The Sick House....

Haven't had much time to do the blog this week, Connal is home sick. If there was a market for mucous production we'd be rich. This is the kind of sick where he is chock full of energy, happy as can be, but too sick to send to school. (Other children in his SMI class might not handle a mucous intensive cold so well.) At any rate, we have been as busy as we can. Got called into Jury Duty yesterday, sat in the courtroom for about 3 hours but never even got to the jury box. But civic duty is done for the year and they assured me, "You won't be called again in 2010." Too bad, would have liked to mess with the judge and mention "jury nullification" which is the idea that even if the defendant committed the crime the jury can find him innocent due to the belief that the law is unjust. (Particularly interesting thought in tax and marijuana cases.) Spend a little time trying to get the fire pit ready for use this weekend, (if the burning ban is lifted by then.) Other than that, just trying to get things done around the house. Just a quick update, have a good Wednesday everyone. Ciao for now.

Cleaning out the collapsing shed...

Spent the last two days cleaning out the old shed in the yard, found some really old license plates.( 1920's or so.) Also a lot of garbage, consisting mostly of old car parts, paint cans, wooden window frames, glass, and tools made by cro-magnon men. (Ok, not really on the last one.) Also it seems a squirrel has been storing his food in there, pine cones, some acorns, (not a lot of them in this area) We would estimate about 40 lbs of pine cones and various edible dry goods. From what we've been reading, this is excessive for a two, three, ...okay maybe five pound "critter". Hazarding a guess, the squirrel in question should weigh about 180 lbs. We have decided to arm ourselves ( shovels, torches, pitchforks, weed beaters...it IS the 21st century!!) should it return and be peeved about it's stash. If it does return we would like to invite our friends over for some bonfire rotisserie. We'll let you know. Anyway, that's about it for now. Everybody keep an eye out for those killer squirrels. Ciao.

Cinnamon Rolls rule...

Having our morning coffee and a cinnamon roll that Wolfie made for us this weekend. A good start to what will be a busy day. The list of things we need to do around here is endless, fortunately for us many of them require money and therefore have to be put off for a while, (first time being poor felt like a boon.) The sun is shining outside and luckily for us a few of the jobs require us to work out there. Of course there is the problem of our latent laziness to deal with. Oh yes, we are lazy, we admit it freely and without guilt. (Ok, a little bit of guilt, after all we all had mothers.) But we have agreed to help each other overcome our laziness and get to work. (Picture us in the garden singing "We shall overcome." in strident yet discordant voices.) But spending our time together joining in the fight against entropy (Ohhh that evil entropy!) sounds like a good time to us anyway. So if you happen to drive or walk by the house and see two aging hippie like folks toiling in the sun cheer us on but don't get in our way, work makes us cranky. Ciao for now.

Icky icky gooey sicky......

Another one of those nights, the sandman is in hiding, woke up at 4:30 AM, after going to sleep at about midnight. Rude awakening number one was stepping in a huge pile of cat vomit while going into the kitchen to get some water for coffee. (We swear two or three cats must have taken turns vomiting in the same pile to make it that big.) So after hopping across the kitchen to the paper towel rack (all the while flinging foul flecks of vomitous flak across the room and swearing like a drunken sailor with tourettes .) and then cleaning foot and floor and furniture. Finally managed to get the coffee brewing and sit down for the morning news. And was a little disappointed to find that South Park has succumbed to pressure from an Islamic organization called Revolution Muslim. It seems the organization was offended by Matt and Trey's portrayal of Muhammad on the show. (They had Muhammad speaking while hidden inside a U-Haul trailer so as not to make his image appear, they later showed Muhammad but wearing a bear suit, which eventually was revealed to be Santa Claus pretending to be Muhammad, or so the news story says.) But we will never know for sure because the episode won't be shown again. It is also not going to be placed for streaming on Comedy Centrals website. Ok gotta say not pleased about that, we did on image search on Google for Muhammad and found over a million hits with images of Muhammad. Here is our opinion. We think every newspaper and online web site in America should post a drawing of Muhammad (A respectful one please.) If the radical Muslims want to kill us all anyway might as well give em a reason. One thing we should not do however is succumb to threats. And clearly the South Park creators were threatened, (the Revolution Muslim organization called it a warning, claiming they were not threatening the South Park creators but just pointing out what 'probably' would happen to them if they ran the show again.) From what we have read of Matt and Trey they probably would have run the show anyway if Comedy Central had let them. And that is as it should be, America has a free press, and it should remain free. We have seen many things in the news that have offended us, but will not and can not abide someone telling a newspaper or online magazine what they can or can not print. Case in point... we are not allowed to post an image of Muhammad in this blog. The penalty for doing so would be the immediate cancellation of our blog. Can anyone recommend a blog posting site that will allow it?
Oh and one more important point, you will notice above that we state RADICAL Muslims are threatening to kill people over images of Muhammad. And that is true, but most Muslims in America while being offended by an image of Muhammad would simply cease support of any organization or magazine that printed the image. In other words if you are offended by a magazine or newspaper you are reading you can simply stop reading it. (Much as we at the Crazy have stopped listening to Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, and Fox news.) For example we were recently offended by a Garfield cartoon that we felt was too cruel to Poor Odie, but we have not started a fatwa on Jim Davis, although a Jihad is not out of the question. Just our opinion, we could be wrong. Ciao for now.

