a ping... (returned in 1,814,401,736ms)

Alright, I know, it HAS been a while. I am sorry. I realize that I have lost most of my daily customers because nobody likes to go to a inactive blog.

I have started to receive the "Where ARE you?" emails. I have now received MORE emails than the number of votes that I get on any post. I wish I could change my "rating" stars to only ONE so that maybe people will click to let me know that they are there without worrying that they are insulting me.

Two of the recent comments let me know that some folks from the very beginning of The Adventure were still watching. Chris S. from Indiana has the exact same name as a long time friend of ours who lives in NH and just happens to be female. So when Susanna wrote a comment with the tag (Chris S's wife) I realized who was actually there.
Hello Chris & Susanna from Indiana, it's great to know that you checked in.
I really want to come visit again... but then again, I would like to do the whole trip again.

There were SO many people that took us in and made us feel welcome. If we were just on our own looking at "the sights" the trip would have been just a sight-seeing trip. Instead we experienced The Adventure which truly was the best of America and was so much fun!
The friendship and trust that was shown to the two traveling hobos was amazing.
It is wonderful to be reminded that the entire country has not become so paranoid and untrusting that they are afraid to show hospitality to strangers. You hear and read the news about stupid people being mean to other people and trying to take advantage of others, which ruins it for everyone else, but we found that in most of this country you can still help and be helped by others with no fears of theft, violence, or severe halitosis (although I did suffer from a bout of it myself, sorry Rookie).
We were told by several folks in Montana that it would not be considered strange to walk up to any house if you were hungry and you would be fed, just like it was just about anywhere until about 45 years ago. I suspect that this would not be wise thing to do in some areas.

The Adventure was great, I cannot imagine that we could top it, although I would LOVE to try.


I WILL be writing again soon. I have been very busy re-wiring the house that we are staying in. It is an old house that had a few "issues" that had caused half of the lights to stop working.
I spent quite a while just trying to map the existing system. It was originally wired by someone that wasn't very concerned about little details like positive/negative.
It turned out to be an effort comparable to mapping the human genome but includes a LOT more stairs. The attic is a VERY long way from the cellar and even farther the other direction.

Tonight all of the lights are working.
I am going to rest and take care of some other commitments tomorrow and maybe by then I will think of something to write about.
So check back and maybe I will have something soon.
[story suggestions would be appreciated]

The ONLY subjects that I have been dwelling on are politics, media, and the war of the arborists.
I will see what bubbles up.

Shuffling around.

It looks like we are going to settle in New Hampshire. We evaluated the options that we had, the areas surrounding the cities that we liked, the taxes, the pay scales, and charted the number or sunny days per year in 15 spots around the country.

We are going to collapse in a heap just about where we are right now. Well, not exactly right here. We are shuffling to another domicile this weekend because our room here at the Inn at Hamster Hill is going to be needed soon for the hoards of horsemen that will descend on this place very soon. Some people can tell that Spring is coming because of the sound of little birds. At this place, Springtime is announced by the sound of many hoofs arriving for "the season".

I posted a resume in a public spot on the Internet and I got a hit right away.
A headhunter wants to send me to a company that I have known about for years that has a position that might be fun. I will probably be a "contractor" until I confirm that the current management has recovered from the years of "reorganization" that it was forced to live through when it was being bought and sold regularly.

We recently met Ralph the "Arborist to the Stars" who is a fellow that LOVES to cook and to feed others. He is a refugee from California with a long story that I was able to track down on the Internet. Very Interesting. I will write about the "Perils of being an honest Arborist" soon.
We are very busy, we are moving our possessions from this spot to another and in general, things are REALLY going to snap into place soon.

Icy Scenes on Valentine's Day

Icy Scenes on Valentines Day

[Album]
[SLIDE SHOW]

Indian(s) Cooking

A cultural predicament. The men that cooked our dinner last weekend are Indian citizens. Two of the three guys LOVE to cook. They arrived with all of the supplies to cook a meal for the eleven of us. The meal was great but there was an interesting nugget that we learned that is truly a cultural difference. Ajit is the hard core programmer and tech geek who is not married and has no real interest in cooking. Ajit will eventually get married the traditional way, with an arranged marriage: "you adapt, you make it work, it can be very nice" and of course there is the exchange of dowries and such.

Raahi is the programmer with terrific communication and customer skills. He is married and has a little 3 month old child. He doesn't get to see his family very often because he works in the States, Japan, Malaysia, and anyplace else that he is needed. His wife has a career in India and won't be moving.
Raahi keeps his cooking skills a secret. There are traditional roles at stake here, and men don't cook.

Tamal is the curious one. Philosophy, politics, culture, conversation, technical, history, religion, and COOKING. Tamal seems to enjoy everything.
Tamal has a dilemma. He loves cooking. He wants a wife. He is going to have to make some decisions. If he marries a 'traditional' woman the cooking will become a secret, an experimental phase of his 'younger days' that isn't talked about anymore. He will miss cooking. He will have a wife. If he marries a woman who has been 'westernized' he can continue to cook, but of course there are those other 'westernization' side effects that come along for the ride. Just because he likes to cook does not necessarily mean that he wants to do all of the cleaning and other chores that 'westernized' men get suckered into.

