It's a hard life

A few weeks ago, when I got home from the office, my wife mentioned that Morgan was feeling 'bummed out'. In the place and at the time I was a kid that exact phrase had certain overtones I felt were inapplicable so I requested enlightenment as to what feeling 'bummed out' meant.

It seems the little princess had spent three and a half hours that day at some social welfare agency filing paperwork and being interviewed for benefits available to the unwed mother.

In return for her time the state will give her approx $150 a month in cash, approx $250 a month in food stamps and pays the entire cost of health insurance for her infant.

In the scheme of things this isn't an enormous amount of financial assistance. I'd be guessing at the cost of health insurance given that I let Sonya worry about those details. That's pure laziness on my side of course but I do hide behind the flimsy excuse of being a newcomer to this society and of course 'we do things differently in Australia'. But at a rough guess we're talking maybe $7000 a year which is hardly a living income.

As I say, not an enormous amount, but I couldn't help feeling bemused at the thought of the little princess being 'bummed out'. As I put it to Sonya, 'Strewth, I'd put in three and a half hours work for seven grand.' On the other hand, I haven't spent my entire life imagining the world owed me a living.

*shrug*

The trouble with dead Presidents

is that they choose the most inconvenient times to die.

According to Andrew that is! Case in point. Former President Gerald Ford died the day after Christmas. And Andrew was indeed saddened by the news, when the realisation sank in that he was already in his Christmas break and would not get an extra day off school! From Andrews point of view it would have been far better had he died either two weeks earlier or two weeks later. I'm pretty sure considerations of how the former President himself might have felt about the matter didn't occur to Andrew. And I fear I made him feel worse when I pointed out that Former President Reagan had also died during a school break.

As Andrew himself expressed it; 'Why do I get all the bad luck?'

A few months ago, when my citizenship oath ceremony was fast approaching, Mom broached the idea of taking Andrew along, on the grounds that it would be 'educational'. I was all for the idea but Andrews only comment was 'cool - that'll be a day off school'. Call me hard hearted if you will but if the only reason he wanted to come along and see me take the oath was to get a day off school then as far as I was concerned he could damn well go to school instead! Which he did!

Poor bastard!

I love it when...

a plan works!

Andrew has no idea how to sustain a conversation. Whenever he feels the pressure of silence he'll ask something like 'so, how's everybody?' or 'how's the weather.'. Hmmm, we live in Phoenix - how does he expect the weather to be anyway???

I'll give him points for trying even though over the past year or more I've been encouraging him to break out. How is it going to look when he's having dinner with his girlfriends parents for the seventh time and he can still only ask about the weather?

So a couple of months ago we, that is Mom and I, decided that he should talk for two minutes at dinner each evening about any subject that enters his head so long as it doesn't relate to our health or the state of the weather. Seemed like a good plan.

After a few false starts he got onto the subject of his favourite band. I'll claim credit for the suggestion. With the smile of someone who is certain that his interests won't be shared he imparted the knowledge that one of his favourite bands is Slipknot[^] and dwellt at considerable length on some of their song titles. 'Pulse of the Maggots' for one! Uh huh, just what you want to be talking about over dinner!

I've been a subscriber to Rhapsody for some months now - great service for the kind of music I like - beats Urge and Napster and Yahoo!music hands down. So a little later that evening I checked if they had StinkbuttSlipknot. Yep, and the album he enthusiastically endorsed.

Five minutes later the album is on my music player and I gave it a listen at the office the next day. I made sure to memorise some of the lyrics (and the tune) and, at dinner the next evening I was sitting there chanting 'I won't let it build up inside of me'!. Took him a few moments to catch on and when he did he asked where I got that tune from. 'Oh', I said, 'from that band you talked about last night, what was their name? Stinkbutt?'. Grin from Andrew. 'You know, Andrew', I said, 'they're quite good.'

You should have seen the amazed look on his face. 'You liked it??? Wow!'.

