One Percent Concern

I was going to write the e-mail off as campaign propaganda given the time of year, but when I followed a link to the SNOPES website where the information was confirmed as accurate - well I got just a little bit agitated.

The e-mail talked about House Bill HR4646, aka Debt Free America Act.

The bill proposes a 1% tax on every financial transaction. Deposit your paycheck - get taxed 1%, make a withdraw - get taxed 1%, buy a house - get taxed 1%, and so on.

While release of this info is undoubtedly tied to the election, if such a bill were to go through it would definitely be more of a trick on the U.S. workforce than a balancing the budget treat.

Between ideas such as this and the great health care boondoggle I foresee a rapidly expanding underground cash economy - along with a few boatloads of burning tea.

Sea Witch

Ding dong the witch is... alive and well.

It's Sea Witch weekend in Rehoboth, DE which means that kids from one to sixty years of age will line up to follow the Sea Witch in a parade down Rehoboth Avenue.

... And that's just the start. The weekend is filled with scavenger hunts that send folks roaming all around Rehoboth Beach and two neighboring towns, costume parades for pets, costume parades for kids, arts and crafts, sand castle contests - the list goes on.

Personally I find it a great alternative to house to house trick or treating in the dark. If it appeals to you too, you can get more info at http://www.beach-fun.com

Life Cycles

It occurs to me that trees go into the end of their life cycles in a much different manner than humans.

While I'll grant that post-summer hibernation for trees is quite different than death for a person, I could not help but make a comparison.

Approaching hibernation, trees put on a dazzling display of color - seemingly a celebration of a successful cycle. The mixed palettes of color are a tree equivalent of fireworks.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, the shuffling, arrested gait of an elderly person is anything but a tap dance that would suggest happiness. Too often the end of the human cycle is accompanied by moaning and wailing.

Perhaps we should do something about. Perhaps as an elder moves into last years we should make a practice of gathering 'round to celebrate what they have achieved and to thank them for the impact they have had on our lives.

Of Colors and Groundhogs

I didn't realize groundhogs were related to chameleons.

The very same King Herman who two months ago was sporting a dark coat that blended perfectly with the thick green grass is now sporting a color equivalent to the light brown post-summer lawn.

And the King didn't even have to change his regal finery - he simply changed the color.

(For those who don't remember, King Herman is the name I gave to the groundhog that lives in the rolling lawn centered in the office complex where I work.)

Think of the money and resources that could be saved if people could change the color tones of their clothing. We could pull last year's reds and browns out of the closet, change them to gold and khaki - and have a fresh new wardrobe.

We would even be one up on King Herman at that point - the King can't send his finery to the dry cleaners.

Year Coastering

My apologies for the lack of advance notice that I would be away from the blog-o-sphere for a few days.

I was focused on coastering into another year.

This was my second annual roller coaster birthday celebration. What better way to spend a birthday than being with the ones you love while riding the twists, turns, rises, and drops of engineering marvels designed to scare a year or two of life out of you?

Having reached my fifties perhaps I shouldn't risk the shortening of life, but as was discussed over the weekend, everyone has to go sometime so I might as well give myself the chance to have fun on they way out.

That I am typing this blog entry is proof that I didn't check out during any of the hundred-and-some foot drops. If anything, I feel a few years younger than I did before my thrill ride weekend.

Sometimes...

A busy evening today so I offer a contemplation

Sometimes the only way to move ahead is to fall behind.

Respecting Billions

A golf ball can get you a billion dollars?!

Apparently Tiger Woods is on the verge of becoming a billionaire. Now I realize not all of that income is directly from tournament winnings - but it is all based on smacking around a little white ball with a club.

Don't get me wrong, after playing Wii Golf I have nothing but respect for a guy who can knock a ball into a cup in less than thirty swings - but not a billion dollars worth of respect.

I'd have a billion dollars worth of respect for a scientist who found a way to control the weather, or an inventor who figured out how to make an automobile run on air. I might even half a billion dollars worth of respect for someone who figured out a way for me to always have a closet full of clean clothes without my having to remember to run the washing machine.

Maybe I need to reexamine my plans for success. I used to be pretty good at throwing a Frisbee. Perhaps if I brushed up on my skills and joined the Frisbee-golf circuit....

Menagerie

People are as varied as the trinkets in display windows.

I made this observation while strolling through the Pennsylvania town of New Hope this weekend.
The shops in this rural town offer a full range of shopping options. Store front windows display glassware, clothing, wood crafts, dolls, framed oil paintings, penny candy, ceramics, candles, and more.

The variety of goods obviously attracts folks from all walks of life. Older couples in dress slacks and knit sweaters share the sidewalks with motorcyclists in leather chaps and jackets. Teenagers wearing fur line uggs with cut off jeans willingly make way for middle age folks dressed in crisply ironed pants and oxford shirts.