Beth has always said that ladies should always marry a man 'who likes to cook'. (Her mother always said that it is just as easy to marry a 'rich man' than a 'poor man') Hmmm a rich guy that loves to cook... this awful image of Richard Simmons doing jumping jacks keeps popping up... (I don't cook and I don't do jumping jacks in silly clothes either)

So the dilema is: Should Tamal hide his love for cooking or does he narrow his prospects significantly by only considering women that are 'comfortable' with a man in the kitchen. After some chatting we learned that Tamal has recently decided to go with Raahi's technique and leave the cooking behind. The world will have one less man in the kitchen.

The names have been changed to allow our Indian friends to keep their secret hobbies truly secret. I will try to cook more.

Dentistry on the ranch.

This one was a surprise to me (I seem to be surprised surprisingly-easy these days).

It seems that here on the Hamster Ranch on Hamster Hill in New Hamster, there is a regular need for dentistry. Hamster teeth keep growing for their entire lives and even though they spend at least 18 hours a day chewing, their molars (which are surprisingly large) don't wear evenly. There are large flat areas but the edges develop long sharp points. It isn't a problem for hamsters that live out in the wild, but these are SHOW hamsters. They do a sport called dressage. To do dressage and most other hamster sports the beasts need to wear a halter, a very snug fitting halter. Think of it like a bull dog: those jowls and cheeks (and drool) all hang out the side so that nothing gets crunched by teeth. If you take a roll of duct tape and compressed the cute-smiling-fat little face into a slim snout like a normal dog has, the bulldog would be biting his cheeks between his teeth as he attempts to take your arm off because of the nasty thing you did with the duct tape.

Well these hamsters with halters have the same problem. So it's time to call in Reeney the vet. Reeney also does teeth, so today she is Reeney the dentist.

I was NOT prepared for what was going on in the barn.

There was this contraption, the likes of which even I, Mr. Gadget himself, could not have thought up. It pries open the mouth so Reeney can reach up in there and do all kinds of things without the slightest worry about losing an arm or two.

This shiny gizmo doesn't bother the hamster because the hamster is stoned. Very stoned. Even I could ride this hamster. In fact if I could keep all of these hamsters stoned like this, I would learn to appreciate them enough to call them horses. They would actually be fun to be around instead of just being perceived by me as giant composting machines that cost a huge amount of money to operate. Horses are NOT a reasonable hobby. They consume your life. Hampsters are much easier. I am avoiding silly things in my life so this is NOT a top-notch horse farm for high-end horses, this is the Hamster Ranch on Hamster Hill in New Hamster (this is properly spoken while closing my eyes and clamping my hands over both ears). Although I have found that changing the name(s) doesn't solve the problem of chipping ice, shoveling lots-o-stuff, large hay bales, grain, wood chips, and now... dentistry. OK, back to the dentistry.

Reeney pried open the mouth with the little ratchets and put a magnetic flashlight on the upper lip of this gizmo and then she puts a little battery pack up on the nose. This gave her a nice view of an armlength of mouth. She takes a water squirter and cleans out the mouth and a pound of grass pours out on the floor. After I figure out that the green is 'food in process' instead of algae washing out of somewhere, I begin to understand one of the advantages of having a mouth (and tongue) the size of my thigh, you can eat and run, literally. These things are prey animals, so they never know when they have to run away, so they have a large mouth that they can empty out when it is convenient. They don't intend to... it's just that they really chew their food like we all are supposed to, and so even if their cheeks don't puff out, they are carrying an entire meal with them at all times, just like..., just like..., well, like a hamster.

Now if I had a mouth like that, maybe I could handle clothes shopping a little better. I could pre-load with a variety of foods and when I am standing in the smooth linoleum 'men's area' that winds through Filene's, I could just stand there and eat. (ok, back to the story)

Reeney started to grind the teeth but Lynn-Winn (the patient) gave the signal that she was not quite stoned enough. Reeney backed off, went to her truck and came back with 'the stuff' that Lynn-Winn wanted.

Five minutes later Lynn-Winn gave us the peace sign and Reeney was ready to go again. She picked up her Black & Decker power drill with a long tool mounted on it. At the end of a stainless steel shaft was a one inch diameter hood that is mounted perpendicular to the shaft. Inside the little hood is a rotating disc with diamonds that very quickly could grind through anything in it's way.

