I'm Baaaaaaack

Did you miss me?

Blogging has been light the last few days as I've been out of town in beautiful(?) Hudson, MA, where the other half of my project is located. I don't announce when I'm out of town on the old blog, as The Mrs. doesn't like it if the whole world knows she's home alone with The Childrens. I've offered to get her a holster so she can carry the piece around the house the whole time, but for some reason she just prefers I not tell everyone I'm gone.

Man, do I gots a lot to talk about. I'm not going to be able to capture it all today, especially given the magnificent thunder/lightning/hail storm we had right after I got home. I'll have to weatherblog that over on the other site.

Lemme start out with the funniest story of trip. I spent a lot of time thinking about whether I could make this a (finally) new installment of Duh or No Duh™, but it just doesn't fit quite right for reasons that will become apparent in a moment. It would be more appropriate as a Sentence of The Month, but I don't want to encroach on NavieA-B's turf. So, instead, it's just going to be a funny quote inside an otherwise mundane post.

I arrived in the Hudson area on Monday night. Shortly thereafter, while I was at the Lazy Dog having dinner and listening to The Artist, it began to snow. The next day, it was a bit slippery on the way in to work, but nothing out of the ordinary for a light snow. Later on in the day, a few of the locals were having a discussion about the snow, and I overheard this gem:

Just because it's four-wheel drive doesn't mean it's four-wheel stop.

Uh...ok. Normally, cars don't write "four-wheel brakes!" on the window sticker, given that every car sold in this country in many many years has had four-wheel stop. But, at any rate, the lady that said this has generally seemed to be intelligent enough at work that I chalked it up to that kind of generic anti-SUV blather you always hear when it snows, only slightly mangled in the word selection.

Then, on the way out, I saw her driving an SUV. So maybe it was just generic blather. Or, perhaps, she was giving a cautionary lesson to the I's and the C's who were out from the Santa Clarabelle site and had never driven in snow before. Dunno. The conversation went on behind me, and I just recognized the voice.

But, I found it funny. So funny that later in the evening I was sitting at the hotel bar with my old buddy WoodyWoody from Santa Clarabelle, and i felt compelled to tell the story. Then, WoodyWoody says, "All cars have had four-wheel brakes since Henry Ford put them on the Model A."

He said it with great authority. I checked wikipedia, and the Model A did, in fact, have four-wheel brakes. The Model T had a transmission brake, which only brakes the drive wheels. Wow. I didn't bother to verify the "all cars" part of it, but he got the Ford history right.

I think WoodyWoody is some kinda savant. I'm not going to say what kind.

Once again, though, he took me to school at the bar, outdrinking me by 50% according to the tab. And I've been training! However, the tab doesn't tell quite the whole story, as at one point the bartender poured me my n^th Jack & Coke, and I looked at the tiny little bit left in the bottle, and I gave him the one-eyebrow raised look of inquiry.

Bartender: "What? Jou want that maign?"

Me, CherkyB: "There's not even enough for another drink in there. Youre not going to put it back on the shelf like that, are you?"

Bartender: "There's a lot more'n one drink in there."

Me, CherkyB: "OK. If you say so..."

Bartender: "Allright. Here jou go. Jou'll see"

The bottles had those little metered pourers on them that dispense only 1 oz per tip, and the standard pour was one and a half tips. I knew this very well by this time, because I am a very observant person or something. Well, he was right. It was a lot more than one drink. So, if we go by my "expert" estimation, that drink that he charged me regular price for what actually a 2.5. If we take that into account, WoodyWoody only outdrank me by 20% at the hotel bar. And he's probably close to 20% larger than I am, so I was out of my weight class.

Please, hold your applause.