Yep, it’s Kansas, and it’s summer. 😉
What cooling thoughts do you have today?
fnord
Wednesday, 06/24/09, Public Square
Filed under The Public Square
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Yep, it’s Kansas, and it’s summer. 😉
What cooling thoughts do you have today?
fnord
Filed under The Public Square
PrairiePopulistsAndProgressives.net 
Okay, watered and fed the dogs and cats, took Rufus and Shy out, had a smoke, put the coffee on, took my meds, fired up the computer, turned the lights out in my son’s room (he fell asleep with them on) poured my first cup……………… all before 7:30 AM.
What the Hell?
Oh well, I am up now so I may as well see what’s going on in the world.
Back later……………………..
Hope ya’ll have a good morning.
Hear that air conditioner run, hear it hum. Why is it making a sound like a cash register?
Oh, yeah, Westar will be cashing in in about twenty-five days.
Ouch.
What do you say when you have nothing to say? Second day in a row that I guess I would call “writer’s block”. I feel like saying something and start out typing only to get a couple of sentences on the screen and decide its babble. Then delete it and set to look at the blank screen.
We’ll get a cool spell, Biker. After all, it’s KANsass. 🙂
Yep, I was up to take the dog out early too. G-kids are still sleeping and it’s past time to make sure daughter is up for work. I’ve added friends on FB and am currently at the keyboard, getting words on paper. Slow going, but it always is in the beginning. (We’re in chapter 4, actually, so not so “beginning”.)
Y’all have an excellent day, and by all means, STAY COOL!
That ain’t happening – I just got summoned to perform an emergency brake job for a cash-strapped friend.
Under a car port.
Damn.
By noon, you’ll probably be able to smell me from East Wichita. My twenty-four hour deodorant won’t last an hour in this heat.
BTW, fnord, funny pic! I have a friend who’s only a little more than an acquaintance, in Memphis who LOVES the Wizard of Oz In fact, that’s kind of how we came to know each other. I’m sure she’d appreciate the humor, even though she’s not in Kansas.
Speaking of hot, went out and cut a few branches and started a pile. Got a lot more to do. Early or late, the afternoon heat is too much.
And to think, I grew up at the pool.
My first job there too, 50 cents an hour!
My yard is in desperate need of a mow job, but I’ll be darned if I risk another bout with asthma. The question is how to motivate the daughters into doing it withought naaaaagging.
Biker, have no fear of the smell. I’ll be too surrounded by my own to notice anyone else’s. ewwwwwww!
I was kinda figuring that T’ would hit me with a “but you always stink, Clark!” comment, but I guess he is too much of a gentleman to take the obvious.
Or, he’s just getting slow in his old age.
Hee hee heeeee…..
“Okay, watered and fed the dogs and cats”
Even though I know what that means, I cant get the picture out of my head of Biker standing there with a garden hose and sprinkler head showering the animals….
And TSTBGOP? Welcome to journalism, a profession where writer’s block is as common as hand cramps from pencils used to be!
SEKB, stay inside dammit! None of us are as young or heat resistant as we used to be.
When I drove wheat truck for my dad, I used to wear a bikini and while I was parked on the edge of the field waiting for a load, (max 20 min) I would take my beach towel, climb up on the truck, spread my towel on the roof, and lie there until I heard the combine approach.
And yeah, the metal was hot enough to fry an egg, much less my teenage skin.
Then I’d climb back into the cab and roar off to let the combine dump. Then I’d move to the edge of the field and repeat the drill. When the truck was full, I’d go home and dump it in the auger and put it in the bin. Grab a can of soda, and off to the field again.
This went on for 12 or more hours a day for a week.
No wonder I was thin and brown back then. Now I’m fat and white.
And lazy. Did I mention lazy?
Lazy???? Not hardly!!!!!!
Just think of the wrinkles and skin cancer we were growing for the future back then under that sun! Probably a good thing we grew up and quit. 🙂
I WIN ON LAZY
napped with the pup after lunch.
…of course in the old days, the women in the house at harvest didnt have it any easier. They had huge meals to fix for tons of people. Three times a day, plus snacks and sandwiches for late afternoon.
Hot and sweaty in the steamy kitchen. All. Day. Long. Hell, they’d butcher the chickens early in the day to be fried in time for lunch! The “sponge” for the bread would have been set the night before, then baked in the morning, just to get the house heated up.
And dishes. Mountains of dishes and hot steaming dish water. Then back to preparing the next meal and baking the desserts for afternoon and evening.
The guys wouldnt eat until ten or eleven at night, (after they washed at the pump) then cleanup and prep for the next day’s meals until midnight.
My granddad Bender used to have a harvest and threshing crew, and they traveled around and cut wheat and came back and threshed it. My grandma followed in the wagon with chickens tied up in the back. They killed and ate them along the way.
What a life. I wouldnt have lasted a day much less a week.
Our house didn’t have AC, so if I wanted to make pies, they had to be started early in the a.m. Too late, and the dough wouldn’t roll, sticking to the rolling pin and driving me nuts.
