And So It Goes

The older I get, the clumsier I seem to get. My graceful days, if they ever existed, may be behind me now.

I opened a can of black beans, put half the beans in a bowl, added onion and cayenne pepper and chili pepper, and heated it for part of my evening meal. As I cleaned up the kitchen, I bumped the remaining half can of beans and it tipped over. I saw it falling and grabbed for it, but missed. My hand hit the toaster, knocking it off the countertop. Black beans and bean juice poured onto the kitchen floor, spattering everywhere. After a ricochet off the wall, the toaster hit the floor hard and half the plastic on one end broke off, revealing the mechanism inside. I stopped still and looked at the mess I had suddenly created, and I thought, “This is not good.” In my younger days I would have thrown in a couple of juicy expletives. I’ve made too many messes to get that upset any more. Once, when I was painting the walls and ceiling of this very same kitchen, I tipped over a half gallon of paint onto the floor. Not just onto the floor, but onto the brand new, just installed, vinyl flooring. Oy.

After cleaning the kitchen floor, I decided to bathe. So I showered, toweled dry, and went to my bedroom to dress. It’s evening and I’m not going out, so I put on a warm-up suit and thick, crew socks. That’s when I noticed I was down to my last pair of clean socks. I pulled them on, making a mental note to wash the laundry first thing in the morning. Feeling thirsty, I walked to the kitchen to get something to drink. I like to use a large plastic mug that holds about 3 cups. I filled the mug with water, added a squirt of lemon juice and some sweetener to make lemonade. As I turned to get ice cubes I bumped the mug on something which caused it to spill a quarter cup of lemonade onto my left foot. Oy, again. I stared at my wet sock. Should I leave it on or take it off? I don’t have another clean sock. This one will dry faster if I leave it on. So I do. As I type these words, my right foot is toasty warm while my left foot is cool on top and feels a bit icky.

And so it goes: the life of the single man.

Spring Snow

It has been a colder than normal spring in central Virginia. High temperatures have been in the low 40s whereas they should be in the mid 50s. Yesterday, five days into spring, we got snow. For several hours the snow fell thickly. It looked really beautiful as it fell.

I went to a window and shot a photo through the window. When I looked at the photo I laughed. I hadn’t even noticed the window screen, but the camera’s autofocus had locked onto it perfectly. I went back to the window and shot a photo through the glass in the upper sash, which lacked a screen. This time the image was not marred by a screen; instead, it was marred by small drops of water – former snowflakes that hit the window and instantly melted.

But even had it not been marred, the photo would have been nothing spectacular. A photo taken while snow is falling looks gray, because at a distance the millions of snowflakes are not visible as individual flakes. Instead, they serve to reduce the picture’s contrast. The sky is light gray, the ground is an even lighter-gray, and everything else is some other shade of gray. None of the photos were worth posting. Here, I’ll show you:

<< In this photo, I increased the luminance to brighten the image, and tweaked the hue to make the white’s a little whiter. Yes, I bleached the photo to rid it of a pervasive off-color fog. Even so, the photo still looks most unremarkable.

I had a weird wakeup from sleep this morning. I woke up and went to the kitchen. I fixed breakfast and ate, and did some other morning-type things. Then – I woke up, again, and realized I had still been asleep the first time I thought I had awakened. Once again I went to the kitchen and did my usual morning activities. And then – I woke up, again. This time, for real.

I hope.

Lucky Egg

I cracked open an egg this morning and found it contained a double yolk. Are double yolks lucky? The last time that happened to me was on September 30, 2010. I know because I posted a picture of it.

I read about someone who cracked open a jumbo hen’s egg and found inside it not only a double yolk but another egg complete with shell: an egg inside an egg. I have to ask, “Where’s the quality control? These chickens are getting out of hand.”

Egg shells are not just white or brown; there are varieties of hens that lay eggs in other colors: blue, blue-green, green, turquoise, and lavender. Regardless of the shell’s color, the yolks are yellow-orange. Good thing, too. Dr. Seuss may enjoy green eggs and ham, but I would have to pass.

It’s time for a roof update. I hired a new roofer named Timothy. He’s the third contractor in thirty days to examine my roof for a leak. The first was Jesús, the man in charge of the crew that re-shingled my roof. He diagnosed the leak but would never return to make the repair. Next was Ed, who came to my house three times to squirt caulking here and there but did not stop the leak.

Timothy tells me what Jesús told me, which is that the L-flashing along the dormer wall must be replaced with step flashing. I agree that L-flashing should never have been used in that location. Furthermore, everything Ed did with the caulking gun has only made matters worse. Openings in the dormer trim that are there to allow rainwater to drain out from behind the trim were caulked over, damming rainwater behind the vinyl where it will find a way into my house instead of running out across the shingles. Timothy said he can fix it. He gave me an estimate and said he will be here tomorrow, Saturday, to do the work.

