Gee, Mister, I'm Skeered

Operation Housepaint has begun! Only a little bit of the old paint has been scraped off, but every bit counts. I even picked up a couple of gallons of what may be the actual color of the actual paint.

Second Try, and First Try, too, has not, well, not actually drying. It's been several days and the stuff's still tacky; so I went with the (different) brand Nephew had suggested to begin with. Harder to go get but if it works, it's worth it. I got the version with primer in it for this test; I'm thinking that for the first coat and then we'll see, 'cos that stuff is expensive. On the other hand, not having to repaint for a long, long time would be nice.

Arrgh!

Update: I found that dadratted garage door remote! ...Right where I'd left it, of course. Logical place, really, and if it had been a snake, it could've bit me on the upper arm, several times: it was in top of books on a bookshelf, quite handy for setting-down while stowing the motorcycle helmet and gloves.. /Update

The wheels fell off my day yesterday afternoon; at least it was only a metaphor. Started well enough -- slept in, scrambled up to a family cookout on the scooter, my longest trip of the season to date, and arrived back home a few hours later, half-dazed by a headache.

Fiddled around at Nothing Much and made ready to go get paint.

Incoming text from Nephew synchronicistally questions my choice of brand -- yeah, me, too; but it's what I have a chance of actually having time to get. Wasted some time on that, decided to leave the question open and just go buy primer, headed out to the garage and -- hey, where's my garage door opener?

Not only can I not find it, I don't remember having had the thing in the house. I thought I knew where it was (pocket of my summer-weight riding jacket), but it's not there.

Proceeded to turn garage and house upside down. It's nowhere. Kept looking. Nope. Looked some more; Tam helped. Nada.

Of course, by then the paint store was closed.... I found other things to do, hoping to stmble over the opener. Not!

Ended on a slightly better note: we had fireworks! So did the neighbors, for miles and miles around. Somebody, some distance off, had big stuff and there'd be a BOOOOM! every so often that you felt, interspersed with the pops and bangs and whistles of lesser amusements. Now there's a celebration!

Pome.

About F.D. R., this verse is, but many parts seem so...aptly current.

(You be nice to Winston, now; he's a typeblogger, not a political blogger. It's his Grandmother's politics quoted here).

Four For The Fourth

- I love my country but bedamned if I can stomach what the government is doing to it. We need a better class of bums, or at least Congressthings with a better grasp of the Constitution and a greater willingness to listen to the people they supposedly represent. I'm not holding my breath waiting, which brings us to:

- We have the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and, if we must, the Code of Federal Regulations. The Roman Republic had the Twelve Tables, and look where that got their Republic in the end. When the weight of Law grows too heavy, the crowd cries for a Caesar. (Still, the Roman Republic had a good long run, as governments go).

- On the other hand, I like the way we increasingly celebrate Independence Day with what sounds like a running blackpowder battle. Though I do wish they'd knock off after midnight. Still, Our Civic Leaders spend most of my youth and early adulthood blanding the celebrations to a "sit down and watch the professionals do it" event and it's nice to see it get back to more the kind of loud-noise exuberance traditionally associated with the day.

- Is it disconcerting or reassuring that Kasey Kasem first treated listeners to American Top 40 41 years ago today? Is he deliberately paraphrasing Oscar Wilde[1] in his signature closing line?[2]
____________________________________
1. "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
2. "Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars."

The Biggest Solid-Fuel Rocket Engine Ever Built

It never flew.

The construction facility and testbed sit moldering away in a Florida swamp:

Pssst: didja know we already landed people on Mars? No, really! Well, sorta really. From what I see on YouTube, someone's been using the place for a junkyard.

Breakfast Sunday, -- No, Lunch

Sliced mettwurst (the uncooked kind, that is; there are at least three sorts all claiming the name) fried up with diced potatoes, onions and scrambled eggs; a couple of carrots for night vision* and fresh sweet marjoram from Tam's herb garden to point it up: Yum!
There may be better mild sausage than mettwurst but I doubt it. Between the sausage and the marjoram, this needed no additional seasoning -- I did cheat, and used three strips of streaky bacon for starters. They're crumbled back in at the finish.
____________________________________
* Only not quite. Hey, didja know they grow purple carrots in the Far East? Want!