The streets were an unending parade of Hyundai's, BMW's, minivans, and motorcycles. Drivers of all vehicles waiting patiently for lines of pedestrians to cross the narrow streets - and pedestrians waited patiently for breaks in the traffic.

While I thoroughly enjoyed the atmosphere, I couldn't help thinking what a shame it was that such good nature was not indicative of everyday life from coast to coast.

Looney Administration

For most of my life I have managed to stay politically neutral. While my votes have tended to favor one party more than the other, I believed that with a fairly balanced mix of representation the country would manage to find balance in legislation.

Even if it wasn't intentional, the sheer number of legislative actions meant that SOME of the legislation was bound to have SOME redeeming value.

With the current Washington administration offering more of communism than democracy, I have turned to the cartoon network for redeeming value.

Given a choice between CSPAN and Looney Tunes, I find more hope in the efforts of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.

On the Road

I'll be away from the internet for a few days.

On this blustery day I offer a contemplation

Just as winds sweep both the Earth and atmosphere clean,
So should we breathe mindfully to purge toxins from our bodies and cobwebs from our minds.

Look for a new post on Tuesday, October 19th

TV Free

There are only two television shows that I watch. Both shows are carried by the same network that will be showing the coming baseball playoffs - which means the shows I watch won't be aired in the coming weeks.

Which means there is absolutely no reason for me to turn on the television until sometime in November.

I am considering using this as an opportunity to go permanently television free.

Motivated Mom and I offered a similar opportunity to College Dude when he was still living at home. We told College Dude that if he went an entire year without watching television we would give him a significant monetary reward. - We ended up writing the check.

Now I have to figure out what I'll gift myself with if I just do away with television all together.

Perhaps a getaway week in an exotic location.

Yeah, I'd exchange 52 hours of television for 168 hours of sun and fun.

Double the Fun

I should have known from the moment I took the faucet apart this was not going to be a quick fix of a leaking valve - because the valve was a design I had never seen before.

A trip (make that trips) to multiple hardware and home improvement stores confirmed that I was not the owner of a popular brand faucet. I would not be returning home with a replacement valve.

Which meant I would be replacing the entire faucet. Make that faucets, because not having a popular brand faucet I would not be returning home with a matching faucet.

Our bathroom has a double sink vanity. Were I living alone I would have replaced just the one dysfunctional faucet , but in deference to Motivated Mom's decorating preferences, I resigned myself to install a matching pair.

Emptying the contents of the first vanity cabinet I found myself staring at a space equivalent in size to a child's car seat - which meant I would have enough room for my head, my shoulders, and half of a wrench.

Wishing I had pursued a career as a contortionist, I wriggled my way into the confined space with motions similar to a cat getting a good back scratch in freshly mowed grass.

I won't detail the number of times I wriggled in and out of first one and then the second space. Suffice it to say I now have eight pack abs.

Next time I'll just put a sponge in the sink to muffle the sound of dripping water.

Stuck in the Middle

Sunrise to the right of me, lightning to the left,
Here I am, stuck in the middle of the two.

Apologies to Stealers Wheel, but those words were running through my mind on the trip into work this morning.

To the east (right) of me, the horizon was washed in the muted yellow common to the hours just before dawn. To the west (left) the purple sky was a dark backdrop to blinding streaks of lightning.

I could almost imagine I was in a shuttle craft, racing along the seam between adjoining universes, trying to make my way back to the Starship Enterprise.

A slight veer to the right and I would find myself headed for a world with dense flora and bright sun. A jog to the left would send me spinning into the maw of universe being devoured by a black hole.

Just a typical day in the workweek.

Glued to the Wall

I'm never going to get used to frogs clinging to the siding of my house.

I first noticed the little green tree frogs last summer. Last summer in these parts was obnoxiously hot and humid (even for someone who loves hot weather) and I thought the tree frogs had mistakenly viewed the mid-atlantic coast as an extension of the rain forest.

Whatever it was that brought them here, the frogs have stuck around - literally.

Coming up the front steps tonight I prepared to battle my way through the critters that gather around the light on the front stoop. What I thought to be a healthy sized moth folded up next to the light fixture turned out to be a frog holding fast with his suction cup feet.

With all of the tiny insects buzzing around, I guess light-side dining is ecstasy for an acrobatic amphibian.

Crabby Feud

Saturday was one of those picture perfect post-summer days. So I was surprised to arrive at the beach and discover Motivated Mom and I would be the sole inhabitants.

Warm sun, soft breeze, rhythmic surf, it wasn't long before I was catching z's along with rays.

At the end of my cat nap, I stretched, yawned, and leapt straight up into the air.

Something frightful was happening. Mere feet from MY feet was a tangle of thrashing legs and clicking claws. A pair of crustaceans were locked in mortal combat.

I had never seen Ghost Crabs this large before. With small bodies and long, spindly legs their appearance was a cross between crab and tarantula.

