but it’s free money


Wednesday night and I’m half asleep and have a headache. Just finished the Vonnegut books Ben got me for Christmas, nice books those: Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five. I enjoyed both very much, so it goes.

I already took out the trash, did it right when I got home so I could ignore the annoying reminder that my cellphone will screech at me around 10pm. Cleaned out the catbox too (I don’t call it a “catbox” in real-life, but it works better on paper). We watched a movie tonight, and I left the laptop powered-down until now so I could enjoy it. We don’t watch movies much, so that was fun. Feeling better today too, not 100%… but better still. Good enough to do a day at work, blech.

Check out the targeted spam-comment I got on Keaton’s (dust-gathering) gallery recently, right here. Gotta be a one-man effort, congratulates us on Keaton’s arrival, and then tosses us a link to his Ebay-front golf supply website. Hey, if they guy went to all the trouble of entering in the captcha and doing the BBcode to make the link clickable – he deserves all the traffic my modest site can send him (but watch out Mr. Golf Supply, the flood of visitors could bring down your server). Ha!

I don’t talk about my family much here, I guess there are things I tend to keep out of the spotlight. I mean, you know how it is. But, I spoke to my brother today and had an interesting conversation. The VA assessed him as 60% disabled, and now the Army is going to give him money every month – for the rest of his life. I guess it’s not relevant exactly how much money, but you may be able to guess based on the details of our conversation. “Yeah, 60% disabled.” “Wow,” I say, “I guess that means you’re a little more than half fucked-up, huh?” “Ha, yeah. But the Army is going to give me amount every month, tax free, for the rest of my life – and they’re backdating payments back to last year.” “Wow,” I say again, “You know, you could totally live like a king for that much in some coastal village in Mexico; never have to work a day again in your life.” “Yeah,” he says, “I already thought of that.” “Cool, I guess,” I summarize, “Cool except you’re 60% fucked up for it.” “Yeah,” he says, “But it’s free money.” “Yeah,” I say.

Before I go, I wanted to mention a question Sharaun asked me tonight. When we saw an 11 o’clock news teaser teasing “California may ban incandescent light bulbs in favor of compact fluorescent, because they use a quarter of the power,” she said “Power. Where do we get out power?” I guessed a bit first, “Hoover Dam, maybe. Maybe Shasta? I think we have reactors too. I think we also get some from Oregon and maybe Nevada.” Anyway, my desire to validate my own guesses led to some fascinating (to me) research on the ever-awesome Wikipedia, where I learned about the completely rad-sounding Pacific Intertie and the X-Files sounding “Path 66.” Check it out if you’re a nerd, you’re sure to enjoy it.

Goodnight.


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