THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER

Mr. B.'s big item for his and Mrs. Charm's secular Christmas celebration was Guitar Hero. When he's older he may find the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns more enlightening. Fortunately there'll be more available than the usual anti-American, anti-war movies that Hollyweird churns out:

Video "game makers aren't afraid to put players in situations where U.S. soldiers are unambiguously the good guys, while the combatants – often Muslims – are the bad guys."

Via Instapundit.

Re our secular Christmas at the rancho: This celebration of parties, presents and poinsettias has more to do with Saturnalia than Christianity. It is far older than the religious version. (Some nineteenth century Protestants found it so unnerving that they took to assuring their fellows that while they did mark the Nativity they did "not worship the tree.")

Christians still confuse the two, some of them whacking the secular version as ungodly. Well, to each his own. Mrs. C. would be lost without her favorite time of the year. And while he long ago graduated from Santa to understanding who the real gift-givers are, Mr. B. likewise would be bereft without packages to unwrap and goodies to consume. Good thing they needn't be.

Link via Power Line.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mrs. C. returned from her weekend trip to Houston Sunday evening safe and sound and with a funny tale. It was about what kids in her friend's neighborhood were wearing while romping in the rare inch or so of wet snow: plastic shopping bags over their shoes and ankles held on with rubber bands. She called them Houston snow boots.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 01:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

But, then, the forecast for it says "mainly before noon" with total accumulation of less than half an inch. The temperature, however, is hovering in the upper 30s, possibly too warm for snow. Except that the forecast calls for it to drop below freezing by 6 p.m. with a hard freeze overnight.

Austin-Travis County EMS, meanwhile, reported an hour ago that the aerial flyovers on U.S. 183 near I-35 have icey conditions and there've been several collisions in the vicinity. We're watching it because Mrs. C. plans to head for Houston in a few hours for the weekend.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Was reading a new genealogy narrative pulled together by a cousin of Mrs. Charm's and came across the phrase of the headline. The description of this old technology wasn't clear, so I searched it and came up with this which is. It also has some diagrams and a photo to reinforce it. Pretty ingenious.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Through an older cousin, Mrs. Charm has been learning about her paternal ancestry. An aunt already was pulling together the maternal side with a few interesting revelations but no scandals so far. Today Mrs. C. discovered her paternal great great uncle, Richard Jenkins Davis, an elder in the early Mormon church.

Born in Wales, he helped recruit some of the thousands of Welsh converts who emigrated to Utah in the 1850s. He returned to Wales in the 1870s to recruit scores more. So far so good. He even has a nice journal with daily entries to read. Then we found that, by the time he died in 1892, he had accumulated four wives. At the same time. Understandably, some of them didn't get along, so they didn't all live together. Still...

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I enjoyed this 1992 scifi novel of physicist Charles Sheffield's, though it seemed unnecessarily complicated in the beginning. A little more action before establishing the seven main characters would have prevented me from putting it down so often. Sheffield died of brain cancer in 2002, which resonates because a good friend of Mrs. Charm's is struggling with it. Seems to have it licked for the moment, though the odds of that lasting are very low.

I bring up Sheffield to point out how easy it is to fall into these stories of ordinary life in the solar system, as if we had gotten off the engineering dime and were actually living in/on Luna, Mars, and the Asteroid Belt. A lot of Cold As Ice occurs on (actually, under the surface of) Ganymede, which recalls Heinlein's impossible young adult novel, Farmer In The Sky, which Mr. B. and I started as a bedtime story but never finished.

We had the space probe pictures and details of Jupiter's radiation to consult, as Heinlein did not. Also life on (under, actually) Europa, which seems plausible, despite Sheffield's scientific realism of the dangers of Jovian radiation. I hope all this verisimilitude means humanity really will do these things and not just wallow forever in political corruption and the threat of war. But a posed result of the latter is limned chillingly in Cold As Ice as one of the spurs for continued colonization.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 07:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

That's the name of Mr. B.'s "newspaper," a two- to three-page stapled collection of brief items, generally about favorite video games, bloopers at recess or clandestine food fights in the cafeteria. Some kids sell lemonade. Mr. B., being the child of two ink-stained wretches, is venturing into journalism.

I worry about possible angry administrators or even parents if some of his items wind up embarrassing another child. Mrs. Charm says I'm making too much of it. Mr. B. wants to sell his papers for twenty-five cents each at recess. He's got visions of more than a hundred potential dollars. I demur, figuring the school will not like him doing that. Mrs. C., well, you know. It's certainly not at this level, but I worry that the consequences could be similar. So far I'm losing. So we shall see what we see.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

We happy band of pool fools have seen the water turn hazy green again since the last rainstorm a few days ago. Mrs. Charm says we must spend the weekend mixing chemicals and scrubbing the walls and vaccuuming the bottom to get the water back to its normal sparkling blue.

