Hashtag

    All right, OK, so I'm getting a little old. You kids with your Tweeter and your Bookface and your Instawam, I'm never going to catch up to you, I know that. I do, however, know what hashtags are for, or thought I did. (I got that far in my Twittering instructions.) It turns out, though, that the hashtag has another, newer use, and it makes me so happy.
    Those autogenerated YouTube videos that I was blithering about not long ago? The artist is always listed as #(artist's name); I noticed this right away. What I didn't realize (since previously you could only google letters and numbers; other characters were ignored) is that you can google, or rather Google Video search say something as obscure as #wonderlick (two of the guys from Too Much Joy who made one record 14 years ago) and boom, there are all their videos. Mind you, the two guys in Wonderlick grew up to work for Rhapsody and VH1, so every band might not work this well, but hey, it's a start. I'm finally feeling good about Google taking over YouTube!

You could look it up

    This isn't anything earth-shattering, and of course if it were a topic that interested anybody but me they could look it up just as easily as I did, but I was surprised. I really really liked broasted chicken in my gluten-eating days and was getting really peeved that I couldn't find any recipes for gluten-free broasted chicken. So, as I say, I looked it up, and found to my surprise that "broasted" is a registered trademark of the Broaster Company, and that company sells its equipment, but only to restaurants. Apparently, pressure cooking chicken with a load of grease is really really really dangerous (Imagine!) so we peons aren't allowed to try it.
    So now of course, the mission is to get some restaurant to make gluten-free broasted chicken. Hey, how hard could it be? I'll get some famous person right on it. Seriously, apparently the Broaster Company also supplies all the flour and spices, so it seems that they would be the only ones to approach. Really, I'll get around to it. Well, we'll see how my oven-fried gluten-free fried chicken turns out. If it's tasty, I'll just call it broasted. I don't think the Broaster Company reads my blog; if you do, ladies and gents, I promise not to try to sell it under that name.

Weather's too perfect

    Naw, not really. I just wanted to complain about the weather being too nice for a change is all. But although I'm not complaining, I wish it were just a hint warmer in the apartment. Or rather, I wish it felt a little warmer. If I would shell out for a dehumidifier, I would no doubt be much more comfortable. And more mildew-free.
    It isn't really a money issue. The dehumidifiers at Lowe's all seemed to weigh about a ton. Anyway, they were beyond my paltry lifting capabilities. I can get one delivered, but what would I do with it then. Handtruck maybe.
    I actually saw a dehumidifier at Goodwill the other day for $10 which I could pick up. Online searches suggest that it was very loud, but then I could turn it on and leave. The cats probably wouldn't mind. I have half a mind to go see if it's still there. Then again, there's always Amazon; they also helpfully tell you the product's weight. I can add it to my Amazon shopping list, right next to the quadracopter. Yes, they have drones for $40. Sign me up!

Cats: still a mystery

    I apologize to non-cat-people for having to mention a hairball to tell the story, but all I have to do is mention it. Amelia coughed up a hairball this afternoon. I threw a bit of a fit because it was on the carpet, but there was no major staining. Then she was vocalizing with her blue jay voice, which I always took to mean that she was unhappy. Then within five minutes, she was up on my lap purring like crazy. It was probably the loudest I've heard her purr, and I've had her for nine years. A big hairball fan? Likes getting yelled at? Just easy-going? It's a mystery to me.
    Speaking of happy cats, I sprayed all their squeaky mouse toys with catnip oil. So far, they show no sign of caring one way or another, although they like the toys fine. But at least I'm in there trying.
    Meanwhile in the tax world, the CPA returns from vacation tomorrow, so I guess we'll get all that settled soon. I'm hoping he can work with the Turbo Tax program and so assume. I can of course print off all these gazillion pages of forms but am hoping too that we are making lots of changes and then I'd have to print them off again. Well, maybe not; one can file electronically of course. I'm just having nightmare visions of waiting on reams of paper to print and having the ink run out on form 187B or something. Just tax season stress, no doubt.
    Recent dreams: Hillary decided that she didn't want to be President after all but rather to be First Lady again, so she threw Bill over finally and married me, somehow making me instantly the sure-thing frontrunner. And last night, I dreamed I was letting some Broadway stars stay with me and they inexplicably threw most of my possessions outside in a pile. I probably need to stop listening to old-time radio all night.

