Serving the Lord, helping the kids, and spending the last third of my life working my way back to the place where I can hang with the boy.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Education

Today's lesson, girls and boys, is about education. Not education in general, it's more like when your mom used to ask you what you learned when you came home from school each day. Today I learned 4 things.



Thing Number 1)

Previously, I learned that when you need to remove 56 years worth of rust from an old Chevy pickup frame, a tool like this makes the job go much faster. Today I learned that you REALLY want to keep your fingers out of this tool when it is running.





Thing Number 2)

A year and a half ago when I built the shop I purchased a first aid kit and hung it on the wall in there. It was somewhat ironical that Monday (that would be the day before yesterday) I was doing some cleaning, noticed the first aid kit hanging there and had a moment of reflection when I pondered what might be inside the kit and whether it would ever get used. Today I learned what the inside of the kit looked like (it looked like this and had everything I needed)


Thing Number 3)



This is actually a self portrait showing the front of my shirt. It is cropped so you can see the little spears of wire sticking out of me. I already knew the spinning wire wheel does that to you. Today I learned that so many are hitting you that you might not notice one that sticks in your head just below your hair line (but someone at McDonnalds will tell you about it when you stop in to get your lunch)

Thing Number 4)

My fourth and final thing I learned today is that this (another self portrait)...

...is not enough protection (although it seems like a lot - look, I even have ear plugs for the noise). I now wear leather gloves too!

Monday, December 20, 2010

A Laugh Out Loud Moment

So I'm cutting 2 inch angle iron for a project I'm working on. Sparks are flying everywhere as they always do but I've done this so many times in the past week that I really don't mind being bathed in the fire.

That was when I smelled the burning hair.

You would think this post would be about the burning hair, but it isn't. I clearly remember having a conscious thought. It was:

"I am in the middle of a shower of sparks and I smell burning hair ... that can't be good".

Obviously I stopped cutting and patted my head down to smother any fire that was going on up there but by the time I finished ensuring I wasn't on fire anymore I pondered the thought that triggered the fire prevention activity and started laughing so hard that I had to take pause before returning to my task.

Now if I can just work that into a conversation with another human being...

"I am in the middle of a shower of sparks and I smell burning hair ... that can't be good".

Who Gets to Decide?

Man's best friend.

Shortly after I woke this morning Michelle told me that the dog (or dogs - we are dog sitting for Mandy and Jack) had managed to pee in four separate places during the night. All four spots were in the room with the dog door (mere feet from the great outdoors). As she exited for work she asked me if I would rake the poop up in the yard today too.

So I'm on my hands and knees with a rag and Clorox water cleaning up last night's fun and games when I look up and I see this:




It was at that point I began to wonder who decided Newbie was my best friend.

You see, I went to Home Depot yesterday to get something they didn't have. As I was exiting the store empty handed I walked by a display of safety glasses and pondered the shower of sparks I seem to be taking daily now that I've taken up metal working as a new hobby. I decided to buy two pairs of new safety glasses so I would have an extra should someone want to watch me work at some future point.

When I got home I wanted to clean the house up some (Michelle was returning from a solo week of vacation) but knowing my feeble 50+ year old mind, I realized that failure to put the new glasses in the shop would result in them being hopelessly lost (without too much grief from me as I probably wouldn't even remember that I purchased them in the first place). To dodge that scenario I hung them on the knob of the back door where I was sure to see them the next time I was heading out to the shop.

You can probably guess the rest. At some point during the night my "best friend" decided to help me out by ripping through the bottom of the bag, taking both pairs of plastic safety glasses out into the yard, and, being unable to write a love note, put the only real signature he had on them.

Time passes.

I get the rake and start taking on the virtual sea of puppy droppings. It's been a week and these two dogs are a remarkable factory. If only they were dropping car parts in the yard. I'd have a hummer by now. I'm sure of it.

