Odd Days in CO: The Critter Factor

Y'all might recall that no sooner did Durf re-enter CO from NY than he was ready to turn around and go back. But as time goes by, I see him settling back in. ("Sure, mowing the lawn is a PITA, but look at all these cool tractors we can buy!")

As for me, my dreams of a pied-a-terre have gone the way of Greece's credit rating. So now I have resorted to weighing the pros and cons of life in rural Colorado. Do we move? Do we stay? Why stay? Why move? Which brings me quickly to the dark side: the critter factor.

Within days of returning to CO, I had to do some laundry. I went through the wash cycle without incident. Then I opened the dryer door for the first time in six months and the next thing I knew, I was coming to on the floor, and the noxious odor permeating the room was threatening to render me unconscious again. I'd know that smell anywhere. Dead rodent!

Fortunately, said rodent was not in said dryer. But its body odor was. If Durf had been home, we would have faced an impasse. I would have wanted to call Rodent Busters and he would have told me he didn't smell a thing. Under extreme pressure he would confess to noting a slight odor, but would say, "Who cares? The smell will be gone in a few months. Don't have a cow."

Fortunately, Durf was safely in NY and Rodent Busters picked up on the first ring.

Colorado score: -1

Getting even.

I consider myself relatively open-minded. I enjoy arguing and I suppose I am as happy as anyone when someone switches to my point of view (rare), but argument is most rewarding when I can learn and my own point of view can change. I even read right-wing editorials, although that has been less useful since the GOP switched from principles to mindless opposition to anything the Obama administration does (see Healthcare -- Romney, Mitt). When thinking about this blog post, I lost an argument with myself and my opinion about the topic changed.

Vengeance is among the worst of all human motivations. To pursue revenge puts us at a level not much higher than our enemy, and it is profoundly unrewarding. I do understand the appeal. If someone did something awful to Twila, I can see myself transmogrifying instantly from slothful and unmotivated to armed and dangerous. Hopefully I would come to my senses before doing anything regrettable.

Some years ago courts of law began to allow relatives of a victim to speak before sentencing. I've long considered that practice unseemly, at best. Imagine a family wailing and then a judge, with a tear in his eye, saying, "I was going to sentence you to 30 days, but I changed my mind. Life in prison!"

I assume, though -- and everything changes if my assumption is incorrect -- that the appeals of a victim's relatives have no effect upon the sentence rendered. So what is the point of all the weeping and gnashing of teeth? It was my intention to say in this post that there is none, and that the practice is demeaning. But then I thought about it.

The point is closure. The statements allow the indirect victims of a crime to speak to the court and, more important, the criminal. They are relief, however meager, for pain and frustration, and an expression of love for the victim. Whether they have an affect on anyone else is irrelevant.

T-Rex 1.

That is the T-Rex 500 after two hours of assembly. There are a lot of parts so it's going to take a while to build. I'm doing it on the dining room table, though, so I really have to finish before Thanksgiving.
  

I'm starting this project with both optimism and trepidation. It makes me a little nervous that many of the teeny weeny screws require either Loctite or CA, aka Super Glue. That will make them hard to remove if I make a mistake.
  
Fortunately, I'm planning to not make any mistakes. I learned my lesson in 1989 (yes, I'm that old) when building a large balsa airplane that Twila gave me. I really got into it and worked on it day after day when I got home from work. Unfortunately, I never finished it, even though the carcass is still in our garage and I have the rest of the parts somewhere. It was really discouraging when I learned that I had built the wings backwards. I had the idea that if I put the propeller on backwards, too, I could fly in reverse, but I didn't get far enough to test that theory.
  

The important thing is that I learned that drinking Wild Turkey shooters and doing complex assembly don't really mix. That lesson was reinforced when I tried to fly my first helicopter and embedded it in the wall of our garage. I don't drink much WT anymore, so I should be safe. Certainly a glass or two of wine won't hurt.

WHOO WHOO!

At last I have my blog partner back!

