Time to Give

Looking back at my last post and the daily news about New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast, I figured the extreme least I could do is make a donation to the Red Cross and provide a link for you to do so too.

Bad day, but worse for Gulfport MS

Well, today was not great day thus far. Starting with a fresh supply of bird crap on my car for the sixth day in a row. There's also this incessant beeping alarm going off in some apartment across the way, echoing throughout the entire neighborhood for what is now the third day straight. The weather was hot and muggy as usual. There was supposed to be a thunderstorm, which I was actually looking forward to in order to wash the bird crap off my car, but which never transpired. They (the birds) only choose my car out of the six in the parking lot as their preferred toilet. Extremely boring work today. Had to pay $19 for a $9 salad at lunch. I guess the folks in Mississippi had a much worse day, though there are times that at least a part of me thinks, "that's what this city could use, a good hurricane." Is that horrible?

H-Town: New England's Rising Rents

This diatribe is on the Hartford redevelopment going on downtown. Apparently, Hartford redevelopment folks have given up on attracting young professionals to downtown and are instead focussing on wealthy retiring baby boomers. I know, our generation, being small in size is often ignored, but this time it will certainly be at Hartford's peril I am sure. Word has it, that rents are going to be $3000 a month for the new downtown apartments. Ridiculous! Let's see, for the same price I can live in downtown a) Boston; b) Manhattan; c) San Francisco or d) Hartford. Who in God's name would pay this money to endure the hell that is Hartford?! Apparently they're going after renters who live places just because they're expensive, but how many wealthy retirees want to retire to downtown Hartford?! That and they're putting a community college campus downtown...woohoo! Nobody lives at a community college. People spend less time there than they do at a downtown office. These idiots have economic theory backwards. First, you have to make a place desirable, then you have lots of people wanting to move there, then you can raise rents. All I can say is, "Good luck Hartford".

Politics, etc.

Well I'm back...a lot of things have pissed me off politically this week. Usually things have been making me so mad since March 2003 that I have had to just turn myself off to it to keep from going bonkers. This week it started with that Robertson comment about Chavez in Venezuela...he apologized later, but there are really a LOT of people in this country totally in favor of getting rid of this guy, who was undisputedly legitimately elected. I did some research and people seem to either love him or hate him. The best things said about him are that he gives oil profits to the poor and establishes hospitals and schools in impoverished areas. The worst things are that he has his supporters in every area of Venezuelan government and basically runs the show there, and he is friends with Fidel and disparages the American government. People with Bushmania apparently think these are grounds to remove a democratically elected leader. Oh...did I happen to mention that he is like the largest importer of oil to the U.S.? This removal of inconvenient governments policy is possibly the most evil thing I can think of...and to have it espoused by a supposed "Christian" just tops the cake, proving that 99% of religious zealots are total and complete hypocrites.

Then something cool happened. Bush made a speech at the VFW convention in Salt Lake and the mayor, good old Rocky Anderson, led a protest against Bush and the war. But then this article came out in the Salt Lake Tribune...and it should give you a good taste of the warped political climate in Utah (Salt Lake City excepted)...the way things are twisted around by the media that drove me crazy when I lived there. It's like a microcosm of the current political climate across the nation.

And to a certain someone out there, Pete, being fiscally conservative does not mean being anti-labor...sometimes being anti-labor increases economic inefficiencies. Fiscal conservatism, from a political perspective, means you don't want the government to spend as much in general. Tort reform also has the potential to introduce inefficiencies because it serves as an artificially imposed cost ceiling on socially undesirable externalities. The costs of these externalities, if not handled in the private realm, will no doubt be borne by the government. And likewise the laws of economics say that any government subsidy of drilling in the ANWAR is a WASTE OF MONEY. The best place to get oil is by those who produce it the cheapest, i.e., not the United States. It is also an amazingly short-sighted view of a cost/benefit analysis. ANWAR drilling would not affect the price of oil, as this is controlled by the world market's supply and demand. ANWAR contributes a negligible amount to this supply. The social costs far outweigh the benefit...the only ones it does benefit are those oil companies who actually drill there (with government subisidies no doubt).

How do I make titles on this thing? Anyway, I took some time off work today to take our cat Magda to the vet. Vets are very hard to get appointments at in the Hartford region. Our usual vet didn't have an appointment until September 12, so I had to trek out to Windsor. The vet was very nice though and I will return. He's a solo practitioner vet, which is cool. Magda got her checkup and shots, but she has also been "scooting" her butt along the carpet. This is a sign of either blocked glands in the netherregions or worms. Vet freed her glands and that appears to have been the problem. I'll spare you the really gory details. Magda is probably already pissed that her personal medical problems are all over the Internet. Her day was all down hill since the pet carrier came out, and really steep downhill when the vet put on the rubber gloves. Sorry Magda. I had to hold her down with the assistance of another vet assistant and she managed to give me one good scratch...managed to get her paw under my long-sleeved shirt. Anyway that's all for today.