Maybe my double yolk will turn out to be a lucky egg; maybe I’ve found a roofer who is both competent and keeps his word. Maybe I’ll have a roof that is both new and doesn’t leak. I have my fingers crossed.

[Update: It is noon Saturday. Timothy and a helper arrived at 9 AM. They worked on the roof for three hours. They’re confident they have fixed the leak.]

Sink Drain Lesson

I took time off from my day job as Internet Philosopher to attack my kitchen sink leak. The sink was installed by Home Depot not many years ago. What do I know about fixing sink drains? I’m an Internet Philosopher, not a plumber. But I went at it anyway.

First, I removed the pipe connected to the sink drain (which I soon learned was called a sink basket.) There was a honkin’ big locknut on the bottom side holding the sink basket in place. I intended to remove the sink basket, put plumber’s putty on the underside of its rim, and re-install the sink basket. I spent a good 15 minutes trying to remove the locknut with a hammer and screwdriver, tapping at the tabs on the locknut, before I realized there had to be a better way. And I was right. A trip to Home Depot’s plumbing section revealed these two items.

This handy gadget is called a Basket Strainer Locknut Wrench. It’s adjustable to fit different size sink baskets. It fits onto the little tabs on the locknut and gives you plenty of leverage to turn the locknut.

But what happens if you turn the locknut and the sink basket turns with it?

That’s where this next handy gadget comes in.

This is called a Basket Strainer Wrench. It fits into the sink basket strainer (the opening through which water runs out of your kitchen sink). Using this tool, you can keep the sink basket from turning as you turn the locknut.

I also believe I found why the sink was leaking around the drain. The douchebag gentleman who installed the sink left out one important component: a thin, cardboard washer.

During installation, the sink basket gets a bead of plumber’s putty under its rim and is placed in the sink drain opening. Below the sink, a rubber washer goes onto the basket, followed by a cardboard washer, then a locknut. The rubber washer seals the drain to prevent leaks. The locknut holds the basket in place and, by squeezing the rubber washer tightly against the bottom of the sink, prevents water from leaking out. The cardboard washer, which looks quite unimportant, goes between the rubber washer and the locknut, and it’s smooth surface allows the installer to tighten the locknut tighter. Without the cardboard washer, the locknut would have to be tightened against the rubber washer, which would be much harder to do. Rubber offers more resistance to something sliding against it than does slick cardboard. So from the beginning the locknut was never tight enough. The sink drain was watertight for a while, until one day it wasn’t – because the installer threw out the cardboard washer. It’s the “I’ve-been-doing-this-for-twenty-years” mentality. (See The Electrician.) It’s the kind of mistake that, in different circumstances, might bring down an airliner. “Oh look, a leftover part. It must not be important.”

I hope we’ve all learned something from this.

Sara Jackson-Holman

The song is Freight Train from Sara’s second album Cardiology. The video was put together by Olivia Paige.

Life Path

"Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one."
– Martin Heidegger

Heidegger stated the obvious. Or perhaps it is obvious only because Heidegger stated it. I suppose it appears we make choices. But maybe choices are made for us. Maybe all the days of our lives exist in a single instant, like a motion picture film. You can hold the reel in your hand and it’s all there – the beginning, the middle, the end – all at the same time, existing in a single moment. You must run the film through a projector, frame-by-frame, to experience its reality, just as we must be born, live day-by-day, and die in order to experience our reality. Can the people in the movie make choices? At any given moment it appears to us that the people in the movie are choosing their paths. But at the same time we know that their destinies are already decided, and not a bit of their reality can be changed.

Maybe we step into the lifetime that best challenges our weaknesses. Isn’t that how we grow?

Looking forward from our beginning, our path seems to run past many doors. Some doors open but most never do. The doors begin to close early. Geography, family connections, environment, nurture, physical and mental aspects of our being: each unlocks some doors while firmly locking others. With the perspective of time we look back and see that many doors never were accessible to us, despite well-intentioned clichés about positive thinking and being all we can be; catch-phrases that assure us we can do anything, be anything, if we patiently persevere. It’s an illusion, a sleight of hand, a deception that allows us to credit ourselves for our successes and blame others for their failures, even as those others were locked on their own unswerving paths.

“Every man is born as many men” – to his doting parents and grandparents, maybe.

What Next?

I have definitely offended the water gods. First, my roof which I re-shingled 2 years ago springs a leak and damages my ceiling, and the guy who took my money says, essentially, “tough beans.” Then last night I walked into the kitchen and found water on the floor. I opened the cabinet under the sink and it had water in it. A quick inspection with a flashlight revealed my kitchen sink is leaking around the drain. It just started leaking all by itself. I think I can fix the kitchen sink. It’s just … annoying.