Now through this entire process Beth is grinning (she likes vet stuff), I am standing there with my camera hanging around my neck but because my jaw was hanging so far down from utter amazement, I kept getting the back of my camera wet. Noel, the co-owner of the horse, and Reeney the vet/dentist, who is also a co-owner of the horse and chattering continuously at high speed [at] each other like a couple of high-school girls. They have NOT stopped talking except when Reeney went to get more drugs (wow, it really WAS like high school, man). While Reeney's mouth was still going full speed she takes this tool that can cut through titanium, and just shoves it up this stoned horse's mouth and starts grinding away. I was squirming like crazy but Lynn-Winn was doing the equivalent of "wow, man!", it was obvious in her eyes. Reeney extracts the tool and shoves her arm up there to feel how much more there is to do, retracts the arm, inserts the tool and starts grinding, all while talking and not even taking a breath from what I could see.

It took about fifteen minutes and then after a 'rinse and spit', she loosened up the speculum and started removing the equipment.

Lynn-Winn stood in the stall and smiled while we talked about the process. This process is necessary because of the type of work that these horses do. She is asked occasionally "who do you need to do this? What do wild mustangs do?". She replies that wild mustangs do not wear halters and they probably stab their cheeks alot.

"But it's unnatural", and Reeney replies that there is nothing natural about thoroughbreds, they are a man-made creature, they don't exist in the wild, and just like most breeds of horses and dogs, they were created by man and need to be maintained my man (or in this case, Reeney).

Reeney left and I spent time recovering from the ordeal.

A couple of hours later Lynn-Winn's podiatrist, who calls himself a farrier, came and did a manicure. Everything got cleaned up. Lynn-Winn seemed to be in good spirits and didn't mind all of the attention at all. Last night Lynn-Winn, Smarty, and the grey mare all loaded up into a trailer and at this moment are cruising toward Aiken, NC, where it is warm. Nice and warm.

2008-01-28 NH, Horse Dentistry

Dentistry on the ranch.

(Click for more pictures)

The Beauty School.

Karl and I arrived a few minutes early for our haircuts. I had just met Karl two days ago and now we were bonding by goin' fer a haircut. We were going to the Beauty School because they have the best prices in town and they do a pretty good job if you've got the time. The students are slower than professionals and there is an element of risk involved. If you are one of those people that needs their hair just the way it's supposed to be, you probably do not want to be under the scissors of a nervous student.

I had been to a beauty academy before, but that was a little one that only had two students so the teacher was heavily involved with my cut. The thing that I remember about that place was that the first time that I was there I was being quizzed by the student about what I wanted done. My usual answer of "whatever you want" just didn't work with someone who is eighteen years old. Most eighteen year olds have no idea "what they want" and shouldn't be given the opportunity to inflict their impulses on other people, especially adults. When the instructor came in twenty minutes later we were pawing through "fashion magazines" trying to find a picture of a male heterosexual so that we could find a "recipe" for my haircut¹.

The instructor took our magazines away and and started asking me what I wanted. Since the "whatever you want" technique was such an utter failure, I tried explaining what I wanted, just like I used to see on TV when people would settle in with Floyd the Barber in downtown Mayberry.

"Take some off the top and trim up the sides."

The instructor could see through my ruse and just fluffed my hair around and said "you just do a standard little-boy haircut". She actually said that, a little-boy haircut! I was so insulted, but since I wouldn't be able to defend myself if she pulled out the fancy words like 'layering' and 'tapering', I just kept my mouth shut and got the haircut. My haircut was "acceptable" according to Beth. I went a few times. My father-in-law liked the price I paid ($2) and started to go for his monthly tune-up. When I would see him after he got each haircut, all I could see was little-boy haircut. It really was. A little wisp in front, longer on top, and almost shaved sides. The wisp was there just in case you had to "dress up" you could add water to your comb and try to make a little pompadour on the front. After seeing Dad looking like Dennis the Menace too often, I moved on to another place to get my haircuts, but that's another story.

That was years ago. Today was the first time that I had dared to try another School. I mostly did it because I have had such a good time at my other haircuts this year that I thought "how much weirder could it be"?

This school was much bigger than the other one. It had a waiting room with six chairs. No fashion magazines either. I figured that girls that are going to "cosmetology" and "esthetic's" classes probably couldn't rearrange those magazines on the table without seeing some teaser on a cover that would make them swipe the whole issue.

We could hear what sounded like quite a few young girls on the other side of the wall. At precisely nine o'clock what sounded like the "teacher" came in and started doing roll call. There were a LOT of students. Carrie came in and got me. I had to sign a release form so that if I didn't have two eyebrows and two ears when I left, it wasn't their fault.

I walked down to the washing stations. It was a long room with at least thirty barber setups. There were also thirty young gals and one young guy chattering away all wearing their black smocks. Constant chattering. They must have to pump in extra oxygen by the afternoon to support this much talking.

After my hair was washed I was walking back to Carrie's station and the student next to Carrie's was poking around in her cabinet and there were people in there. I said "you've got people". She replied that she's "only got heads". Two heads. Each student has two heads stashed in their cabinet so if they don't have any live clients, they work on their fake ones.