Odd things on odd days. Very imaginative. I guess I'm stuck with even things on even days. 

I'll do my best.

Odd Days: Here We Go

Back by popular acclaim (thanks, you two!), I thought it best to reveal what I've been thinking. In truth, I've been searching for purpose. The NYC blog had a purpose, which was to stay in touch with friends and family, all of whose lives revolved around what we were up to in NY, don't you know. And without the blog it would have been virtually impossible to keep in touch. After all we were in the wilds of New York with no phone, no email, no Skype. We were forced to blog.

Once we returned to CO, I feared (with all my heart) that our blog would look much like a series of Facebook posts. You know, the kind that Durf parodied so effectively by posting his toilet breaks. But then I realized I have a lot to say, and Durf is eager to say the opposite. So....

The theme of my posts will be Odd Days in Colorado. That's because my intent is to post on odd days about odd aspects of life in CO. No doubt this will be all encompassing enough that Durf can post whatever random thoughts come to mind, which is what he's been lobbying for.

I don't know if the CO theme is circumscribed enough to make me feel purposeful. If not, I might switch to The Tax Aspects of Retirement Plan Distributions. But if I do that, Durf might not post.

Stay tuned.

Moth morals.

The miller moths that have been infesting our house for a month have mostly moved on to the mountains. Every few days a bunch of stragglers stop in, though.

To help deal with the moths, I'd bought a bug zapper. It is somewhat of a humane zapper. When a moth flies in and hits the grid, it doesn't make that satisfying ZAP sound. Usually it just stuns the moth, which then falls down to the bottom of the zapper, which is, I learned on the first morning, open. So after the first day I put the zapper on top of a large jar half full of water. The next morning there were about 20 moths in the water. I dumped the jar outside, and at least half of the moths flew away. That eased my conscience.

Yesterday, though, I began to think that probably some of the freed moths just reenter the house. I wasn't willing to drive them to the next county to release them, so I wondered if it would be okay to leave them in the water until they drowned. That is, after all, a relatively peaceful way to die, once you stop struggling. You don't actually inhale lungfuls of water, because when you eventually have to inhale, your throat constricts. You just suffocate, and possibly see mermaids in that long tunnel with the light at the end.

I was thinking about that last night and watching the moths around the zapper when I realized: those moths are really, really stupid. They bang and bang on the protective enclosure, trying to get through to that violet light, even though ten seconds before they saw their Uncle Fred get through, hit the grid, and get blown to smithereens. What are they thinking?

I made my decision, and I don't think I'm a bad person. I really do hope the moths get to see mermaids.

Write-in campaign.

I guess I should have named this blog "durf-sez", since contributions from "oui" have been scant. It's time to get rolling again, and the way to do that is to put a little pressure on esteemed blogger Twila, who otherwise might slither and dither until all readers have long gone. She is, after all, the one who preaches that a blog needs a daily entry to stay alive.

I can't publish her email address here, but most of you already know it. Please drop her a note asking her to get her blogass in gear!

Flying, or not.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, a couple of months ago I bought my first collective pitch RC helicopter. It's a micro, for flying inside. It weighs 1.6 oz, its total length is 9", the main rotor diameter is 10", and the tail rotor diameter is 1.5". I had just learned to hover it when one of the servos (which receive commands from the radio) burned out. It turns out they're backordered for two months, a bummer. What to do?

I decided that I'd buy my ultimate (in current projections) heli, a much larger model for flying outdoors. I ordered it last week. (I left a human in the pic for relative size.)

Here are the specs. It weighs 3 lb. 12 oz., its total length is 33", the main rotor diameter is 38.2", and the tail rotor diameter is 7.9". So it's a lot bigger. It will arrive in a kit, so I'll have to build it.

The best part is that it's really cool. The worst part is that every crash will probably cost $100 or more. But I'm going to be really, really conservative. ACK! Bad word! I mean, really, really careful.

My philosophy of life, compleat and unabridged.

Love is everything.

Chris Bliss, P.S.

Here are a couple of minutes of his show last night (well, you know).