A Man A Plan

In honor of Theodore Roosevelt as a great Captain of Destiny and to his conception and execution of building the Panama Canal --
The longest palindrome I know:

A man a plan a canal panama

Anyway.  Not quite on the same scale as taking over small Central American Countries through intrigue and literally moving mountains to connect the Pacific Ocean with the Caribbean & Atlantic waters; never-the-less, putting two kids through college in these times takes a bit of planning.

Our son Grant, at the University of Missouri, Columbia has the fortune of being enrolled in an institution that as a matter of policy makes it somewhat easy to be granted in-state tuition once one can demonstrate residency by obtaining Missouri voting registration, a Missouri address and driver's license, swear that you intend to be a loyal and life-long resident of the Show Me State and prove that your have a job and make a minimal annual wage and pay your local and state taxes.  This generous policy can save out-of-state students like Grant (actually his parents) thousands of dollars per semester.  Showing proper adulation for Mark Twain and saying "I Dis-Like Ike" in favor of Harry S. Truman may also get you points.

The kicker in the above formula, is getting a paying job.  His applications are in at grocery stores, pizza and sub-sandwich shops to Wal*Mart.  Getting to a from work likely requires transportation, and the most convenient option would be to have a car available.  To mkae the in-state tuition and job thing mesh -- this therefore requires a plan.
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For Christmas, Grant had to buy a last minute plane ticket out of St. Louis to get back to Dallas.  To get from Dallas back to school, he paid gas money to Ali (his suite mate's girlfriend) to pick him up on her way from Austin to Columbia.  But, with a car he would not be beholden to other people's schedule and it would work out nicely in providing flexibility for any employment (and thus tuition reduction) in the Columbia area.

For Spring Break: The plan for Grant was, once we removed Grant and his dirty laundry from Ali's Volvo, we had a week to get another car and send Grant back to Mizzou in the 2003 Toyota Camry that Sue was currently driving.  Spring Break for Grant would not be a life on the beach this year [see: Spring Break Broke, April 2012], but the plan was to get him a practical set of wheels.  Not too bad by all's estimation.

Before handing off the old 2003 Camry to Grant, I had to find out what that pesky "check engine" light on the dash meant.  It was about a bad catalytic converter, which without replacement would not pass Texas emissions standards.  So I ordered a new catalytic converter from the internet, had AAA Muffler install it and then run the car through their machine and then give me a passing emissions grade and the coveted official windshield sticker of compliance for the 129,000 mile Toyota.  A visit with the insurance agent and then Grant was ready.  Good to go.

A man a plan a camry pandemonium

Maybe not quite the nerdy symmetry of the afore mentioned palindrome, but it'll have to do.

Spring Break Broke

Glorious Plans.
New fine and fast friends, hints of warming across the Republic's mid-sections coinciding with the completion of midterms. 
A young man can't help but dream of road trips, adventures and casting one's youth and freedom into such a fortuitous melding of weather and high spirits.
A Glorious Plan indeed!  Indeed it was a Glorious Dream.

Grant calls home from the University of Missouri, classes are going well, he has a few midterms exams coming up but he has the studying routine under control and some of his classes will even forgo the midterm, relying on papers, on which  he has received high marks, he has assured his curious parents.  All that academic stuff being said up-front, Grant inquires, "How about I spend Spring Break on the South Carolina Coast?  His suite mate Carson and their friend Sean (known as 'Jersey' [pronounced "Joisy"] can use Jersey's parent's beach house, so no real expenses for rooms.

Grant's Mom say, "Well, you know I am not a fan of debauchery and Spring Break shenanigans" in understated tones.  Grant assuages her fears, by saying the plan includes only low levels of debauchery, like  learning to play a little golf and mostly hanging out - and Sean's mom will be at the beach house anyway.
It was a Glorious Plan. 
A Plan that required transportation from central MO to the Palmetto shaded shores of the Atlantic.  It was a plan that required Carson's girlfriend, Ali, to employ her car on the adventure to the mysterious East.  Ali had the only set of wheels among the group.  And Ali wanted to go back home to Austin for Spring Break and not play golf in South Carolina or hang out on the beach with Jersey's mom.

Grant, seeing the pieces of the Glorious Plan rapidly corrode and crumble before his eyes, pragmatically kicked them into the dust bin of life where many a Glorious Plan ends up; saying "Yeah, maybe it would be best just to get back home for a week over Spring Break."

When it comes to Glorious Plans, go for broke.  And when it is "Spring Break on the Beach or Bust" -- sometimes it is bust.  But sometimes bust is for the best.

But it was a Glorious Plan.

In Flight Entertainment

THE FEW WHO FLEW FROM THE FLUE

Sitting at breakfast on a fine Friday morning, the noise on the other side of the wall caused me to stop crunching on my apricot-pineapple laden toast, and caused Sue to stop probing her half-grapefruit with her spoon.  Aaaagh -- it sounds like we have a rat or a squirrel inside our wall I lamented.  Sue listened to the intermittent scritching and said, "No, don't you think that sounds like a bird?"  After a moment, I was pleased to agree with her sonic assessment.  The interior wall was adjacent to the fireplace that separates the dining room from the living room, and somehow a bird managed to drop into that space.  Well, we both had things to do that morning and I was feeling a bit of guilty prosaic pleasure with the thought that a dead bird inside our wall would not stink as much as a dead squirrel or rat.  We both left the house with the welfare of the sparrow in God's hands.

Sue returned in the afternoon to find a disrupted house.  The bird had managed to work its way from inside the wall, into the chimney flue and then dropped down onto the grate and worked her way past the fire screen and into our living room.  This unexpected entrance was a bit much for the dog, so he had retreated from the frantic sparrow to a more pacific pooch perch in the bedroom.  Meanwhile, the bird had been clever enough to work herself most of the way our of her predicament.  But now had to simply fly toward the light.  Unfortunately for her, the light was on the other side of the window.  Unfortunately for us, perched on this window sill was my radiometer.  A vacuum-filled glass bulb with a 4-panel vane that spins when hit by sunlight. One of those cool science toys that doesn't really do much, but does make me pleased at witnessing the power of photons and the feeling of connecting with the mysterious and invisible forces of nature.

Anyway, the sparrow, a visible part of nature, connected with both the window (which was immovable) and my radiometer (which was movable).  The radiometer fell to the floor and shattered into a thousand shards.  Sue noticed the shattered radiometer, then the bird sitting on the hearth, and then lots of bird droppings all over the house (another visible part of nature that holds no mystery for me).  She tried to direct the frightened sparrow out an open door, but the bird flew upstairs into Grant's room.  Sue closed the door behind her and was attempting to open the room's window when more bird poop emanated.  The second story window was a struggle to pry open, but when it was finally lifted, the bird flew toward the light, only to hit the yet to be removed window screen.  More poop.  The screen was wrangled free of its silt-encrusted seal and the sparrow was as free as a sparrow.  She flew unfettered toward heaven singing praises.

Meanwhile, back on the ground: With the great mess from the small bird, Sue set about wiping up poo lest we get bird flu from the bird who flew from the flue. 

  

Signals an End of an Era

When I got up on the roof to replace the rotting wood that formed the enclosure around my chimney pipe, I found an old, battered and forgotten icon of a lost era.  There attached to the back of the chimney at the top of the roof was the forgotten TV antenna.  I believe I had purchased this color TV antenna from Radio Shack, or may Sears and Roebuck.  It has been serving as a bird perch since we went with cable TV years ago. 

It also served as a lightning-bolt-attractor.  One August afternoon about 18 years ago, the house was struck by lightning, nails were fired out of the interior walls across the room, the living room was filled with drywall chips, chunks and dust and smoke.  The TV signal amplification box was melted into a glob of charred plastic.  Sue dashed out of the house with two younguns to the neighbor's to call the fire department.  No fire, just frayed nerves and fried electronics.

