Friday, July 31, 2009

POTW Week 30

So from out of the blue, we hear from Peep of the Year, Lauren Rathbone, whining about her reigning year being half over, and thinking she is going to get a lobster dinner because she is floating in Echo Lake.
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Uh..... Lauren.
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There are no lobsters in Echo Lake.
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Duh!!!!
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Being POTY must really take a toll on people.
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Announcing....
Nanepashemet Peeos of the Week for the 30th week of 2008

Lauren Rathbone
Ed Hudson
Phil Freeman
Ron Caliri
David Labovitz
Nancy Bruett

Maybe we should look into the special needs and stresses that POTY's face every day. Not everyone handles stress equally.

Take the Bait


I have to get out and bait the traps sometime today. Even when you are a dynamic executive type at Nanepashemet Telecom, you have to make time for the simple, mundane tasks.
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Just because I'm a Mountain of a Man, that doesn't prevent me from sometimes doing the same things that a mundane peep would do.....

Lauren Rathbone, reigning Peep of the Year said....
I am over half way thru my PEEP of the year run, do I get a lobster dinner! Heading to north conway this weekend, I will think of Mrs Nestor as I float on echo lake.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

No Urinating



Even when you specifically put the sign up.....

Susan said...
Who did that Jay?

No Susan. That is obviously not my urine. (When I pee on a building, I usually spell my name, and this is just one big void.)
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Didn't you read the sign???
It says "No Urinating Against the Building."
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So naturally, I didn't pee there.
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However, there was no sign that said that you couldn't take a poo in the bushes.

Pesky Facts

So President Obama is taking time out of his busy day today to have a beer with some Cambridge guys who had a run in. President BO calls it a "Teaching Moment".
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Do you find this to be just a bit pretentious? A tad irritating maybe? A little condescending?
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Let's face it. The Gates controversy points out that people who make a living out of extolling racist America are on the run. Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Skip Gates, and quite a few of the twisted ideolog professors that I remember at UMASS and BU are losing their subject matter.
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Racism in America is on the wane. Somebody should point out to them the WE ELECTED A BLACK PRESIDENT. And the FACTS behind the Cambridge racial profiling incident clearly show that this was not an issue of race at all... from the 911 call down to the African American police sergeant who responded to the scene immediately after Crowley, the evidence is clear that race was NOT taken into account by anyone but Henry Louis Gates.
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Now it comes out that the evil white Sergeant Crowley is a widely respected teacher of racial profiling to Massachusetts police cadets. Pesky fact.
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President BO lectured to us that the "Cambridge Police acted stupidly." Did they also act stupidly by issuing you 17 tickets while you were a student in Cambridge, that you only paid when you decided to run for President? That's another one of those pesky facts that keep moving this from the trite rush to judgement that Obama embraced.
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I guess the most annoying thing about this is that America has made great strides, and it is obvious that guys like Gates have an equity position in seeing that racism persists.
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We should never forget our racist past... but we can't denigrate our achievements in escaping that past.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Bye Bye B. I.

We bid adieu to the Block Island project today.
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Left the Verizon cell site a lot better than we found it. Which still isn't saying much. It has been a very ill kept cell site.
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But the unbelieveably rainy conditions in May and June really made this job drag on a lot longer than we had hoped. You can't cad weld in the rain and you can't climb towers in the rain, and there was a ton of each on this job.
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Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Axiomatic

We all know the axiom.... "If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?"
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Maybe you don't know this axiom, but I do.
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Well.... "If a tree falls in your backyard, and nobody has the insurance to cover the removal, does it stay there all summer?"
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This one may be harder to answer.
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I'm so sick of legal fees. My next door neighbor, who shares with us in the willow drapesing his property has been threatening lawsuit. Maybe if I wasn't paying lawyers up the yin-yang these days, I'd be more attentive to his rants and raves.
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I'd just be happy to see the mess cleaned up, fix my fence and get on with life without massive down willow branches all over the place.

The Lorax said...

take down the willow. shallow roots.

Tuna Lips said...

what's axiomatik is there aint nary a scrap o'toilet paper in the public crap house when I needs to pinch me a loaf.

Monday, July 27, 2009

Willow Limb



Granted our backyard is a source of neglect. We really have to pay some attention to it and get it into shape.
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But the huge willow limb that crashed through the fence at 10:00 AM this morning didn't help matters at all.
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Both my insurance agent, Dave Bruett, and my public adjuster, Harvey Rowe, didn't give me any indication that this will be a quick insurance fix.
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Maybe cleaning this up will be the catalyst to getting the entire back done for the rest of the summer.