Mystery fireworks

    So last night, a fireworks show happened. It wasn't any event or historic date that I know of. It went on for ages. I was listening to a baseball game, so the muffled sounds might have been anything. Eventually, though, somebody else posted about it on Facebook, so I went to see. My ears were telling me that it was coming from the State Fairgrounds, and that turned out to be correct.
    Thing is, there was nobody there. That is, there was no audience. Just the portion of the show that I stuck around for was very impressive, and I think it had been going at least an hour and would go on perhaps another half hour. Also odd was that there would be long gaps such that I would think that it was over, but no!
    I found a reasonably dark spot on George Rogers Boulevard where the right lane was blocked off by traffic cones anyway and pulled over there with the flashers on. I took some pictures with the regular camera app on the phone but then switched to the quick burst photo app. This gives you a lot of nearly identical photos, but they're so cool that so far I've been unable to steel myself to delete any. They're not quite shareworthy; just cool, as I said.
    As far as I know, nobody ever found out what the show was about. I still think it was a rehearsal for something. V-E Day isn't far away. Or maybe they were working on the 1812 Overture and forgot to invite the Boston Pops. Could be!

I feel so rejected!

    My car got tossed a second time and for the second time nothing was stolen. As before, what I don't feel is rejected, just lucky, but it just seems strange. If you're going to go through somebody's car, why make it obvious that you've done so? It wouldn't have been difficult to put things back roughly where they were. Cars move, so nobody would be surprised that the objects inside move, too. (Dang poltergeists!)
    As with the first instance, it was a rainy night/morning. I'm assuming that a kid got caught outside in the rain, tried the car door, found it would open and got in, and then got bored. Then again, I nearly always keep the car doors locked at night. Two of the times I haven't, somebody got in and tossed my possessions. Maybe there's just some zeeb who wanders Olympia after midnight and climbs in all unlocked cars and throws stuff around. If so, whoever you are, thanks for leaving the glove compartment alone. And I think I'm inoculated from forgetting to lock the doors for another six months or so!

EVerybody's a critic!

    Went to Congaree National Park today, thinking that since the (Congaree) river is no longer flooded that the inundation at the park would have subsided, too. This was not the best piece of thinking ever. However, the weather was sublime and the air marvelous and even if you can't make a circuit due to flooding, you can still put together a nice long walk there. And the floody photos came out pretty well. I took one with the phone camera in panorama mode and accidentally left it there. The next photo, I didn't realize this and just held the camera as for normal mode. It chirped up with a message: "Unable to take panoramic picture due to lack of scenery detail." I mean jeez; everybody really IS a critic. Would be funnier though if I panned properly and still got that message. "This scenery is beneath me," says the phone.
    I am much more cheerful, possibly because of the absurdly perfect weather, though I can't say that the better mood has led to greater productivity. One odd thing: I missed probably the show for the ages last night at Conundrum Music Hall owing to being grumpy. For some reason, this cheers me up. Almost like I've been punished sufficiently. Darned Catholic upbringing. Then again, maybe it's just having better dreams that cheered me up. Had a truly horrible one night before last. You don't want to know.

English: still hard

    I got this toy for a quarter at a thrift store. It somewhat amuses, or anyway puzzles, the kitties. I wanted to try to describe it, but then it occurred to me that somebody out there probably already has a name for it and maybe I don't have to reinvent the English language just today. It turns out to be a friction flip car. You rub the wheels on the floor in the direction you want it to go and it keeps going, making a vroom noise that is delightful to oversized children like myself but somewhat alarming to kitties. It also flips if it hits anything and either comes back or flips again and again. One side is styled like a race car; the other seems like a pickup to me but toy designers feel that it's an off-road vehicle.
    Now this is an extremely delightful toy for a quarter, but you should maybe google friction flip car. People are asking remarkable amounts of money for what is a zany but pretty simple toy. Not a king's ransom or anything, but way more than a quarter. Also nobody seems to sell my model anymore. This suggests, since it's in good shape, that somebody bought it for a child long ago, it got ignored and then finally given away years later. This works for me. My Dollar Tree toy car, which you roll backwards to wind it up and then let it go, amuses the cats to some degree but it doesn't work on carpets, so we can only play in the kitchen. The flip car works on carpets, too. If only the cats were as childish as I am, we would have such fun. Perhaps a little catnip oil...
    Anyway, the point was my attempts to describe the thing. Actually, "toy car that flips" got me where I wanted to go, and I didn't have to figure out how to incorporate the Vroom aspect. What puzzled me was that there was no manufacturer's or distributor's name anywhere on the toy, just a five digit number that didn't push any of Google's buttons. Ah well... another mystery.

