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Last updated
08/29/2007 06:39 PM -0700
The beginnings and endings of
all human undertakings are untidy.
John Galsworthy, author, Nobelist
(1867-1933)
Monday February, 11 2002
No school today, actually Mike had school but we are not making
him go.... for several reasons, all the other kids have the day off, the
medication he is on has not had an opportunity to work effectively, the county
school is the pits, and I don't want to deal with it.
I went to the Gym again, I have an appointment to get "evaluated
for a program" on Thursday at 1000.
If you are here you know that I have moved my page, Tripod was
giving me fits, I will still use it for my Rants, Genealogy and such, the pages
I don't go to frequently.
Better to write for yourself
and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
Cyril Connolly, critic and editor
(1903-1974)
Tuesday February, 12 2002
Christy left for school early, she is teaching a 6 hour class today... I
got the kids to school
Cindy got an award for Citizenship, they held the damn ceremony at 0830, that's
when I was dropping off Autumn... these people are something else... I get the
strong feeling that the people running the schools up here go home each night
thinking that they would have a really good job if they couls only get rid of
all the damn kids that show up every day...
Got a call from Mike's teacher today saying he was a model student... that's a novelty
Posted my website yesterday and spent about four hours last night sending out
notices... I finished this morning, I found about 80 bad e-mail addresses...
Irksome...
I've been getting e-mails all day, it's great...
I spent my spare time today answering them.
I need to send out notices more often I guess...
Wednesday February, 13 2002
More e-mails this morning... cool... no time to answer them though....Christian had a dental appointment today,
he's pretty good at the dentist... I had to take Calie too, she is too young to
be home alone... We went shopping at Smart & Final...
I had told
Mike that if he was good he could walk from the school to the Gym, it's less
than a quarter of a mile. When I made that deal I thought I would be able to go
down and work out for a few minutes but Christy was teaching and I had to take
all the kiddies with me...my car is too small for six kids (Christian stayed
home alone)
I was at the PC and noticed an overdue alarm I was late for the
Cowboy Music and Poetry Festival sign up meeting... I made it down to Newhall
and I was only 23 minutes late...I signed up and talked to Tony Natoli for a few
minutes... This thing is a big deal, it gets bigger every year...
When one has too great a dread
of what is impending, one feels some relief when the trouble has come.
Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)
Thursday February, 14 2002
Valentines Day
Autumn's last therapy (really this time) went well, I like Jamie, I am going to
guess that she is second or third generation Taiwanese. She is as skinny as a
hockey stick and has a crooked arm and a beautiful smile...Autumn is doing
pretty well and there is not much they can do for her... I talked with her about
having her get prepared for reexamining the viability of fixing Autumn up with a
communication device... it's a 'Touch screen' computer that will allow Autumn to
"talk" by pushing pictures on the screen... we tried last year but Autumn wasn't
ready yet... she treated it like a toy....t he Aides at school really tried hard
but Autumn couldn't or wouldn't take it seriously...
I had to deposit some checks after dropping of Autumn off I took Calie and
Christian to the
Home Town Buffet, They love that place but I hate it... Seems to be full of
people with no place else to go, elderly folks, extremely obese single people
and ... me... I looked in the mirror on my way back from the buffet line and
stopped in my tracks... I looked at my reflection in the mirror and I looked at
the big people engrossed in their feeding and the elderly with their walkers
parked beside their table and back at my reflection again and the fact that the
guy in the mirror looking back at me looked like he belonged there really
depressed me... Christy met us there, the kids ate macaroni and cheese and a bit
of spaghetti and about a half gallon of ice-cream... they made a profit off me
today...
Mike lied to me today, He said he had been suspended, he told me and the bus
driver... I was a little suspicious because the school will call if he is in
trouble... and hey hadn't called, as a matter of fact the teacher called and
told me Mike had had a good day, except for carving on the desk top with a pair
of scissors... ( have never been able to spell that word... thank the software
gods for spell-checkers) So I acted like I was pissed at the school and told
Mike that I was going to call the school in the morning and read them the "riot
act" (what is the Riot Act any way... anybody know?)
From Jerry:
Our Sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth
all persons being assembled immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to
depart to their habitations or to their lawful business, upon the pains
contained in the act made in the first year of King George for preventing
tumultuous and riotous assemblies. God save the King.
These days, it's just a figurative expression meaning
to give a an individual or a group a severe scolding or caution, or to announce
that some unruly behaviour must cease. But originally it was a deadly serious
injunction to a rioting crowd to disperse.
The Riot Act was passed by the British government in
1715. This was the period of the Catholic Jacobite riots, when mobs opposed to
the new Hanoverian king, George I, were attacking the meeting houses of
dissenting groups. There was a very real threat of invasion by supporters of the
deposed Stuart kings - as actually happened later that year and also in 1745.
The government feared uprisings, and passed a draconian law making it a felony
if a group of more than twelve persons refused to disperse more than an hour
after magistrates had told them to do so. To invoke the law, the magistrates had
to read the relevant section of the Act aloud to the mob, something that often
required courage:
The pains or penalties were penal servitude for
life or not less than three years, or imprisonment with or without hard labour
for up to two years. The Act remained in force for a surprisingly long time,
only finally being repealed in 1973, though it had been effectively defunct for
decades.
anyway... Mike said "you
don't have to worry about that... I don't want to school anyway... "Well...
