the heat, the wind bein' slightly too high to deploy our awning but not high enough to soothe the sun's burning rays. But we did get in more than an hour of Vitamin D intensive therapy and that's a good thing. And, as is our habit, here's a part of Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack:
My heart and my soul, I give You control
Consume me from the inside out Lord
Let justice and praise, become my embrace
To love You from the inside out
Your will above all else, my purpose remains
The art of losing myself in bringing you praise
Wow. Those lyrics have a double meaning at the very least, considering what I'm reading at the moment. But nevermind. We shall continue as we've begun.
NOone likes it. The usual source is mostly about The One's ridiculous efforts at deficit reduction, kicking the can down the road, yadda, yadda. Here's one such:
My favorite, tho, is this one:
The most amazing thing (to me, anyhoo) about Obama's budget is the fact he completely ignored the Simpson-Bowles recommendations. That was HIS commission and he basically said "thanks, but no thanks." It's hard to take Obama seriously on the subject of the deficit, even for the most Hopey-Changey among us. Those of us on the right who never really took him seriously about any-damned-thing could just shrug our shoulders and say "Well, what did you expect?" But the deficit is an existential crisis, the sort of "make or break" issue that threatens the very life of the republic. I was hoping... excuse the expression... for something better than what we got.
Reading budgets ain't my cuppa and by that I mean the actual document itself. I'll leave that to the wonks, thank ya. But I have read a lot of reaction and analysis to/on the budget and there ain't much "there" there. I'll put up one brief quote from the WSJ and then I'll go:
This $3.73 trillion budget does a Cee Lo Green ("Forget You," as cleaned up for the Grammys) to the voter mandate in November to control spending. It leaves every hard decision to the new House Republican majority. And it ignores almost entirely the recommendations of Mr. Obama's own deficit commission. No wonder the commission's Democratic co-chairman, Erskine Bowles, said Monday that this budget goes "nowhere near where they will have to go to resolve our fiscal nightmare." And he's an ally.
How unserious is this budget? Although the White House trumpets $2.18 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade, those savings are so far off in the magical "out years" that you can barely see them from here. More than 95% of the savings would happen after Mr. Obama's first term in the White House is over, and almost two-thirds of the promised deficit reduction would arrive after 2016. Pretending to cut deficits by pushing all real cuts into the future is Budget Flimflam 101.
That pretty much sums it up. Hope 'n' Change, my ass.
Back-to-back on Pandora, earlier this afternoon...
It's been awhile
Since I've seen the way the candles light your face
It's been awhile
But I can still remember just the way you taste
Oh yeah, all right
Take it easy baby
Make it last all night
She was an American girl
Google ain't the ONLY inner-tube entity that knows... it's kinda-sorta bizarre how Pandora can cut close to the bone with its play-list.
So. It was almost TOO hot sitting outdoors in the afternoon sun. Just last week we had wind-chills exceeding 20-below and today I was jetting around town with the top down... followed by an extended outdoor Happy Hour. Life's pretty danged good, all things considered, and that would include the memory-provoking stuff on Pandora. Which, truth be told, ain't all bad.
So... there I was, sitting in my dentist's comfortably-appointed waiting room about ten minutes before my allotted time with the Lovely Victoria, Queen of Dental Hygienists, exchanging small talk about the weather with Jana, Queen of Dental Appointments, you know... bursting pipes, wind-chills direct from the upper reaches of the North Pole... stuff like that. Whereupon the Lovely Victoria strides right up to me and sez "What are you doing here, Buck? Your appointment is tomorrow!" (That's the Readers Digest version, she was much kinder than that.)
Well.
We made a lame joke about needing to spend the briefest of times with our favorite ladies on Valentine's Day and beat a hasty retreat, noticing the badly-hidden smirks on the faces of those occupying the waiting room. But NOT the staff, of course, for they are FAR too kind to participate in the needless embarrassment of their favorite semi-senile Old Guy.
Oh, well. At least we got out for a bit yesterday and it wasn't to Wally-World.
―:☺:―
We returned home to El Casa Móvil De Pennington, mucked about with the water and stuff for a while, and then adjourned to the verandah for an extremely satisfying outdoor Happy Hour. We had been reading the Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1 but found all the academic notes and references prior to the actual S. Clemens bits way too damned enlightening for our tastes. We're much more into entertainment than enlightenment these days so we put the Autobiography on the virtual shelf for later slogging and hied our self off to Amazon where we bought Tom Clancy's latest. And we ARE entertained now. It's good to see Mr. Clancy back on form; I thought he'd run his string out with the last thing abomination he put out.
There will be more al fresco entertainment this afternoon. After I get back from the dentist's, of course.