And, I’m out of food. I don’t feel like going to the grocery store because it’s a cold, gray, rainy day. Actually, I’m not totally out of food. There’s always “cupboard detritus” – the odds and ends left in the cupboard when you run out of stuff for meals. I do a pantry inspection and find I have a couple apples, a couple bananas, lemons and limes, tuna fish, a pint of cow’s milk, a quart of almond milk, a jar of peanut butter, a half jar of almond butter, a half dozen celery stalks, a couple cucumbers, a bag of kale greens. Ooh, summer sausage and jalapeño cheddar cheese, both unopened. I can make fruit smoothies and vegetable smoothies and snacks. Life is good.

The Long, Slow Fadeout

I went to my shrink this morning. I go every six months. He never knows who I am.

I enter his office and sit opposite him with his ginormous desk piled high with paperwork between us. “How have you been?” he always asks.

“About the same,” I always reply. He studies the results of the MMPI that I took when I first visited him. After that, the conversation runs something like this:

Shrink: “Your main problem is OCD.”
Me: “I don’t have OCD.”
Shrink: “According to your MMPI you do.”
Me: “And the MMPI can’t be wrong.”
Shrink: “It can be, but …” He studies the test results again. “You did answer several questions wrong …“

That was an odd thing for him to say. The MMPI test has 567 multiple choice questions. The questions are about “you”, such as, “Do you drink too much alcohol at least once a week?” If someone asks you a question about yourself, and you answer as truthfully as you can, how can the answer be wrong?

“What’s your favorite color.”
”Blue.”
”That answer is incorrect.”
”Uh … what?”

Color me puzzled.

Shrink: “You don’t rehash things over and over in your head?”
Me: “What kind of things? My PSA is high and it causes me to sometimes worry about whether I have prostate cancer. Is that OCD? Isn’t it normal to worry about some things?”

I look around his office. One wall is decorated with many official looking documents, each in a small, black frame. One of them declares his membership in some organization devoted to the study of OCD. I guess it’s true: To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

The doctor wants to give me a prescription for an OCD pill and becomes frustrated when I tell him I don’t need or want an OCD pill.

“Then why are you here?” he asks. I explain that I’m here so when the pharmacy calls to renew the prescription for the med he’s already got me on, he’ll know who I am. But as I speak the words I know they’re b.s. This guy never knows who I am.

I tell him I don’t need a prescription this time because I have enough refills to last six months. He ignores me and performs some incorrect math on his fingers, after which he decides I need a refill, and he writes it out and hands it to me.

“See you in September,” I tell him.
”September,” he says in agreement.
”I hope things go well for you until then.”
”Likewise.”

I leave, knowing that when I return in September he won’t know who I am. He’ll look at his little MMPI printout, and he will tell me I have OCD and try to get me to take a pill for it. He always does.

The grocery store is on my way home so I stop and pick up a half dozen meal items. When I get home I unpack the bag and discover an ice cold bottle of Dasani. I don’t buy bottled water, so where did the Dasani come from? Did I pay for it? I look at the receipt. Nope, the Dasani is not listed. I suspect the lady who was directly ahead of me in the checkout queue is, right about now, discovering she doesn’t have her Dasani.

I have a leaky roof and I’ve spoken with Jesús several times about it. Jesús re-shingled the roof, thus causing the leak. I called him last Thursday and he said he would come to my house the next day at 1 PM. At 2 PM the next day I called him and he said he would be at my house at 3. At 4:45 I called him and got no answer. I finally got him to my house on Saturday. He inspected the roof and assured me he would return on Monday, if not sooner, to repair the leak. I reminded him that the forecast called for rain Monday night and Tuesday and stressed the importance of fixing the leak before my ceiling was completely ruined. He promised to return on Sunday or Monday. Now it’s Thursday and I’ve heard nothing from him. So I call him.

“Jesús, this is Wayne. The last time we talked you said you were going to come by on Monday to fix my roof. Did you come by Monday?”

Long silence. Then Jesús says, “Who is this?”

It’s just a part of the long, slow fadeout. First you become invisible; waiters, waitresses and store clerks can’t see you. Then, after a few more years, you become conveniently forgettable. Oh, you may be young now, but the long, slow fadeout – it’s waiting for you.

Doldrums

I’m stuck in the doldrums. Doldrums – the word itself connotes, suggests, even sounds like a Sargasso Sea of the Soul. Is it the time of year, is it the weather, or is it me?

I arise at 9 AM. Breakfast. Two eggs fried in a puddle of grapeseed oil accompanied by the last two sausage patties in the fridge – pre-cooked courtesy of Jimmy Dean and company. Lately, I sometimes fry food in coconut oil. Coconut oil is 91% saturated fat. It has more saturated fat than beef fat, which is about 50% mono-unsaturated. (Yes, folks, half the fat in your rib-eye steak is the same kind of healthy fat found in olive oil.) Coconut oil is solid at room temperature. It looks like paraffin. It melts at 76° F.

