You Can Scratch "Drinking The Crazy Water" As A Figure Of Speech--

     Because it's a very real thing.  And they have T-shirts!

     But here's the crux of the matter: I have been all over that website and nowhere on it -- nowhere! --  does it say, "Exclusive water supplier to the national conventions of all major political parties."  Why do you suppose they'd want to hide an important distinction like that?

     (And yes, that paragraph's satire.  Crazy Water most certainly is not, having been a fine product out of Mineral Wells, Texas since the Nineteenth Century.  As you might except, that's where the name of the town comes from, and I am assured by those who can obtain it that it's very fine mineral water indeed.)

The M. C. Escher Building?

     I'd have to reflect on that:

Now It Can Be Told

     Tam is back, after two weeks plus in the cold frozen Northwoods of New Hampshire, replete with chickens and short-legged dogs and the second-highest beer consumption per capita of any other state.  --Only second-highest?  Tsk. Tsk.

     With two cats full of mischief, I worry what they will get up to without adult supervision.  Huck did manage to get the basement door open twice, but he was good about coming back upstairs when found out, and it was on the weekend when I was mostly home anyway.

If I Like Jeans? They Stop Making Them

     I wore bootcut Levis for years.  One particular style fit me well, held up well and wasn't too expensive.  Levis decided jeans that reach one's waist were passe and discontinued them.

     Hey, that's okay -- Galyan's Sporting Goods sold good hiking jeans!  --Then Galyan's was bought by Dick's and their clothing lines were no more.

     So I started shopping at Western tack & saddle stores, farm-supply outlets, and discovered the old traditional (non-Levis) brands still sold jeans that fit well and I liked...until, one by one, they didn't and Carhartt was all that was left.

     But hey -- Carhartt.  Good stuff.  Workwear, right?  Not too likely to go chasing fashion?  ...Then they dropped the heavy carpenter's jeans I liked.  So I discovered their Double-Fronts.  Not my blue denim but tough canvas twill in dark brown and tan.  And that's serious workwear, they won't stop making those, will they?

     They have.  I should have become suspicious when the dark brown color stopped being available; it's a little more popular. (I've got a couple of pairs in the mending, which has now become a priority.)

     You can still get women's Double-Fronts -- in a "slim," low-rise style.  Yes, "skinny jeans" workwear, which might work for me if I was twenty years younger and as many pounds lighter.

     Carhartt still -- so far -- sells some plain "easy-fit" jeans that should do.  Maybe I'd better stock up

Serrano Peppers, I Love You, But...

     I should not have put an entire one in my breakfast. Alas, I had to dig it back out.  Tasty, but too hot for my breakfast of egg, good link sausage, sauteed Anaheim and Poblano peppers and rice.  Maybe if I'd used potatoes instead of rice, maybe if I'd deseeded it first instead of merely slicing it into rounds. 

     Removed, it left behind flavor and just enough heat.

Fireworks From Inside

     Wonderful Drone Tricks:

     Found at model-maker and aerospace historian Scott Lowther's Unwanted Blog, with gratitude.  He notes this is undoubtedly in violation of numerous FAA and other regulations and laws.  It's also a good way to lose a quadcopter and a camera -- and the results are worth it.

Cable: It Still Sucks

     Not me, I haven't got cable.  Threw them out long ago.  This guy, he's stuck with Comcast.

Independance Day

     Here it is again, that day with all the fireworks.  But what is it, really?  What was wrought this day?  From before 4 July 1776 through the first government seated under our present Constitution, what was going on, anyway?

     From September of 1774 through March of 1789 (when Congress as we know it first started up), the States went through three Congresses and various interim forms of federal government, generally with plenty of power to incur debts and wage war but not a whole lot else; they could print money (and did, in profusion) but had nothing with which to back it. These bad habits were passed on to subsequent Congresses -- despite an honest effort by the Framers to apply some limits.

