Update from the Mud Shack

What ever possesses people to do some things is totally incomprehensible to me. A standard washer/dryer pair takes up just over 58 inches---each is 29 inches wide, you need a couple inches clearance. So why make a laundry room 55-1/2 inches wall to wall??? Glad those new front loaders can be stacked; sorry to not be able to use our less than 2-years-old conventional top loaders.........

Gotta do a commercial for Lowe's---got the units on sale and they delivered Sat. a.m. at 7:30!! So nice to not waste a day hanging out waiting for delivery/service people!!!!! I've always had better service from them than their competitor.

Since the gas heater in the front of the house needs work, we have been heating with wood. The kiva fireplaces are wonderful. They are easy to light and once the massive masonry structure gets warm it retains the heat and keeps the area warm all day and most of the night.

We found a place that offers a variety of firewood for pretty reasonable prices and spent Friday stacking a 1/2 cord of pecan for our heat source.

Now Comcast is another story. The customer service people were a pleasure to deal with, the contractor was a jerk. We wanted at least two live connections. He provided one and groused that it wasn't on the orders to do two. Of course he still had his ladder against the roof and it would have taken him about 5 minutes to reconnect the splitter he had just disconnected.....It took me 10 minutes but that's because I had to wait for CZ to find me a pair of pliers to undo the connection.

There's some other small repairs that need doing, like the line to the swamp cooler that decided to spring a leak Thursday night......but no big deals considering the house is a fifty year old adobe!!!!! And I can sit in just about any room and marvel at the views, or curl up on the couch in front of the kiva fireplace with a good book or magazine.......

Can I figure out how to retire NOW???????

T-Day '09

Dad drove past a sign on a church in Alamogordo that said "This Thanksgiving, try counting your blessings, not your calories." So---

mud house

lots of running room

'Roid, Weetz, Bertequila

cousin dogs

Klingon Kats

warm kiva fireplaces

a great place to live

my people all together here for the holiday

Happy Thanksgiving to all!!!!!!!

Leny

First Mate of the Pirate Dogs

Elegy

So our 97 year old aunt died last Wed. in her sleep. The way one should check out---sleeping and with no pain. Nice service, too---very quick, no wake, viewing for two and a half hours before the funeral mass.

Lately I've been re-discovering Teilhard de Chardin and thinking and reading about religion. Aunt Mary watched "the mass" every Sunday at 10:00am. I knew better than to do my weekly Sunday call at that time. I guess I lost my faith one August day in 1966 and never really got it back.

So as the quote that serves as a header for this blog states, "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." So should we view Mary's life. And be happy for her that her suffering is past and she rests in the bosom of the creator along with the litany of family that preceded her--parents Alessandra and Vincenzo, siblings Rose, Frances, Philipina, Delia, Philip, Gennaro, and Amalio. Requiescat in pace, Aunt Mary, for no-one deserves that peace more than you.

Gone and Done It

So after sitting on the market since mid-June with lots of showings and no offers, we signed a contract to sell our house Thursday at around 8:30PM. Needing a place to live, we had searched the internet and then on Saturday drove to Las Cruces and made an offer -----Today it was accepted!!!!! YeeHah and here we go again.

The house is an adobe, 3br/2ba on about 1/4 acre fully fenced and bordered by a pecan orchard on three sides. There are 2 kiva fireplaces and three outdoor living areas. The property is north of the Las Cruces city limits but only about 10 minutes to all the amenities of the city.

Here's a few pix:

This is the back of the house with 2 patios and french doors.

This is the family/living room with kiva fireplace.

This is the view out the back door of the back yard and the pecan orchard that borders the property.

More can be seen at Clair's Picasa site.

Dumb and Stupid-er????

I give up. It's getting cold even here and the pirate dogs and me are getting to feel like it's time to hibernate. Maybe when we come out of that state things will be somewhat normal?????

This morning I posted a link to an Onion satirical article on Facebook. The gist of it was "moron" picketing in WA state thinking they were in Wa DC. The last sentence was that to combat the ignorance, the gov was gonna spend $3-trillion on education. Would that were true......

Throughout the day I check Google News to see where the Dow is (affects my retirement) and just to stay in touch with the "real" world (outside the office). And the Onion is prescient---we have been taken over by morons!!!!

Take Fox News---please, preferably off the airwaves. These idiots, led by Greta van Susteren, are trying to paint the administration as having an Enemies List and Fox News is #1 on that hit parade. Shades of Nixon and the Plumbers, whom I'm sure they would have supported!!! Problem with Fox News---all ego no grey matter. All bluster and no brainwork.

The premise that stupidity is rampant in our fair nation is the subject of a column in the Berkeley Daily Planet on the dumbing down of America. Basically the author's take is that oversimplification due to constant noise has led to a degradation in the thought processes of the American public.

Now what I've thus far presented are opinions. I could scrape up more of them, I'm sure. But let's end this discussion with a fact that conclusively makes the case for this premise that we are stupid as a people. The governor of CA, Arnold Schwarzneggar, today signed a bill supporting the building of a 75,000 seat football stadium in the LA area. This phenomenal WASTE of money in a state that can't educate its children, can't balance its budget, has made drastic cuts in services, and needs to free prisoners to cut the prison population or be in contempt of court!!! LA needs a football stadium as much as the rest of us need to contract AIDS and Swine Flu at the same time!!!!!

Dumb, dumber, stupid, and stupider. Time to hibernate. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

El Beisbol

I guess baseball season is over.

Tuesday night we settled in to watch the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (who dreams up these monikers???) even up their American League Championship Series with those NastY Yankees. Being true Red Sox fans, of course we favor the Angels. Long story short---didn't happen. The Yankees won 10-1 taking a 3-1 lead in a best 4 of 7 series. If their opponent were the Red Sox, there might be hope. But the Angels?? Let's give them some applause for finally ending the dominance of the Red Sox over their West Coast patsies---the Sox have owned the Angels in the post season going back to 1987.

Back to Tuesday---I understand if Jerry Remy and Don Orsillo of NESN, the Red Sox flagship t v station, shill for the team and are not at all objective in assessing the skills of the Beantown Boyz. I even suffer thru the Fox Sports Southwest fools who laud the Texas Rangers when I watch that station to see my beloved Sox. It's only natural for t v announcers to favor the home market team. But is it too much to ask for some objectivity from national announcers like Joe Buck and Tim (the terrible) McCarver on Fox's national coverage of the playoffs??? The first Yankee run came on a play with Alex Rodriguez scoring from third base. There was a grounder to second, the Angel defender was a little too deep and the throw home was high.

Well to hear Tim McCarver's analysis, A-roid (A-rod after steroids---ever look at his earlobes---hi-def is sometimes too much information) is the greatest thing since sliced bread, Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Lou Gehrig, and Reggie Jackson all embodied in him. Honestly, I think I could have scored on that grounder, replacement right knee and arthritic left knee and all. Now A-roid is number 8 on the all-time homer list. Of course, given the steroid and drug era, so what?? He's up there with Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, and Mark McGwire---the Jacked-up Three. The 'Roid got the bulk of his homers with such play-off denizens as the Seattle Mariners and the Texas Rangers. When he finally got to play post-season, he was basically 0-for-October until this year. And McCarver makes him sound like Jeter, for god's sake!!!! Sorry, A-roid doesn't belong in the same sentence as the Yankee captain. I hate the Yankees and love the Red Sox, but I can respect Derek Jeter as a class act. He's the only one of the Skankees I'd like to see move north to Fenway.

So no more ALCS, unless the Angels have a Red Sox miracle up their sleeves. And we'll take solace in the fact that even if the Yankees win the World Series, Los Soquitos Rojos will still have won twice as many world championships this century.

Nothing's Easy

After all the flap about the peace prize, we really need to get serious about blaming the current administration for things. Onion has a piece about Obama negotiating with a forest fire--guess he CAN do anything!!! Today the news broke that American kids are even worse at math than last year after we elected what we thought was a REAL education supportive president. There's tsunamis in the Pacific and Dylan was right about SoCal---"a hard rain's gonna fall" and all those multi-million dollar homes the elite built on those recently denuded-by-fire hills may come tumbling down like Jericho's walls. Barack, blow that trumpet!!!!!!!!

But the ultimate insult, worse than H1N1 swine flu, is H3N8!!!! Obviously this plague has been visited upon us by Yahweh as punishment for our electing Obama. What, you didn't hear about this?? The ultimate apocalyptic event, worse than a Vince Vaughn movie or a Mayan prophecy?

H3N8 is a virus that infects horses. Apparently it can be transmitted to dogs, causing pneumonia in man's last and only best friend. Vets are recommending vaccinations for the K-9 population to protect them. Holy spiraling health care costs, and right on top of the swine flu vaccine issues!!!!! Barack, Barack, why hast thou forsaken us???? After nine months in office, all there is for you is blame---- blame for the wars you didn't start and the deficit you didn't create. Bet you even support Limbaugh's buying the St Louis Rams!!!! Don't worry, someone is sure to paint you with that brush,too......