Close Out July

It's the last week in July. Not much fishing luck this summer, but at least the keeper trap is filled with lobsters. We'll probably fire up the turkey fryer with a kettle of boiling water this weekend for a lobster dinner.
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It will be a push to clear up loose ends this week, tidy up Nanepashemet Telecom. We've got a couple of projects in the pipeline, but I would really like to concentrate on closeouts rather than planning. Plus we will be moving our warehouse operations next week so it will be nice to stand back and take stock.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Workbench Progress


I surprised myself at the progress that was made on the Workbench Project.
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The dovetailed apron was glued and fastened, the end vise was attached, as well as the two bench vises.
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The wooden vise grips have to be assembled and fastened to the bench vises, and a ton of sanding had to be done. Then the holes for the bench dogs need to be lined up and drilled.
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I also cut all of the mortises for the bench leg system in the mahogany 2x4's using the Jet Mortising Machine that I'm really glad that I bought on a whim six months ago or so.
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I'm going to set up the router table with a sharpened 3/4" straight bit to cut the tenons.
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Then the leg system will be assembled and attached to the bottom of the table.
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After the sanding is completed, five or six coats of sprayed polyurethane varnish will finish the project, and we will move it into the basement to be used as a plan table and fine detail work, until it becomes the centerpiece for the dream shop that I will build when I retire.
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Maybe I'll sneak in some hours on the project this week because I'm anxious to get moving on Kate's Adirondack chair. I know that I will be down to Block Island once or twice this week to close that project out, and there is probably some other Nanepashemet Telecom priorities that will loom forth. Plus alot will depend on the weather.

White House Beer

More
So  the President wants to have a beer at the White House with the Cambridge Cop and the agitated Harvard Professor.
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Could be a really sensitive meeting.
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I would think that the White House stocks a wide selection of beers.
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Colt 45 is one brand that has marketed heavily to African Americans. Billy Dee Williams says "It works every time!" Maybe Obama should test this claim.
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Or maybe they should stick to a Sam Adams.
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Better yet, I'd recommend a Corona, which would placate the growing Hispanic constituency.

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If I was Obama, I wouldn't pick the beer....he's already way too deep in the weeds.
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Then again..... I would ship a case of Bud to the Cambridge Police and call it a day.

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Weekend Responsibility

Peeps -
We are staring down the beginning of a relatively nice, mid-summer weekend.
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Why don't you pay attention to your own plans, and stop sending me hundreds of emails asking me what I'm going to do this weekend????
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I'm tempted to completely ignore your pathetic petitions, but I realize that would tend to exacerbate your neurotic insecurities, so I will gratuitously give you my weekend outlook. You Emotional Babies!
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Things I have to do.... check lobster pots, glue the maple and mahoghany apron on to the workbench project, make a bank deposit, see if the Bluefish have returned to Fish Alley behind Baker's Island, get a rowing workout in the Tender in Marblehead Harbor, grab a burger at the Boston Yacht Club, send out some Nanepashemet Telecom invoices, drink some Dark and Stormies.
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Pretty much have to stop the list there. Even a Mountain of a Man like me has his limits.
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Now I hope you can settle down and concentrate on your own life for awhile and leave me alone.

POTW Week 29

My advice to the President is to concentrate on the economy, and try to get his health plan on track. Anything he says from here on in regarding the Gates Racial Profiling Fiasco will only highlight Obama's rush to judgement. This is about a prima donna who thinks he can use the race card to stand above the law. It is way beneath Obama.

But our President has proposed to have a beer at the White House with his friend Gates and the evil Sgt. Crowley. The aggrieved victim, Prof. Gates, responded that he would go but that he doesn't drink beer. Isn't that insulting to all White Beer Drinkers everywhere???

Announcing....
Nanepashemet Peeps of the Week for the 29th week of 2009

Sgt. Jim Crowley
Pres. Barack Obama
Prof. Skip Gates
Commissioner Robert C. Haas of the Cambridge Police Department
Sgt. Leon Lashley of the Cambridge Police Department
The Guy across the Street Who Witnessed the Entire Incident

I realize that this is the only theme related POTW selection in history, but that's just the way it happened this week. You just can't tamper with the completely scientific and unbiased selection criteria. That would be disastrous.