Universal balance maintained

Manny has noticed many times over the last few years that I have incredible luck. He has also noted that I tend to balance it with amazing turns of fortune. Which is to say: what goes up, must come down. I seem to be on the reverse at the moment. The last few days have been very good. So. What comes next? I'll tell you. My Oracle gets left behind at work. For those of you who are not aware, work is the better part of 40 miles from home. This means that I have an almost 80 mile round trip to go get it. There are places (NCRy) to be rather early in the morning. Sleep is in short supply anyway without the needful drive. We may further complicate matters by realizing that I only have one of the two keys necessary to actually get into the shop once I arrive there. Crap. The shop does not open until 10 tomorrow morning. I am to be at Brightside Yard at 8. Crap. All is not lost however. Remembering that I live in a place with no garbage service, I go rooting through the trash that does not burn or recycle. I found three old bottles of the long acting insulin I need to take. The good, full, clean bottle was the last in the box, very carefully stored in my Oracle case at work. I managed to salvage 2/3 of a dose out of the old bottles. Then of course, I had to inject this concoction. Those of you whom know me well know that I have an inexplicable fear of needles. I use a fantastic little device to aid me with my injections. That too, was left at work. I had to do it by hand. It is a repellant thing, feeling a foreign object sliding into your flesh, slowly parting the human fibers to leave some strange unwelcome substance behind. It makes me turn green just thinking about it. Done is done, however. If nothing else is gained from this, at least I know that I am actually capable of taking a needle in hand and plunging it into myself. After dealing with this, I checked my email to find that PG&E had sent me my bill. This is not good. See for yourself:

PG&E energy statement (e-Bills) information

Amount Due: $-24.72
Due Date: October 26, 2006

It is not possible that they owe me money. This means that any moment now a falling meteorite is going to come careening out of the heavens and crack my bean wide open. I am reasonably sure this is one of the signs of the apocalypse. Sometime tomorrow PG&E is going to discover their mistake and move the decimal two places to the right and reverse the - to +.

Warmth

As odd as it is having people in the house with me, I do like having the landlords here. I got home tonight and instead of the usual cold, the house was pleasantly warm and smelling of sweet oak. A fire had been lit in the kitchen stove and the house was deliciously warm, rather than the usual cold and dark. Also, I can see my way to the light switch now. After breaking my nose on the living room wall, I put some thought into how to prevent future nose adjustments. At some time in the distant past, I took one of my grandfather's old caboose lamps (my father has the other) and rigged it up with an electric light. All the old parts are there and intact, I simply added a few easily removable parts. It always required me to plug it in though, and I've never really done that. A quick trip to the hardware store bought me a small timer to plug my lamp into. Now when I come home at night my living room is lit up by the red and blue lenses of my grandfather's lantern.

Unexplainable generosity

Ricardo the Magnificent has done it again. I had been planning to drive to Washington State for to visit my family and Charlie. His folks (my landlords) have very kindly invited me to Thanksgiving dinner with them for the third year running. With the holiday getting steadily closer I had begun to think of those many things that would be needful to get me there. My car is old and always needs some form of attention to keep her running smoothly. Gas is also expensive and must be budgeted. There is food to be purchased along the way. Also I get sleepy behind the wheel on long trips, so I was trying to figure out where the best spots would be for a series of short naps. Bat-Ricardo (out of the blue) offered to give me a certificate of sorts good for airfare to and from our green northern neighbor (the state of Washington, not Charlie). Beyond that stupendous bit of beneficence, he took pity on my lack of worldly knowledge and found me a rental car as well. I will pay for that, of course, but the fact that he did the work of actually finding it and reserving it astounds me. It also begs the question: "why do I deserve this?" What have I ever done to deserve such kindness from so many wonderful people? It is well beyond my means to ever repay anyone for the magnificently friendly gestures they offer me. I do try, but my attempts seem pitiful and somehow insignificant when compared to the generosity given me. I cannot thank these people enough for anything they have ever done for me, but I surely intend to try.