DUH!" he must really have a low opinion of my intelligence...anyway I talked to
him again and he confessed... I gave him my lecture on "Trust" that he ignored
and we all went to bed...
I went to the
ROF tonight... Just the regulars this time, Joe and Darlene made it this
time... Tony got ties up... tomorrow is his wife's birthday so I imagine 'If I
know what's good for me' ' won out over 'What's the stupidest thing I can do
today'. I left earlier than usual, I had made a promise to John that was getting
harder and harder to keep.
Learn to write in the sand.
As the story goes, two friends were walking through the desert. In a specific
point of the journey, they had an argument, and one friend slapped the other one
in the face.
The one, who got slapped, was hurt, but without anything to say, he wrote in the
sand:
"TODAY, MY BEST FRIEND SLAPPED ME IN THE FACE".
They kept on walking, until they found an oasis, where they decided to take a
bath. The one who got slapped and hurt started drowning, and the other friend
saved him. When he recovered from the fright, he wrote on a stone:
"TODAY MY BEST FRIEND SAVED MY LIFE".
The friend who saved and slapped his best friend, asked him, "Why, after I hurt
you, you wrote in the sand, and now you write on a stone?"
The other friend, smiling, replied: "When a friend hurts us, we should write it
down in the sand, where the winds of forgiveness erase it away, and when
something great happens, we should engrave it in the stone of the memory of the
heart, where no wind can erase it"
Friday February, 15 2002
What is Conservatism without Conservation, why has the Republican Party
surrendered the environmental high ground to the Liberals? Decisions on the
environment are being made according to the financial impact alone. It seems to
me that if it will inconvenience the business concerns the environment loses.
After taking all the kids to school I took Mike to his school in Palmdale, when
I got back I helped Calie write a paper for a home schooling project... I did
too much of it... Bad Daddy... I watched "Fast and Furious" and "The Wonder
Boys" Fast and Furious was not as bad as I had expected... it wasn't Academy
Award Material by any stretch of the imagination but it wasn't as predictable as
I thought it would be... The Wonder Boys was excellent, I am probably the last
person in North America to see it but if I'm not and you haven't seen it... I
recommend it highly.
I am sitting here typing away with Celtic Music blaring in my headphones... I am
having a hard time sustaining a clear train of thought... I am tired and a bit
stressed I guess... I need to find a physical release, I will be going in to the
gym (24 Hour Fitness) Christy joined and added me to her membership... I have an
appointment at noon with a person called Isis... hot having met my counselor, or
what ever they are called, I am not sure of the gender of this person yet...
Isis should be a girl but these days it is risky to make assumptions. Maybe I am
old enough and disgusted enough with the lousy shape I'\m in to do something
constructive...
Never be haughty to the humble;
never be humble to the haughty.
Jefferson Davis, confederate president
(1808-1889)
Saturday February, 16 2002
Motorcycle races today... today was the whole race that I saw the excerpt from
last Sunday... bummer... I had forgotten and had deluded myself into thinking I
was watching something new...
When the race was over I took Mike and I went to Lancaster 24 Hour Physical
Fitness for my "Intake" It was short because. Isis (Born in the late 60's) saw
that I had had a heart attack... she needs a release from my Cardiologist
don-cha-know. I went out on the floor and worked out anyway... tested out some
of the new machines and plodded along on treadmill for about a half an hour...
stupid things... treadmills... I always feel like my mind is betraying my body
or the other way around, all that energy expended and absolutely nothing
tangible has been accomplished...My goal is to dump 2 pounds a week, at that
rate I should attain my ideal body weight by Christmas... <grin> if I can
sustain the proper regimen I should be down around 175 or 180 in four months.
Christy is sick, flu we guess... she has felt rotten for a couple days now.
Sunday February, 17 2002
NASCAR Daytona 500... I like racing. As near as I can figure only 16 of the
original 43 cars finished the race... it was pretty spectacular... no one hurt
but by all rights several should have been... it was a demolition derby.
I got to thinking about Rush a while back, actually I was responding to Jerry
and had a revelation... Limbaugh isn’t Mrs. Limbaugh’s little boy in my mind… he
is a caricature I have created to be the personification of conscious-less,
intellectual bullies everywhere.
It
is easier to demonize a stranger than someone you actually know. Since I don’t
know him personally, I haven’t gotten drunk with him, played pool with him, or
discussed the relative merits of one car over another with him, he is not a real
person, he is an Icon I have created in my mind… he is not evil… my conscious
perception of him isn’t really even real, it’s only in my head… I hate the Image
of Limbaugh I created in my mind, not the flesh and blood man. I am sure he is
kind to animals and has many admirable qualities. The Limbaugh in my mind is
more of a montage of all the creeps on the airwaves that provoke the
unsophisticated into actions of prejudice and insensitivity… when their
worshipful followers throw tomatoes at Hillary, or drag a black man behind a
pick-up truck or leave a young gay man hanging on a barb wire fence or blow up
an office building in Oklahoma the Bullies of the airwaves throw up their hands
in shock, saying “There is a wave of EVIL washing across the land, We have to
root it out and destroy it, the Liberal Jews, the Gay
Coalition, the Intellectuals, the scientists, the abortionists, the Government…
they caused this outrage…
 
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