There's a Song About That...

For the past two days, we've had a crew polishing and sealing the tiles in the bathrooms of our main building. These gentlemen were here until 11:20PM last night, and they'll be pulling another late night tonight. There are five bathrooms that are being renovated- two floors, each with a men's and a women's bathroom, plus a wheelchair accessible bathroom on the main floor with a diaper changing station. As an aside, we don't get stupid about our bathrooms here.

Looking around the main building, I am of the opinion that the drop-ceiling in the gift shop should have had first priority, it's looking a little ragged, with sagging tiles, some of them stained. The organization is a not-for-profit, so they receive grants, many of them earmarked for specific purposes- I suspect that the lady who liked clean restrooms was the one who donated this particular chunk of change. If so, her money was well spent, I looked at a finished floor, and it looked beautiful, like you could eat off of it.

In two of the bathrooms, there tiles missing from the floor. Yesterday, my boss told my co-worker covering the 5PM-9PM shift that he would bring over the missing tiles... nothing. The foreman of the crew cleaning the tiles asked me to let the boss know that the tiles were needed. I sent the boss an e-mail informing him of this.

Today, I arrived at 9PM, and my co-worker told me that the tiles never arrived... the boss thought that the daytime maintenance staff would be bringing the tiles over. This reminds me of a song from my childhood:





The missing tiles haven't been replaced... the contractors could always fill the gaps with grout before sealing everything... not a perfect solution, but perhaps the best one. In the meantime, I'm stuck in the main building until they leave for the night, and I'm not exactly great when it comes to chemical exposure- cleansers and solvents don't agree with my respiratory tract. I had opened up all of the doors to the building so there was cross-ventilation, but the foreman told me that early spring insects were flying into the building and falling onto the floor of the fume-filled bathrooms. I'm the only person in the loop here who would think that sealing insects into the finish of the tile floor would be cool, but that's because I'm a paleontology nerd. Once the contractors leave, I think I'll stay outside for the rest of the night, or maybe hunker down in one of the other buildings with these two.

The Time of Year We Celebrate Baby Brother's Birthday

As we do every year, we take time out on the 30th of March to wish my baby brother, nicknamed Gomez, a happy birthday. He's currently working on a second master's degree, in sports management... besides his day job, he has been working as a hockey referee for several leagues (high school and adult recreational), and he coaches his daughter's hockey team as well. His day job is a good one, and he describes it as cushy, but hockey has been his passion since he was in middle school, so perhaps he's looking for a cooler career, an icy one, even.

Happy birthday, Gomez, stay frosty icy.

Old Dominion Whirlwind Tour

Yesterday, in the wee hours of the morning, I drove down, in foggy and rainy conditions, to Northern Virginia to visit my mom. Mom has decided to sell the house she has been living in for the past eighteen years and to buy a townhouse. She's at a point where she doesn't want to be burdened with yardwork and keeping up a house that is too big for her. Better that the house goes to a family which could utilize the house and yard well. Mom had a good run in the place, and has hosted countless family and friends, but she'd like the luxury to be able to travel without worrying about the condition of the yard, and she'd rather heat a smaller place.

I got two hours of sleep before mom and I left to check out a nice place about two miles down the road- our inspection coincided with a realtor bringing a prospective purchaser over to mom's place. She put the house on the market not quite two weeks ago and already she's had nineteen interested parties. Things should be moving pretty quickly now- she decided that she'd put an offer on the place we saw, it was the nicest place she'd looked at, an end unit with a perfect utilization of space (the second floor is one continuous room, a kitchen/living room combo that is perfect for our 'hearth-centric' family lifestyle).

It's been a whirlwind tour- not a lot of sleep, a lot of busywork, but it's been fun. Mom and I even get along famously with her real estate agent. Mom's neighbors are pretty upset that she'll be leaving the house, but I spoke with one very close friend of hers (one of her many unofficial 'adopted' sons) and told him that mom would most likely only be moving down the street... she won't even do her shopping in a different store.

We'll see how things go, everything is contingent on the current house being sold, but I'm confident that things will go pretty smoothly. It's been a hectic couple of days, but I feel that we got a lot accomplished, and we even had fun doing it.

Happy Easter!

Here's hoping that everybody had a Happy Easter. To me, Easter's always been about the Earth's return to vibrancy after winter. Once Easter rolls around, it's safe to say that Spring is in full swing. Here at work, the daffodils are at their peak. Check out these lovely cream colored ones with yellow centers:

They make a nice contrast with the more conventional yellow ones:

All over the site, there are green things popping up- crocuses, wild alliums, and my beloved stinging nettles. There are no chocolate bunnies growing on trees, but I can't complain... I prefer the real ones to the chocolate ones... though I guess a conejo mole poblano could be considered a chocolate rabbit.