I check my email: nothing much there. I check Skype and see that my amigo CyberDave is online but his status is Invisible, which means he is busy. There is an icon for Busy, but he prefers Invisible. So I don’t hail him.

After a while I lie on the couch. The house is cool, but I leave the heat turned down. Eventually I fall asleep and have a fitful sleep with dreams. Several times I awaken and I think, “I should get up”, but I don’t. I need to wash laundry; that’s my only reason for getting up.

Eventually I get up, but now it’s 1:30 PM. I make a raspberry-banana smoothie, to which I add almond butter and lemon juice. I drink half of it before I remember I didn’t add the ground flaxseed I intended to add. That’s ok, I’ll add the flaxseed to something else. When I want to use flaxseed I grind it in an old coffee mill I found in the garage. I cleaned the mill and it works fine for grinding flaxseed. I could buy ground flaxseed, but ground flaxseed goes rancid quickly, so I prefer to grind it when I need it. It only takes seconds.

Unlike peanut butter, the almond butter in my smoothie is made from a nut – the almond nut. Peanut butter is made from a legume. That’s right; despite cans of nuts on store shelves that proclaim “Mixed Nuts” on their labels and contain peanuts, peanuts are legumes, not nuts. If you eat a lot of corn or peanuts or peanut butter, you may want to read about aflatoxin. Corn and peanuts are particularly susceptible to being contaminated with aflatoxin. It’s a bigger problem in Third World countries, but even in developed countries you will be exposed to it at low levels. Aflatoxin is a potent carcinogen, especially for the liver, and it is so toxic it sometimes kills livestock and, in poor countries, people.

At 5 PM I eat a spinach salad. I put broccoli and cauliflower and sliced beet and black olives and green olives and Bell pepper and chopped scallion and bleu cheese dressing on it. And, it gets a tablespoon of ground flaxseed which is not only healthy but adds a nutty flavor.

I follow up the salad with a rib-eye steak. I bought and cooked two rib-eyes yesterday. Here’s how I cooked them.

First, I left the steaks on the counter for at least half an hour to come to room temperature. I put a cast-iron frying pan on the stove and added oil. As the pan heated, I sprinkled salt and freshly ground pepper onto each side of a steak, patting it firmly into the meat so it won’t fall off in the pan. Using tongs, I placed the steak into the hot pan. It sizzled for a couple minutes, then I turned it over. After two minutes I turned it over again. I poked at the steak with the tongs, judging the amount of doneness by the firmness of the meat. After five or six minutes I removed the steak onto a plate and let it rest for two minutes to finish cooking. Then I repeated the process with the second steak. One steak I ate and one steak went into the fridge. It was perfect – seared on both sides and medium to medium rare inside. I don’t often eat steak because “they say” that too much red meat isn’t good for you. I don’t know the truth of that. It seems, depending on who I listen to, that nothing is good for me. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die.

It’s almost time for the nightly news. I’ll tune in to see what manner of mischief the world’s leaders have perpetrated upon the world’s people today.

Roof Update

In out last episode, Jesús, former employee of Ben’s roofing company, said he would be here today to fix my roof before tonight’s expected rain. So at 2 PM I called him to check his status. He said he planned to be here around 3 PM.

While talking with Jesús I learned that Ben, former owner of the defunct company that re-shingled my roof, would not pay to fix the roof. That didn’t surprise me. Ben’s primary vocation is Preacher. He probably has more Biblical things on his mind than standing behind his work. Jesús asked if Ben had called me and seemed surprised to learn Ben had not.

You may remember a previous post in which I described the three kinds of people you can meet in a business transaction:

The first kind will tell you they won’t screw you, but they’re lying. The second kind will tell you at the outset that they’re going to screw you. The third kind will assure you they won’t screw you, and they really mean it, but they screw you anyway.

I don’t think Ben intended to screw me. But after all is said and done, Ben has my money and I have a leaky roof. What a deal.

Since the old roof didn’t leak, I see an alternate scenario for what happened. It goes like this: Ben and I discuss the roofing job. We agree on a price. I write Ben a check. Ben puts the check in his wallet. Then he takes out a pistol and fires a bullet through my roof, gets in his truck, and drives away. The result is the same: I have a roof that leaks. The difference is: using a bullet eliminates the labor-intensive process of removing the old shingles, putting down new tarpaper and new shingles, and cleaning the yard of nails and debris. A bullet is simply more efficient at creating a roof leak than having a crew of laborers take shortcuts on the job. Oh, I see I’ve wandered into Sarcasm. I’d better wrap up this blog post.

By the way, Jesús never showed. Are we surprised?