Software rage

    I find it interesting (I guess is the word) that what ticked me off about doing Dad's taxes was not having to do them, not having to pay them in spite of the large numbers involved nor even having to pay an accountant to make sure I'm not paying those large numbers in error. What ticked me off was the TurboTax software. It generally performed great (except for the whole "large numbers" thing). Apart from the previously mentioned problem with having to buy the elite version just because Dad had one 1099-B, things were pretty smooth until the end. At the end, though, once I had printed the request for an extension (complete with the money owed), the display at the top of the program showing how much I owe went down to zero.
    I have no idea why this enraged me. Presumably, the endless supply of petty annoyances just finally went over the top. But then, I could fix all the other petty annoyances. This was a stupid thing that I could only undo by reverting to the previously saved version, which I did. When I redid the extension request, though, I came out with different numbers for no known reason. This also teed me O fairly drastically. Fortunately, I'll have a CPA looking at all this stuff to fix what needs to be fixed relatively shortly. And nobody died. But I really think that these tiny silly things are the root of my bad mood of the last week or so, complicated by bad weather. The latter has really really cleared up today. Again, this helps a LOT.

Further valuable object lesson

    NEVER turn on a computer you're not familiar with and hook it to the Internet. I fired up Dad's computer after a long hiatus and also hooked it to my WiFi hotspot (intermittently, a couple of minutes at a time) with the idea that I should get all the Windows updates. If I had been thinking, I would have realized that if I just kept it offline, I wouldn't NEED any Windows updates, but I guess I'm just conditioned to download the damned things at all times.
    So there was this window from Norton antivirus. I certainly didn't agree to anything nor ask it to download anything, yet somehow there is a $90 bill (on a credit card I didn't even know existed) with very little in the way of description of what the charge is except for the word Norton. I'm going to tell the credit card company not to pay Norton and discontinue the card. This is in no way dishonest; I didn't want whatever the downloaded update was, didn't ask for it, and in fact was getting around to uninstalling Norton on that computer anyway because it's so useless. But hey; just another pointless annoyance I didn't need.
    On the brighter side (literally and figuratively), the weather finally cleared up. For a while, there was not a cloud in the big blue sky. Later, when a couple of clouds turned up, I nearly panicked, but think I got over it. I took a long, long walk. Hopefully brain function and emotional stability will return shortly.

Edit: WELL! As it turns out, it was just a coincidence that I had turned on the computer and saw a box from Norton at about the date that the $90 charge was added. It was an annual automatic renewal fee. I called the credit card company and when I calmed down, they canceled the credit card and gave me the number for Norton, and the person there was also very nice and "processed the refund." (Quotes there since I didn't pay anything; hopefully, the refund will go to the credit card company and the matter is resolved. Anyway, everyone knows that Dad is dead, and they get that no payment will be forthcoming. Knock. On. Wood.

Very damn grateful

    Some day I swear I'll quit harping on the weather. However, it was not my imagination that nicer weather would lead at least for me to a better mood. We only had a couple of hours of sunny weather and blue skies this morning before the clouds closed in again, but I felt vastly better. Not for nothing is that pewter-colored sky called "brooding," I guess.
    This is the actual weather system that brought all those tornadoes to Dallas, but our risk of extreme weather is only supposed to be slightly elevated. Nevertheless, I'll be very happy when this batch blows by as well, especially if the blue skies return. Heck, I've got to be a productive person (how ever briefly) some of these days!