While my hair was being cut, there were six or so live people and 24 or so mannequins getting their hair styled. There still was a huge amount of talking going on and almost half of the people were plastic.

I went with the "anything you want" technique and it turned out fine.

It took about an hour but it is a very nice haircut. When Carrie was finished the "Pro" came over and made about another 60 snips with the scissors, just to "clean things up". So I got two haircuts for 8 bucks.

The students do not get paid for their work, probably so that they can get used to the idea of never making enough to pay their bills, after all, they are going out into the real world here. So I tipped her 5 bucks. So $13 for a haircut still comes out to less than WallyWorld or SuckyClips Inc.

There was an interesting dialog taking place while the "Pro" was "cleaning things up". The pro had worked at a place that I used to go to many years ago but now she "is on her own". That is barber talk for "renting a spot". They pay monthly rent to get a chair at a beauty salon and they give the owner of the salon a percentage in exchange for scheduling, heat, water, and those wonderful fumes that you can't really find anywhere else.

My little student got excited because she wants to "be on her own" because that is the "only way to make any money". The pro stated that she liked being "on her own" because she didn't have to charge her customers as much as a "working for a company" would force her to. The student said "or charge as MUCH as you want" with a big smile on her face. The pro and I both replied with the equivalent of "you can only charge big bucks ONCE, and then they will politely leave and never come back", which seemed to disappoint the little student a lot.

She looked so sad, so I offered "...except for the stupid ones!" "They will come back no matter how much you charge and how little hair they have as long as they think that it is very difficult to get an appointment with you." "But of course, you need a LOT of experience to pull that off." That seemed to cheer her up. Tonight she will have dreams of $60 haircuts dancing through her head. "All I need is ONE big job and I can retire..."

When I came out to meet Karl in the waiting room he looked up and said "Hey, you got a better one than me!" so I knew that I had hit pay dirt.

The end.

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Note¹ Concerning finding a hairstyle in a magazine: In case you are wondering, we were unsuccessful, "fashion magazines" do not seem to have any heterosexual males that have come out of the closet yet, maybe someday men will be able to be stylish without trying to look like a boy-toy. I say "out of the closet" because not ALL good looking guys could be gay, statistically, SOME of them would have to be straight, but if you are going to be a model you have to have the "current look" which means that if you are straight, you sure don't want to look straight. Remember when all female models had to look like junkies? The next phase after that was the S&M look with harsh eye makeup and baring their teeth. Very pleasant.

Marmon Newsletter, February

This is February's column for "The Marmon News".
-------------------------------------------------------------
Greetings,
It is so icy here on the ranch that driving down the half mile long driveway is just like steering down a bobsled run. If there were not frozen snowbanks on either side to gently guide the tires back to the middle there would be a lot of fencing and fenders needing repair.

There are many lucky readers that do not have to deal with snowy roads, but I'm not jealous (I actually am, but I'm trying to be polite). I just thought I would tell you a little "history" about roads, snow, and Marmons in the great white north.

A century ago the preferred technique of road maintenance was not to push the snow out of the way, but to squash it down. Horses pulled large wooden rollers that were six feet in diameter or bigger. Bigger towns had bigger rollers. These rollers were weighed down with rocks. The resulting surface was hard and slick. Horses could walk on the hard surface and pulled sleighs. Most of the time you could also travel with wagons because a it's wheels are not driven, they merely roll across the surface. A wagon wheel merely supports weight, it doesn't propel you forward.

Large chain-drive trucks were being used with some success in the winter on packed roads because they had wide solid-rubber tires with a square profile. Virgil White in West Ossipee New Hampshire sold 25,000 kits to convert your Model T into a SnowMobile, a name coined by Mr. White. You merely unbolted your fenders, moved the front wheels, added crawler treads, and the front was fitted with steerable skis. They were very popular, but the transition from snowy roads to non-snowy roads and back again always meant quite some time in the barn with a wrench.
Farmers and Doctors started venturing out on the roads with their brand new little cars and they found that even if they couldn't afford the SnowMobile kit they could wrap their wheels with chains. They could start and sometimes stop, and with enough practice they could actually get to a destination and back without having to push themselves out of a snowbank very often. A small car was always getting into predicaments that could only be solved because the car was so lightweight. "Two strong men" could push a car out of almost any 'hazard'.

Every town had a rich person. Bigger towns had more rich people. Rich people didn't drive Model-Ts.
Rich people drove Marmons, Rolls-Royces, Oldsmobiles, Pierce-Arrows, and other worthy vehicles.
These cars were not lightweight. When a five thousand pound car stuffs it's nose in a snowdrift, it will take more than "two strong men" to extract the vehicle from the snowdrift and the building behind it.
Rich people could not drive their fine automobiles in the winter. They had to ride in carriages, or a commoner's Model T. What is the point of being wealthy if you can't show it off?

The Snowmobile kits would not work on a luxury car because you just don't pull the fenders off of a car that has a custom body that is considered a work of art. The OctoCar with eight sets of chains might have worked, but the OctoCar was not pretty and never caught the eye of the wealthy.