I haven’t made a pie in years. Don’t plan to, either. Mrs. Smith does a great job! I sure miss my great-aunt Dorothy’s chocolate pie though. Heaven on earth!
LOL PP one time I actually wrote a story about writer’s block, “Your guts feels as if it will explode unless you can release the fluctuations of creativity! The words run out as a flow of meaningless links to a idea yet to be thought of. But in the end there is no release, your guts still feel blotted and pained by the pressure to expel And that which appears is liken to the foulness of word diarrhea ”.
Funny, but writer’s block hits me exactly the opposite. It’s like looking down, down, down into an empty well, dropping the bucket and hearing the thud. A little reading or a few movies usually cures it. That and BIC-HOK — Butt In Chair-Hands On Keyboard. 😉
See, the blank page is a scary thing, but as a wise woman (Nora Roberts?) once said, you can’t fix a blank page. So you write. You write crap. And pretty soon it isn’t such crap anymore, and then you can go back and fix it all. The words WILL come. Really. I promise. 🙂
Now, if we’re talking ideas, forgeddaboutit.
Well, I am back from my brake job task – sweaty, greasy and a little worse for wear.
It was a relatively easy job and cheap too. The jacking of the van and yanking the wheels was the toughest part, the brake work went pretty easy. If I hadn’t taken a beer break and a dozen smoke breaks, I coulda been done in an hour.
My “rule” for doing a job is simple “do it right or don’t do it at all.”
I break my own rule all the time.
If it had been my vehicle, I would have replaced both rotors and one caliper, but she didn’t have the green, so I did a “one year” brake job. One rotor was metal to metal on the inside side, with a noticeable but not severe amount of scoring. The scoring was caused by a sticky caliper that did not exert even pressure. So I just replaced the pads and went with it.
It works fine (of course, I do good work) and I got it done for less than twenty bucks.
Not including copious amount of soap that I will need in a few minutes.
Now I know who to call for a brake job! LOL
Had my front brakes replaced last fall. I fear the back ones need it now, but it’ll have to wait until the money’s in the bank. Luckily, a friend of the girls offered for cheap. Parts weren’t so cheap, but sure beat going into a shop.
Then there are the front tires that are wearing, the cracked windshield, thanks to the grandson’s toy truck, the scratched and chipped paint, again, thanks to the grandson, and the headliner that droops, then blows when the windows are open. No AC. It won’t hold freon.
I’m not complaining. It runs better than the last two I had, and it cost me nothing, thanks to a very generous son-in-law. Now if he could just find me a bus for after the next grandkid comes along in September…
Ah, most folks don’t know jack about vehicle maintenance and that is why dealers and shops make tons of money.
(That wasn’t a slap at you, Wick.)
Rear brakes rarely need to be changed. I have seen pick up trucks with 150K miles and original rear brakes on them that didn’t need work.
Why? Because 75-80% of your braking is done by the front brakes, more if it is a heavily front loaded vehicle like a front wheel drive van or a pick up.
Usually, what is needed with rear brakes is an adjustment. Most vehicles have self-adjusting rear brakes.
If you have DRUM rear brakes or combo-brakes (disc and drum) the solution is simple.
Find an empty parking lot – drive quickly in reverse, about fifteen miles per hour and then depress the emergency brake pedal or grab the parking brake and stop suddenly. Do this three times.
If that doesn’t cure the problem, then your adjuster is probably rusted tight or maybe your brakes really do need to be changed.
Standard pricing from Will: Parts plus beer. Rear brakes shoes should be about twenty bucks, beer is $19.31 at Uncle Happy’s.
It is highly unusual from rear drums to need to be turned, but that happens. That would be extra, but pocketbooks can dictate a cheaper solution, depending on the miles on the vehicle.
Front brakes – about the same unless the rotors need to be changed out.
If so, add $50 to the tab.
I work on short notice and bring my own tools.
Ah, Will’s Super Service.
The brake lights keep coming on, but when I press harder, they go out. It started early in the spring with the rain. Doesn’t do it all the time, just when it wants to mess with me.
Oh, and I AM clueless, especially about cars. Well, pretty much. I can check and add oil, gas (yeah, really!), brake fluid, coolant crap, change headlights and taillights and a host of simple things. I know to STOP if my oil light comes on, then panic, not wait for it to get brighter. 🙂
And I can change a tire with the best of ’em. 😉
I just watched an interview with a Senator from Utah, on health care and he solutions to the problems.
On the forty million Americans that are not covered by insurance? Simply, the Government mandates you to get health insurance as simply as that problem solved!
BUT here is the brass ring of that, the Government also mandates that if you have employer based health insurance. your company will now give you the money they spend to provide you with insurance instead of them spending it for you.
Can you see where this is a failing? Here I will lay it out, your company goes to an insurance company and said. “I have fifty employees what rate will you charge for an insurance policy for those fifty employees?”.
Better yet, let say your employer is a subsidiary of a larger conglomerate. So now they are going to the insurance company and now they have five thousand employees.
What does that mean for you? Well the money your company is now giving you for insurance. Is the amount that they are paying as a multiple rate. Otherwise saying that the amount is the rate divide by five thousand. So if they are paying five thousand a month for the insurance for five thousand then you will get ONE dollar!