Suddenly love boredom

    We've spent the past couple of hours surrounded by tornado watches and warnings. I don't think any of the warnings have extended quite to Columbia, but it was still a little more dramatic than I would prefer. I have both kitties indoors, so am not as worried as I might be. Listening to my Casey Kasem rebroadcast (1981, god help me), which was interrupted for a while there with weather warnings every song. The actual weather got here and was also fairly dramatic, but not too bad at least so far. I napped through a lot of it, dreaming that I was posting on Facebook, getting ignored by everyone and getting pissed off about it. My subconscious is a bit behind the curve. I don't really post on Facebook all that much anymore, granted mostly for that reason.
    Yesterday's awful weather in Dallas couldn't have gotten to us yet, so I guess we may have a rough night and morning ahead as well. Hopefully I can persuade Harry to stay inside for most of that. The weather anomaly that mainly struck me today though wasn't the tornado-iness but another temperature oddity: phone kept insisting that it was 70 degrees outside, but it felt much balmier. I guess my built-in thermometer just isn't too reliable.

400 feet below

    So there are things that I couldn't do while Dad was living. While still bummed about the reason why I can do them now, I guess I can morally do a little dance that I nevertheless can do them now. One of those is take the bus tour to the bottom of the quarry in my neighborhood, which happens once a year on a Saturday (which conflicted with taking Dad to and from dialysis), including today.
    It's a hoot! Even though I know what a quarry is and have seen aerial photos, my brain still resolutely determined that I was going down a mine and wondered how a bus would do that. A quarry, quite open-faced, is much more bus-friendly, but still more than a little tricky. It's a dang impressive, even awe-inspiring place, apparently one foot shy of being 400 feet deep at the moment. The huge equipment was impressive as well, but more so was how tiny it looked. My pictures were OK, but not nearly as good as I would have liked. There's one last bus going at 2:30; I have half a mind to go back with the real camera. Heck, it's just $5 and I waited four years to go. Ehhhhhhh maybe. (The clothes-in-the-dryer-might-get-stinky factor enters in as well. Hmmmm.) Anyway, if you get a chance to tour a quarry, go! Next year I'll probably walk it!

New Bangkok

    I have no idea why this amuses me. Maybe it's more a neat bit of problem solving that appeals to me in a way that feels like humor; I don't know.
    Ages ago Walmart came here, of course. They set up in their own giant strip malls. Generally speaking, they have abandoned those strip malls (largely killing them) and moving down the road or across it to new bigger super duper digs. Out Garners Ferry Road, the Walmart moved across the road, but the old mall didn't quite die. It's not thriving exactly, but it's still there. One tenant was the Bangkok Restaurant, and it hung on doggedly. I had some bad experiences there because the lady running the front was kind of a nut, but only stopped going there because I stopped living anywhere nearby.
    After about ten years, Bangkok Restaurant finally moved across the street to the new walmart's new strip mall. And that should have been all, really. But lately, I noticed that the old Bangkok Restaurant now has an added sign, making it the New Bangkok Restaurant. Internet searching says that the cook from the old restaurant has come back to open this one, and reviews are generally enthusiastic. So we're going to go check it out. Alas, they don't help with my main problem with this town's Thai places, that they close on Sundays, since this one does, too. But if they can manage a decent green curry, I can probably forgive it.

Somewhat less blue

    In case I haven't mentioned it, I'm not the world's biggest fan of grey, rainy weather. We've had a lot this week. And it's still only Thursday! Moreover, while I get through TurboTax without actually breaking anything, it was a very annoying, frustrating experience filled with cusswords and I really needed to decompress.
    Put these things together, and the only reasonable move was to head to Congaree National Park. There, rain doesn't bother you (or me anyway) as the canopy keeps nearly all of it off you and grey weather is acceptable because it can make for better photography. And the clean air helps.
    I felt a lot lot lot better while I was there and went off to Papa Jazz to purchase marked-down jazz records, which also helps morale. However, being back here is a major drag. I don't think I've suddenly gotten unhappy with my lodgings in the last day after six years. So I suspect it may be the air quality, or just the dankness. I'll be vacuuming a little later which will help with the former. The chilly weather should be gone tomorrow or the next day which should help with the latter. As I keep saying, if you live in South Carolina, it feels foolish to complain about cold, cool or any kind of temperate weather at all considering how hot it's about to be. So I'll try to dig feeling cool later in the year than usual. Still, it looks like my decision early in life to rule out Seattle as a possible place to move to was probably one of my rare smart ones.