Roof Job: The Second Coming of Jesús

This post is for RefugeeGuy and anyone else following my miseries with the new roof.

Jesús the roofer came by this morning. I talked to him Thursday and he said he would come by the next day around 1 PM. But he didn’t, so at 2 PM I called to see if he still intended to come by and he said he had one small spot to finish and he would be on his way. At 4:45 I called him again and got no answer. At this point I thought I might see the actual Second Coming before I saw Jesús. But he showed up at 9 AM.

The first time Jesús came to my house was two years ago when he re-shingled my roof. This time he went upstairs to examine the site of the leak, and he went up on the roof and pondered things, looking all around the dormer very carefully, feeling around the vinyl trim, then he came down and explained things. Here’s the gist of what he said.

Two years ago when he re-shingled the roof, Ben owned the roofing company and Jesús worked for Ben. Jesús said he told Ben that the dormers needed new flashing. Ben said to use the old flashing; that would save money. Jesús then told Ben that he (Jesús) would not guarantee the roof would not leak if they used the old flashing. Ben said to use the old flashing anyway.

Right away, one dormer leaked and they had to remove the siding and install new flashing. That stopped the leak and there were no more leaks until last month.

After inspecting the roof, Jesús called Ben to explain the situation but got Ben’s voicemail. I asked Jesús if he thought Ben would pay for the repair, inasmuch as I had already paid for a new roof and expected one that didn’t leak. Jesús said, “If he’s got a conscience.” I told Jesús that no matter what Ben said, he should return and fix the roof before the next rainy day, and if I had to, I would pay for the repair. I emphasized that the leak had to be stopped whether Ben paid for it or not, so be sure to return and install new flashing. Jesús said he would return tomorrow or Monday. Then he got in his truck and drove off. He’s a busy guy. He has five other roof projects he’s working on and he’s behind schedule. Fixing a roof he got paid for installing two years ago is a nuisance job.

Taking a shortcut to save money can be an expensive way to waste money.

Roof Leak Hits New Low

In my last edition of Roof Leak, I wrote about a conversation I imagined to have taken place in a small Mexican border town:

“When you get across the border, call my cousin Jesús. He’s a roofer, he’ll have a job for you.”

“But Pablo, I know nothing about roofing.”

“Don’t worry, Juan. My cousin will explain what you need to know. It’s called on-the-job training. The important thing is to work fast. The faster you work, the more roofs you do, and the more money you make. Don’t worry about being perfect.”

Sunday evening I located Ben, the former owner of the defunct company that shingled my roof two years ago. I told him about the roof leak and he said he would get in touch with the boss of the roofing crew . He said the man’s name – wait for it, wait for it – is Jesús.

Now it’s Wednesday and it’s raining and snowing and I haven’t heard anything from Ben or Jesús. But now I have a leak in my living room ceiling. I have a bucket sitting on the floor below the leak. My plaster ceiling is being damaged, eaten away by water running through it, with streaky water stains extending from the original leak and birthing several new leaks.

My first thought was the drip catch tray under the roof had filled and was overflowing. I hurried upstairs to inspect the catch tray. To my surprise, the tray was empty. I saw some wet boards but no drip. Rainwater was entering around the dormer but instead of dripping it was running down the dormer structure to the plasterboard of the living room ceiling. There was no place to intercept the leak.

The thing that annoys me most is: the old roof wasn’t leaking; I paid $5000 for a new roof to ensure that I had a sound roof that would not leak and ruin my ceiling, and since then the new roof has developed two leaks in different locations.

It reminds me of something I read long, long ago. The writer said that, in business, there are three kinds of people. The first kind will tell you they won’t screw you, but they’re lying. The second kind will tell you at the outset that they’re going to screw you. The third kind will assure you they won’t screw you, and they really mean it, but they screw you anyway.

I called Ben, and he told me he hadn’t been able to contact Jesús until just an hour before I called. Maybe there is a fourth kind of person in business: the kind that stands behind the work they do. I hope there is, because I’m beginning to feel a little bit like Diogenes, who wandered ancient Greece with a lantern, searching for an honest man.

The Old Couple

From a blog I had in the last millennium:

I have just finished my lunch when I notice a very elderly couple. They have finished their meal, also, and are preparing to leave. The man goes to the restroom, leaving this very elderly lady, presumably his wife, standing near the kitchen entrance.

Now, when I say elderly, I don't mean she is just a "senior citizen". I mean she could be ninety easily. Anyway, she gingerly seats herself at one of the round tables near the kitchen. I notice how she moves - like she is afraid she will disturb something. She looks around the room as though she is a little "out of her element". She sits there, waiting for her spouse to return, maybe a little confused by the commotion and the rock music playing on the Muzak system. I notice how fragile she appears, how almost childlike. Her movements are cautious and tentative. Something about the way she looks makes me want to smile at her and say "Don't be afraid, you're very welcome in here, we're glad to see you here today."