I didn't have the heart to tell him that anyone who grew up listening to rock in the late 60's wouldn't feel all that lost with Slipknot. About all that's changed is that nowadays rock bands have license to slip in a few four letter words. *shrug*

And nope, I very much doubt Slipknot will ever make it to my 'must listen' list. But I did enjoy it for a few listens.

So what do I know about Rock anyways?

Nicked fromInspired by Vern[^].

The Seeker You scored 60%!

I don't know if you've been searching low and high, but you do know your bare-bones classic rock basics. With this kind of score, you probably nailed the signature song questions and most of the albums. You probably don't have much of a classic rock collection yourself, but when your friends play theirs, you recognize the songs. This is a respectable score: you're neither know-nothing nor nerd.

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 99% on notes

Link: The BASIC classic rock Test written by allmydays on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Testing a thermometer

How things change. Time was when a thermometer, the type one might use to take ones temperature, contained a drop of mercury in a thin tube and you had to squint just right to read the damn thing. I'm not sure I could even read one these days; the years are taking their toll on my eyesight.

Nowadays there's a thermocouple and an LCD display supposedly calibrated to tenths of a degree. One of these days I might do a couple of checks to see how accurate they are.

The thing that amazes me the most though is that they give the things away at the local pharmacy! Cue the old codger music. I remember when the glass and mercury thermometer was expensive enough that most households in our neighbourhood didn't have one!

Whilst picking up a prescription the other day Sonya grabbed a couple of thermometers and left one sitting on the dinner table. We're a bit like that; almost the only time the dinner table is cleared is at Christmas. (There! I knew there'd be another use for Christmas!) Sat down to dinner Andrew picked it up and stuck it in his gob to test it. I couldn't resist.

'Ummm, my dear?' I asked Sonya. 'Do you think we should tell Andrew how we tested that thermometer?'

'Nah' she said. 'It'd only put him off his dinner'.

It did too!

The cheap bastards pile

My US passport finally arrived last week. As you know I wasn't in that much of a hurry for it to arrive; I was quite content to be unable to do international travel and now that we're getting close to *that* time of the year (the only use I have for Christmas) it's unlikely I'll have to travel for at least another month. That said, it was in December 2004 that I was sent on less than a days notice to France. France I wouldn't mind - I'm just not in any hurry to go back to The Philippines.

The passport arrived on November 27th but curiously it was dated October 30th. Hmmm, so they made it and then took nearly a month to ship it out? Seems so.

Of course I have my theory. I didn't pay the expedite fee so, having made it, they tossed it into the cheap bastards pile, in the bin marked, do not ship until November 24th!

The Importance of Research

With *that* time of the year fast approaching I was indulging in my usual rant about Christmas and all it stands for. My wife asked, 'how is that I ended up married to such a Bah Humbug'.

'Simple' I replied, 'you didn't do your research!'.

Burgers

I've made no secret in the past of my distaste for the American manifestation of the humble hamburger. It may, once upon a time, have been edible, but I fear the relentless spur of competition to put more and more into or onto it has gone way past the point where wisdom should have prevailed. In short, I can't stand the bugrgers!

Americans of course don't understand just why it is that I find the things so unpalatable; within minutes of discovering how much I did *not* want to eat one nothing would do but that my wife had to take me to In-N-Out[^]. I can imagine her disappointment when their burgers turned out to be just as unpalatable. She hasn't said it in so many words but I'm sure she thinks I'm impossible to please when it comes to fast food. She's right! :-)

It seems that when the local In-N-Out opened the police were required for traffic duty in the surrounding streets for some days. I take this as evidence of appalling burger taste in the populace! :-)

Anyway, the fact is that I find the American burger has way too much meat, the meat is barelyundercooked and their idea of a burger with onions is to bung raw onions on the side! Toss in the inevitable pallid mustard, barbecue sauce, ketchup or, heaven forbid, ranch sauce, and you've got a mess!

The other night at dinner the subject of burgers came up again and, again, I said something about how much I didn't like the local version. Andrew piped up with an enthusiastic endorsement of In-N-Out, concluding with the statement 'I like In-N-Out'. Now what could I do? It was there, like low hanging fruit, demanding to be said! So I said it. 'Yeah, I'm rather fond of In-N-Out myself - but I ain't talking burgers!'.