Alas, the weekend forecast calls for more storms, in a Pacific tap as it's called, of moisture streaming up here from the remains of TS Olaf, predicted to go ashore on the Baja tomorrow night. So we may just have to start all over again on Monday. Pool fools, indeed.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 07:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Mr. B.'s fourth grade teacher wants empty 2-liter soda bottles for a classroom ecology study. Being a classroom parent, I didn't stop at one Coke Zero bottle for Mr. B. but have plunged on to get more. The only hassle is the label. Most of it can be cut off, but it always leaves some where the glue is.

The glue comes off easy enough with WD-40, something I discovered years ago trying to get dried glue off fiberglass. But the label residue itself, ugh, what a pain. Scrape, scrape. Mrs. Charm suggested immersing the bottle in hot, soapy water. I even left it soaking overnight. Didn't work.

This fellow managed it with slightly-cooled boiling water poured into the bottle. I may have to try it, though it sounds like a great way to ruin, or at least deform, the bottle's thin plastic. If there's a surefire trick here, I have yet to find it. Anybody have any suggestions?

UPDATE:  Have noticed several visits from folks seeking info on this subject. Therefore will add that I wound up doing in the neighborhood of twelve bottles and this process works best: cut off the label and spray the label residue with WD-40. Let it soak a while and then use a razor blade in a holder to scrape it off. Corner of the blade works best. Once the label is off, spray more on the glue, wait a bit and then wipe it off. Wash and dry the bottle to get the WD-40 off. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 03:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I figured when Mr. B. starts on algebra, either in late middle school or early high school, that my ability to help him with his homework would be at an end. I never understood it and have happily ignored it ever since.

Then Mrs Charm and I got into a mild dispute the other night trying to correct his math homework on decimals. We realized that neither of us was entirely comfortable with fourth grade math, nevermind the harder versions to come.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 06:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Cobb links to a piece purporting to list the best rock albums of the past twenty years. I'm not familiar with a single one. Worse than Cobb who at least likes three. I should be ashamed, I suppose, but I'm not.

In fact, I am loading the new IPod Mrs. Charm gave me with the stuff I grew up with: Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Parker. Next up: Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Stan Kenton, etc. Stuff I can whistle. I'm too retro to live, maybe...

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Mr. B.'s homework assignment spiral notebook has a spot on the first page for his parents' phone numbers. He dutifully wrote in Mrs. Charm's office phone. For Dad he put the home landline number and wrote under it: "Never answers the phone, so don't bother."

Smart kid. Wish the sales callers would get the message, but they continue to call and I continue to ignore them. We've debated getting rid of the landline but are keeping it for the older relatives who don't have cell phones.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Unlike millions of other seniors, I can live without the cost-of-living increases in Social Security payments. For one thing, I won't have to face concomitant rising Medicare premiums so long as Mrs. Charm is able to keep me on her employer-supplied health insurance. But the implicit threat of SS's impending demise really is angering.

Some of those who are too young to get the checks seem to think it's free money, a kind of welfare payment for being old. It's actually reimbursement, of sorts, for all those years the government merrily deleted social security taxes from my paycheck. I'm convinced that it would not be in the red if the pols hadn't been stealing money from it all these years for their pork and lobby payoffs.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

He had one this morning, at the Dell Children's Hospital, in search of something that might, or might not, be wrong. They put him under anesthetic so he could hold still inside the hole of the big donut for thirty minutes to an hour. He came out of it okay, just groggy and dehydrated. They gave him a popsicle and let him sleep a while. At home he lay on the couch and watched cartoons all afternoon.

The worst part, for us, was waiting in the outpatient-surgery waiting room. There were several other couples, presumably waiting out something more serious than an MRI. One couple I remember especially. The woman looked stunned. The man looked angry, which I took to be anger at fate. Another man was crying. He had his head down by his knees, trying to hide the fact. The woman was stroking his back. Tough morning. Tougher for them. We got off easy. This time.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Mr. Boy's spirit animal, this stuffed elephant, recently had her first bath in nine years. Followed by a tumble dry. It was Mrs. Charm's idea. Get rid of her familiar smell, the thinking went, and Mr. B. would be less inclined to carry her about and sleep with her. Not that we mind that, especially, but he still sucks his fingers, despite our best efforts to stop it, and her comfortin presence seems to play a role in it. Anyhow, it didn't work. The precocious pachyderm, Miss El, remains immortal. And the rising fourth grader's finger sucking, alas, continues.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 01:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Mr. Boy went off to four weeks of day camp at the JCC this morning. He rebuffed Mrs. Charm's offer to help him find his group at the flag raising. Being a rising fourth grader he's too big for nanny stuff. He was looking forward to a hot game of Ga-ga, an Israeli form of dodge ball. With a forecast high of 102, it definitely will be hot.

Meanwhile, I was honored to have two posts linked in the new Haveil Havalim, a carnival of Jewish blog posts founded way back when by Soccer Dad. It is, appropriately, the Hot and Humid Edition. Haveil Havalim means Vanity of Vanities, a reference to King Solomon's discovery that materialism for its own sake is a dead end. Or something like that.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

If the Air Force isn't telling the truth and the GPS system does go down, it would mean chaos for the aviation industry. Me, I could always go back to map and compass. I taught both as a counselor in Boy Scouts many moons ago. But I'll keep my fingers crossed that the sat system isn't really in jeopardy.

Cause we like our TomTom. We use the Jane voice, which is British. You have to remember to update the memory every so often. But even when the route she suggests is more circuitous than we like, she picks up on where we're going and adjusts her guidance. Lots easier than when Mrs. Charm navigates.

Via The Fat Guy.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Mrs. Charm needed to move some bags of mulch and potting soil around to the back forty and didn't want to bother me, apparently, so she went and got the wheel barrow out of the tool shed. She noticed it was a little hard to push but only when she got to the driveway did she notice that its tire was flat.

Now this is one of those fat tires that could, possibly, support half of a Piper Cub. We thought about using Mr. B.'s basketball pump to inflate it, but no, it has a real tire valve. So she thought why not take it off the barrow and take it up to the gas station to inflate it? Could not get the bolts off the barrow that keep the tire on it. She suggested putting the barrow in the CRV, but it wouldn't fit. She suggested putting the seat down so it would fit, but that's where I drew the line. I carried the bags.

Then I put the barrow back in the shed. What else? I need a torque wrench to get those bolts off. But I don't want to buy one. Maybe a little WD-40 and more elbow grease? Why did I ever buy such a complicated wheel barrow? I was moving sand to build Mr. B. a sandbox back in '03. Which reminds me, I need to dismantle the sandbox one of these years. It's only a haven for ant colonies, now.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I'm glad to see that Mr. B., who is nine, has passed the age when it is against Texas law to leave him home alone, while I run a brief errand or two. Or leave him in the car while I go into a store, so long as the outside temp is not in triple digits. He dislikes shopping as much as most males of any age and sometimes puts up a fuss if he is expected to go along.

Mrs. Charm looked aghast when I told her, but she'll come around. He already plays on his scooter on the sidewalk out front without us worrying. It's even part of a trend, this independence. Not quite what it was when I was a child and would get scolded for staying inside too long. Some kids Mr. B.'s age even walk to school (which is only half a dozen blocks away), but he's not quite ready for that. I was eleven before we lived close enough to school for me to do it.

Via Instapundit.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Mr. B. is getting almost too old to help Mrs. Charm dye eggs anymore. But he nevertheless rallied to their old effort yesterday. Expect he will still enjoy the jelly beans and other candy today. Eschewing potential diabetes, I will stick to eating the eggs--throughout the coming week.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 01:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mr. B. and I are spending the day east of Austin at Cub World at Camp Tom Wooten. It's in the pine forest northeast of Bastrop. He and his den are expecting to learn fishing, and archery and shoot at paper targets with BB guns. Some craft work as well. Mrs. Charm gets the day off as we will not be back until about five and have a Little League game at seven. If he has any energy left.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 07:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mrs. Charm's good friend is set to begin a round of chemotherapy and radiation next week in her struggle with an unexpected cancer. I suppose cancer is always unexpected. So, too, was the cost of the chemo, alone, the poison that goes along with the burning radiation, to try to kill the tumors without killing the hosts, though it generally debilitates them awfully. So why are these people smiling?

Maybe because they're getting paid. Six thousand dollars for the first round of chemo, at about a hundred dollars a pill. Luckily Mrs. C.'s friend can afford whatever her insurance doesn't pay. I suppose this is a good argument for socialized medicine, though I doubt there'll be as many choices once Barry and his cronies take us in that direction. But with cancer there's not much choice, anyhow. You try to live a while longer, and some do succeed. Or you accept your dying sooner instead of later and at least depart in as near the condition of your old self as possible. For whatever that might be worth. I suppose it wouldn't frighten your children as much as the husk you become from the treatments.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 07:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

We're leaving the rancho this afternoon to fly to D.C. for a week of family reunion before the family there moves to Tyler and we're no longer able to save money on a hotel. Weren't able to get into the Spring Break mob converging on the Capitol and the White House. But we have plenty else to see and do, including visiting Mr. B.'s paternal grandfather's grave in Arlington and, hopefully, catch the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Add the tarantula to the rancho's indigenous species. Mrs. Charm saw a black one last night on the patio with a body about four inches long. It had just walked up out of the flower bed. She reached for a dust pan to smack it with but the attached broom fell down and the tarantula reacted to the noise by scurrying back into the bed.