The waitresses bustle past her, not glancing at her. Other customers are animated in conversation, wrapped up in their own worlds. The little old lady looks very out of place and looks as though she feels very out of place. I feel sad for her. What experiences she must have had. Perhaps she was a child during the Great Depression. Perhaps she was a young woman working in a factory during World War Two. I imagine she had children, had watched her children grow up, get married, have children of their own, and become old themselves. Perhaps she has even watched her grandchildren grow to adulthood and have families of their own.

What crises she must have gone through in her life, what sadness, what heartbreak and loss. And what happy times as well: childhood friends, trips eagerly planned and awaited, marriages, births, family gatherings. Once she was a vigorous young woman. Now she is old, and her time is nearly at an end. Is this the reward for a life well lived? A lifetime of experience, a lifetime of knowledge gained, and yet, now the world is ready to discard her - ready to presume there is nothing in her that we could benefit from knowing. What marvelous secrets she might know, what marvelous stories she might share, if only ... if only she had the strength to sit and tell us, if only we had the wisdom to listen.

Chili Day

It’s 45°F and raining now, and tomorrow will be colder with a 70% chance of rain or snow, so I went to the store and bought makings for chili with beans. Tomorrow will be a “chili day.” I say “chili with beans” instead of “chili” because, as fans of The Big Bang Theory know because Sheldon told us, true chili has no beans.

Chili cookoffs don’t allow beans in contestants’ recipes. I’m going to quote the first two cookoff recipe rules from the International Chili Society:

1. Traditional Red Chili is defined by the International Chili Society as any kind of meat or combination of meats, cooked with red chili peppers, various spices and other ingredients, with the exception of BEANS and PASTA which are strictly forbidden.

2. Chili Verde is defined by the International Chili Society as any kind of meat or combination of meats, cooked with green chili peppers, various spices and other ingredients, with the exception of BEANS and PASTA which are strictly forbidden.

The capitalizations for emphasis are on the official rules page. They really want you to know: no beans, no pasta.

I’m making Chili Verde because I’m using green jalapeños. I prefer hotter serrano peppers when I can find them, but I couldn’t find them today.

But I suppose “true” chili also doesn’t have meat. Because when you add meat it’s called chili con carne (chili with meat). But the name “chili con carne” is usually and confusingly shortened to “chili”.

So what is chili – without beans and without meat? It’s chili peppers, spices, broths, tomatoes, and whatever else you put in your chili other than meat and beans. To that you add meat and then you have chili con carne, which everyone shortens to chili. Then you can add beans and you have chili with beans which, again, everyone shortens to chili.

If you want to try something sweet that leaves a burn on your lips, try Strawberry-Serrano Preserves.

If you want to try some championship winning recipes, go to the website of the International Chili Society and click on Recipes.

Maybe Ludwig Wittgenstein Was A Little Bit Right

Some quotes:

“I ought to have... become a star in the sky. Instead of which I have remained stuck on earth.”

“I won't say 'See you tomorrow' because that would be like predicting the future, and I'm pretty sure I can't do that.”

“I don’t know why we are here, but I’m pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.”

“A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.”

“Where two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and a heretic.”

“The limits of my language means the limits of my world.”

“If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.”

“One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is.”

“Not how the world is, but that it is, is the mystery.”

“It is true: Man is the microcosm:
I am my world.”

“We are asleep. Our Life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.”

“Don't for heaven's sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.”

“If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done.”

“Only describe, don't explain.”

“Don't think, but look!”

“How small a thought it takes to fill a life.”

“Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.”

“I sit astride life like a bad rider on a horse. I only owe it to the horse's good nature that I am not thrown off at this very moment.”

“Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.”

“If you and I are to live religious lives, it mustn't be that we talk a lot about religion, but that our manner of life is different. It is my belief that only if you try to be helpful to other people will you in the end find your way to God.”

“It is a dogma of the Roman Church that the existence of God can be proved by natural reason. Now this dogma would make it impossible for me to be a Roman Catholic. If I thought of God as another being like myself, outside myself, only infinitely more powerful, then I would regard it as my duty to defy him.”

“Make sure that your religion is a matter between you and God only.”

“The primary question about life after death is not whether it is a fact, but even if it is, what problems that really solves.”

Unplugged

March 1 – 2, 2013, was this year’s National Day of Unplugging, a 24 hour time period running from sunset to sunset in which people are encouraged to put down their gadgets and spend more time doing things with family, friends, neighbors – in other words, take part in life. I didn’t stay offline but I did unplug, in a way.

