Welcome to March, and the first day of the “Sequester.” Assuming you’re not a government employee or contractor, you won’t really be noticing anything different for a while. I don’t really see anything much happening to end it until March 27th when the Republicans decide to let the government run out of money and shut down rather than eliminate the tax break on corporate jets. Who knows what’ll happen after that, but I figure one way or another, some kind of bad shit will trickle down on me.

We’re also officially popeless, which I know is hard on everybody, but hopefully the College of Cardinals can order some pizza, wings, and young boys and get bust electing a new pope by St. Patrick’s Day. Somebody who hates gay people, doesn’t think women should be priests, and things sex should only be for procreation (unless you’re a priest, in which case anything goes and he’s got your back).

So I finally became one of the cool kids when I got my iPhone the other day. It’s not an iPhone 5, just a measly 4s but it’s a lot better than the Blackberry I had before that. I must admit, it’s very pretty (at least until you touch it – it’s definitely a fingerprint magnet, and not just the screen but that nice shiny back and the silver apple on the back.

Of course, now my BB charging stands have no use, and I had order a new charging stand and case, but that’s the price of progress, I guess. So far, iOS is OK. I think I prefer Android a bit, but it’s close. There aren’t really too many differences. Getting the free Google and Roku apps was kind of a pain, because I had to deal with both the Apple app store and iTunes for some reason. But once I got through the initial double registration hoops they made me jump through, it was OK (Google Play is easier to use, as is the Amazon app store).

I played with Siri a little bit, but she seems pretty humorless. I think she needs an emotion chip or something.

Oh well, since I don’t work at Yahoo, I guess I’d better get back to working from home – at least as long as they let me.

Have a good Friday (so to speak).

For some reason, looking out the window this morning is hurting my eyes. And the sky is a really funny color that I can only describe as “blue.” I think I saw something like this a long time ago – it’s a rare combination of a clear day and actually having a window to look out of. I could get used to this, except for the fact that everything is supposed to turn to crap again tonight. Rain changing to sleet, then snow they say. Those bastids in the Midwest are sending some shitty weather our way. Isn’t it bad enough they’re killing our trees with their acid rain, they have to send us snow, too? You people need to keep your weather (and you politicians) to yourselves.

So, who knew that Ikea sells Swedish Horse Meat Balls? Now, I like horses – just not for dinner. Then again, I don’t eat cows, either. I will admit to eating a fair amount of turkey and chicken, though. This is mainly because I’m too lazy to be a vegetarian. If somebody would only make all my food for me, I’d be happy stick to veggies.

Just not water chestnuts. I hate them.

I have about a half hour commute in the morning (well, in the evening, too ,I guess), which means I heard the Oscar roundup (the Academy Awards, not the guy with the fancy legs) three times (after having been inundated with it by looking at the Internets before even leaving the house). Twice on the “news” and once in a feature story that had to have lasted about 7 minutes. Besides finding out that Jennifer Lawrence tripped on her dress and that Ben Afleck hadn’t even been nominated for Best Director on Argo (oh, the outrage!), I also learned that the NPR “Entertainment Blogger” is apparently a humorless twit who didn’t like Seth MacFarlane one little bit – calling him both awkward and boring.

I didn’t watch, so perhaps he was. But I did read one of his jokes that I thought was pretty funny. After mentioning the Raymond Massey and Daniel Day Lewis depictions of Abraham Lincoln, MacFarlane said something to the effect of “but the one actor who really got inside Linclon’s head was John Wilkes Booth. OK, so maybe I’m crass and juvenile, but I laughed out loud at that one (as Seth said – “what, 150 years and it’s still too soon?”).

Speaking of Lincoln and Hollywood, Raymond Massey is a Canuck and Lewis is a Brit. Are there no Americans who can play Abe Lincoln? Or at least somebody from a country that doesn’t have a Queen?

Of course, the other “big” news from yesterday was that Jimmie Johnson won the Daytona 500. Apparently everybody kept their vehicles out of the stands, which I guess is a good thing, but you have to admit the only actually interesting part of watching a bunch of people drive around in circles is when there happens to be a fiery crash (extra points when flaming vehicle parts fly up into the crowd).

I really don’t know much about NASCAR, so I looked up the Daytona International Speedway (what exactly makes it “international” I don’t know). It’s a 2.5 mile track, so – if I’ve got the math right – that’s 200 laps. Around and around and around. :yawn:

Well, to each his or her own. There are folks who are mighty passionate about their NASCAR (I guess that would be auto eroticism). It’s a good excuse to drink beer, I suppose. But I can sit out by the road and drink beer while the cars go by if I get a hankering for some exhaust fumes.

