I got to mind the 3 grandkids from Friday afternoon to about 9:30 last night, capping a week that included:
– 2 user group meetings, one of them mine;
– the latest and hopefully last in a series of car repairs;
– a visit (with the kids) to my most understanding Dennisport customer for a quick IT consult;
– a presentation on Technology for Non-Profits at two sessions of the Cape Corps Volunteer Expo;
– an agonizing 5 hour round trip to Hyannis via the b-Bus and
– an escape from the dour, patriarchal cynicism of Cape Cod via a 2-day client onsite in Boston.
Blood, Boston, B-bus, Baskin-Robbins
I didn’t realize how many tulips have come up this spring until I decided this evening to put down dry blood around each and every one of ’em.
This is to prevent squirrels from eating the flowers, which are now fat buds and will be out soon.
We don’t have as many squirrels as we used to, since one of the neighbors decided to capture them in his Have-A-Heart trap and release them to a spot across the highway. He’s gotten over 150.
Still, you can’t be too careful.
What the Heck……?
So, Pope Benedict XVI has not yet repudiated the assinine, paranoid comments he made back in 2002 that the reports of child sexual abuse by priests in the American press were really just anti-Catholic propaganda:
“In the United States, there is constant news on this topic…one comes to the conclusion that it is intentional, manipulated – that there is a desire to discredit the church.”
How Much Mulch?
Mulch in bulk is measured by the inconvenient and non-intuitive square yard. Since most of us compute garden or yard area in feet, it’s a challenge to figure out how much mulch to buy.
Turns out, there’s a simple formula for figuring this out:
Area to be covered (in square feet) x depth of mulch (in inches) divided by 324 = square yards (or fraction thereof) of mulch*
Why 324? Because that’s the amount of mulch, spread to a thickness of 1 inch, in a square yard (3 x 3 x 3 x 12).
7th Line of “If”
Years ago, I worked with a fine gentleman whose philosophy of life was, as he told me, summed up in Kipling’s poem “If”.
In fact, I’ve been privileged to have met a number of very good people in my almost 3 score years, most of my current neighbors among them.
Benedict XVI
Those who track Vatican politics did not seem overly surprised with the choice of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger as the 265th pope.
There’s a hidden hypocrisy in this election which very few have commented on in the mainstream press.
I’ve Been Wondering About This
The 102nd Fighter Interceptor Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base, part of the Mass. Military Reservation (MMR), which overlaps sections of Bourne, Mashpee, and Sandwich, may be relocated in the next round of military base cutbacks.
According to the story, the combination of the high cost of snow removal this past winter, the generally screwed-up groundwater cleanup effort and the fact that the Base is in Kennedy/Kerryland count for three strikes against the Base.
Also, according to the story, the Mass. congressional delegation is a lot more worried about protecting Hanscom AFB in Bedford than its poor little cousin on the Upper Cape.
I Still Don’t Get It
Stirling Newberry, who writes for truthout and other online pubs, believes that you need to balance the trade deficit (a result of the cost of foreign oil) with the sale of American assets, not just American goods.
But to avoid passing control of US companies to overseas investors, you have to keep rich Americans happy: “bring(ing) investment in (to the US) means that one must also cut taxes on the wealthy, so that companies remain under the control of Americans, rather than being bought up by foreigners, particularly those from nations that do not have internal economies. This creates a budget deficit.”
Prediction
Clark/Edwards
In case you were wondering
In last Friday’s New York Times, Paul Krugman, professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton, started a series of columns on “The Medical Money Pit”.
Two excerpts: