Not a Winner

Well, it was 1.24 miles. That's a long way for an old guy. We'll do better next year if we don't get diverted again by George Washington or do a Rocky on the Art museum steps.

The Parkway Run/Walk was the wife's idea.She enjoys being part of a community fund raising effort. She likes people. Even around her. Strange. Me? I'd rather write a check. I don't travel well. But Brenda and Jas do. Especially Jas, being a hotel and hospital kid from all the operations, cancer treatments and doctor's visits. We stayed at the Hotel Windsor which I highly recommend. Clean and way cheaper than the Four Seasons. Efficiency, centrally located, nice restaurant down below and heated rooftop pool. I floated on my back and looked at the glass walled Comcast building towering above. Just like being in a commercial for the good life. Valet parking so these Jamaican guys disappear your car when you get there and if you need something out of it you have to get them to bring it back and disappear it again. I'm not sure I like that. I like having at least three vehicles and their contents wilthin easy reach. I guess you're supposed to tip them. Hell, I don't know - I did - every trip. Why I should care if a couple of Jamaican guys think that I am a clueless rube I do not know. But I do.

Philly makes me a little uneasy, although it seems cleaner and safer than when I was a kid. Part of the unease resulted from my wife's boy howdy attitude towards everyone she met as she dragged us to every fucking fountain in the city. I guess when you're from the suburbs of a cow pasture any conversational encounter is a good one. She is so nice that she will stop to give directions to total strangers even when we're lost. In my humble opinion, that's a little too nice.

Better class of bum than in the old days, too. More mellow. Not like the wild eyed obscene agressive juicers of my youth. Maybe they're dispensing Prozac down at the shelter. Here's where I get deep: You have to wonder what brought these men to this sorry state and how close any of us are to having our function switches turned off. I suspect any accidental turn of the screw could sit any one of us down at any time. I'm sure some of these guys had families. And some of them had stuff. I can almost see how it happens.

Don't Touch That Wiener!

Oh goody. Bachman, Palin, Angle - I guess the crazy just wasn't deep enough for the new Know Nothing Party. Of course, that was back in the 90's (the 1890's) before it was discovered that masturbation was good for you. After all, if Jesus didn't want you to masturbate he wouldn't have invented porn. Here's another tidbit from the Republican nominee for one of the Delaware Senate seats:

CHRISTINE O’DONNELL: Now, he said that it’s based on fact. I just want to point out a couple things. First of all, they use carbon dating, as an example, to prove that something was millions of years old. Well, we have the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens and the carbon dating test that they used then would have to then prove that these were hundreds of millions of years younger, when what happened was they had the exact same results on the fossils and canyons that they did the tests on that were supposedly 100 millions of years old. And it’s the kind of inconsistent tests like this that they’re basing their ‘facts’ on.

This is so unbelievably wrong on so many levels and there are so many logical fallacies embedded in that one statement that it is almost impossible to parse out what she is trying to say. The anti-intellectual fruits sprung from the poison seed of Rushdoony . We're a country half full of half educated dumb asses. Let's send one to the Senate.

Not Exactly Don Draper

Well, this is a little embarassing. I stopped in the company president's office this morning for a little chat and to brag about my mad estimating skills and about how I am the man. I was just getting into what percentage of total sales was the result of my bidding efforts when he looked at me and asked me if my shirt was on inside out. Shit. It was. I just walked out. God, I hope some of these jobs make some money.

More Invasion of the Species

My entire back yard was graded down to the clay when they built the highline next to the house. That was in 1913 and the soil has yet to recover. Shaded by a row of decaying rock maples,  the flat spots can grow only dirt and the occasional clump of quack grass and the railroad bank and fence line grow everything else, mostly a feeble vegetable garden and my collection of invasive plants. I do have some native plants - poison ivy and pokeberry. Yay.

Trumpet vine (Campsis radicans) - inherited this. The parent vine seems to have died but runners are popping up all over. No blooms this year, though.

Morning Glory (Ipomoea nil) - my fault. Can't say I wasn't warned. I managed to infest my father's place with these things and I heard about it until the day he died. They looked nice on his trellis, though. Supposedly the seeds have hallucinogenic properties if you eat hundreds of them. Blecch. Oddly enough I don't know if this is true. I also have a wild variety embedded in my garden that seems to propagate by runner instead of seed. I'll never get rid of it. It's the hydra of morning glories.