We spent some time perusing the Viral Video charts this afternoon and were ever so slightly amazed at what's hot on this Valentine's Day. First of all there was Barry White, from 1974:
And then this, from 1996:
And then this, which brought us back to reality as we know it:
The first two tunes are from Former Happy Days, albeit separated as they are by some 20 or more years. Misery Bear and I seem to share a certain gestalt concerning this day. Sorta. But it is what it is, and we're hopin' YOUR V-Day was all chocolates and flowers, Gentle Reader. With an appropriate follow-on, of course.
We have water and we don't have any leaks. The ice dams had melted away by early this afternoon and I turned the water back on just for grins 'n' giggles. Close inspection of the service areas and all visible water lines revealed nothing amiss, so we assume Dr. Andy was right about the problem being a holding tank overflow. We WILL be keeping a close eye on things for the next few, however.
What amazes and mystifies me is this wasn't our first cold-weather rodeo, but it was the first time we had issues beyond the all-too-often frozen water lines. Ah, well. Stuff happens.
Now if you'll excuse me, please, I have some dishes to do.
My list just keeps gettin' longer and longer and here's yet ANOTHER candidate, with an ad I love to hate. I'd sooner gouge my eyes out than join The Ladders, just because of the association with Teh Stoopid. And Teh Ghey, which the ad most certainly IS.
OTOH, I find the Asian chick kinda hot in a bizarre sorta way. Call me, Darlin'... I just might have a position for ya. It doesn't pay $100K, but it's a fun place to work. We knock off early for Happy Hour every day and you look like a gal who enjoys her beer.
HNIC's opening montage intro to last night's Leafs-Habs game:
Pretty cool, as I noted in the post title. But let me say a few things about this... The Leafs and the Habs have an historic rivalry, to be sure. But it's not the ONLY rivalry in the league... similar and just as storied rivalries exist between Boston and Montreal, Boston and the Rangers, Chicago and Detroit, the Wings and the Leafs, the list goes on. And on.
Whitehorse isn't a unique city, either. There are many open-air rinks in Michigan, New York, Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and all the other northern-tier US states. And while we're on about North Dakota... there's college hockey, exemplified by the Fighting Sioux, just to name ONE team... that's alive and well in these United States. Northern Michigan University, Boston College, Colorado College, Big Blue, the Spartans, and MANY more college hockey programs mean just as much to the game as the NHL or the Canadian Junior League and mebbe more, depending on your point of view.
MY point, when ya get right down to it, is that Canada may have invented the game but they no longer own it. Hockey belongs to all of us now, and I haven't even mentioned the Swedes, the Russians, the Finns, and all the other countries that play and love the game (scroll down at the link and note the medal winners over the years).
Yeah, we owe ya, Canada, but back off on all this chauvinistic crap, will ya? Please? It's not all that becoming for a nation that prides itself on accomplishment AND humility.
We just finished watching the Wings take the second game of a home and home series with Boston, winning this one by a score of 4-2. The Wings looked pretty good, coming back from 1-0 and 2-1 deficits to get the win. The game was egg-zactly what we needed to get our day underway. Well, a good Wings game, excellent coffee, and a morning cigar... that was all part of a very satisfying whole. I'm thinkin' we'll do an outdoor Happy Hour for our next act, seein' as how it's already 64 degrees outside.
The ice lake continues to shrink albeit not as fast as we'd like. We'll be spending this evening at the Holiday Inn Express for the hot shower that's in it. And a looong soak in the tub after, mainly coz we want to be fresh for tomorrow's routine dental appointment.
I'm thinkin' I might help the melting along a lil bit tomorrow with some assistance from my handy-dandy propane torch. But I might not, mainly coz the words "hold my beer and watch THIS" come to mind. We don't wanna live out a Talking Heads song... the first one, anyhoo.
"This" meaning me, as in just in from running the day's errands. I broke a vow of sorts by going to Wally-World on a Saturday and it was a zoo, as it always is on the weekends. But we had pent-up demand because we stayed indoors during our recent... ummm... cold snap, if you can call sub-zero wind-chills a "snap." I used to enjoy going to the zoo once upon a time but that was a zoo of an entirely different sort. Well, I suppose that's open to debate...
One of our local radio stations had a van set up in the parking lot and was blaring music out for the entertainment of Wally-Worlders as I arrived on the scene. I had to laugh at the logo on the side of the van as I walked by... "ALL the greatest hits!"... boogieing as I was to the sounds of the Beach Boys singing "I Get Around." Yup, all the greatest hits from damned near 50 years ago. I looked around the parking lot and observed not one single soul who possibly could have been alive when "I Get Around" was in the Top 40. Except for me, of course. It sucks when the Oldies station plays music the deejays spun as you waltzed around your high school gym...
Then
Now
We could be doin' an outdoor Happy Hour today as it's 63 degrees outside, as we speak. But I don't wanna, sez my Inner Child... mainly because I DON'T want to look at the much-too-slowly thawing ice lake (see above) that would be close to hand as we sat on the verandah. Out of sight is out of mind, if you concentrate.