Oh well, back to work today. It kinda sucks, but it’s the only way to get to Friday.

Today Tomorrow is the big day, when we find out if Oscar what’s-his-name gets bail or not. I heard he offered to wear an ankle bracelet. Apparently the cop they put in charge of investigating him is facing attempted murder charges himself. Odd country, that South Africa (note to South African burglars – don’t break into a house and then run into the toilet, or you’re a goner) – but they gave us Charlize Theron, so they can’t be all bad.

My back, however, has been pretty much all bad for the past few days. Kinda sucks. Grabbing a bag of pellets from the garage and tossing it into the pellet stoves has become a real challenge. Sitting all day isn’t so great either. Amazingly enough, I actually got a fairly decent night’s sleep last night (at least by my standards). If I could string a few of those together, I’d be good to go. Not that I have anywhere to go besides work, but whatever.

Some guy who used to be a priest but was “defrocked” for ordaining a woman as a priest was in town to speak the other night. This was interesting to me, in light of having just watched the HBO documentary on pervert priests. You can molest children all you want and the Catholic church will have your back (so to speak), but ordain a woman? You’re outta here!

Also “outta here” is Dennis Tito. You may remember him as they guy who had an extra $20 million lying around that he could toss the Russians for a ride up the ISS back in 2001 (an actual space odyssey) has his sights set a bit higher: he’s planning on going to Mars in January 2018 (or roughly when I’ll get back the 7 days of pay they’re planning on stealing from me). Good luck with that, Dennis. And don’t forget to take Newt Gingrich with you (though you may want to put him on a diet before launch).

In an act of transparency reminiscent of the Bush Jr. administration, Preznit Obama is refusing to release the memos that supposedly detail how assassinating Americans (among other people) with drones is legal and constitutional (and maybe even moral – in a Saint Augustine kinda way).

Hey, but at least he supports gay marriage now (once he realized that gay marriage is popular amongst the under-100, non-Fux News watching crowd). And he’s all for immigration reform (while simultaneously deporting a record number of Mexicans).

If he’d just get off this federal marijuana law enforcement kick, it’d all be good.

Today is my loooooong day. Not in hours, so much. To be honest. I work much longer hours when I work from home. But today is the day I have to stay at work until 5:00. This is pretty stupid, as it means I don’t bother coming in until 8:30 and I then make sure I take time to run out to the grocery store to buy food (and by food, I mostly mean beer, though I may toss a few other things in my basket so as not to appear to be an alcoholic to the bored kid at the register who couldn’t care less and only asks for ID in order to be polite). It’s not bad this time of year because the beer food stays cold in my trunk, but come summer I have to bring fake ice for my thermal bags. Maybe I should stick a couple coolers in there (though I really need to clean my trunk out, because I cleaned my car out a couple weeks ago by tossing all the shit in the car into the trunk.

Yesterday was somewhat exciting. I went to let Fritzi in, and noticed that the other two dogs (I still think of them as puppies, but they’re over a year old so I guess they’re all growed up now) were nowhere in sight. Turns out, there was a hole where the crappy wooden snow fence was busted up, and they skedaddled into the woods. This is kind of a bummer because they don’t typically wear their collars (because Bud take them off either himself or his sister and then proceeds to chew them into tiny little pieces).

Peggy heard me whistling and cam running back in through the hole in the fence, but Bud was nowhere to be seen. So I had to go out into the woods (which sucked because it was about 38 degrees and raining), where he was still nowhere to be found. After much whistling and pondering over which direction I should try heading off to next, he finally came bounding through the snow and came back inside with me. Then I had to go fix the hole in the fence and walk the perimeter looking for more escape points. As soon as I let them out again, they bounded for where the hole was, saddened that it was a no longer viable egress.

For now, things seem secure, but of course I now feel compelled to stand around looking at them all the while they’re out.

Otherwise, there isn’t much of interest going on. That Bladerunner dude is still insisting that he thought his girlfriend was a burglar. Far be it for me to judge somebody else, but when you live with another person and you hear someone in the bathroom in the middle of the night, do you really automatically assume it’s a burglar?

Not at my age.

If somebody took a shot at me every time I went to the can at night, my bathroom would riddled with bullet holes. I’d risk getting blasted about ten times a night.