The town where we lived until recently, Antrim NH, had the very first Main Street that was illuminated with electric lights. This did not happen because of some kind of grant, it happened because Antrim's
rich guy, Mr. Goodell paid to install lights from his house all the way down to his knife factory downtown. Eventually the town inherited the lights and paid for their upkeep. That is the way things worked: The rich guy built it, bought it, or commanded it, and the town keeps it going.
Side Note: The very first automobile that was seen in the town of Antrim was a Marmon, when it was purchased by a resident. According to Pete Wallace, they never had an automobile even drive through the town before the Marmon arrived.

So the wealthy people couldn't drive their fancy cars on hard packed snow that (because of the crown of the road) actually launched any vehicle that drove faster than a walk.
The rich folks paid for a snowplow. A snowplow was a large-slow-noisy-cleat-tracked-beast made by Caterpillar or Buffalo-Springfield that had an over-sized vee-plow mounted on front. It would push the snow into "snowbanks" on the side of the road instead of packing it down and the wealthy were then free to drive their handsome luxury cars down the relatively dry road. Since everybody else is town benefited slightly from the roads being plowed instead of rolled, it wasn't long before the plowing was paid by taxes. Plowing roads also lead to changes in paving materials. Cobblestones do NOT plow well, square paving stones were better, but eventually all roads were surfaced with a "plowable" texture.

Driving was a sport for the wealthy, a hobby for the mechanically gifted, and it became a tool for farmers, doctors, and businessmen. We Marmoneers should take pride in the fact that without the luxury car market of the teens and twenties, our countrymen may not have learned to plow snow when we did. Cobblestones with their bone-jarring ride would still be touted as the safest surface to apply brakes on. The luxury car market changed all that. Think about that the next time you are shoveling out your driveway. We can drive to work on the snowiest of days because of those rich folks and their plowed roads.
That's a good thing... right?

Snow

New Hampshire Primary Day

There are some people that have not experienced what it is like to be in New Hampshire during Primary Season. It is absolutely amazing. EVERYBODY takes it very seriously. It is an important job and they don't take it lightly. I don't think that you could get the same candid response from a large state. The candidates would not be able to traverse California to meet people everywhere and would end up parking themselves in front of a TV camera, which just doesn't give you the same feel.
The phone NEVER stops ringing, the mailbox and diners are stuffed full of politician stuff.
The citizens hate being bombarded but accept it as part of the job.
I was watching TV with some teenagers recently and I explained to them during one of the candidate's "very important messages" to the American people during an episode of "Grey's Anatomy" that the rest of the country is still seeing KIA's "Maniac dancing salesman commercial" and are still being told how important "Super White" clothing is and that they haven't lived until they have eaten a breakfast burrito with "real egg byproducts" included with the other secret ingredients. In New Hampshire, these commercials are gone. America's economy can go to hell, there is only one thing to advertise: the candidates. The teenagers in this state just assume that the entire country is being bombarded like this.
Surprisingly the stores are still in business and I looked around and in this little town, the whites are still "SUPER WHITE" so obviously everyone is still buying the correct laundry detergent.
Maybe we don't need quite as many ads as the companies think that we do.

Somebody remarked on TV recently that New Hampshire is one of the only states that EVERY registered voter in the state has at least once been in the same room and listened to a person that has become the President of the United States of America. We listen, we switch sides, we jump ship, and we lend our support to the various candidates based on what they actually say, not on the little sound-bites that are fed to us. Sometimes we meet the candidate and they only speak in sound-bites and there is no real substance behind it. They have to be weeded out.
What the folks in New Hampshire vote for is only our opinion. A lot of thought has gone into it, but it is only one voice out of 50. Our voice IS the most important voice on this particular day because we put so much research into it, but the other 49 states can redirect everything down the correct path if that is required because of new information.
Almost HALF of the state's voters are "Undeclared" which is New Hampshire's legal term for "Independent". We don't just vote for who we are told to vote for, we vote for who we WANT to vote for, tempered of course by the little dance of "electability" and "throwing you vote away" and other little strategy items that cloud the waters.
This year was our first year that we voted in the big city of Keene. They have different checklists and lines for different parts of the alphabet! They didn't even recognise who we were! In Antrim we used to announce who we were because that is the law, but they already were flipping to the correct page before you even speak up. There were no cookies as a reward for doing your civic duty, I REALLY missed the cookies. But Keene did have a nice touch, they had a table right next to the ballot box so that you can switch back to "Undeclared" immediately after voting for a candidate in one of the two major parties. So you don't have to be a full-time Democrat or Republican for more that the two minutes that it takes to check-in, vote, and checkout. I really feel kind of trapped when I am officially in one party or the other because of all those brainless statements that politicians make when "the other side" is accused of something. So Keene makes it very easy to open both ears again. In Antrim you had to loop around to the checklist person again and change your affiliation and sometimes you could forget to do it what with the cookies and talking and jokes an' all that you get at a small town.