But how will I tell if it's raining?

    For the last year or so, there's been a vine dangling down outside my kitchen window. You mainly think of vines as growing upwards, but nobody told this one. It was really great, because when it would rain but not hard enough to make a noise or splash on the windows, I would see water drops on this vine and know whether or not it was raining.
    This morning, I noticed that the vine was much lower compared to the window. Now it may be gone altogether, although it appears more like it's caught up on a higher vine, which it would be well entitled to do; we had a heck of a storm earlier! And the reason I'm related this particular piece of ephemera is because much as I kid myself about it, I do feel a little blue about not having my rain gauge anymore. Mind you, if I were really worried about it, I would open the window and untangle the dang thing. It's just funny the little things you get used to, and then have to get used to living without.
    It is, however, easier to live without because of the way it would whip against the window in really heavy storms, as I would generally jump with every thump. This is probably the prime reason I'm not jumping up to open that window to get my vine back.
    Meanwhile, tax day went OK. I filed extensions and paid what TurboTax wanted me to pay. I would have been willing to go ahead and file SC taxes, but they wanted me to attach Dad's entire federal return and copies of all 1099s, which would have been pretty tricky since I hadn't filed the former yet. So now I have a lovely 20 page printout of his SC tax return which will no doubt be helpful to the accountant. Always a silver lining!

Ouch!

    So I finished Dad's 2014 taxes, and early. owie ouch ouch! I won't be specific about numbers, but he came out with much greater income than previous years and owing a large, large amount of taxes. I was very highly peeved that TurboTax required me to buy their elite program for an extra $30 because Dad had ONE 1099-B form (brokerage activity). I kind of felt I should have gotten a trial version for just one.
    I was alarmed by the big numbers and contacted the accountants. They advised me to file for an extension but pay the money; that way I won't have to file an amended return nor risk penalties. We'll have an appointment some time after the 15th and go over everything. Works for me.

Apartment boom

    We are puzzled. Our little city suddenly has apartment buildings going up all over the damn place. All at the same time, after years of stasis. If this were Austin or Atlanta, say, this would make perfect sense. Charlotte or Charleston, sure. But Columbia is the Sunbelt city that never grew. We have no industry except for gubmint and every surrounding city has a better climate due to the meteorological phenomena known as mountains or ocean. We hit 100,000 people by the end of the '60s and topped out there. There's a largish college here, but as far as I know, there wasn't a post Gulf War baby boom, so it seems unlikely that there's a huge cohort of new students coming in.
    One imagines it's just another result of a complete lack of planning, or perhaps the various stimulus packages of five-odd years ago took this long to get here. Speaking as somebody who rents, a glut of apartments might not be at all a bad thing for me personally, but unless somebody has a brilliant plan that they're keeping highly secret to bring the Research Triangle south, I imagine we're going to wind up looking pretty silly. One good thing is that the new buildings are a lot closer than many of the places students have stayed in the past, which would bring gas usage down, I guess. And I'm not doing much traveling anymore; maybe there are apartment buildings springing up in every part of the country as credit eases. It just looks funny right here, right now.
    (And I'm totally not writing this to put off doing my taxes a little longer.)

Taxing

    Sister Anne reassures me that doing Dad's taxes with TurboTax will be easy and fast. Unfortunately she has done too good a job convincing me, so I'm putting off doing it for another day. What I really need is somebody to convince me that it's easy, fast and FUN so I'll want to do it immediately. That's the problem with being celiac; giving me a cookie doesn't work anymore. And nobody seems to want to give me a pony.
    I walked at the 12,000 Year Historical Park with my friend Michelle. She was wearing an Amos Lee t-shirt with a big owl picture in the middle. A family bicycled by from the other direction. The youngest son was bringing up the rear, and more or less shouted, "Hey! A owl shirt!" Made our day.