Thanks, Obama John Bellairs

Now that my Saturday morning volunteer gig is over until October, I don't have to get up at half-past-seven in order to travel downtown. I typically set my alarm for eleven AM so I can listen to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!, which is a perfect coda to the week for a current events nerd. During this week's show, the special guest portion with bassist Esperanza Spalding, featured a question about Smead Jolley, a baseball player whose main claim to fame is having committed three errors on one play (the guy was apparently a monster hitter, though, so he would have made a fantastic designated hitter, if that had been an option back then).

I'm not a big sportball fan at all, but I actually knew about Smead, because I'm a huge fan of John Bellairs, whose The Face in the Frost is a particular favorite of mine, a short novel which happens to be simultaneously comical and unsettling. The book's protagonists, Prospero (but not the one you're thinking of) and Roger Bacon are two aged wizards who have to put aside their whimsical pursuits, such as watching 20th century baseball games with their magic mirrors, in order to investigate the machinations of a mysterious enemy which is out of their league (heh). Smead's name comes up when Roger Bacon recounts his misadventure with the brazen head.

I reread The Face in the Frost every couple of years. It's a quick read that gives me much pleasure- the funny bits are very funny, the horror bits really atmospheric without being gory or distasteful. The ending of the book is a bit of a letdown on first reading, being abrupt and vague, but on re-reading it begins to make sense, the mysterious antagonist is way too powerful for our protagonists to take on by themselves, so the final struggle takes place on multiple fronts, with only one being 'onstage'. At any rate, if you're a fan of 'weird' fiction of a somewhat comical bent, it's a great read, and an even better introduction to Smead Jolley.

No Trip Like the Nostalgia Trip: Retro Futuristic Edition

I've been poking around some of the weird corners of the intert00bz and, as a result, I've been on Gary Numan kick. Oddly enough, in all the years I've been blogging, I've only mentioned Gary in one post, and even more shockingly, I only have one post mentioning the fantastic concert film Urgh! A Music War. At any rate, I have been binge-listening to Mr Numan's back catalog, starting with his dystopian sci-fi/horror masterpiece Replicas, originally credited to his band Tubeway Army.

Replicas opens up with Me! I Disconnect from You, a story about isolation and alienation:





Are 'Friends' Electric?, which hit number one on the UK charts, continues the same theme of urban anomie:





Down in the Park is a straight-up horror story about androids and machines which hunt, abuse, and kill humans for the entertainment of the patrons of a club (no Laws of Robotics for these killbots). I am reminded of a William Gibson story, but the song was written before Mr Gibson's writing hit the bookshelves. The concert footage in Urgh! A Music War somewhat undercuts the grimness of the song- it's hard not to laugh at the wee, weird car that Gary rides in during his performance, disquieting lyrics be damned:





Gary is still active, and seems to perform entire albums during his shows:





He'll be playing NYC in May, I may have to consider buying tickets for this show.

Must Have Gotten a Diagnosis

I don't write much about Alex Jones, but I can't resist posting about his complete meltdown last week. Wow, talk about a complete farrago of whackaloon conspiracy theories... in under three-and-a-half minutes, Jones completely fills out a 'Conspiracy Bingo' card- we have aliens, the global elite, the media, vaccine manufacturers, Satan. Jones builds to a crescendo, ranting about the patrimony that has been stolen from him:


Humanity has got to get off world. We have access to life extension technologies. talk about discrimination...I want the advanced life extension!

I WANT TO GO TO SPACE. I WANT TO SEE INTERDIMENSIONAL TRAVEL. I WANT WHAT GOD PROMISED US. AND i WON'T SIT HERE AND WATCH SATAN STEAL IT!!! THAT'S THE FIGHT, THAT'S THE KEY!!


The really weird thing about it, to me, is that Jones claims to be religious, yet he wants advanced life extension technology... wouldn't such technology thwart the will of God? Isn't the notion of wanting to live forever in a corporeal state the very essence of original sin? Sounds like Jones has his theology messed up, just like he has his history, sociology, and political science messed up. I think he may be freaking out because he got a rough diagnosis... he should have taken care of his gut flora, but he displaced them by keeping his head wedged up his poop chute.

The only quibble I have with Jones' rant is that he didn't mention any deros, I can't take Jones seriously, the guy doesn't remember Lemuria. And another thing, do you think a guy like Alex Jones knows what the queers are doing to the soil?





I like Alex, he's not like the other people, here, in the trailer park.