I'm getting old

My oldest turned 15 today.  This coming summer will filled with driving lessons.  Time to start saving for a new clutch.

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Why was this stopped?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7798270.stm

Unless the receiving couple can be shown to have a history of abuse/neglect/imcompetence when it comes to child care, why shouldn't they be allowed to keep the child?  They clearly want the child, and the biological parents clearly don't want the child.  Let the child go to where it is wanted.

Lyme disease sucks

It really does.

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The Ice Storm of 2008 IV

My wife's job requires Internet access, so sometime on Saturday or Sunday I called Charter to report an outage.  Today I received an automated phone call from Charter:

This is Charter Communications calling in reference to the outage that you reported to let you know that service has been restored. Thank you. Good-bye.

How can they report to me that my service has been restored when I don't even have power back on yet?

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I'm waiting for my visit from the non-union fairy godmother...

I tuned into WTKK 96.9 briefly over the weekend to hear this come from one of the two mouth-breathers known as the hosts of the "Joe and Huggy Show": 

Now, I'm a member of a union, and while on paper it looks like we make 60 to 70 dollars per hour, after you figure in retirement, medical, dental, life insurance, car insurance and all that other stuff, we really only make 20 to 30 dollars per hour.

I cannot comprehend the mindset that would think this way.

The Ice Storm of 2008 III

Today was spent locating, buying, transporting and installing a 5700 watt gas-powered generator.  We now have heat, water and refrigerator.  The sound of a flushing toilet has never sounded so good.

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The Ice Storm of 2008 II

It's 12:49 AM and I'm wide awake after draining the pipes.  I had gone outside for more wood for the woodstove and checked the thermometer.  20F.  The hallway from the kitchen to Fee's office had been quite cold and I couldn't stop worrying over the pipes.  So I opened the faucet in the basement sink and went around and opened all the other faucets all over the house.  No ice chunks came out, so I guess I did it in time.

My neighbor lost a huge double tree in the storm (two trees that had grown right next to each other and shared a root ball).  One side went down and absolutely smashed a shed of his.  The other side went down on all the utility lines for his house and mine.  At the base of the trunk, both trees are easily 24" in diameter.  National Grid has no idea how bad it is up here.  I doubt we'll have power again any time soon.

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The Ice Storm of '08

A very terrible kind of beauty around here.  We're likely to be without power for two more days.

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Who is the genius who came up with this one?

I woke up about an hour ago to the sound of an ice-encrusted tree branch crashing down onto my truck. After the requisite tour of the house and barn to make sure there wasn't any other damage that required immediate attention, stoking the wood stoves, and generally calming down the wife, I got around to calling in the power outage clearly caused by the ice storm.

"Welcome to our automated outage reporting service.  Please enter your 10 digit phone number."

Okay.

"We're sorry, but our records show two accounts that have that number listed as the phone number for that account. Please enter your account number found at the top of your latest bill."

My power is out, there are trees crashing down around the house every minute or so, and you want me to go thrashing around in the dark and find my latest bill?!?

They repeated this request twice before telling me I could say that I didn't have it.

What moron came up with this?

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Work of Art

Every year, our church has a small fund-raiser of people building gingerbread houses and selling them to other members of the parish.  Each year, this one family makes a virtual work of art.  All the furniture and wall decorations and pictures and everything is meticulously made out of gingerbread.  And as you can see from the picture, the tree has working lights.

Masterful!

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Scrabble

Heh.

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