The zen of mediocrity

    The Onion very recently had a headline about Area Man Deriving His Self Worth From Performance of Professional Team. Where I live, that's not too funny, and there's no professional team. Downtown U. is not having its best year. The women's basketball team is great, but that's about it. The men's football team fell from several years of excellence to mediocrity. The men's basketball team is climbing from wretchedness to, you guessed it, mediocrity. The baseball team, after winning consecutive national championships not five years ago is barreling towards mediocrity.
    Mediocrity seems to be the destiny of University of South Carolina sports. The football team only made it over .500 for all time a couple of years ago. A five-year-run beating upstate rival Clemson barely put a dent in their gigantic series lead. We're pretty much the Chicago Cubs of the South, if maybe a little bit less godawful.
    But the Cubs and the Gamecocks teach us lessons. For all that Clemson says that USC's motto is "Wait 'til next year!" there is something to be said for always believing in next years. And the thing about beatdowns (baseball lost to Florida 14-3, last night, a respectable football score but not something you can feel good about in baseball), they never really make you appreciate the good times more, but they make you learn to forget them. And it's useful to realize that sports really aren't that important, that nearly everything else in life is more so, and you really can't derive your self-worth from the performance of a team. And then perhaps you can better appreciate the good times, sports-related or otherwise. But seriously-- 14-3? I ask you!

Saw a muskrat

    I went exploring at the Canal Park (Historic Columbia Canal and Riverfront Park, which is why I call it Canal Park for short). I don't think that they've cut new trails, but maybe they have. More likely I just wasn't curious enough to explore. Anyway, it turns out you can go out to little islets in the Broad River. As there are benches (months? benches? Go figure English) beside the trail out on the islets, presumably this isn't a surprise to the authorities. Lots of fishing folk out there, too.
    I was bummed that the picture didn't turn out better, but I did see a cute little otter. Or a cute but really immense rat. Whatever it was was swimming in the river quite near the shore. The picture, unfortunately, was about as interesting as a pine cone bobbing in the water. Ah well. It was a very nice little walk and I dug the islets a lot. The Broad River is not most scenic river in the world, but it's always nice to get next to water. I didn't much feel like emulating the otter; he seemed to feel similarly about getting next to land, though.

Edit: I guess the picture turned out better than I thought. I wound up posting it on Facebook more because I liked the texture of the water rather than because I thought anybody could identify the animal. But somebody could. Was muskrat. I didn't even know we have muskrats around here!

Everyone considered him...

    So I don't live in Columbia, but in Olympia, ten feet away but part of the county rather than the city. In the county, we have a dark green curbside cart (Herbie Curbie) for garbage just like in the city, but we also have a bright green one for recycling. Weeks ago we got notification that we should leave our recycling cart out starting Monday a week ago for inspection. Inspections might take more than a week but we would know it had been done when we saw a QC sticker on the cart.
    This morning, I happened to be looking out the window when I saw somebody walking from the cart across the street to mine, so figured it must be the inspector. (Pickers would have known they were all empty.) Later I went out, but there was no QC sticker on the recycling cart. Anywhere. Puzzled, I looked at the garbage cart. A QC sticker smiled back at me. Looked across the street and a QC sticker was on their garbage cart, too. Apparently, dark green and bright green are hard to tell apart. Everyone considered him/the moron from the county...

Edit: Ha! I'm the moron of the county! Looked back at the notification from the county and it clearly said that they're auditing both garbage and recycling rollcarts. My reading skills = not what they used to be. All apologies to my county cart inspector!

Mr. Fixit

    I lost my happ'nin' earbuds, or thought I had. It turned out that I had left them on the wrong counter. Anyway, I couldn't find them, which is what lost means, so I took to the trail using my old Walkman-type headphones. I quickly found why I had been so happy to switch to earbuds. In addition to not fitting under my hat well, they feature a plug that just wouldn't stay in place. Or anyway it wouldn't stay in place well enough to avoid scritchy, poppy, annoying sound. I tried putting the iPod in my shirt pocket, I tried carrying it, I tried putting it in my back pocket, and nothing worked. I tried looping the extra line around width-wise, which didn't work either and I tried lengthwise and that did. I put it in the pocket from where it started with one loop around lengthwise and it worked perfectly for the rest of the walk.
    I appreciate that I am plumbing new depths of microscopic slices of life of very limited interest, but it was just weird. All the stuff I tried that made sense and should have worked didn't. The one thing I tried that should not have worked (since it didn't noticeably stop the line from being jostled) did. And anyway, maybe there's somebody out there trying to get their iPod to work with Walkman headphones. I have a suggestion!