And back to the mundane...

Another week come and gone. We here at the crazy are gearing up for a working weekend, we hope for good weather. (The weather report says no rain until later saturday.) But the weather report didn't predict the snow we got earlier in the week either so we guess it's just a scattershot type of forecast. Brother Dan and me have been clearing out behind the garage, and in the shed which is due for demolition. (Too bad the city of Ishpeming doesn't allow us to use dynamite, KABOOM!! Shed gone, job done.) We noticed that the DNR is issuing burning permits for Marquette county, so it's just possible we will get to burn some of the brush and such that we collected behind the garage over the years. A few weekends ago we had some friends over and we watched an Ermine come into the yard and kill one of the chipmunks that lives under our garage. (You should have heard the little chipmunk screams!....... Aaaaalviiin!!!) The Ermine is probably a weasel by now, but we haven't seen it since, and we still have some chipmunks. The hunting range for Ermines/Weasels is over 40 acres so it's possible we may never see that one again. But still, looking forward to a weekend with the family, nothing better than that. Spring is here, summer is roaring down on us like a runaway Mack truck, so a lot of work to be done, followed by copious bundles of play. We'll let you know how the weekend goes. Everybody give yourselves a hug and a kiss on the head. (Stand on a chair if you have to.) Ciao for now.

Earthday is her birthday....

Just a quick note to point out that the light of my and Connal's life is having her birthday today.
Lisa is at once childlike and wise, she loves us unconditionally yet demands that we better ourselves as people. It always surprises me when she sees a new flower in our garden and makes a childlike expulsion of joy and amazement, and finds so much joy in such a simple thing. Somehow when she bounces out into the garden or the yard you can still see the little girl she once was as she stoops to pick a flower or stops to look at an interesting bug. We feel lucky to have her with us, and hope we get to spend a long and eventful life together. So when you read this hon, we love you. And hope you have a beautiful birthday.

A non smokers point of view....

On May 1st the state of Michigan is putting a new anti-smoking law into effect. The law states that smoking is banned in all public places including restaurants, bars, offices, retail businesses, basically all public places except casinos, (but only in some casinos, which seems kind of shady to us.) Actually the only real difference between current smoking laws and the new one is there is no smoking in bars. We have been hearing a lot of people complaining about not being allowed to smoke on public streets. THAT IS NOT TRUE. Smoking will not be allowed in Al fresco areas of restaurants, or in Bars. But smokers can still walk down a public street and smoke. Do we agree with the new smoking ban, not entirely, but it should be pointed out that many years ago most states made it illegal to drink alcohol on public streets, and there is no such thing as a second hand drunk. We at the crazy think that a private business owner should be allowed to do with their properties as they see fit. And believe that someone with the money and the courage to do so could effectively fight this law in court. Also we would like to point out that the fine for smoking is less than $100 dollars the first time someone is caught doing it. All that being said, it's going to be nice to walk into a bar (on the rare occasion that we do) and not be exposed to second hand smoke. We at the crazy believe that if someone wants to smoke there should be places around that they are allowed to do so. (Private clubs such as Augusta National have gotten around the law (concerning not allowing women to join) by proclaiming they are a private organization. If a bar owner closed his bar to the public and then allowed people to join what is then a private club (with a nominal fee of say 5 dollars a month.) and then gave out membership cards to it's patrons they may be able to circumvent the law. (The state however would try to pull their liquor license) If there are any lawyers reading this could you email me and let me know if this would be an effective way around the law. Just a thought, we'll be seeing you smokers on the streets. You non-smokers, we'll meet you at the bar. (Just kidding folks) Oh the main point of this article is that not allowing smoking in public buildings may not be particularly fair, but it really isn't taking away the freedom to smoke, just the freedom of where to smoke.
And just as we are not allowed to drink a beer on a public street, you are not allowed to smoke in a public building. And we are offended by this, drinkers of the world unite, let's change the archaic and meaningless law about public intoxication. (Again, just kidding folks.) What is the long term effect of not allowing smoking in bars going to be, only time will tell. Although in other states where these laws have been passed bar patronage temporarily dropped off and then picked back up again, with some owners reporting increased customer bases. And some bars closed their doors. Good luck to all you bar and restaurant owners. Ciao for now.