Lunch In SoBro (Saturday)

...A very late lunch or possibly an early supper. One of my coworkers (Lance, the Atomic Ferret) had mentioned a new restaurant serving Indonesian food (and possibly soon to add Dutch, which is kind of historically accurate). It's called Garuda and it's gooooood!Tam and I stopped by, thinking to check the hours and come back later. The door was wide open and the place looked inviting, so we stopped right then. (Tam has the bigger picture on our afternoon.) Indonesian cuisine has a little in common with Thai and Indian but takes the spices and staple foods of that part of the world and gives them a different twist. We started with spring rolls; the wrapping was a different batter than one usually sees, and soft rather than crunchy; the filling was different too, and very tasty. And while hot and sweet condiments were available, they, too were different -- the hot a delicious but not overpowering chili sauce rather than mustard and the sweet a tangy spiced pineapple puree.

I had cold chai tea, a very refreshing drink. I like spiced tea and this stands out, more like the Ethiopian version than Indian, but with milk.

My entree was chicken curry on rice, a substantial dish and flavorful (face it, chicken and rice is one of the staple foods of the world. Outside the far, frozen North, what culture doesn't have some version of it?). Tam had Beef Rendang, beef and potatoes over noodles, in a nice sauce.

Unlike a lot of Indian food, the dishes were not at all "soupy," and seemed to be more fork/chopticks items rather than intended to be scooped up with flatbread.

Service was friendly and attentive.

Our opening course was misplaced (they were careful to ask if we had seafood allergies, had set it aside and about then, the appetizers showed up) and arrived after the meal: krupuk, fried prawn crackers, with peanut sauce. A remarkably good combination of tastes. (Tam promises to buy a big bag of them at the oriental grocery store; I'm hoping not-to-far-away Sakura Mart has them).

We will be back! --And not just for the shadow puppets, though they're pretty cool. (If you were wondering who or what a "Garuda" might be, here's the info.)

Greening Roseholme Cottage

No, no, not the Greeeeeen kind of greening -- I'm having the house painted.

The old color is a very dark rose shade (well, of course) with white trim. Nice enough but I wanted something more restful. After a false start, I've gone with a medium grayish-green and cream trim; I'll still have a little bit of the old cranberry/dark rose hue for minor trim, like brackets and the funny little trim piece at the very peak of the roof. Here are the basic colors, plus the overly-wasibi green and butter-yellow I tried first:Yes, the old paint is kind of awful and the siding, most of it 1924 original, has seen better days; this is the West wall, which takes the brunt of incoming weather. It faces the well-fenced back yard, so I don't mind conducting experiments on it.

My oldest nephew (way growed up and doing freelance handyman work between jobs) will be doing the painting. He'll scrape the loose bits off and prime it first to control bleed-through. Should be...interesting.

I also picked up some patching mortar for the foundation -- I don't expect I'll do all that great a job but there are some pretty big gaps between the blocks that want filled on the walls of the tiny crawl space under the kitchen extension at the back of the house. (Roseholme is an irregularly-shaped house over a square basement, with a small crawl spaces under the front half of the living room and a leeeetle one under the back third of the kitchen. I don't know why -- maybe it was cheaper?)

Got the test-painting done, came indoors, had a soft drink and decided to lay down. Three hours later....! I blame some of it on a very tasty late lunch at a new Broad Ripple eatery, which will be the subject of a later post.

IMPD vs. Useful Actions

Tam points it out: Indy's Finest have been putting on a major dog & pony show of force along the Monon Trail, while somehow entirely failing to mention the single greatest safety improvement: as of Friday just past, if you have a carry permit (from anywhere), you may carry along nearly all city bike trails (parks, too) without violating a city ordinance with your ordnance.

(The sole possible exception is the Central Canal Towpath Trail. The property is owned by the water company; while city owns the utility and thus ownership ultimately traces back to you, the taxpayer, there's sufficient room for lawyers to argue it, which they are.)

Meanwhile, an example of IMPD's approach: biking back from Sunday's BlogMeet, I saw four (4) IMPD cruisers parked just off 61st St. and the Monon. Uh-oh, thought I, a pal of Sumdood has done struck again. Crossing the bridge over Kessler, I met 4 IMPD officers strolling the other way, chatting amiably and bein' Highly Visible.