Why waltz?

    (I as usual have important money stuff to talk about, but can't, so you get this. All apologies.) I've never been a Strauss boy, and never thought I had any interest in the waltz or waltzing. But I'm gradually finding out that some of my favorite rock songs from over the decades are actually waltzes. I find this somewhere between alarming and embarrassing, and can't really figure that out either. I guess because The Blue Danube became somewhat less cool as the years passed. I guess.
    It doesn't help that my favorite songs aren't exactly too many other people's favorite songs, so citing examples isn't going to help a lot. Three that leap to mind (you can probably find them all on YouTube if you're curious) are "Change Partners" by Stephen Stills, "When You Make Up Your Mind" by Gutterball and "The Slim" by Sugar. The latter to me always sounded like a seaman's shanty, but more recently I think I pick up the strong ONE two three. If I'm wrong, though, I won't be too surprised. Counting is hard!
    What puzzles me mainly, as I am the least dancin' of all Dantzlers, is why this beat makes me want to dance. Having at most two feet, I don't see why a three-count would inspire them to get moving. My best guess is that the strong ONE sets one off, and the other two counts give your feet the simplest thing to do. Maybe. I don't know. Anyway, they all make me much more inclined to dance than did The Blue Danube. Perhaps waltz technology has advanced with the discovery of the electric guitar. Or perhaps everybody becomes a waltzing fool after age 50. Makes as much sense as anything!

Will the miracles never cease?

    Oh it's nothing. At his death, Dad had a largish credit balance on his Discover card. I called to report his death and they said no problem, that they would send a check. I guess I should have asked when. What annoyed me wasn't so much the wait but that they kept sending bills with a credit balance, which suggested that they weren't doing squat. Anyway, today I got the check. Granted, it's made out to Dad, deceased, c/o me, which strikes me as a tricky one to deposit. I mean, if it were going to my account, that would be no problem, but it needs to go to the estate account. Then again, what could be more appropriate for an estate account than a check that says the recipient is resting in peace? I'm sure I'll find out tomorrow.
    Meanwhile, the AAA Atlanta Braves are kicking off their season in Miami, where it's pouring down rain. The Marlins' stadium has a retractable roof and the fans, such as they are, are not best pleased. (During the rain delay, the Braves broadcasters are taking the opportunity to talk to the GM about why he traded his best players away. Reading not very far between the lines, he pretty much flat said yes, we're the AAA Braves now. But hey, we'll be great in a couple of years!)

A slight bout of conscience

    It's Easter Sunday; retail options are fairly limited. Paul suggested 2d & Charles, a used book/record store, apparently a chain. Regardless, they were open, and we went. I got some very nice CDs cheap and also Andrew Vachss' first novel, so a win!
    But before that, I was in the cheap PC games section. These are almost always dreadful. A very smart young kid and his somewhat slower older brother (I'd guess) were also looking. The young fellow was looking for first-person shooters. The games they have, though, besides being dreadful are nearly always hidden object games. I did find a first-person shooter all the way at the bottom right. And I just couldn't tell him. It's silly; he likes first-person shooters so he'll play them anyway. It would have only been nice to show him one for just $5. But I couldn't. I wasn't being shy; I wasn't being mean. I just didn't want to be party to it. He's young; maybe he'll fall in love with hidden object games.
    If this happens again, I think I'll do the most honest thing: tell the kid about it, but damn it with faint praise. As I've found out through bitter experience, there's a reason that their games are $5!