So we looked them up on the Web and she was consoled to learn that they are rarely harmful to people and not aggressive--unless you're a mouse, a lizard or a small bird. They're even sold as exotic pets. In six years we'd never seen one in the back forty. Although the pool guy did report fishing a dead one out a few months ago, probably looking for a drink in the drought and apparently done in by the chlorine. I'll have to be more careful pulling weeds in the future. I was already on the alert for snakes coming out in the spring warmth.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 04:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Just think, nine more years and I won't have to get up early... Meanwhile, he opened his first present: a new batting helmet for his spring season with the Grasshoppers. Maybe it can break his hitting slump. More tonight when Mrs. Charm makes cowboy hamburgers, etc.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 07:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Most of what Mrs. Charm's mother forwards me in emails is, uh, not very compelling. But this one is:

"Some employees are simply irreplaceable. Take [First Lady] Michelle Obama: The University of Chicago Medical center hired her in 2002 to run 'programs for community relations, neighborhood outreach, volunteer recruitment, staff diversity and minority contracting.' In 2005 the hospital raised her salary from $120,000 to $317,000 - nearly twice what her husband made as a Senator. Oh! Did we mention that her husband had just become a US Senator? He sure had! And he requested a $1 Million earmark for the UC Medical Center, in fact. Way to network Michelle!

"But now that Mrs. Obama has resigned, the hospital says her position will remain unfilled. How can that be, if the work she did was vital enough to be worth $317,000?

"We can think of only one explanation: Senator Roland Burris's wife wasn't interested."

From the Feb. 9 print edition of National Review.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Topaz is the state gemstone of Texas. And hunting for topaz, on a Mason County ranch famous for it, is to be the star attraction of the late February campout of Mr. B.'s cub scout pack. He always sleeps well on these deals. Mrs. Charm and I do not, but the topaz hunt should help enliven our spirits. Especially if we find some. There will be, also, the charms of Mason County, to savor. All in all, we're looking forward to it.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Scott at The Fat Guy, apparently already suffering from the noise and traffic of San Antonio, although he just recently moved there from Dallas, has taken up a casual comment I made about considering moving to Mason County. He likes winding, dark, two-lane roads, fly-fishing, hunting, and plenty of open spaces and few neighbors. The links he found and the comments he's drawn so far make me wish I could move tomorrow. That's the great thing about these Internets. You can go back to the country and still make a living, if you need to. But, until Mr. B. finishes school (about nine more years) and Mrs. Charm retires, it will probably not be possible for me.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 05:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (88)

Mrs. Charm, good liberal that she is, faithfully listens to NPR every morning. I stopped years ago. And their recent attempt to rehabilitate belt-and-suspender-man Dan Rather to cover up his anti-Bush election fraud of 2004 is a good reminder why. It still amazes me that we have to pay tax money for NPR's crap-as-news-and-analysis. How much nicer it would be if they were forced to be wholly self-supporting. You know, like Air America on which soon-to-be U.S. Sen. Al Franken couldn't make a living? Heh.

As it happens, I knew Rather's source before his crazy fraud. I had dealt with the guy on a pre-Bush piece he wanted on the Texas National Guard. My editors decided it was bosh, and I had to admit that it was pretty flaky. So it never ran. The guy later tried to get even by libeling me on a Web site that I won't link to. A few years later I heard from other ink-stained wretches that he was playing Dan Rather for a chump. About the same time, Charles Johnson at LGF wonderfully exposed DR's fraud, in the simplest way possible: showing that the source's material was forged. All it has left DR with, four years later, is to keep trying to muddy the waters. Good luck with that. Even with NPR providing him a free, obfuscating tongue-bath.

Via LGF.

MORE: Beldar also had a small but prominent role of his own in exposing the fraud.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 01:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, I made it past another solstice, without feeling the need for an Anglo-Saxon costume drama. Just a quiet day, despite the frigid aftermath of another overnight Blue Norther. Finishing Iron Sunrise, another good Charles Stross SF novel, and thinking of the seasonal carols of my youth, Adeste Fideles and Hark The Herald Angels Sing. Then I did the annual reading of his Maccabees book to Mr. Boy before we lit the first Hanukkah candle. For the next few days we will be singing Santa and Reindeer songs for his and Mrs. Charm's secular celebration of Christmas.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 01:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been considering this for a while now and I've finally decided to give Mr. Boy's mom an anonymouse name of her own, instead of just referring to her as his mom, etc., which sounds sort of like I'm a stepdad, which is not the case. I will even give her a separate category of her own, so I can do posts on her doings, now and then. I did steal the name from the same nice blog where I filched the map of the "soler system," but there it's Mr. Charm, so, their being of different genders, I doubt we'll get them mixed up. In this blogosphere, we all learn from each other. More or less.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)