I smiled and waved; they don't decide where they're going to patrol, after all, and despite a spate of bad apples, most IMPD officers are a-okay. But holy cow, if the Trail is soooooo dangerous in that stretch of Broad Ripple in broad daylight that the po-lice have to take it in fire teams, WTF am I doing on it all alone-o? Conversely, if it ain't, why are My Tax Dollars payin' four guys to do the work of one (and a lone patrolperson would be a lot more approachable) while somewhere else in town, a slum or subdivision goes unpatrolled?

'Cos "face time" and "showin' the badge" is what you do instead of something.

With all due respect to your boss, officers, while you're operating in bridge foursomes, you or one of your peers is all that much less likely to be where I'd want you when fun-loving youths energetically importune me for spare and not-so-spare cash. I'll be countin' on my sidearm for first response to trouble I didn't see soon enough to flee.

They sure do got 'em in purty uniforms, though.

New Chemex User:

From SpeakerTweaker, commenting on "Real Coffee, A Dollar A Day:"

I caught this post back when you wrote it, and the whole Chemex thing stuck in my head for a while. After having hand-drip coffee from a buddy (what a similar concept), I decided to splurge on the Chemex.

Well, as luck would have it, before I got a chance to order one, The Wifey spotted the 40oz. version in World Market here in San Antonio. They even stock the special filters.

Huzzah! Getting some coffee from a local shop this afternoon. I'll let you know how it turns out!

Enjoy! The better the coffee, the better the brew -- and good water helps, too. (Indy city water is pretty variable).

Eyeglasses Update

As luck would have it, UPS arrived as I was at the back door to leave this morning. Tam signed for it and ran the package to me and later on at work, I had a nice "lunch" (about five minutes, a partial lunch) moving my lenses over to the new frames.

About 26 hours from order to arrival. I'm happy.

"Thank You, Sir, May I Have Another?"

A nameless ninny at The Week chides us: "Quit picking on the TSA," claims random pat-downs and full-body searches protect us all from the scourge of blue-eyed jihadiots and concludes by chirping, "If any of these allegedly outrageous pat-downs had occurred on October 11, 2001, the general reaction would have been, 'What an awful shame that things have come to this, but you can't be too careful.'"

O rilly? Aw, let's break it down:

1. The odds of a random closer-look finding Bad Guys (not just Mr. Albert Qaeda and his singing incendiaries, but D. B. Cooper and the addled hippie who just wants to go to Cuba, too) are, well, random.

2. Honest to Murgatroyd, the writer tells us, "It is indisputable that the ranks of violent Islamist jihadists include people who definitely do not look the part.... While it may well be true that the entire population of, say, white-western-mom-violent-Islamist-jihadists would fit into a booth at McDonald's, it is also true that it doesn't take more than that to bring down an airplane." This implies A) all swarthy passengers ("looks the part") are being closely scrutinized, which is both manifestly untrue and would be greeted by cries of outrage (and forsooth, the world has both zillions of dark-complected, dark-haired people who aren't Muslims and Muslims who don't look like "Arabs"); and B) that plane-bombers are a statistically greater risk than hamfisted maintenance and pilot fatigue or wind shear, enough risk to randomly deep-search some but not all airline passengers. How d'ye suppose the feddies calibrate that?

3. Pining for the panicky, over-wrought days immediately after the filthy bastards adopted airplanes as mass-murder weapons is preposterous; flying was never safer than it was at that time, when the first passenger to even look like he was in a skyjacking mood would -- and on several occasions did -- find himself bottom man in an impromptu game of pile-up. The element of surprise was lost and passengers were not in a just-go-along mood. They still aren't.

Looky here, you anonymous, nanny-state-worshiping witling, if pat-downs and nudie-scanners are the answer, they otta be doin' 'em to everybody before they get on a plane -- ground crew, pilots, flight attendants, all passengers. --And if they do work so blamed well, how many would-be malefactors have they caught? Anyone? Oh, I'll tell you: none. Zero.

Security theatre: it's what they do instead of something; and the victims, some of them, cheer 'em on.