The battle went back and forth, like a swashbuckling duel, until one crab retreated into its burrow and the other ran - in my direction before dropping into a burrow if its own.

All of which caused me to decide there was somewhere else I urgently needed to be.

High and Dry

All this time you thought people were swearing...

That four letter word starting with S turns out to be an acronym.

Way back when dried manure was transported by ship, it was important the blocks of manure not get wet. Damp manure, besides smelling bad, releases methane gas. If a ship's hold were to fill with methane and a crew member were to strike a match - well, the ship didn't stay afloat for very long.

In order to make sure transported manure stayed dry, the packaging was marked Store High In Transit.

So the next time someone uses that acronym, grab the nearest storage container and place it on the top shelf.

Unidentified Running Objects

It wasn't a dead skunk in the middle of the road - because the eyes reflecting in the headlights were moving.

Whatever occupied the middle of the road was certainly bold. The glowing eyes were angling toward my car rather than away.

A tap of the brakes slowed the car enough for me to catch site of a white form on the shoulder keeping pace with my car. Thoughts of wolves and vampires flashed through my mind and for a moment I thought I was being stalked.

I envisioned the scenario. The as yet unidentified thing in the middle of the road would prevent passage. I would be forced to stop whereupon the beast to my right would leap on the hood of the car, gnashing and snarling at the windshield.

As it turned out leaning on my horn caused both creatures to retreat. But as I passed I clearly saw two dirty-white canines loping along the side of the road.

Ghost dogs, I thought. And the hair on the back of my neck stood up.

Heavenly Slides

Double double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble.

This excerpt from Shakespeare's Macbeth was going through my mind this evening as I watched layers of charcoal colored clouds churn across the sky.

Breaks in the clouds were few, but where the clouds thinned seven or eight beams of sunlight stabbed down to the ground.

So defined were those columns of light they might have been solid. I could envision an army of angles and other heavenly beings riding the bright slides to earth.

Misdirected Prognostication

It seems that whenever there is a particularly bad stretch of weather both private conversations and news reports turn to references of what the future weather ramifications are.

Almost as though, already miserable, we are compelled to make ourselves more miserable yet.

The interesting thing is, the portents of what the future holds are based on past attempts to predict the weather. Attempts that I suspect had a much lower accuracy level than repetition suggests.

For every heavy fog in September, October, and November there will be a snowfall in December, January, or February the Farmer's Almanac supposedly says.

Somewhere along the line someone replaced fog with rain and now folks are talking about how we're destined to endure another string of blizzards come the colder months because of the torrential rains we've had this month.

Why is it folks aren't inclined to look for the upside? Hey, the rain has to stop eventually and then we'll be back to blue sky and sunshine are the kinds of portents that should be shared.

Myself, I'm counting on several more weekends spent ocean-side before I worry about what the early months of 2011 hold.

Thumb Obstacle

I was certain my google search was going to lead to the discovery that the tip of the human thumb has somewhere around 1200 nerve endings.

As it turned out, my quest for knowledge was inconclusive, but I'm still betting on at least 1000 nerve endings. I'm going with that wager because it felt like all 1000 endings were exposed when I sneezed while chopping celery and tried to add my thumb to my salad.

For such a little slice, it really made life difficult - because of course I had to apply four layers of bandages to protect my thumb from accidental bumps.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to work a button through a button hole when your thumb is three times its normal size?

Try cracking an egg with a bandaged thumb and see how much of the egg white makes it to the griddle and much gets absorbed in the gauze.

Tying a shoe became an exercise in futility. Pushing a looped string back under itself with an appendage the size of a cannon charge plunger is impossible.

My thumb is back to normal now - and I'm out of the house fifteen minutes earlier in the morning.

Rain Reaction

Rain in October is totally different than rain in June.

June rain encourages us to celebrate growth and life. We splash in puddles and look forward to gardens filled with lush flowers and numerous vegetables.

October rains send us scurrying indoors. We lay logs in our fireplaces and wrap ourselves in blankets like insects weaving a cocoons.

Always an Ark

The primary topic of discussion here on the east coast right now is the rain.

The northern end of Delaware received 7-1/2 inches of rain in 24 hours. A pittance compared to what North Carolina had to deal with, but still enough to wash out bridges, cause mudslides, and close dozens of roads.

Perhaps the most overheard comments had to do with the building of an ark.

And I have to wonder... Why is it that in times of heavy rain people always want to build an ark?
No one ever says, Did you hear the forecast? Time to build a 3 masted schooner. No on ever proposes to hollow out a log for a canoe or mould a surfboard. Everyone's all about building an ark.

Why? Are we so consumed by guilt that we expect punishment from above at every turn - or are we simply lacking in imagination?

Just to put a twist on things, the next time there's call for torrential rains I'm going to say to my coworkers: Gee, I hope there's a sale on bathing suits.