At the very least, you think maybe – even if you felt compelled to grab your firearm – you’d say, “oh, honey…. I have my .38 trained at the bathroom door. If that’s you in there, please say something, or at the count of three, I start blasting. One..two….”

Our union has reached a tentative 5-yr contract agreement with the State and, as predicted, we’re getting screwed. Health insurance premiums up 6%, a furlough amounting to a 2% pay cut over the next two years, no increases for the past two years when we were working without a contract, basically diddly-squat this year, and 2% raises over the final two years.

Could have been worse, I suppose, but the increase in insurance premiums combined with the furlough and the previous 2% increase in the payroll tax is all kind of difficult to deal with all at once (it’s not like any other prices – or taxes – are going down). Could be time to cut the satellite TV service off when my two years are up in April. I’ll miss SU games on ESPN, but, well, whattya gonna do?

Oh well, time to get back to work while I still have a job, I guess.

Today is not a holiday for me. I find that rather tragic. I don’t even earn an extra day off for working today (though I earned a day for last Tuesday, which was Lincoln’d birthday, so go figure). My union traded today’s holiday for the day after Thanksgiving. I guess I’ll be happy about that in nine months or so, but for right now, it sucks. Plus it’s really cold out this morning (it was cold and windy all day yesterday, which led me to do not much of anything).

I saw that some of John Cleese’s Twitter “followers” are upset with him because of his tweet regarding the whole Oscar Pistorius thing.

Oscar’s defence will be that he was absolutely legless at the time.

Hey, sorry, I thought that was pretty funny. Maybe some of John’s followers don’t realize that “absolutely legless” is the British equivalent of “really drunk.” But if you’re the type to take offense at something like that, why would you follow John Cleese in the first place? It’s like the crackers in Atlanta storming out on CSNY in “CSNY: Deja Vu” (the 2006 tour that featured songs like “Let’s Impeach the President”) – upset that they were being so “political.”

Really?

You never heard of “Ohio?” Oh well, never overestimate the intelligence of the people.

Time for work.

Happy Valentine’s Day all you Hallmark shareholders out there. I completely missed the fact that it was Ash Wednesday yesterday, even though I saw some ashes on the floor of the building I work in. Not sure if it was a coincidence or not. It’s been a while since I had my forehead smeared, but I don’t recall the ashes falling off on the floor. So I guess that must mean it’s Lent now. I’m not sure what to give up, so I’m thinking of maybe just giving up in general. Kind of a 40-day nap. Goodness knows I could use it.

Things at work are a strange combination of stressful, hectic, and boring. The only bright side is that, since my BlackBerry is acting up on me, I’m supposed to be getting an iPhone as a replacement. So now I get to be one of the cool kids (except I’d rather have a ‘Droid, but that’s not actually an option unless I want to get them to spring for more money which, times being what they are, I don’t think would be a good idea).

I say I’m supposed to get a new phone because it was supposed to be “today or tomorrow” on Monday, and I haven’t seen it yet. And if I don’t get it today, I won’t be back in the office until Monday. Not that I’m really in a hurry, but it’s kind of nice when working from home if the phone doesn’t just boink off in the middle of a work-related conversation. Since I don’t have a land line, that’s pretty much my only option.

Oh well, back to work.

So, tonight’s the big night – the State of the Union address. :yawn: They make such a big deal out of this thing (and there have been some good speeches over the years, no doubt about it), but why? It’s all just talk, “we’re gonna go to Mars, we’re gonna defeat the terr’ists, we’re gonna be all green and good for the planet….” Blah, blah, blah. It’s all just talk and bullshit, ‘cuz one side is dead set against letting anything happen that doesn’t involve tax cuts for rich people and benefit cuts for the rest of us, and the other side isn’t really a “side” at all – more like a dysfunctional polygon. So they’ll go through the motions, one side standing and cheering every once in a while, the other side sitting on their hands looking as though somebody is holding a small turd under each and every one of their noses (and maybe occasionally shouting out “you lie, boy!”). I won’t be watching, and if I need a reason not to, number one on the list is not having to look at that disgusting piece of shit Fat Tony Scalia.

Another thing they seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time on is this whole Pope thing. OK, first time one quit in 600 years (and that was only so they could get down to just having one pope) is newsworthy, I guess. But who really cars about the leader of some corrupt cult who wears a hat that makes him resemble a turkey’s ass? To me, all he’ll ever be is the Sarah Palin of popes – quitting before his term is up. And that’s only when I think about him, which will be never again once they quit fucking talking about him on the “news” (and then again when he croaks – I wonder if they’ll be “fast-tracking” him for sainthood they way they are the last one). Which reminds me of that old joke headline from the papacy of JPI: “John Paul Named Pope. George Ringo Miffed.”