March 1 was the day I opened my Comcast cable bill and saw that it had gone up six percent. Comcast raises the price every year, so it wasn’t unexpected. But Comcast, in my opinion, has gotten greedy. They’ve already bought 51% of NBC Universal and they’ve announced plans to buy the remainder. They’ve got more money than they know what to do with.

And what entertainment do they provide? Reality shows about hillbilly catfish grabbers, shows about guys looking through old barns for trash to sell to people with more money than sense, shows about people who are famous only because they are on a reality show, shows about pawn shop employees, game shows, soap operas, right-wing cable news, left-wing cable news, the transvestite golf channel – the list of what I don’t want to watch on cable TV is a long one.

Not only that, the number of commercials is out of control. One of my favorite shows is The Big Bang Theory. It seemed to have a lot of commercials, so one night I put the commercial break times into a spreadsheet so I could easily calculate how much of the show was “content” and how much consisted of commercials. The “30 minute” show was actually 20 minutes, 15 seconds. One third of the show’s 30 minute time slot was filled with commercials.

So I called Comcast and told them to drop my cable TV. The lady at customer service explained that the price increase was to cover the cost of all the fantastic new services that Comcast is rolling out. I have only the “extended basic” TV plan and Internet service, so I asked her why am I being billed more each year to cover the cost of providing services that I’m not buying. I already knew the answer, though. They’re billing me because they can.

I receive several local channels on an indoor UHF antenna, though I’m in a fringe zone and sometimes weather affects the picture. But usually I can get CBS, ABC, and PBS. I used to get NBC but on the day when the country transitioned to digital, my local NBC station transitioned from the UHF band to the VHF band, and when I rescanned for them they were gone.

CBS, ABC, and NBC offer free, full episodes of most of their shows online, as do Comedy Central and MTV. Some shows and movies are available through services like Netflix, Hulu, Fancast, TV.com, Veoh, and Joost. Classic TV shows are available on In2TV, and many sporting events are streamed on ESPN3.

I can watch shows on my TV as they stream in to my computer. So I’m not entirely unplugged. But instead of turning on the TV and flipping through channels to some mind-numbing show I didn’t even intend to watch, I must now either settle for a local channel or make the effort to seek out and stream an online show, so maybe I won’t “tune in” as often.

This isn’t the first time I’ve canceled cable TV because of a price hike. The last time I canceled, I was without cable for several years until one day a salesman from the cable company offered a discount if I would sign up again, and on a whim I did. As I said, it’s not the first time, but I think this is the last time I will cancel cable.

Carving the Bird

Tonight I am carving, if one can call it that, a rotisserie-cooked chicken that I bought on a trip to the store a couple days ago. It’s a treat I don’t often indulge in.

I love the taste of rotisserie-cooked chicken. Unfortunately, whole cooked birds are not a good bargain for me because I waste about half the bird. You see, I never learned how to carve a bird. I’ve seen people do it, of course, and I’ve watched it done on TV cooking shows. But when I’m standing, knife in hand, with the bird before me, my non-existent carving skills quickly become obvious.

At first, things go smoothly enough. I cut off the legs, right through the joint; I cut off the wings. I begin to carve the breast meat. But then everything goes haywire fast and I end up with what looks like an unidentifiable creature, possibly of alien origin, that exploded in some violent manner such as by being shot into the vacuum of outer space with no protective suit. Eventually I discard the all-but-useless knife and begin picking and tearing at little pieces of meat and stuffing the tiny morsels into my mouth. The little morsels are too small to do anything with, except make chicken salad, so why not nibble on them as I inflict further destruction on the carcass. Finally the entire procedure becomes too tedious and I throw the carcass into the garbage can.

I’ve actually seen garbage-pickup men jump back in horror, covering their mouths with their hands to muffle their screams, upon seeing the chicken carnage lying atop the other trash in my can. What happens to whole chickens in my kitchen is as bad as it gets.

As for turkeys, I wouldn’t even make an attempt. Well, if you paid me cash money and promised not to hold the results against me, I could get enough meat off a turkey for two or three people. The thing is, long before I finished with the bird, horror and disgust would drive you to intervene. You’d take the knife away from me, with a look of loathing and contempt that I already envisage on your face, and you would begin trying to restore some manner of organization to what was left of the bird, so that it might, in the end, be identifiable as once being some manner of flying creature and not a visiting extraterrestrial who was torn to shreds by wild dogs.

The carving is finished. I think I have enough meat for a sandwich. Let’s raise our glasses in a toast. “Bon appétit.”

Sinkhole

I feel sorry for that Florida man who was in bed when suddenly the ground under his bedroom opened up and swallowed him. Just like that, he and his bedroom furniture were gone – swallowed by the earth. He is now missing. No body has been recovered so the authorities can’t say with certainty that he’s dead, but it would be a miracle if he’s not. And if he is dead, then what a ghastly way to die.