But, now you are to go forth as a singular to find health insurance, you go with your dollar and ask.
“ I am by myself what rate will you charge me for an insurance policy?”.
With five thousand on a policy the company is going to make money since only a few of those five thousand will become ill. You by yourself are more likely to cost the insurance company so your rate is much higher then the company’s.
I have purposely left out the party affiliation of this Senator… It is too much of an embarrassment.
No really I argue that not all Republicans are just that stupid, even when Michael Steele send out an e-mail to all the news media with a link to a USA today article about fat cat key members who got millions of dollars in Stimulus money for their states. He asked, “Where are the jobs? where is this money being spent? Where is the benefit to the nation for this money going to pork barrel projects?”
The link was to an article with Thad Cochran’s picture at the beginning the Republican Senator from Mississippi.
What does it mean? It means they don’t care.
I’d just watched a Fox news video online before you posted, tstbgop. Probably the same guy and a couple of other flunkies with well-padded pockets mouthing the talking points needed to sway the “general public” into thinking that those of us without health insurance don’t care. I was so furious at these people I was speechless.
“You only have to fill out a paper and sign it to get help with insurance.” Probably Medicaid or like Healthwave. Uh huh. Has he done this? Anybody wanna bet he is TOTALLY CLUELESS?
B.S. Pure and simple. 2 complicated pages, send copy of birth certificate–of which I spent $20+ to get in a jiffy–and the right arm of your first born so they can tell you that you don’t qualify…for whatever excuse they’ve thought up. Start with, “You make too much money,” and on to “You owe us $320, because although you stopped using our program before, we continued charging you for it, and never told you until now” reason.
Then they blame it on immigrants, both legal and illegal. 7 million of the 46 million uninsured. So tell me how the illegals are getting insurance? Oh, wait, anchor babies. Duh! I saw a couple of dozen of them last night in WM. I”m sure they have insurance. Not me. Now, if my youngest should get knocked up, things change.
Of the 90% uninsured, they say, who happen to be the latest unemployed. 99% will only be without health insurance for a month. The rest for only 2 months.
Anybody ever heard the word PRECONDITIONS?
Screw ’em. Screw ’em all!!
Sanford was having an affair OMG and he said his four boys was a blessing from God.
Maybe except on father’s day when they are not as important as a piece of…. LOL I can’t stop, his boys are in his heart and his hard is in her…. What a Buffoon the fool just needs to pull out a handgun and blow his head off on Camera it would be less painful to watch!
Wicked, we have a saying in my family: Poppa can fix anything.
Usually that is true.
For my usual fee, I can take a look and probably fix it. If I cannot fix it, no fee.
Guaranteed.
I am such a bad boy – I just ran down to Dillon’s, kind of hungry, but just buying stuff for tonight’s dinner. Stopped at the meat counter to buy some ground chuck for tacos when I noticed that brisket was on sale for $3.49 a pound.
I bought five pounds.
I have no idea when I will have the time to smoke it and when the family will be around to eat it, but I bought it anyway.
I was gonna buy about three pounds, but the slab weighed in at five and I just said “I’ll take it all.”
Oh, well, we will have one Hell of a barbecue.
I’m wiped out.
How did I work 50 hours every week, plus the laundry, shopping, cooking…? Musta been younger, in better shape and conditioned to the condition I was in.
Half a day tomorrow and I get off for four weeks — good behavior. 😉
I need to mow and the hours that can be done with any degree of comfort seem to be really dark hours. So damn the comfort and git er done.
Are we still on for Saturday?? I check email each evening and don’t see anything.
Steven,
Enjoy your short vacation! My Dad always said we’re given so many days and the ones you spend fishin’ don’t count against your total. I hope it’s cool too, at least the evenings and mornings should be much cooler even if the daytimes are warm. Are you camping or will you have some comforts?
At night, the Stacie and I are staying in a ski resort that was built by the Steve Forbes. It is small, but very nice.
We will have high end cable, which we don’t have at home. We will watch it, when not fishing.
My friend at work and I discussed the possibility that rainbow trout are the dumbest fish on earth. I think that case could be made…
“I think it would be much better for the country and for him personally (to resign). I come from the business side. If you had a chairman or president in the business world facing these allegations, he’d be gone.” [Sanford on Clinton, The Post and Courier, 9/12/98]
But…but…that was BEFORE he met his mistress! Things change.
These are the places we stay:
http://www.alv35.com/floor_plan_and_photos.htm
They are nice and relatively close to us here in ICT. The fishing is good. The place remains a fairly well kept secret…
Very nice. I could plant my backside on that deck and veg out for days.
I missed the trip with friends to Tennessee a few years ago. My oldest honeymooned there. One of these days, I’ll get there.
http://www.cabinfevervacations.com/
But this is what I’m wishing for with a couple of friends, maybe this fall.
http://www.lyonstwinmansions.com
wow,
followed sekanblogger here from a friends blog site…
seems like a nice place…I’ll check back often!
Welcome, Michelle.
Visit often, or just pull up a chair and make yourself at home.