When Michelle left she tried to soften the request by saying she just wanted me to rake the bountiful harvest into a pile, I didn't need to pick it up. Considering this I appriciated the gesture but also knew there was no good reason to leave the job undone once I got a nice deep pile. As I grumbled about the fact that I didn't get to vote on Newbie being my best friend, I headed into the garage to get a shovel.

I found the shovel, walked back to the yard, opened the gate to see Jack's best friend rolling in the pile.

It was then that I knew I had to go public in the blogosphere and ask the question. Who gets to decide?

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Pointless and Amazing

I've done this thing from time to time when I find a very liberal political discussion, and I participate. I do it because I think I will be amused by the exchange of ideas and the debate will grow me. I think I'm done doing it.

Actually it surprises me how bitter, angry and condescending many folks on the left are. I go in and make bold statements about the issues and the responses typically include personal insults, shots at my family, sweeping derogatory generalizations about republicans and ALWAYS include attacks on my intelligence.

My approach was typically to enter the conversation with something provocative to get their attention, then after they react and respond engage in a friendly, polite, and hopefully intense dialog.

Let's say, for example, I found a thread that was addressing the roll-back of the Bush tax cuts. The liberal folks would be going on and on about how the rich are evil and must pay more while they themselves are having a hard time and should pay less and get more help from the government. In the thread there seem to be folks who believe if we all pay, say, 15% in taxes, it isn't right because the "rich" aren't paying pay more (and they should). They think they should be paying 5% and the rich should be paying 40%.

I must admit it isn't clear to me why the rich must pay more but let's set that aside for a moment. I would want to argue that 15% of $20,000 was $3,000 and 15% of a million was $150,000 so the gal making a million would pay 7.5 times the $20,000 yearly salary as an annual tax (and that is MORE). If we had an equal percentage the folks who make more still pay more.

So I would enter the thread and my provocative attention getter (to ensure folks would want to read my second post to the thread which makes the point above) would be something like "If you expect people who make over $250,000 to pay 40% of their income in taxes you should be willing to stand up and pay 40% yourself or you should sit down and shut up".

The response is actually fairly universal and predictable. They will start by calling me a jackass. (I believe the last thread it was "You are an evil greedy jackass") and then they would set into personal attacks like "You are a horrible, despicable human being" and "You are what is wrong with this country" or "you should be jailed (or killed or some other horrible fate)." They will ALWAYS tell me I'm uneducated and not as smart as them.

I will then put up my second post making my point about fiscal policy and adding that they really don't know me well enough to make judgments about my intelligence and greed. I rarely get through the second round without sweeping generalizations about the evils of "people like me" and additional personal attacks. I can more or less count on being called a bigot in round two and it is not uncommon for them to start taking shots at my family. The last round one of them got on my face book page, saw that I read Sarah Palin's commentaries and then attacked me because I would have to be ignorant and a bigot if I didn't hate her.

I am flawed if I am not smart enough to hate someone.

It is amazing.

Lest I distort the truth it is important that I say there are some folks who will stick with the issues. Some will tell me that they think the rich should pay more because a 50% tax won't have an effect on their standard of living where as someone who is making $30,000 a year could not survive on $15,000 (thus providing the dialog and debate I was originally seeking) but I've never engaged in one of these discussions where someone didn't put all their energy into hating me (sometimes in scary ways).

So I have decided my last such discussion was my last such discussion. I've decided the whole thing is fairly pointless. I'm not going to convince them of anything. They are elite and could never hear the words of an ignorant, greedy bigot such as me. For my part, I love the debate but I've decided it isn't worth all the negative energy. I typically spend 75% of my responses addressing attacks on me as a person rather than discussing the issues. If I can't discuss the issues the participation is pointless. The negative energy is pointless. Entering a dialog with people who are too elite to hear my side is pointless. Talking with people who hate me so much that they can't discuss the issues without insulting me and my family is ... well, pointless.

It's truly amazing.