*Boom boom*

Andrew blushed and choked back laughter. Mom? She reached over the table and clocked me one! Can't blame her. :-)

Gotcha!

As you might remember[^] my wife has been researching her ancestors for some time. Lately she's discovered that some great grandfather or other once ran a pie shop in an English town by the name of Nuneaton[^]. Me being me it was, of course, impossible to resist remarking that they couldn't have been very good pies. 'Why do you say that?' she asked. 'Well they were Nuneaton of course!' was my reply.

*boom boom*

A little later in the conversation Sonya dropped the fact that the pie shop was next door to the residence of one Mary Anne Evans. I shrugged. 'Who, pray tell, is Mary Anne Evans when she's at home?' I asked. I do sometimes talk pretentiously like that! 'Aha' she said, going for the jugular. 'So you don't know that Mary Anne Evans was George Eliot?'

Uh huh. A gotcha indeed! It was indeed feeble of me to riposte by asking if she knew who Ellen Price[^] was. But geeze, am I supposed to remember the real name of every 19th century English novelist? Don't answer that! :-)

Heard on the radio today

There's some golf tournament or another about to take place down in Tucson. Personally I've always thought that if you really really wanted so badly to get that ball into the little hole surely bashing it with a funny shaped stick is going about it the hard way. Why not just pick the ball up and put it in the hole? But that's me. *shrug*

As I was driving home tonight an ad came on for the golf tournament aforementioned. The usual extolling of virtues followed by the breathless announcement that they were restricting ticket sales to a (and I quote) relatively intimate 15,000 per day.

Yikes! Relatively intimate? Imagine being invited to the copy writers for a dinner party!

And now there are three

cats as comfortable, recognised members of our household. Ginger died this evening, very suddenly, of what the vet described as a heart attack. Doubtless he (the vet) was trotting out a formula of explanation easy to grasp when old age wouldn't fit the bill.

If this were written about a human person we'd launch into a description of early years, achievements, spice (is that the plural of spouse? If not it ought to be!) and so on. But as I'm writing about a cat those things don't apply.

Nope, he walked in late one evening about three years ago, liked what he saw and decided he wanted to stay. We took him back to his owners and he was back the next night. The night after that his owners had moved away so here he lived. The most placid cat I've ever known. Nothing except cars seemed to worry him; whilst he'd happily climb onto or into one he'd run for cover if the engine started.

He was very good with the new-comers. Where the other established members of the household (Cleo and Roo and, latterly, Kitten) would ignore the new-comer or snarl and spit he was more than happy to play and, I presume, helped them feel more at home.

I'll miss him. Rest in Peace Ginger.

Intelligence test

I was standing in the self checkout line at the local supermarket, chocolate cake in one hand, paper towels in the other. The two purchases aren't necessarily related!

Before me the usual rag tag assortment of people who can't cope with the self checkout process. Why they subject themselves and, more importantly, me, to the experience is something I couldn't say but I *have* seen some of the same folk struggling with the concept before.

But heck, this ain't rocket science. What's so hard about reading a three word instruction then pushing the correct button? Followed by swiping things through one at a time and putting them on the scales?

I will admit that the supermarket checkout *does* throw a spanner in the works by expecting some kind of personal identifier, either a loyalty card or a phone number. I refuse to play that game except to the extent of getting the 'discounted' price attached to the identifier. I find that punching in a random phone number works just fine and doubtless there are people who will, next week, sit down to their thanksgiving turkey with not the faintest inkling that my purchases helped them accumulate the loyalty points required to snag a free one!

So anyway, I was standing in the line half an hour ago watching yet another assortment of people trying to cope with a process simple enough that I reckon a particularly dull chimp could master it within seconds when it occurred to me that they really need an intelligence test to gain access to the shorter line. And then it occurred to me that in fact the entire process itself *was* the intelligence test; all that is lacking is the reward or revenge at the end of the process.

