My Addled Brain

My body is old, brittle driftwood with rusting joints. But the move, for all intents and purposes, is complete. By that, I mean everything we own has been transferred from my squalid one-room apartment to my placial three bedroom, two bath estate in beautiful Zephyrhills, FL.

Of course, about 75% of it is still in the garage. We’re in the process of painting the joint, in the hopes that when we accidentally splatter a wall with the blood of our latest victim, we’ll be able to get it up with a warm washcloth and not worry about smearing the cheap white paint the builder put on. So far, the master bedroom and kitchen are completed, and I’m sure we’ll have pictures up as soon as I can find the USB cord for my camera, and, of course, get some sort of Internet going, something I hope will happen by the beginning of 2005. But seeing as how we don’t even have a phone line yet, and our phone company has no idea when this will occur, as it’s now an engineering issue, so I can’t even sign up for 9 bajillion hours of AOL for the most basic of services. So, I suffer in an information wasteland, one devoid of content and time-wasting links. Hell, I didn’t even hear about the Bucs game until Monday afternoon. Instead, my life is a never ending swirl of utility hook-ups, crumpled up newspaper packing, and, oh yes, paint.

My sincere thanks to those who helped with the move - Irish Stud, MCG, Padre, The Devious Cook, and special thanks to Madre, who couldn’t help with the move, but is great at pointing out spots we missed painting.

Oh, this will serve as a quick notice: anyone who might try to contact me on my old tampabay.rr.com addresses will be sorely disappointed when their e-mail bounces. There’s a bright, shiny link to what should be my permanent address at the bottom of the page. But you already knew that, right?

Well, I’m stuffed, and I still have one more house to visit on the annual Thanksgiving family trek. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Tomorrow…keys

Baby kidnapped from mother’s womb.

Oh, happy day. Apparently, the doom-and-gloom scenario surrounding the expansion of the Selmon Expressway has a silver lining after all, thanks to the quick work of the Tampa-Hillsborough County Expressway Authority, who apparently also has a side business manufacturing LSD in their basement. It seems that, in spite of having to spend an extra $78 million in repairs on top of the $350 million the expansion had already cost, they can raise enough money to repay state loans and still have anywhere from 12-40 million left over. And while I laud the efforts of the Authority interim executive director Ralph Mervine to deliver this news with a straight face, at this point, my faith in that roadway has been so undermined, I don’t think they could pay me to drive on that thing. It’s almost taken on Monty Python-esque heights.

Son, when I came here, all this was swamp - and a perfectly good Expressway. Everyone said it was daft to build an expansion to the Expressway on a swamp, but I build it just the same, just to show ‘em. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second expansion. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That partially collapsed, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up!

I’m glad I’m moving to Pasco, at least in this case - I’ll never have a need to drive on that deathtrap.

Happy birthday to MCG, who turns 28 today, yet somehow still manages to stay younger than me. Bastard. There will be plenty of birthday festivites at my apartment this weekend, where Teh 1 and I will celebrate by packing up all our crap for the big move next week. Come and join the fun!

Also, a belated happy birthday to Erky, who managed to pop by last week while down for a convention and Orlando roller coaster raid. He’s leaving the staunch Republican stronghold of Lawrence, Kansas for the bright lights, big city that is Clovis, New Mexico, a town so large the nearest airport is only three hours away. And it’s a great place for both he and his lovely girlfriend, avid sun-worshippers that they are. The best of luck to them both, and let me know how that “real estate” thing works out for you. *wink*

Archived comments - IN. Perhaps my lawyers were wrong.

I had hoped to get the posts from the old website up on the new one - and eureka! They live and breathe once again. Took a bit of SQL trickery to get it, but the previous archives are active. So, you can once again refuse to check out classic posts, such as this one and this one, and who can forget this hall-of-famer? It will take a bit more work to restore comments (and I’m not totally sure I can), and I fear pages from previous days have disappeared entirely, but I plan to work on it until I either figure it out, or give up.

By the way, this is four posts in four days. There are also four horseman that signal the start of the apocalypse, but my lawyers assure me this is simply coincidence.

President Bush has just completed the annual ritual of pardoning the Thanksgiving turkey. While this is usually only good for a mention on page two of the “Lifestyle” section of the newspaper, this time he manages to make it actually funny, pardoning two birds who had competed in a bitter, heated campaign for the honor. Biscuits and Gravy, indeed.

Did the first house walk yesterday. There were various minor issues with the house, as could be expected, but no sagging drywall, holes in the roof, or broken tiles - on the contrary, drywall’s straight, roof is solid, and the tiles in the kitchen look awesome. Just some screw holes that need to be filled and various bumps and smudges in the interior. My realtor said it was the cleanest walk on a new home he had ever done. And the guy pointing out most of the flaws that needed to be fixed? The builder. Have I mentioned that I love the builders at Lennar? Because I do love them so. I would hug them and squeeze them if they were attractive women, but they are hairy dudes, so I instead shake their hands and thank them profusely.

Lennar’s in-house mortgage company, however, can bite my hinder. Since I decided to not use them, they’ve done nothing but stall for time and toss roadblocks in my path. Sorry you people don’t get first crack at the interest, but my guy beat you fair and square. Just a week until we close (a week!), and there are things that can’t get done to finish the mortgage until the Lennar people release them. A plague on their houses until this is resolved.

None of this can kill the good mood I’m in, however. By the time I finished my walkthrough I went from being pleased I was purchasing a house to estatic. Teh 1 told me it was a good idea to buy it once we saw it, and I hemmed and hawed for a good couple of hours before I said agreed, and she’s reminded me of that ever since. Well, she was right, and now she can look at this, know she was right, and never, ever mention it again. See? Everyone wins.