Frenzied Daddy

I’m driving the girls this morning, we’re off to our friend L’s place. She’s going to watch them while I go to work. I turn right, around a blind corner, onto an onramp to a highway. Behind me is a skyline of the city, before me is a tunnel. I see a van on the right. pulled over; one of the big panel vans (like UPS), not a SUV. There’s a guy, there, bent over the rear wheel, fiddling with it. As I come up to him, he turns slowly around, holding something small in front of him with both hands. He brings it up to his face, to look through it. As I pass him, I realize that he’s got a cell phone camera, and he’s taking a picture of where he is.

But, you know, he could be using his cell phone to detonate a bomb on the MAX train. Or taking a picture of the busy tunnel, to plot out the structural flaws. Or any number of things that leapt immediately to mind, as I’m speeding away from him.

This, to me, is the legacy of September 11. We can no longer trust that “a guy changing his tire” is really a guy changing his tire. No matter how many rights the government takes away (the “Patriot Act”) , no matter how many airplane passengers get their box knives taken away, it’s still going to be there. And until Americans realize that we need a more appropriate response to it than living in fear, that legacy will remain.

Stop the war; figure out why they hate us. Fix the hate. Don’t be making more terrorists than we can kill. I don’t want North Portland to become Belfast, Portland to become Beirut.

Shiny Good. Get More Shiny.

So, it’s really happened. First, I got someone (thanks a bunch, Auntie A) to watch the kids, and went to a client interview and then a “job” interview. And I’ve been hired by both; I’m working 5-20 hours/week on one site and 25-30 hours as a system administrator for another “client.” And to top it off, I won a (small) Rent-A-Coder bid the same freaking day.

The PHP gigs don’t faze me. I can do those, as soon as I get my bearings, I’ll be spitting out code and doing testing and stuff. But this sysadmin thing? I’ve been in the office 2 hours, I barely know where the servers are, and I’m trying to sleuth out why we keep getting spam piped through our sendmail server. I’m only a little stressed.

It’s great though, I feel busy and productive. And I guess I am !

We celebrated Baby K’s first birthday today, at Jamison Park. On a day when the weather’s eighty-plus, it’s a great idea to party at the water. We and a few friends took our kids to play in the fountain, eat pound cake with berries, and celebrate. I don’t think the subject of the party was aware that it was “for her” but … she will be.

She had a great haul, especially considering my generic response when someone asks me what my kids need; “Oh, you know, whenever they need something we go shopping…” She has thrilling new books, a new schoolbus, some new play mats, some new clothes, and a new tigger-in-the-box.

Hey, I stuck up a gallery …

Radio commercials have sent a shiver of fear into our monthly budget. I’ve heard that “Congress has passed a bill to double the minimum payment for open-ended credit accounts” and that it’s effective next month. Do you have any information on this?

I found this bill, which is apparently not yet a law, and I can see why this would send credit card cockroaches scurrying for a 10% minimum payment; but I haven’t found anything else. I also called the two credit unions we have visas with, but their “visa coordinators” have played dumber than usual. Although one told me that my August payment won’t be strikingly higher than this month’s.

Sometimes, I cannot believe the previous owners of this house.

About a week ago, I noticed that the doorbell was broken. That is, the little button part was broken and you could see the light bulb. So I mentally made a note to get a new bell mechanism. Today, I was at the despot on a completely unrelated errand, and noticed that el-cheapo buttons were two and a half bucks. So I bought one. Came home, put some food in front of Baby K and whipped out my cordless screwdriver. I figured that it’d be a quick in and out job.

I removed the two screws holding on the broken bell, and it was still stuck to the door. Unsuspecting, I inserted a putty knife behind it and pried it off. I found a whole lot more putty than I thought was necessary… and it smelled like doublemint. The cheeseheads had shoved a big wad of chewed up gum behind the doorbell!

So I chiseled most of it off, reattached the new bell and cleaned up. Then I walked inside, and the bell rang. I found out why they had so much gum in there- the bell was short circuiting across the metal siding. I fixed it up with a little caulk and some freaking electrical tape. Sheesh. Even I can do a better job than doublemint.

My “close personal friend” with breast cancer had some great news after her surgery last week.

We saw the surgeon today. The drain is out; the wounds healing well. There is post op physical therapy to be done to preserve full range of motion of her right arm after the node dissection.

The pathology results are good: The tumor is classed as Stage I.

lymph node involvement detected.

The margins are clean (they most likely got it all)/

The tests for Estrogen and other receptors are not back.

SO. Only radiation. No chemotherapy. Long range treatment decisions will come with those final test results, I think.

She will see an Oncologist as soon as the appointment is made but will not have the radiation until after she is back from her residency stint in Arizona.

I was doing my traditional MMWAP. I’d read through all my usual links, then moved on to StrayChaser, who I read approximately three times weekly. Compelling but depressing. I envy her focus, gumption and energy, but I don’t envy her pain. Anyway, I had read about some feral cats that were fixed with “POPPA” funds. So I went and looked up POPPA in google, and found them. Hurray for google! This lead me to something I found fascinatin’.

POPPA also runs something called Recycled Gardens. This is like the ReBuilding Center, but for your garden; they have plants and landscape materials. So, now I have another field trip to take the kids on; and besides, they might have a dark purple lilac bush for my wife

Honestly, I’ve been to the ReBuilding center a few times. Only once have I actually purchased stuff there; I wanted some conduit stuff for the basement wall, so I could run some more electricity down there. I described to someone what I was looking for, and he replied “hey man, this isn’t Home Depot™,” I found what I needed about twenty minutes later.

Heinous Human Rights violations couldn’t remove most favored trading nation status. How does threatening the US with nuclear weapons sound?

I mean, geez, if Tiannamin Square doesn’t get attention, what does?