What I think is needed is a system reminiscent of the system at customs and immigration; the machine weighs the subject by a variety of criteria; how many times did they have to request a restart because they pushed the wrong button? How many seconds elapsed between scanning one item and the next? At the end they get a tag to follow the green arrow or the red one.

Green leads to the car park. And red leads to a small padded room with an automatic lead dispenser! Some people are just *too* stupid to live!!!

Die Spamming Bastards, Die!

As if it isn't bad enough copping 160 spam emails now they've spammed my Wdevs[^] blog. 160 spams in an email inbox are relatively easy to delete; not so when it's on .text.

Nope, I'm not complaining about Wdevs - they put up with my posting, which is more than I would! Nonetheless, this ain't doing my RSI any good :-( *cue soppy music on violins* :-)

Well, they got that wrong!

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop."
The Northeast
Philadelphia
The Midland
The South
Boston
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

I voted today

Well actually it was yesterday but who's counting? Apart, that is, from a thousand harried election officials being hounded by anxious almost made its?

Australia is the only other country where I've voted and attendance there at a polling booth on the day is mandatory on pain of a 50 buck fine. That being the case there's nothing all that remarkable about having actually voted in Australia; one assumes that everyone has.

Not so here in the US. With a voter turnout of only 40% it's a toss up whether someone has bothered or not. So, at least here in Arizona (I can't speak for anywhere else in the country) they hand you a little sticker saying 'I voted today'. It nonplussed me for a moment but then I stuck it on my forehead and wore it all day at the office.

Laughs all round! Well, what did they expect when I became a citizen? That I'd not bother voting?

An interesting exercise. A combination of the familiar with an interleaving of the utterly strange! No surprise seeing candidates for House and Senate. Not even much of a surprise seeing candidates for Governor (a rather different office here than in Australia). But further down candidates for School Board? Approval for the continuation of judgeships? What a disappointment there was no candidate for The Office of Dog Catcher!

Ok, I'm being a little facetious. I'm just not used to the voting process being quite so granular. I'm sure familiarity will breed complacence.

Fortunately the ballots here are real paper and you mark your choice using a pen. No risk of illegitimate chads a few months hence. No touch screen computers either. I still have my suspicions about the machine one feeds ones ballot into which apparently counts it on the spot. Call me old fashioned but I really don't like the idea of computerising something as important as voting. I'd be a whole lot happier if they were counted by hand with a bunch of rival scrutineers agreeing that this ballot really was for so and so.

But I reserve the real shocker for last. It came as quite the surprise a couple of weeks ago when my wife received her sample ballot to see that it had a map printed on the front pointing the way to the polling place. 'Yes, that's right', she said, when I asked, 'you can only vote there.' I was incredulous. 'You mean that I can only vote there and nowhere else? That's the only place on the whole planet where I can vote?' Apparently it's so.

Hmmm. Much to get used to! I'm sure I'll cope.

Sonya's Europe trip

Like, I imagine, a lot of people, we have a change jar. Few things are worse than clanking around the house like some rusty old ghost so we've both got into the habit of emptying the loose shrapnel out of our pockets as soon as we get home.

On the other hand I've become quite fond of snacking on Cheetos at the office so I'm putting change in the jar with one hand and taking it out with the other. It's become quite the ritual when I get home to peer into the jar and say 'oooh' if I spy silver. Sonya's said more than twice that she'll never get to Europe at this rate; as often as she piles the odd dollar of silver into the jar I nick it for snacking.

I can't help noticing this week that the jar is stubbornly bereft of silver. I think she's taking that Europe trip to heart!

What I wanted for Christmas

Many years ago my parents asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I thought for a moment and replied 'I wanna watch'. So they let me!

*boom boom*

Yeah, an old joke. I must have been telling it at (in)appropriate moments for at least thirty years so it should come as no surprise whatsoever that when, the other night, we were talking about Christmas over dinner, I trotted it out. Andrew mulled it a moment and then let out a half embarassed laugh along with a sheepish grin. Sonya, however, looked at me and said, in a voice of incredulity, 'Really???'.