The next attempt

I've just registered (for the second time) for the first class in the jewelry arts. This class is the prerequisite for the jewelry technician intensive program that I intend to take if this first class is anything like I expect it to be. There is a serious amount of money involved in these classes, which has me a bit concerned. It is a gamble. I spend money to possibly make money later. The last time I tried to take this class, it was already full. If I get in this time and enjoy it, I'll have to start looking for a good loan to pay for the classes and keep me alive in the meanwhile.

Energy

You might be surprised at how much energy there is stored in a greasy old pizza box. I was a bit cold this morning, so I lit up the stove. I didn't use any wood, rather I just lit the mass of junk mail packed into the stove. Junk mail does burn very hot, but I was astounded to see the stove pipe glowing red all the way up to where it joins the wall from the heat put out by one pizza box. I dread to think what the actual pizza might have done. Or what it likely did to my innards.

They don't pay me enough for this

I like to think that I am a decent person. I do the right thing whenever I can, but some days it isn't very fun. In fact, some days it is down right nasty. Like yesterday, for example. (If you do not like nasty things, I advise you not to continue reading.) Through an unforseen series of events, namely customers and work, I was not able to use the facilities down the hall right at the most opportune moment. I had to wait longer to relieve myself than was strictly comfortable. When finaly the moment had come to shuffle down the hall, I attempted to do so without looking too much like my innards were cramping or my bladder about to burst. After finally making it the heavenly lavatory down the hall I found that someone had already beaten me there. Or rather, almost. It (I refuse to acknowledge this persons humanity) had found the bathroom, rightly enough, yet had not quite completely found the commode before venting its bowels all over the floor. Worse yet, was the fact that in leaving the john, this sorry person stepped in their own foulness and trod human filth into the tiles over a far larger area than one might expect to cover when leaving a room. Fortunately they had left the seat up (I really needed to go) so I stepped over the mess quite carefully and discovered that I could not properly utilise the facilities due to the fact that my revolting friend had clogged the toilet with whatever ended up in the bowl. Judjing by what was on the floor, it couldn't have been much. Nothing more would fit without overflow. In despiration, I grabbed the plunger and righted one aspect of this sickening scenario. After finding relief I went to find the mop. I found the mop handle. The mop end was gone. There was no way I could leave this behind and still respect myself, though the urge to simply walk away was certainly there. I found a large bottle of Lysol and grabbed a very (very) large handfull of paper towels and went to work. Due to the fact that the towels were now covered in what had to have been the crowning defecation of this things (persons?) life, I thought the pot would be the best place to dispose of them. Ignoring the sign that advises against putting paper towels in the john, I flushed them away, immediately clogging it again. Again with the handy Tralfamadorian. Eventually I was satisfied with the cleanliness of the floor and moved on to the splashes on the porcelain. Being a considerate gentleman, I lowered the seat only to find that the person (creature of darknesse) had left their mark all over that too. So I cleaned that also. Remembering that I could not flush the paper towels, it went into the can. The can of course, could not remain, so I emptied it into the dumpster. When I (finally) returned to my workshop I smelled smoke. Not just smoke, but wicked, nasty, toxic, electrical, scorched metal smoke. One of the florescent light ballasts up in the loft had just rather spectacularly failed, throwing smoking oily crud out, where it proceeded to short out the electrical system it was tied to. My shop (and water closet) still stink.

Found on an Irish language site

a curse:
Go n-ithe an cat thú is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat.
May the cat eat you, and may the cat be eaten by the devil.

I can't pronounce it though. Irish sounds nothing like it is spelled.

I like this

From the Saturday Track Report for October 7

"This test required a person to lay supine on the top of the
engine compartment housing (on the Fairmont Tamper), reach down to the engine, and manually articulate
the governor linkage to measure the effect on engine speed and track speed...
The course of this test covered about 1/2 mile of railroad, much of which
was visible from the highway. We caught occasional quizzical glimpses of
motorists looking at the body laying across the engine compartment of the Tamper.
If the tester had been one with a lean cross-country runner-like build such
as Bob Zacher, the vision might have been one of the winged Mercury hood
ornament on a '30s era Pierce Arrow or Packard. But the test technician was
stocky yours truly, so the vision was probably more like that of the classic limp
trophy deer strapped to the muddy fender of an old Willys Jeep."