One thing, though. If the Pope is too old and sick and tired to keep on poping, doesn’t that imply a certain amount of fallibility? And if the Pope’s not infallible, doesn’t that mean that everybody can now just ignore him (that is, those of us who weren’t already ignoring him in the first place)?

NPR this morning is currently wasting about 10 minutes on some food segment that appears to be related to Valentines Day – another day I tend to ignore to the extent possible. I’ve never quite understood how this Hallmark Holiday has anything to do with love and romance (especially considering its origin). If I don’t get the day off, then it aint no holiday.

Speaking of holidays that I don’t get a day off for, today is Lincoln’s birthday. If he hadn’t been shot, he’d be like 204 years old today. OK, well, he’d still be dead. But would he be on the five dollar bill?

To celebrate Lincoln’s birthday, North Korea has apparently tested a nuclear weapon. It’s always nice to see a dirt-poor nation whose people are starving to death and freezing their asses off in the winter get their spending priorities right. I mean, what are they really afraid of? If they had oil or something somebody actually wanted, then maybe they’d have reason to want to protect themselves, but as it stands today? Who the hell wants a country whose main natural resource is guys in goofy uniforms with bad haircuts? What are they afraid that South Korea is going to invade and inundate them with cell phones, laptops, tablets, and high-speed Internet?

Hey, come and invade us folks. I already drive a Hyundai.

It’s not all that cold today, but it’s very, very windy. No word on the status of this weekend’s potential nor’easter. Hopefully if anything happens, it’ll miss us. Snow-wise, we’re about 14 inches below average at this point, and I’d like to keep it that way. We average another 40″ or so for the rest of February and March, and it wouldn’t break my heart one bit if we didn’t get any more at all.

Oh well, time to get back to work, I guess.

I’m sure you’ve all heard the big news by now – the Pope is resigning. He claims to be old and worn out to be continue, but I have my doubts. I mean, popes don’t quit – they croak. Hell, they shot the hell out of the last one, and he didn’t quit. I suspect this has more to do with his role in covering up the whole pedophile thing. That reminds me, I should watch the HBO documentary on that – “Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God.” Although I’m not sure I have the stomach for it.

The big question now, of course, is who gets to be the next pope? I’m not sure why anybody actually cares, though I suppose if they got somebody young in there who was up for not persecuting gay people and giving the OK for birth control, that might stop a lot of the nonsense going on in this country. And let priests get married if they want to (you might attract a better class of people to the job).

Speaking of priests, why not let women be priests? I mean, it’s your church and you can do what you want, but you might find it’s kinda nice to have some women around (always tends to keep the boys on their best behavior, I find).

And how’s about opening up the Vatican vaults and feeding some poor people? While you’re at it, order the Bishops here in the US to stay the hell out of politics.

But I don’t reckon there’s much chance of all that.

Warm day today – supposed to be in the 40s (I wish I could be in my 40s again). I’d better enjoy it while I can, ‘cuz there’s talk of another nor’easter on the way for next weekend, and I can’t keep count on them missing us up here.

It’s too dark to see how much snow we got, but I don’t think it was all that much (though it’s still coming down some). Maybe eight inches if we got what Syracuse got. Maybe more, if you believe my sister, who says she has a lot over at her place. It’s only about 5 miles as the crow flies from me, but we’re a valley apart, and the weather can vary quite a bit. I can see car headlights off in the distance, so I reckon traffic is moving OK. Still, I reckon there’s enough to plow the driveway (on the odd chance that FedEx actually makes it here today).

Otherwise, I don’t think I’ll be doing all that much. If I go out, it’ll be to get some more mouse traps. I found a little path they like to use under the baseboard heater and over to a dog food bowl. I’ve gotten three in the past 4 days, but now my trap doesn’t want to reset, and I can’t find any others around. I really should be more diligent and set some up in the basement where (based on their turds) they seem to like hang out. I don’t really like to kill them, but what am I gonna do? Take them out to the country? I’m already in the country – I’d have to take them to another country. If they’d just hang out and stay warm it’d be one thing. But they piss and shit all over the place, and they chew through all kinds of stuff. So, PETA forgive me, they just have to go.

I wouldn’t have to do this if the cats were doing their jobs.