Kicking the tyres

We went house hunting today. To be honest, we're not sure we can afford to be in the housing market just yet but you've got to at least throw some numbers around. It seems that it's rather easier to do it here in the US than it was back in Australia; the last time I refinanced my house there they did the arithmetic, concluded that as I had a mere 19 years until legal retirement age that they couldn't manage a mortgage (in blocks of 5 years) longer than 15 years. Seems it's against some law or other here to discriminate on the basis of age. Score one for the US!

And we're both sick of living in a two up, two down and two in the middle condo. I can't fart without everyone in the place knowing about it! I swore black and blue about twenty years ago (when I last lived in a flat, apartment, condo, call it what you will) that I'd never live in one again. Houses only for this little black duck. And now look at me!

Toss in the fact that until a couple of months ago I was required to mail an AR11 change of address form to an obscure address in London, Kentucky, if my permanent address changed, which requirement has now gone away and we have no good reasons not to go looking! Not, I hasten to add, that the US is crawling with secret police checking on the whereabouts of every alien, legal or not. Nonetheless, there's always the nagging doubt that some important piece of immigrant related mail will fail to arrive if I dare to move residence and suddenly I'll find myself out of status. No such doubt any more. Being a citizen has its advantages!

So we set off house hunting. Pretty easy to do - the buggers just sit there on their blocks of land! *boom boom*. Sonya wants to stay within the Horizon High School district though I have to say that given the quality of output that I've seen they don't overmuch impress me. But what do I know?

Thus to a funnish afternoon of driving aimlessly around looking for little signs stuck on street corners pointing toward an 'open house'.

It's all done very differently to the way I was used to in Melbourne. There every house for sale is open each weekend until sold but you only have a half hour window when it's open. Thus the need for planning. Grab the Weekend Age property guide, turn to the suburb of interest and map out four hours of driving. Gotta get to that address by 1:15 because the agent moves on to the next house at 1:30.

Not so here. The agent arrives, opens, and sits for four hours. And then, apparently, that house won't be available for casual inspection for another month! *shrug* That's the way they do things here so one goes with the flow.

We went through this exercise just after I arrived here four years ago and I got into the habit of pointing out that the master bathroom was larger than my bedroom back in Melbourne. Not much of an exaggeration. Of course, first house we went into I *just* had to say that! Laugh from Sonya. I can still make her laugh! :-)

But there was one house we looked at (way out of our price range) where the master bedroom really was larger than our entire condo. The bed looked like an afterthought in that sea of carpet!

We did find a couple of houses we liked so I imagine it's time to talk to the lenders. Of course, the way Sonya said that word I thought she said 'time to talk to the Linda's' and I found myself wondering why on earth we had to talk to a Linda I hadn't met and just exactly what she had to do with what we could or could not afford!

Bloggers block

I haven't died. I'm just going through one of those periods where one hasn't all that much to say. Well, I could write about some of the antics Andrew's been up to lately but that way lies the possibility of my blog turning into a 'Chronicles of Andrew' and really, he's the one who should be writing that blog.

I'm told that posting about a blog hiatus is one of the better ways of ensuring a hundred blogworthy things will happen; let's see shall we?

Respect

Found at my desk yesterday morning. It's easy to see the high esteem and respect with which my fellow workers (Kathy in this case) regard me! :-)

[^]

White Menudo

My wife finally managed to find a canned foodstuff I didn't recognise. When I got home this arvo I found a rather large can labelled 'White Menudo'. I took a look at it and called for enlightenment. With a shrug she admitted she didn't know what it was either but was planning to use it for tonights dinner. Hmmm... there's brave for you!

It seems, according to the ingredients list, that it contains beef tripe and Mexican style hominy. Sounds mouthwatering doesn't it? I gloated a little, within Andrews hearing, about the beef tripe and discovered that, even though he has no idea what beef tripe *is*, he doesn't want to try it. If I said that announcement came as a surprise I'd be lying! I wonder what hoops they had to jump through to get him to try his first burger!

