Ruminations of an ex-Oregonian

Normally, I am not one to go running off to shop on the day after Thanksgiving.  However, I do need to go to Costco and Target.  Pray for my safety as I brave the wild shopping yonder.  I may come back bruised and battered after dealing with millions of zombies who got up at some insane hour this morning to try and get the best deals of the century.

As we are getting ready for church this morning, we turned on some music of inspirational value.  Some of it is set in more modern styles, such as pop.  However, one that is on right now is of a country style.  I got to thinking about it and realized that there is very little “Mormon” music that is country.

Of course, here’s what would happen in country and western “Mormon” music.  Your spouse would leave you with the 7 children, the Bishop is upset at the talk you gave last week in church, the minivan broke down and your dog died.

Some things just don’t change.

We went to Joe’s Crab Shack for dinner tonight. Pretty good stuff, a little expensive, though. Anyway, the place is decorated up pretty good and the tables were fiberglassed with lots of stuff in them, pictures, patterns, little sayings and so on. This one just cracked me up. It’s a picture of a bunch of books with the following titles from left to right.

• How to Pick up Women
• How to Keep a Woman Happy
• How to Keep a Woman From Leaving You
• Dealing With Deep Depression
• Can Stress Lead to Hair Loss
• Considering the Priesthood

I realize that I have not posted here in a long time.  I’ve just been way too busy.  There just does not seem to be that much time any more to get everything done.  Ah, the benefits of working.

However, I feel the need to post a couple of comments about the past election.

1)      Republicans deserved to lose, mainly because they have not acted like the conservatives they claimed to be.  I do not feel that there are many conservatives left, so getting people elected to congress who are going to be worth it is difficult at best.

2)      Democrats who won over incumbent Republicans did so mostly by claiming they are the conservatives.  I don’t believe them very much either.

3)      Now that both houses of congress are under liberal control (can’t get much worse than Pelosi and Reid), hang on to your pocketbooks.  If you thought that past few years of spendaholics was bad, just you wait.

4)      Bush needs to use his veto pen many, many times over the next two years.  If he goes along with tons of new congressional spending there will be a liberal in the White House in 2 years.  People are sick of massive government spending.

5)      If we have a liberal congress and president in 2 years, with the current leadership or similar in place, welcome back to the Carter years.  We will have rising inflation, rising unemployment, rising interest rates, PLUS the constant threat of terrorism within our borders, increasing crime like you wouldn’t believe, and God-fearing Christians will be increasingly persecuted for standing up for their beliefs.  Much of this will be muted by individual state laws, but the federal agenda will promote it.

6)      If, on the other hand, the now powerful liberals act like the liberals we have come to know and love, and fulfill the agenda they have said they wanted, which is to raise taxes, impeach Bush, investigate everything they can, leave Iraq hanging in the breeze, and generally ruin every good thing that has happened the past several years, and if Bush will play conservative and do everything he can to keep all of it from happening, there is a good chance that in 2 years, sanity can prevail. 

7)      In the mean time, do things that will keep the bad effects of government to a minimum.  Pay off your credit cards.  Put some money aside.  Store some food.  Purchase ammunition.  Do your job well so you are a valued employee, not a liability.  In short, spend the next couple of years getting your position in life into as good of a place as you can, because the storm is likely coming.

Now, you might think from some of this that I am somewhat depressed.  Not even.  I think that we have the opportunity to get our individual ducks in a row in spite of what our national leadership is doing.  Anything that congress does now will take some time to have an effect.  The Bush tax cuts have taken several years to make the national economy what it is now.  It will take some time for detrimental things to have the opposite effect.  All I am saying is take advantage of the current times to put yourself in a good position and pray mightily that it doesn’t change.

It’s yucky hot right now.  Almost 10 PM and still 93 degrees.  Forecast for tomorrow is 107.  At least it’s fairly dry.

The new neighbor started moving in yesterday; he had his brother and father helping him.  Turns out that the father has had a heatstroke some years ago.  I helped them unload the truck then went down to Caldwell with them to fill the truck up again.  We didn’t think it was a good idea to have the older man in the sun that much.  It was 105 and the truck was another 30 degrees warmer inside it.  The neighbor, Tony, had a handtruck and I took mine as well.  We had the father in the cool house stacking boxes, two of us taking loads out and one in the truck getting them settled and it went pretty fast.  By the time I got home about sundown, I was worn out and smelled horrible.  Quick shower and bed.

Anyway, the heat continues and the A/C just can’t quite keep up.  Still better inside than out.

I went out and dug up the sprinkler that I killed earlier today.  I decided that instead of the little sprayer type, I would just go ahead and put in a rotor.  I have a couple of spares and it would be nice to have it go around farther than the sprayer did.  Then I realized that the sprayer head is a 1/2″ pipe and the rotor is 3/4″.  So, I have a nice hole in the ground for the night until I can either get an appropriate adapter or another sprayer tomorrow.

My wife came home with the game of Life, Pirates of the Caribbean style.  They have run out of ideas for new games, and have to keep recycling the old ones with new gimmicks.  So far, I have yet to win a game.

Whoever installed the sprinkler system placed, in their infinite wisdom, 1 sprinkler in the little area on the side of the house where there is very little yard.  I don’t have a problem with having a sprinkler there.  The problem is that this particular sprinkler is not connected with the rest of the front yard.  Anyway, after cutting the area where this bank of sprinklers operates, and turning them on and proceeding to the next area of yard, I came around the corner where this solitary unit is, mostly under a bush, and cleanly cut it off with the mower.  Now I get to replace it.  #&(*@)#&@# sprinklers anyhow.  I guess I have project for later.

According to the city, I have to have my backflow prevention device for the sprinkler system tested every year.  It is only for the sprinklers, not the water going into the house.  For the life of me, I can not see how water from an unpressurized side of a water system could ever make it into the pressurized side.  It makes no sense to me.  At least the city pays for the test.

While the man was here I asked about the water softener system.  I have been here a year and have not had a clue what to do with it.  He spent a minute and quickly told me what I needed to do to maintenance it.  Pretty straightforward.  Put salt in the big black bucket and change the filter every six months.  I took the old filter out to see what it looked like.  YUCK!  So, I need to get a filter as well as salt.  Maybe the water pressure in the house will be better with a clean filter installed.

I just spent about 2 hours giving my car a “tune-up”. Of course, tune-ups these days are different than they used to be. Change the air filter and plugs. That’s it. Of course, in order to change the air filter, you have to diassemble half of the car’s front end. And, to change the 3 plugs in back, you have to remove the distributor block. So, a 30 minute job expands to 2 hours. The car is spec’d for platinum spark plugs. It didn’t have platinum plugs in it. At some point, they were changed and the correct ones were not installed. I also spent the $40 and put a K&N air filter in it. It will be interesting to see if it will get better mileage. Just going up the street and back, it runs a lot better.