Concentration would be required, too, as the memory of hauling six gallons of water in from the outdoor tap is still fresh in my mind. It's amazing how much water is required to do a small sink full of dishes, consisting mainly of three coffee cups, three beer glasses, and assorted dishes, plates, and silverware. It will also be amazing if I don't succumb to food poisoning over the next few as I've resolved to rinse out each glass and cup immediately after using said vessel. We WILL economize on dish soap, however... not to mention the fact we'll be eating out a lot more than usual, too.
All has NOT been quiet on the Western Front of late and the war was going badly for the Beloved Wings who, prior to last night's game in Boston, lost three of their last four and what's worse... only managed to score four goals in those four losses while suffering TWO shut-outs. Coach Babcock, quoted in the Detroit News:
Coach Mike Babcock said before the game, "You go through (lulls) every year. When you get it, you don't love getting it, but when you're through with it, you like it. You have to get through it. We haven't played hard or good enough, and when we do play good, it's (only) for a short period of time."
You can't continue to play like we've been playing, with the energy we've been playing."
That energy returned against the Bruins.
And so did their scoring prowess... the 6-1 final score against the Bruins included two power play goals. All sports teams slump at one point or another during a season, and that's particularly true in the long grind that is the NHL's 82-game schedule. That said, it's difficult to suppress the urge to panic when things start to go wrong. A good comeback game against a division leading team like Boston... on the road... helps restore faith. It also helps to keep things in perspective: while the Wings may have been in a bit of a funk the last week or so they are still the number two seed in the West and lead the Central Division by a comfortable margin.
But I sure would panic if I were a Blackhawks fan. Last year's Stanley Cup champs are 11th in the West and three points out of the playoff picture as we speak. (smirk)
"You don't have to go home but you can't stay here"
Never let it be said we've lost our sense o' humor. The bar remains open here at El Casa Móvil De Pennington and that most certainly helps. Come to think on it... we never close.
Andy the RV Doctor just departed El Casa Móvil De Pennington. His verdict: nothing can be done until the ice dams melt away, as the HUGE amounts of ice in every nook and cranny block access to everything/anything that might be broke. No fix today, in other words... not that I really was expecting a fix. The only good news is Andy feels the issue MIGHT be a holding tank overflow due to ice blockage, as opposed to a broken water line but there's no way of telling until the ice dams melt away.
Andy has been a busy, busy man the last few days. He remarked in passing that nearly everyone living in an RV in the Clovis/Portales area froze up in one form or another last week, with some folks experiencing catastrophic damage. That's obviously good for his bid'niz but not so good for us RV-dwellers. I suppose there's some small consolation of the "misery loves company" variety, but it's small consolation, indeed.
So... the really bad news is three more days of livin' off bottled water, at the very least. The only faint ray of hope is that we'll be in the mid-60s to lower 70s for the next week, so a fix should be forthcoming the first part of next week. That's all well and good but I see at least ONE night in the Holiday Inn Express in my future. That's mainly because I can do the stand-up bath thing with water heated on the stove, but washing my hair is problematic under those conditions.
I guess I'll just pretend I'm "in the field" for the next few.
Or "Too Poor to Pay Attention," your choice. I've discovered the ultimate oxymoron as a result of not paying attention whilst shopping:
What's the POINT of "fat-free" half & half? Half & half, by definition, is HALF cream, and cream is FULL o' fat, nu? Sweet Jesus, but the only thing dumber than its very existence is my stoopidity in buying it. A pox on Wally-World stock boys for putting this abomination where the REAL half & half normally sits. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.
I have a full quart of this crap and I'm too damned cheap to just throw it out and go get the Real Deal. But I'm thinkin' things just MIGHT change. Bleah!
I didn't go out yesterday. There was no need as I was stocked up on all the important stuff and it was just too damned cold out, anyhoo. But I did order a pizza last evening. As I was taking delivery I happened to look down, upon which time I scared the livin' Hell out of the pizza guy with my very emphatic and menacing "FUCK!" exclamation. He stepped back a bit, still clutching the pizza box and looked at me with a wide-eyed "fight or flight" expression, the best I've seen lately. "It's not YOU," sez I... "it's THAT!" And this is what I saw:
It looks for all the world like I have a busted water line and it looks pretty bad, don't it? So, whereas I THOUGHT our freeze-up yesterday morning was my fault for not leaving the tap running, it wasn't. It was something one whole helluva lot worse.
Andy the RV Doctor will be dropping by for a house call tomorrow, once it warms up and we can see exactly where and how bad the break is.
No real reason for this selection other than the fact I like the tune. We could maintain the WX is making us crazy or that there's some connection between this tune and Former Happy Days. But we won't go to either place, we'll just pop open another Sammy Adams Winter Ale instead and enjoy the tune.
I think the day calls for a second cigar, too. It's kinda-sorta out of character for me to do more than one cigar per day, but I've been prone to do more than one since the humidor got fat. Which kinda reminds me of that sayin': too much is just enough. Or sumthin' like that.
