A brief update

The county in which I live has finally decided to get off their bureaucratic asses and approve the permit application for rebuilding the deck. They're only about a week later on that than we really needed. We had our first inspection today, of the concrete footing holes and rebar. Very interesting that our deck apparently requires 24" diameter, 3' deep reinforced concrete footings, as the contractor had to come back and dig them larger before the inspector arrived.

My house in Santa Clarabelle did not have 24" diameter concrete footings. And they have lots of earthquakes there. And it was a house, not a stupid deck. A deck that is a grand total of 8" off the ground at the particular spot that requires 24" footings.

I am always amazed at the steady creep of building codes.

I kinda like the idea of pounding rebars down into the dirt a couple feet below the bottom of the footing and then letting them come up through the concrete. I bet that holds it in place quite nicely. I should probably have done that on the trampoline. Maybe I'll update the diagram.

Tomorrow, the concrete truck comes. They'll pour the footings as well as the slab for the hot tub. I wish I could be home for that, but I have to work work work.

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I'd like to thank everyone for their birthday well-wishes, and thanks to Ellie for the Beavis and Butt-head mouse pad (which I had been using for a week as it came in a box with a lot of other stuff and was in no way marked as a birthday present for me, but later turned out to be), and of course Fat Moother for the "My other ride is your mom" T-shirt. Very classy. I'll wear it to fat camp tomorrow.

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Ethel is still in the freezer. I hope we can bury her this weekend.

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I've found that the best way to get people to click on your blog ads is to get them to blog and get them to sign up for ads themselves. My revenue is up about 500% since Ellie got ads on her site. Could it be that people are motivated more by greed than by altruism? I figure it's only a matter of time before the google police accuse me of click fraud or something and demand all their money back.

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I don't know anybody in Germany, yet I have had a regular (every 2-3 days) visitor from Germany for months now. He or she has a static IP, so I know it isn't just random people from Germany. Hey there, German dude(ette). I'll try to start making fun of the French more often again for you. Though now that they've elected Sarkozy, I've been trying to tone it down. I even contemplated buying a bottle of French wine for the first time in 6 years. I kinda miss my Beaujolais, even if it is spelled like a drunkard made it up. Those stupid French f@^&s can't spell for s&!%.

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I might be traveling to a place called "The Medicine Bows," which is a whole 2 hours away, to see my brother and sister-in-law on Saturday (which, coincidentally, is my brother's birthday). We lack firm plans, but it seems to be on, as The Mrs. is organizing it. They live in Wisconsin, so I not only don't see them very often, but I have to feel sorry for them all the time for living in a place such as Wisconsin. This seems to annoy people from Wisconsin to no end, as a lot of them claim to like it there.

French people claim to like it in France, too, I might add.

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Yesterday, I got to chatting with The Iceman about this thing we have called the "Multi-cultural Room" in our new building at work. I was explaining how "multi-cultural room" is the latest PC code phrase for "Islamic prayer room", but no company wants to set aside a room named specifically for Islamic prayer, or suddenly every religion under the sun wants their own prayer room.

The Iceman said, "We should have NRA meetings in there or something."

So we spent some time thinking about how to start up the Fort TomCollins Gun Culture club. The gun culture is an officially recognized culture, so we should have no trouble booking time in the multi-cultural room. We've decided to open each meeting with an inspirational passage from the late Colonel Jeff Cooper, the man who taught me how to shoot a rifle, if indirectly.

We're a little hung up right now on the exclusionary rule, as all clubs are defined really more by whom the exclude than whom they include. I proposed a 4-gun minimum, but Rico and Bimminy Cwicket complained about that, as they're both only 2-gun guys.

I pointed out that we have a bonus being paid out in just 2 weeks that should easily cover the cost two quite fine firearms, but already they want the rules changed to suit them. Well, what can I say other than: Borders, Language, Culture. In our culture, we have a 4-gun minimum. You don't like it? There is no wall keeping people out of Mexico.

I'm pretty sure Iceman lacks the organizational skills to get this off the ground. I may have to assign Tinfoil to it when he gets back from vacation.