Small town or big town, everybody that I know participates and takes it seriously. Of course I have some friends that consistently vote for the wrong people but I don't hold that against them, they think that they are right even though they are so obviously mistaken. My vote counteracts one of those poor misguided souls and somebody cancels somebody Else's vote. We could actually save trouble if we coordinated our cancellation votes and only have those seven people that don't have a counterpart make the decisions, b-b-b-b-but there is the chance that those seven people would vote wrong, so I guess we will keep doing what we do.
I know ANYBODY reading this in New Hampshire has already voted, but if you live in one of those other states make sure that you weed out the propaganda from the candidate and VOTE.
A helpful hint: If the talking head on TV or on the radio sounds like he is frothing up, what he is saying is probably not entirely based on reality, I mean, you could do as well getting your facts from THIS website (which you shouldn't) than you would from a talking head that is just a leeeetle too excited. Entertainment versus News, step carefully.

Remember that during the primaries you get to actually vote for a person. As soon as the primaries are over you are voting for an administration. The candidate is just the public face for the folks working behind the candidate. As Bob Goldthwaite said a few presidents ago "You can't blame Ronald McDonald because you get a bad hamburger". So vote for the figurehead that you think has a leeeetle more skill than the others and during the actual election you should vote for the administration that is slightly less corrupt and self serving than the other one is. Every short term decision has long term ramifications. We are still recovering from stupid decisions made a long time ago that were obviously stupid and short sighted when they were made. The figurehead did not make the decisions, but the administration that is hiding behind the curtain did. We are paying for it this year, and next year. Saying "nobody could predict this would happen" is a lousy excuse when the people that weren't immediately profiting from the decision were saying that it was a bad decision way back when the profiteers were pushing it through.
Profiting for short term results = BAD
Planning for long term results = GOOD
This rant is over.

faaaarm livin is the life for thee....

OK, nuthin new here... Sorry.... Maybe this afternoon. It warmed up here from "unbelievably cold" to just "unreasonably cold" and ALL of the snow on the barn slid off at once.
I have to shovel the heap-o-frozen-snow so that it doesn't flood the stalls.
I thought it would be more fun to add sharp edges to the horseshoes and they could practice their skating skills but I have been told to shovel instead.
I am also hoping to take advantage of the warm weather to get the tractor running. I understand engines. The horses are about as exciting to me as gigantic guinea pigs.

Oil of Olay and Beards

We were enjoying a wonderful Christmas dinner that had been prepared by Mia. Beth and I were asked about the place that we "are staying at". Beth and I are staying at a horse farm in Marlborough with Noel our housemate, two cats, and American dog, a French dog (who seems to bark in English), and eight very beautiful show horses.
One of our dinner companions, I'll call him "Paul", started telling us about a neat guy that he met in Marlborough that he liked, which is something to be noted because "Paul" isn't particularly fond of very many people. He was buying a large quantity of hay from a fellow named Karl. When we heard "Karl" and "Hay" and "Marlborough" in the same sentence we figured out that Karl was possibly the same Karl that normally lives right here in this house. We haven't met him yet because being of above average intelligence, he is still down in warmer climates enjoying winter the way winter is supposed to be enjoyed.
Well Paul and Karl seemed to really click. Somebody asked Paul how old Karl is.
Paul waved his hand and said "Oh, he's about the same age as me".
I leaned over to Jenny and said "Well that really narrows things down".
.
Let me explain how Paul looks. He is tall, has great hair that he wears rather long. It is gray.
He has very bright eyes and wire-rimmed glasses. He doesn't really talk or smile unless he is required to, so he has a minimal amount of wrinkles, in fact, I can't recall seeing ANY wrinkles.
His skin is smooth and healthy looking. All two inches of it. There is about a one inch patch on each cheek that is not covered with fur. He has a very long beard and an even longer mustache.
He wears his fur proudly. It is one of the few things in his life that he has total control over and dammit he's gonna grow it as long as he wants to. It looks good, it's clean, it covers him completely. So you have his hands, his cheeks, and his eyes. That is not very much to use to make an estimate of age from. You could probably check out his teeth if you knew how, but I would be very careful doing that. Beth is probably the only person that Paul would show his teeth to anyhow. He looks healthy. He's cranky enough that you would suspect that he has been around for a while. There really isn't any other way to determine his age. He's ageless. Someday we will all go "Ooooooooh" when we read his obituary.