Florida is notorious for sinkholes. The ground in Florida is pretty much like Swiss cheese. Add to that lots of groundwater and underground streams. There have been so many sinkholes in the state that people have made sinkhole maps of Florida’s counties. You can see an index of sinkhole maps at this page.

In parts of Virginia there are lots of limestone caverns. There are few sinkholes, however, probably because the ground is not saturated with water. Some Virginia caverns are famous. Luray Caverns is a U.S. Natural Landmark that has attracted millions of visitors since its discovery in 1878. I’ve tromped through it a couple of times and can assure you that it’s an impressive place.

One day I was walking through a newly-built neighborhood in southwestern Virginia, and I happened to walk across an empty lot that was being prepared for a new house. Bulldozers had scraped away much of the topsoil and left behind bare earth. In the middle of this empty lot I chanced upon a small hole in the ground. I picked up a pebble and dropped it into the hole. A few seconds passed and then I heard a splash. I mentally pictured what must be beneath me. There was was a void in the earth beneath my feet; a limestone cavern, perhaps, and at the bottom of that void was water – a flowing stream or still lake. It made me uneasy and I walked away. The next time I walked through that neighborhood, a new house stood on the ground where I had dropped my pebble into the earth and heard a splash. I wondered if the people living in that house would sleep as easily in their beds at night if they knew that their house was built atop a void in the earth – a void that could possibly swallow their house on some random future day.

If there’s a lesson to be learned from all this, it is this: attention Floridians – your state is not safe; get out while you can! I hear Georgia is nice.

Obama’s Budgets

I keep hearing this statement: the Federal government has not passed a budget since Obama was elected. Fox news says so. CNN says so. Well, if they say it on TV, it must be true. You can’t lie on TV. How do I know? I heard it on TV.

I’m not sure but I think the implication is supposed to be that President Obama is sitting in the Oval Office spending money right and left that Congress hasn’t authorized him to spend. Therefore, the budget deficits and the national debt problem must have been created by Obama. Or maybe the implication is that Congress is incompetent. Do we really need an email campaign to make Congress look incompetent? Aren’t Senators and Congressmen doing a good enough job of that all by themselves?

The President has Constitutional authority to spend money only in the amount and for the purposes that Congress has authorized. In recent times, whenever we get near the start of a new fiscal year we begin to hear dire warnings: if we don’t pass a new budget by such-and-such date, the U.S. government will default on its debts. And that is exactly what would happen. Without Congressional authorization to spend money, the Federal government would simply shut down.

And yet, it hasn’t shut down. The reason it hasn’t is because Congress has authorized the government to continue spending. Every dollar the Federal government is spending today, every dollar spent yesterday, every dollar spent last month and last year and so on back to the beginning of the Republic, was authorized by Congress.

I can hear you guys now, “But Congress hasn’t passed a real budget – those bills were continuing resolutions and consolidated appropriations and supplemental this-or-that, not real budgets.” I hear you. In other words, Congress has instructed the President regarding how much he must spend, when he must spend it, and what he must spend it on, but they haven’t provided him a budget. Excuse me if I don’t see the distinction.

No doubt some of you have heard of the duck test, which goes “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.”

If Congress passes a bill that authorizes the President to spend a stated amount of money for a stated period of time for a stated purpose, then I don’t care what words you put at the top of the bill; according to the duck test, it is some kind of budget. It might be a budget for the Defense Department; it might be a budget for the Commerce Department; it might be a budget for Education – but it’s still a budget. And if Congress passes this type of bill for each department and agency of the government, then we have a de facto Federal budget and we’re just arguing over semantics.

The Fiscal Year 2013 budget request was submitted to Congress by Barack Obama on February 13, 2012. At this date, March 1, government is funded through 3/27/13 by a continuing appropriations act, Public Law 112-175 enacted on 9/28/12 and subsequent disaster assistance supplementals. Details at: http://thomas.loc.gov/home/approp/app13.html

The Fiscal Year 2012 budget request was submitted to Congress by Barack Obama on February 14, 2011, and was enacted in November and December, 2011, as P.L. (Public Law) 112-55, P.L. 112-74 and P.L. 112-77. Prior to passage of the budget, government was funded by continuing appropriations acts. Details at: http://thomas.loc.gov/home/approp/app12.html

The Fiscal Year 2011 budget request was submitted to Congress by Barack Obama on February 1, 2010, and was enacted in April, 2011, as P.L. 112-8 and P.L. 112-10. Prior to passage of the budget, government was funded by continuing appropriations acts. Details at: http://thomas.loc.gov/home/approp/app11.html

The Fiscal Year 2010 budget request (the first Obama budget) was submitted to Congress by Barack Obama in February, 2009, and was enacted as a series of appropriations acts passed on different dates. Details at: http://thomas.loc.gov/home/approp/app10.html