I cut the co-axial cable that still ran from the antenna and into the attic where it dangled unattached, unbolted the shaft and flung the relic assembly onto the lawn below.  I looked across the neighborhood from my vantage two stories up to see if we had the last TV antenna on our block.  We were not the last on our block to ditch the TV antenna, as I did see two other homes with an antennas.

Don't touch that dial! All of you out there in Internetland.  Sunesonscenes will be right back; same time, same station!

The Most Exciting Day of Watching Paint Dry

The city code inspector came by the house the other day and noticed that the wood structure that encloses my chimney pipe on the top of the second story roof had peeling paint.  I was cited with a city code violation and required to fix it.  Yeah, yeah, Mr. Inspector, I noticed that too, I just hadn't gotten around to working on it.  But I guess the city code enforcement did their job, and I was now motivated to get the boards replaced and painted sooner than later.

The wife said, you [are too old and] should hire someone to fix it, rather than you falling off the roof.  My parents (yes - they still like to offer unsolicited advice), "You should not go up on your roof, you might fall off".  My wife called Reuben, one of the many Mexicans that are constantly leaving their cards and fliers at the front door offering their yard work services.  Reuben came by and said he could do it for $100.  I supply the wood and paint.  And "No", Reuben indicated he did not have any insurance for his workers if they fell off my roof.

My Plan?  Act like a man, take care of my own house. 
Though plenty doubted my abilities: I reasoned, How hard is it to not fall off the roof?  I have been not falling off roofs all of my life.  I can do that as well as any Mexican.  Besides, by the time I buy wood and paint, I might as well do the job myself and do it right.

I purchased pressure-treated 1x4's and while Sue was on the job one Sunday directing her Children's Ministry at church, I set up shop on the vacated garage floor.  I laid out the raw boards and began to prime them with a base coat before I was to paint them with a coat of exterior paint.  Having all the boards primed with the first coat, I had to let them dry there on the garage floor.

There is a familiar sarcastic phrase used to imply monotony and boredom, "About as exciting as watching paint dry".  And so here I was, faced with the unexciting task of waiting and watching the paint dry on my freshly painted boards on my garage floor.  Wait, wait, ho hum, wait.  Or so I thought.

I left the garage open for the sunshine and breeze to circulated while I went inside to have the last of St. Patrick's Day corned beef in a sandwich.  Strider, my 70 lb black dog, saw somebody/something he did not like in the alley.  I let him out to go investigate what was on the other side of my iron fence.  It is my policy to let strangers in the alley know that an aggressive big black dog patrols this back yard (this policy however, to my great disappointment, does not apply to pecan stealing squirrels due to Strider's ambivalence toward furry woodland creatures).  As I moved my corned beef sandwich into the dining room, I could see Strider was very agitated and rather than directing his barking toward the alley, he continued to bark as he moved back toward the house along the fence.  I thought that was strange, so I went out to see what was going on.

Strider had alerted me to a young black man inside my open garage with his face pressed up against the window of my car.  I confronted him with the question, "What hell are you doing in my garage!?" -- as if I didn't know.  I ended up running him off.  Then I called 911 and gave a description of the intruder.

I lost 3 straight nights of sleep over my actions/inactions.  I now greatly regret not flying into action first and asking questions later.  I discovered that my first impulse is reason rather than reflex.  I wish I would have reacted with reflex to the obvious criminal intent within my own home. I could have taken the little punk, thrashed him good, taught him a lesson and then hog-tied him and called the cops to take him away.  I let a thief inside my house go.  That was not justice.  I do so regret not making him pay for his brazen criminal intent.  I was bigger, I had the element of surprise, I had my chance to clean up the neighborhood and I blew it. 

Does crime pay?  I fear that by intentionally letting this rat get away, he now thinks he can do it again - no consequence. 
Is waiting for paint to dry exciting?  Yes, unfortunately it can inspire the fight or flight reflex.