Well, not much new today. Slow day at work though there was a birthday "party". Does everyone realize I have guinea pigs? Not sure I mentioned that. They're fabulous. One is named Alexandria and the other is Gilbert, though we call Gilbert Mr. Mr. Yes that's right Mister Mister. Also, as others have mentioned Yelp is fabulous, I've rated twelve places so far, but will surely do more....great boredom killer. Does anyone read this thing other than Andrew? One day I'll make it well worth you'll time and that day will come soon. You'll see!

I still can't get over how weird that plane crash in Greece was. I mean there's the whole air pressure/freezing thing...all I can think is, can't they just fly at a low altitude? Then there's the weird guy falsely reporting the text message and then going to the prosecutor's office and "tripping" and falling ending up all bloody. Of course, apart from being a huge mystery, it's a horrible tragedy and I can't imagine what all the survivors' families are going through and my heart goes out to them. Then there was the Venezuelan thing yesterday. These thing always seem to happen all at once, or is it that when one thing happens the media starts reporting on similar events if it's a slow news day. The media is very frustrating and idiotic sometimes the way they just glob on to some stories and won't let go no matter how much they've beat the dead horse. Strange herd mentality or something at work there.

OK, apparently I haven't quite got the hang of this thing...I had a post sitting there for a couple of days. So, today is cooler which is nice. Work days go by so quickly, there's not much time for self, especially if you do things like clean house, cook, and do dishes. there are tons of annoying car alarms always going off in my neighborhood...ugh!

Paragliders and fender benders...

Hello everyone, this is the new blog. I doubt I'll be able to do daily updates, but I'm going to aim for at least weekly. I'll try to post as often as possible. It is another hot and humid Sunday here in Hartford. This summer has been brutal. The winter was very long too. Something is broken with the weather here. I will not inundate you with photos, but I got my scanner working again and I'll put one new one up with every post. I'll start with some from our honeymoon.

Someone hit my car the other day in the parking lot at West Hartford Center and was kind enough to leave me a note. I was amazed! So, basically that saves me my deductible of going through my own insurance. I left a note on someone's car once when I hit it in my own parking lot, so it must be karma coming back to reward me. My car is getting fixed and I rented a car for the weekend. All they had left was a GMC Envoy so I got it at a discounted rate. It's fun to drive, though a bit more sluggish than I had expected.

The photo above is Merinda and I just before we jumped off the North Face of the Alps on a paraglider. We got up to the top of the moutain on a gondola and no one jumped off for a long time because the wind wasn't right. One guy tried a couple of times but changed his mind once, and almost got dragged off the cliff, because his parachute kind of half-way opened (Yikes!). Nevertheless, I guess the wind changed, and they thought it was ok to go and I was the first one to jump in our group. We each rode tandem with an experienced glider. Still, I am usually a bit afraid of heights and this requires you to run as fast as you can directly off a 300 foot cliff, which further out drops at least 2000 feet, dragging a parachute behind you. But I realized that the best thing you can do about fear is just ignore it. I always wondered if I'd have the guts to run off a cliff, or jump out of a plane, and it was good to find out that I do. When you're running you're concentrating on running fast enough, so you don't really think about being afraid. Though before I went, I though, "gee, I hope the wind doesn't change again just as I'm running." I guess the running part makes it easier than jumping out of a plane in one way. Once we were out floating in the air and the paraglider opened behind us it was a little unnerving that there was just this wooden board between you and the ground, and these little metal hooks with latches that you yourself had hooked up, connecting you to the paraglider, but I don't think your brain really lets it sink in. It seemed very surreal, as if I was I was just in some really realistic virtual reality video game or something. Is this a side effect of growing up in our generation? All I could hear was the wind in the paraglider, and the little altimeter thingy beeping now and then (I think it helps the glider catch "thermals" and prolong the ride.) Our ride was about forty minutes. They say that one guy flew from that spot where we jumped in Germany all the way to Italy on a paraglider. That would give me a soar bum. It was almost too perfectly beautiful of a view to sink in to your head (natural beauty overload). You could see the peaks of the Alps stretching out to the horizon in one direction and many lush green valleys with lakes and castles in the other.

A giant thunderstorm just hit and looks to be trying to break the heat wave. Lightning is all over. One just struck so close that right before I heard the thunder I heard a fizzle coming from the plug in the outlet. Car alarms are being set off randomly in the neighborhood by the thunder.

I really like Pete's straw poll idea, so here's two questions. Would you leave a note if you hit someone's car in a parking lot and left noticeable damage? Would you go skydiving? Paragliding?