I dub thee "Loose Cannon"

This weekend has been more labor intensive than the work-week I was trying to recreate away from. Isn't volunteer work grand? The day begain in Brightside yard as it always does. I arrived to find that the ballast car (see the entry from sept. 28) was still buried at the end of north lead no. 4. This lead is not yet fully built. It is being constructed by GGRM to store their stuff now that they are being moved from their current premises. With no ballast car, we couldn't do any tie replacement (badly needed in prep for the train of lights). Instead we got to take the Fairmont Tamper out. It's a big machine with a giant robotic hand on one end. You position the fingers over a railroad tie and push a button. They fingers begin to vibrate very fast and are rammed into the ballast the tie sits on. As the fingers shake, the ballast compacts around them. Contents may settle in shipping. This thing is really cool. The amount of human labor it saves is immense. We managed to tamp over a third of lead no. 4 in just a few hours. Brett had been doing it by hand with a steel bar. We switched all of the junk out of the way in order to free our ballast car and decided to give him a mechanical hand (can you say "liquifaction" boys and girls?). There was still a lot of shoveling though. The next day put me to work with the Niles Planning Committee in clearing a bit of county land of fencing and tumbleweed. During lunch I was inducted into the ranks of the "Loose Cannons." These are the members of the PLA that think that progress is a good thing. They are working on getting me to grade the upper yard. We don't have an upper yard yet. We have a hill. I have access to tractors. Crap. What have I gotten myself into?

A monsterous light snake

I've just procured ten tickets for the Niles Canyon Railway Train of Lights. I am bringing as many people as I am allowed to bring. not everyone knows each other, but it ought to be good none the less. Both my parents are coming. I don't have both of them in the same place at the same time very often. My youngest sister Julie and my stepmother Nancy are also coming. Rich, Jeremy (who is bringing someone with him), Michelle and her mother too will be there. I suppose I am coming too. I don't know that anyone else on the list has met Michelle yet. We'll fix that soon enough. I am just glad there were tickets left. There almost weren't.

Magnificent

A month ago yesterday I won an auction on ebay for a Tannahill Weavers CD. It just showed up today. It seems that "something" went wrong and it was not shipped. The seller somehow managed to "forget" that he had sold it to me and sent it off to the flea market. I contacted him once I was sure the disk was not coming. He did some checking and "found" my CD. It seems it was not what he thought. He said he would not be able to get to the disk until Saturday (a week later). Once he had it in his possession, he wrote me and said the disk was autographed. I assumed he meant the last owner had written his name on it somewhere. I was wrong. The CD is indeed autographed. By the entire band. All of them. This is cool. I just picked up a good album for less than five bucks, and it is signed by the band. I could have done much worse.

I am not a cat person, damnit

You will note that I happen to live on the same property as a cat. I am obliged to feed the cat and not to kill same. He does his thing, and I do mine. He ate my butter without my approval. Further note that I have never offered him any kindness beyond what is needful by my agreement with the landlord. I happen to like dogs. I also like squirrels. And turkey. Neither dogs, nor squirrels, nor even turkeys get along with cats. Thus, I am not a cat person. End transmission.

Oh, sure. Just come into my house and eat my butter

I got back from Niles Canyon today and spent a bit of time in the shop looking for Charlie's fence staple puller. It will come in very handy next Sunday when the Niles Planning Committee work party goes to the future site of the Niles Interpretive Center and Musuem. There are several parcels of land there available for our use. Several of them are surrounded by post and wire fences. Since I have the tool, I likely will end up dismantling the fence. Since I also provided the idea of how to remove the fence posts, likely I will be doing that as well. Don't you just love volunteer work? When I got home and started looking for the tool, the cat followed me around being very friendly. So friendly, in fact, that he followed me into the house again, despite my attempts to keep me out. I figured I could just herd him out when he discovered there was nothing inside for him. I was wrong. He ran into the kitchen, jumped up onto the counter and started licking my butter. He was purring very loudly as I carried him out the door. He did it twice. Lather, rinse, repeat. Always repeat.