     So we got our Declaration, and a nice Revolution followed by the Treaty of Paris, and thirteen years of a piffling sort of Union, so weak that, "New York and South Carolina repeatedly prosecuted Loyalists for wartime activity and redistributed their lands over the protests of both Great Britain and the Confederation Congress." among other things.  (New York was a troubled state; if you think their state government is bad now, consider that around the same post-Treaty time as they were yanking the ground out from under Loyalists, "A rumor had it that a 'seditious party' of New York legislators had opened a conversation with the Viceroy of Canada.")  Vermont sat the whole federal thing out as an independent country from 1777 through 1791! It was a mess -- but not nearly as big a mess as most post-Revolutionary nations.

     We are practically the only direct inheritors of the revolutions of the late 18th and early 19th Century.  No other nation created in revolt has endured as long.  (I'd like to tell you why -- the pre-existing tradition of self-government in the Colonies?  The foundation laid by English government?  Remarkably well-informed theory, brilliantly modified by practice? Divine Providence?  Sheer luck? -- but no one really knows.) While it can be argued the American Revolution faltered badly in 1861-65, even the ultimately-thwarted secession of so many States did not end the country it brought into being.

     What came from the Declaration of Independence has been so astoundingly successful that, indeed, "It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more."  True, John Adams was writing about the second of July, the date the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration instead of the date of its signing, but he was right nevertheless.
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     I'll be excoriated for this, but the inhabitants of U.S. and Canada ought to celebrate July 2 and 3, the days between Canada Day and Independence Day,  as "Co-dependence Days," in which we consider all that we love and loathe about our neighbor.  We share the longest border in the world without armies watching one another over it, about 2/3 of a common language and all manner of customs, habits and entertainments -- and we share them about the same way fraternal twins between the ages of seven and  twelve share the back seat of a car over the course of a day-long excursion.

Tools Of The Trade

     I'm still adding bookshelves -- this one wraps through the arch between the living room and library/dining room:

     Closer look at installation tools: Stanley hand drill, some hex-shank drills, a short-throw "chairmaker's" brace and countersink bit, "Yankee"-type screwdriver, little wood block to help mark holes in the right place, knife-sharpened pencil (a classic Mirado Black Warrior, no less!) and a big pile of clamps to hold it all in place while attaching the new bookshelf to the shelves on each side of the arch.

     This is first of two or three for this batch, I hope.

...And My Printer Is Unhappy

     Or is it the driver?  The printer will print out a report of status and setting nice as can be, but the computer can't get it to print.  It's not the cable, tried that this morning.  Out of time to mess with it for now, other than a quick websearch.

Monster Hunter: Nemesis

     Larry Correia's latest offers a little more insight into one of his more interesting characters: Franks.  That said, the early going also delivers a little political commentary in something of a mirror-image of Stross's "Family Trade" series, though at least without the naming of names (a practice that dates a book rather badly).  It doesn't distract that much and readers can make their own minds up if the scene is really necessary.

     Amusingly, a common theme between Correia and Stross is the risk posed by inter-office wrangling for power in government agencies and other groups involved in the supernatural.  Despite their differences in political philosophy, both men recognize the more-immediate risk to their protagonists created by inappropriately-ambitious peers and bosses.  Office politics are a universal source of trouble -- and rather more than the usual amount when eldritch horrors from other dimensions are rung in.  Politicians of the Left or Right may indeed be wicked, masterminds and/or spineless but it's that unethical bureaucrat just down the hall who'll get you killed in his effort to get promoted a couple of pay grades.

     Correia's gift for "recipe not quite as before" keeps things interesting in the by-now-familiar world of the Monster Hunter books.  I can't wait to see how it turns out!

It's Summer, Y'see?

     Still, you don't expect a storm to barrel through in the middle of the night; thunderstorms are solar powered and after sundown, things tend to start quieting down.

     Not last night.  About 2:30 a.m., a huge wind (71 at the airport, which cuaght as it came whipping into town, 40-50 though the city) driving rain before it can slamming through.  It woke me up, though so far I don't see any trees down around the house.  There are trees down through the city, and traffic lights out.  IP&L was reporting 20,000 customers without electricity by sunrise.

     And now the sidewalks are dry.  The air isn't, humidity is right at 100%.  Meteorologists are promising drier and cooler over the next few days.  I'm hoping they're right.