Decisions, decisions

    In the Further Grownup Stuff Department, I need to decide if I want to buy a house or not. On the one hand, rent is a dead loss. On the other, property taxes seem pretty high around here. Owning a home outright and then still having to pay isn't very appealing, either.
    Unfortunately, my dream house is probably a dream. All I want is a small (cottage-size) country farmhouse that's also conveniently located (which in my world means near an Aldi). Of course, it needs to be in my price range (meaning the lowest). The place I really want is literally condemned. I would try to get a hold of it anyway, except that it has (as the song says) a tin roof, rusted. I don't think I have the kind of money needed to buy a house and put a new roof on it. But I'm insane enough to be tempted.
    Columbia is really odd, because we have some terrific houses, but when new houses are built, they usually imitate styles from elsewhere instead of the good houses we have already. This means that the few terrific ones are really expensive even though they're in not the best neighborhood ever. Then again, the neighborhood I'm in (not the best either) has terrific mill houses. But talk about imitating styles from somewhere else; they're based on the mill houses of New England of 100 years ago, and are built to shed heavy snows! Brilliant, these mill owners were! They're too big for me and anyway I'd like to get out of this neighborhood (as it's shut in by frequent freight trains), but might be within my budget. Maybe. As I say, decisions, decisions!

Not complaining

    But yes, I would like some dairy-free fake cheese with this sulfite-free whine. Really, though, I'm not so much complaining as still reeling in shock. It occurs to me that one of the disadvantages of not being poor anymore is that I actually have something to lose now. So whereas before, I wasn't risking much by flying nekkid as regards, say, health insurance, now I'm risking much more. When my net worth topped out at about the price of a fairly nice late-model used car, that was one thing. Now it's more and (am I being vague again? Yes!) that's quite another. Ditto life insurance, ditto not having a will, ditto I'm sure a dozen other things that I'll be finding out sooner or later.
    This grownup stuff is a drag. (OK, so I AM complaining.) No wonder I stayed away from it for so long!

More good hiky news

    Or good biky news to go with good hiky news. This town sits on a river. OK, three rivers. One is called the Broad River for reasons that might occur to you. (It's not all that broad compared to the Amazon, say, but I'm not sure I'd want to swim across.) Crossing the Broad River (this'll surprise you, too!) is the Broad River Road which, unbelievably enough, does so on the Broad River Bridge. This bridge needed replacing, but it's also an essential artery, so it needed replacing while staying more or less open. Apparently this is pretty tricky. It took, by our calculation, 115 years. (This may be an exaggeration.) Seriously, my friend Paul thinks it has taken the length of the Obama Administration; I think it's been a bit less than that.
    Anyway, it's been at least 5 years. What makes it hiky/biky is that they had built a pedestrian/bike bridge down from it to the Columbia Canal/Riverfront Park, just about five minutes before cutting it off again for a century of construction. That little connector was particularly handy for Paul, as he bikes everywhere, and it let him bike from up/downtown (where he lives; it's called either up- or downtown, though I admit I prefer both) to a good thrift store and a good new/used record store with much greater safety than otherwise. And now it's back! And in the interim, they've put in interesting riverfront trails to go with the canalside one that was always there. So yay again!

They are! They are! They really are!

    So a year and some months ago, in February I think, there was a severe storm in the area. It had little lasting impact except for severely damaging the elevated boardwalk at Congaree National Park, which has been closed ever since. (The boardwalk, that is.) It was supposed to be repaired last summer, but that never happened, so when this spring rolled around and it was still closed, I was starting to give up hope. How happy was I then when I found that they really are starting work to rebuild it? Very!
    People not living in this area code might not understand. This state is basically a big cleared swamp. In metropolitan areas, the mosquitoes are under control; out in the country, not so much. At Congaree, I never really had trouble with mosquitoes. It isn't that they aren't there, but rather that the flies are so annoying that I never got around to being bothered by the smaller set. (However, if you ever stop at all, you can get eaten by mosquitoes. That's why I never stop.)
    In the summer, which is half the year around here, this gets to be a real problem. However, the elevated boardwalk, even though it is only elevated five or ten feet, seems to confuse the flying bugs. It makes for a substantial improvement, and makes it possible to visit practically year-round. (Not for nothing is there a Mosquito Meter at the Visitors' Center that goes up to 6: War Zone, though.) Without that elevated boardwalk, they might as well close by May. It'll be great to have it back. Hopefully by May!