So you see, Paul's comment about Karl being his age didn't really narrow anything down.
So after my "Well that really narrows things down" comment to Jenny, Paul asked me what that meant. I replied that saying that Karl was the same age as Paul means that "Karl is somewhere between the ages of 40 to 80". Paul said "thanks a lot", but what he didn't realize is that it also is a compliment because of the 40 thing at the lower end of the scale. I really have no clue how old Paul could be. Karl's age is not a mystery to me anymore. Noel was talking about Karl today and mentioned his age. I asked Noel to repeat it. Paul the bearded one seems to have a problem telling the age of other bearded people too. I may not know how old Paul actually is, but at this exact moment Karl and Paul are probably not the same age even though they may look like identical twins. Karl is seventy nine. I wonder how old Paul is. I wonder how old Paul thinks Karl is. I sure wish I could grow a beard.

Feeling lazy in the snow (in Antrimville)

We dropped D&L off at the airport in Florida and Beth and I headed North.
While Beth was driving, I was talking to Stu on the phone and he mentioned that his mom used to use the AutoTrain. I said that it is probably expensive and he said that his mother was really cheap, so it must have been cost affective. I hung up, fired up the computer and checked out Amtrak. I did some calculations and after subtracting gas expenses, an overnight stay, food, and the cost of some miscellaneous expense (like South of the Border gift shops) and the train seemed like a good idea. The train was scheduled to leave at 4pm from a spot in Florida that was two hours away from where we were. It was 2:10pm. I jumped in the driver's seat, we bought two Dairy Queen sundaes for vitality, stamina, and mood enhancement and we turned right and headed East in a straight line to the Amtrak station. We made it to the "WineBarrel Express" which was a very exciting adventure on it's own that I will talk about later. We squirted out of the other end and were reunited with our car in Virginia and then started heading North again. We steered directly into the "Northeast Corridor". Whew. Traffic, tunnels, bridges, Washington DC. We crossed the lower level of the George Washington Bridge into NYC and were looking at the huge grimy brick walls of the undershorts of the city when we saw our first icicles of the year. Huge 20 foot tall things stretching down the black walls towards the eight lanes of honking cars. Jimmy Buffett's song about wasting away in Margaritaville was playing on the radio and caused Beth and I to do a final check to confirm that the mission was a "GO". We could veer right and sneak back across the Verrazano to warmer weather or veer left into the black hole of Route 95. The tail lights in front of me were narrowing into a blur of red, everything becomes compressed in a black hole, you know.

We went for it. We turned up the radio to drown out the honking horns and crept when necessary and lurched and sped along when the opportunity presented itself. We almost jumped on the Hutch which was pretty crowded and instead went for Rt 95. We hadn't been on the Connecticut stretch of Rt 95 for twenty years, it HAD to be better by now.
.
.
Nope. It's not any better. Two hours later we had traveled twenty or thirty miles and the traffic reports were saying "everything was normal".
We took an exit and drove the back roads to the sanity of the Hutchinson Parkway, which had evolved into the Merritt Parkway at this latitude.
We spent an hour getting to the next exit. Then I just gave up. I set Lorraine (our trusty navigation system) to a spot in Northern Connecticut and we drove though residential neighborhoods and single lane back roads for an hour until we hit route Rt 84 and then started cruising again.
Traffic was still thick, but it was moving.
We had spent four hours or more getting from the Hudson River in Manhattan to Stamford Connecticut, and we weren't phased at all. Nope. It didn't bother us. We knew we didn't want to turn around and flee to warmer roads, nosiree, there were waaaaay too many cars blocking the portal to "the warm side". We were committed to the mission. We were hungry and I started asking Lorraine to look for motels, but Beth wanted to push on. McDonalds gave us calories and caffeine and we plunged back into the darkness. We called to check up with D&L so we could get a little sympathy about the stresses of our trip and they had JUST arrived at the airport in Manchester and were filling out the forms so that their luggage could be shipped to them, someday. We had dropped them off in Florida, driven four hours, rode a train, drank gallons of wine, slept a little, ate breakfast, sat around reading, drove to NYC, entered the black hole of tail lights, busted out of the other side, were three hours from D&L's house and D&L STILL had to shovel out their car and drive two hours home. Nope, we weren't going to get any sympathy from them. We cranked up the radio even louder and sang songs until we crossed the New Hampster border. We held hands as we crossed the line and took a deep sigh. We found a couch and Beth took a nap from 10:30pm Monday until 7:30am Wednesday. Tuesday didn't exist.
We have since found a place to live and are going to go there now.
We may be taking it easy for a while. There is a beautiful snowstorm right now. Whooops, Beth fell asleep on the couch next to me. I'm going to wake her up so that we can eat some lunch and drive to Marlborough to check out the couch in our new living quarters.

Derek's Spot

Jaffrey NH

I've just always loved

these things...

For our friend in Chicahgah

Brae Mar awakens, 2007

We went to Brae mar to open it up for the summer.

The views were great.


Mt Washington


We turned on the water. No leaks.

From 2007-05-08

The work I did on the driveway last summer paid off....
The was NO water erosion, while most of the road coming up the hill was wiped out.


We took some pictures to get used to this whole BLOG thing.

From 2007-05-08 Brae Mar (Click to check them out)

Miss Chocorua

From 2007-05-08 Brae Mar...