Four Hours

They've been running an ad on The History Channel for the last hour or so. Normally I mentally tune out as soon as the ad breaks start but after a while I started noticing this one. It begins as a discussion of erectile dysfunction; just the subject matter one wants to hear at my age!

Then it goes on to extol the virtues of a particular drug and, as is the fashion these days, ends on a breathless list of all the possible side-effects. There's one that particularly impressed me. 'Seek immediate medical attention if an erection lasts for more than four hours!'. Four hours?? Wow! I should be so lucky!!! :-)

Austin, TX

I'm in Austin, Texas, for the next few days. I could say why but if I did I'd have to kill you! j/k. No, the truth is that story is so uninteresting I reckon I'd fall asleep writing it and I'm *sure* you'd fall asleep reading it. Sufficient to say that it's work related.

The flight over was ok and would hardly merit mention were it not that I found myself stuck in the middle seat, row 15. The guy on my right was ok at first but the bloke on the left was built such that he really needed two seats. Instead he spilled over on both sides!

I could have coped with that. After all, it's only a 2 hour flight but nope, half an hour into the air the bastard opened a pack of Teriyaki flavoured beef jerky! Aromatic stuff to say the least! Not only that but he didn't even have the decency to offer any to all those within nostril-shot of it. Mind you, had he done so he'd have found himself offering to the entire planeload methinks. And then, as though encouraged by the thought that the aroma of a salami sandwich couldn't make things worse, the bloke on my right whips out said sandwich!

It's hard to say which was worse; the beef jerky or the salami sanger!

Austin might be a nice city; I haven't seen enough of it to comment though I do note that, seen from the air, it seems to have a much bigger downtown area than Phoenix. I may have enough time to check it out; if so I'll probably write about it.

On the other hand, I've just returned from a trip to the supermarket for various things I forgot (such as razors). You'd reckon I've done enough travel to not forget such obvious things but apparently not. I also took the chance to get some beef jerky and salami to go with my saltine crackers! :-)

But if the trip to the supermarket is anything to go by I'm going to give downtown Austin a big miss; four years of Phoenix traffic has made me incapable of the sort of driving patience one evidently needs to navigate Austin. In short, driving around sucks. It'd probably be a little different if I knew the place well enough not to miss turns but only marginally better. It feels as though the entire layout of intersections and the traffic light patterns are designed to make driving as slow and annoying as possible.

So I reckon the next time someone complains to me about 'what a bitch it was driving to work today' in Phoenix I'm going to laugh the bitter laugh of one who remembers driving to work in Melbourne and has survived peak hour in Austin and Chicago. We forget just how good the road system is in Phoenix!

Life is good

For 25 years or so I've been thinking I'd heard all of Anton Bruckners[^] symphonies, or at least all those I could obtain. I never did seem able to find a recording of Symphony 0 (Die Nullte) back in those days.

More recently even that curiously numbered symphony has been readily obtainable and I've been bopping to it the last few days courtesy of a Napster download.

Imagine my delight then, upon discovering that there's yet *another* symphony now available, the even more curiously numbered Symphony 00 (The Study Symphony). I foresee more bopping ahead. Life is good!

In which Andrew learns two things

The first being that I can't sing. The second? That phrases to which his friends may not pay overmuch attention will only serve to attract ridicule if uttered within my hearing! :-)

One of our cats went AWOL a year or so ago; methinks she was fed up with the constant stream of newcomers. We weren't particularly concerned about it; she was still around and she'd schmooze up every so often. The last couple of days though she's been coming in almost hourly. She never stays very long; just long enough that we know she's around and certainly long enough to be sure we all make a big thing about it.

So there she was this afternoon, sitting in Andrews lap as he sat at the computer. Andrew said 'She wants some Andrew loving'. Ye gods! Andrew loving??? Pretty big statement from a 15 year old. I couldn't resist; I started singing 'I can't get no, Andrew loving...' (sung to the Rolling Stones tune).

I have no idea if I embarassed the poor bastard or not but I do note that he had an enormous grin!