Neanderpundit

This is my busiest time of year- I’m doing all the little outdoor things I need to do to make sure that the house is ready for another Indiana winter- it’s a tough gig, and doing it on a 60 year old house which was neglected almost all it’s life is a chore.

Last year I spent a great deal of time tuckpointing and cleaning, and near the end of the season I spent nearly 10k having the west end of the house excavated, jacked up, sealed, and backfilled. it was an amazing amount of work, and I’d rather not repeat it, so this summer, I put in a retaining wall to keep the dirt up against the house from washing away. The retaining wall is on the back slope of the yard, a precipitous slope which is good only flor sledding.

Anyway, 500 odd retaining wall blocks weighing in excess of 60 lbs each had to be hand carried and placed, and this last weekend, I finishjed all the backfilling and put down heavy plastic and covered the resultant terrace with large river gravel. I ache everywhere. Next weekend I have some friends I need to help with some projects, and then I need to jack up the roof of my garage and replace a sagging header, then replace the garage door. Then I’ll be ready for winter, more or less, and I can call it quits and move to indoor projects for a while. Home ownership is such a pain. Promise I’ll return to more blogging soon.

Vman has a link to a post about the war on Iraq. It’s a good read. me, I’m not so eloquent.

You see a group of guys steal the tires and wheels from your truck, and beat your dog to death with an aluminum baseball bat, and you watch them go into their home. You go to their home but they’ve snuck out the back door. You look across the alley, and see another group of guys with tire irons and aluminum baseball bats. Youy call the cops. The cops do nothing. You call the cops again. the cops do nothing again. You call the cops ten more times and each time the cops tell you they’re gonna come down hard on the hoods before they can do anything, but ten more times the cops do nothing.

Finally, you do what needs to be done.

Is there ANYONE out there who doesn’t get this?

> I thought not.

never been a fan of presidential debates.

Usually, they’re an opportunity for someone with a big lead to blow it, or for someone to say the one thing or make the one gesture that everyone in the media ridicules and which blows it for the candidate. Nixon and Kennedy, for instance. A five-o’clock shadow loses the TV debate for the man who, based on polls of radio listeners, wins it.

It’s all a big pita, if you ask me. No matter how badly Kerry does, the media will portray him as a genius, and no matter how well Bush does, the media will make him look like a fool.

All you can do is pray that the folks watching make up their minds based on integrity.