We were able to spend about an hour there before we had to run off to Martha's for dinner.

************************************
Vicky ;o) said...
Ok, this, you are going to get a kick out of. I'm looking at these pictures and I'm remembering some lobster races on the kitchen floor of the house there. I remember the view. I don't remember a lot from my early childhood because of the chemo I went through, but you guys always bring fond memories to mind.
September 3, 2007 1:37 AM

A General update from Major Disaster

Hello folks,
I guess I have to start with the regular entries now that we are officially in "coasting" mode.
We accelerated hard and did the estate sale and almost everything is now sold or given away. We closed on our house yesterday (April 18th, 2007). We now are holed up in Beth's dad's little house with the intent of scanning all of our history (photos and papers), outfitting our adventuremobile, visiting all of the locals, handle some legal stuff... whew! I'm feeling tired again.
The house closing went fine. This week was a miserable wet time emptying the house. Everything had to be wrapped in plastic because of the "NorthEaster".

When people asked where we were planning to go, I had gotten into the habit of saying "we are gonna drive South until we hit warm weather and then turn right". I stopped saying that last week because we would have to drive to Mexico if were expecting to hit warm weather.
We have decided that we will bring our winter coats along, just in case.

Beth REALLY wanted the day after we sold the house to be bright and sunny (new beginnings and all that), but the forecast was that maybe on Friday the rain would peter out. Well Beth got her wish. Today was bright and sunny and we took naps in the sun. Our brains are starting to pull themselves out of the muck now. We were sooooo toasted yesterday. If we didn't have the help from Leslie, Kay, and the Enman clan on Tuesday we would have failed.

The new owners are very pleased and have started moving in.

Now that I finally have a little time to breathe, I will fill in the blanks on this story so those people like me that want the background story and not just the pictures, will know what is going on, or I guess "what went on". We are alive. Our brains are starting up. The rain stopped. The Marmon Newsletter was delivered yesterday (I haven't got mine yet, but I don't have a mailbox, so I guess that should be expected) and I just got a couple of calls from Marmoneers and a couple of invites for visits. Invites will be very handy.

Pictures! Lots of pictures of our travels. Our spiffy new cellphones have cameras too, so we can be like those people in those commercials...

Well I have to go get a haircut and then we are going to the King's for dessert and a little sanity.

We are over the hump.
ww Thursday, April 19th etc etc

Antique Pedestal Dining Room Table w/ 6 chairs - $800 (Antrim, NH)

We have two items left, time to pull out the secret weapon: Craigslist

---

Antique Pedestal Dining Room Table w/ 6 chairs

Reply to: sale-310728489@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-04-12, 4:01PM

We are selling our very nice pedestal dining room table. It has six chairs that have a design pressed into the shoulder board. The table is 48 inches in diameter and it has three 9 inch leaves. When all three leaves are inserted the table is a 75 inch long oval. There are pictures available at (photos were removed after being sold)
Take a look. We only have two things left to sell before we hit the road.
The MINI Cooper and this great table set. It has to be picked up THIS COMING Friday, Saturday, or Sunday (13-14-15).

Original URL: http://nh.craigslist.org/fur/310728489.html

The Adventure

The Idea...

We had decided that we were going to sell our house (because of reasons we will explain later), and we were thinking of moving to Asheville NC.
Unfortunately Asheville is in the middle of a population boom, so the housing prices are stupid right now. We think that we should wait a bit to see how well they handle their growing pains.

So where to go?

We had no idea...
and then we had an idea...

We would have an Adventure! We are going to put our house in Antrim NH on the market in April. It will sell almost immediately (you have to think positive), we will climb into our car and start driving.

Cool plan, huh?

Being homeless isn't that difficult if you have money. Not that we have a lot of money, but we do have some that was planned for Derek's college expenses, and so we are going to travel around to see where we want to live.
This Adventure could take weeks, months, years, decades, or any combination thereof. We are very excited. We haven't been excited about anything for quite some time. It's a wonderful opportunity for Beth and I to find our spark for life again. We will enjoy some time off while our health is good, and we figure there is really nothing to lose.

It will be fun. This blog is so that our friends can keep track of us, and we will try to enter posts whenever we can. We will include pictures so that you can see a slightly blurry version of what we are seeing.
There are also some people out there that just read other people's blogs for fun and profit. Well if you are one of those people that have never met us, you could help by recommending restaurants, cities, travel hints, places to stay, and anything else you can think of. Your help will REALLY be appreciated. Sometimes my entries will be rants, but for the most part I will be polite and I will attempt to be concise... which is a real battle because my fingers just seem to jump around at high speed without any real control or throttling and next thing you know there are a preponderance of words... a lot of words.... sorry.

I will now set up my DNS jumps so that WarrenAndBeth.com and BethAndWarren.com will jump directly to this blog. It would be WAY too difficult to remember which way to spell it, so both will work.

Thanks for reading this,

Warren (and Beth by proxy)