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Bad hair day here:

Phonecast this morning: -0.7^o. You could really feel the point seven part. Shortly after, I checked my phone again and we’d warmed to +0.7^o. A great day was in store after all!

Dark outside, too. And quiet. Hoar frost on the trees, everything brittle from the cold.

Lit a fire to improve the ambient look ‘n feel of my space. This involved flicking a wall switch. Sometimes we have to flick two or three times to start — Oh gawd. The world it turns out is awash in natural gas reserves so I don’t feel the least bit wasteful burning some to suit our purpose. Besides, I’m told natural gas (methane, CH₄) is the worst of all the greenhouse gases. If somebody doesn’t burn it, producing impotent less harmful combustion products, why there’s a chance that by accident (e.g., mishandling in storage, transportation, etc.) it might escape into the atmosphere and wreck havoc. Sure, the gas could be forced back deep into the ground, but with certain exceptions re-injection is a dumb idea given all the time and effort (and money) that went into getting it out of the deep ground in the first place. Plus, if you cared to click the link you’d see that re-injection is typically done to increase production of crude oil. How does the saying go: Chasing Bad energy with Good. That must really drive global warming alarmists crazy.

Not too much concern about warming here today. The dogs haven’t moved since Harry ventured outside early to take a pee. Little smears of yellow dotting the snow. They will still want demand their walk later today and as usual I will oblige, even though it’s only… let me check… +1.4^o! You can really feel the point four part.

Gooey schmooey pumpkin cheesecake. Prior to rendition.

Oh, you see the snow do you? And beyond it the baleful black spruce. Hardy Alaska trees those, but you wouldn’t know it to look at them, uneven and unkempt. One might think mongrels of the tree world yet black spruce — Picea mariana — is a successful species all its own, if its wide geographic range is any indication.

Above, a brooding sky. Not to worry, though. Once the light comes up, feeble though it is this time of year, and the sky clears, as it’s forecast to do, we will share the day with friends and family and express gratitude for our good fortune.

As always thanks for stopping by. I appreciate your inexplicable interest in the unraveling tale of our lives. Gobble gobble.

The (advanced) nurse (practitioner) will see you now. I snuck up on her. Yes I know snuck is not a proper usage but it should be. The language keeps changing they say. Besides, sneaked sounds like something you’d do to somebody with an athletic shoe.

On the other hand …

Usage Note: Snuck is an Americanism first introduced in the 19th century as a nonstandard regional variant of sneaked. Widespread use of snuck has become more common with every generation. It is now used by educated speakers in all regions. Formal written English is more conservative than other varieties, of course, and here snuck still meets with much resistance. Many writers and editors have a lingering unease about the form, particularly if they recall its nonstandard origins. And 67 percent of the Usage Panel disapproved of snuck in our 1988 survey. Nevertheless, an examination of recent sources shows that snuck is sneaking up on sneaked. Snuck was almost 20 percent more common in newspaper articles published in 1995 than it was in 1985. Snuck also appears in the work of many respected columnists and authors: “He ran up huge hotel bills and then snuck out without paying” (George Stade). “He had snuck away from camp with a cabinmate” (Anne Tyler). “I ducked down behind the paperbacks and snuck out” (Garrison Keillor).

There you have it; if Keillor could snuck then so can I.

So I arrived early to pick her up and instead of waiting curbside in the car I thought I’d park, walk up and surprise her. I wanted to get on that exam table so bad. I asked her to “do something” to me — blood pressure, temperature, stick a Popsicle stick in my mouth and make me say “ahh,” anything. Nope, she was having none of it. All that being well beneath her pay grade. Probably my insurance doesn’t cover spousal exams anyway.

Reminded me of one of my favorite Graham Parker songs:

Woke to a disquieted bowel. (For the record I wasn’t the only one!).

Pardoned myself, rolled out of bed and held the corner of the bedsheets higher and longer than usual to permit evacuation of unwanted vapor. (Not all my own!).

I slipped on my comfys and tip-toed cautiously downstairs. Feeling like a delicate puffball. You know what I mean — all it takes is one heavy footfall too many to jostle a vulnerable bowel and…

Minutes later, downstairs, feeling more settled but not out of the woods, I carefully stepped with coffee in hand (Gepetto is back online!) toward a familiar chair in the kitchen, sat down and opened the laptop thinking I’d search for a solution to offensive anal vapor. With Christmas coming maybe a novel his ‘n her stocking stuffer? (I am not the only offender in this house!).

Good grief, is nothing unfindable anymore:

New line of underwear filters out farts

Incredulous, I clicked…

… and was agassed (sic) to see two product testers.

Srsly?

Here’s something…

Several years ago Happy Wife and I along with friends hiked to the summit of Knoya (cuh-noy-ah) peak in the Chugach mountains near Anchorage. At the summit (~4600′) we ironed. That’s right, iron, like press a garment, in our case a pullover, and a badly wrinkled one if I recall correctly. To be honest we didn’t really iron the garment because we’d brought an electric iron, along with a full-size ironing board. But we went through the motions, enough I believe to qualify it as a legitimate extreme ironing experience, and us as true “ironeers.” As far as I know we were the first people to extreme iron in the Chugach mountains.

Proof:

There are two infinities
they say
countable and non
and now
with you and I
there are three

Happy Wife had a troubling day at work. Prescribed her a Sapphire martini with a splash of vermouth and two plump pimento-filled olives. Shaken. Served up. I delivered.

I could relate. Many years ago when I worked at a traditional job in the corporate world… oh some of the days I had. Occasionally I’d arrive home so pissed off I was visibly trembling, like a Quaking Aspen in a stiff Fall breeze. Mental commotion is one thing, but when it affects you physiologically like that you know you’ve let it go too far. Over time I learned to tame my reaction to these situations. Which is not to say that pissant managers who couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the sole didn’t continue to annoy me — and I them, to be fair. We did (continue to annoy each other). Only that over time I gained self-control over how I chose to react to the enmity. Reaching professional maturity is often coincident with the adoption of a Dilbertesque attitude. Day-to-day therapy comes in the form of amusing catch phrases meant to demean pissant managers, little quips you share with fellow employees of like mind. For example, say the pissant’s name is Dave, then one of my favorites was: ” Having Dave at work today is like having two good guys on vacation.” Haha.

Alas, it’s only a distant memory now; been over eight years since I last worked in a corporate setting, and years before that since I last experienced or cared about said discord.

What I remember for sure about those days coming home livid is that I never once felt like I had anything left to “throw” together an impromptu dinner like this:

BIGGER.

Baked squash with a dollop of cottage cheese, spinach salad with honey vinaigrette dressing and crispy prosciutto, and pork in Calvados gravy.

No, I’m quite sure I would’ve never been capable of that.

Coffee by Rube Goldberg. Right? Who else would concoct such a monstrosity merely to make…well, coffee? The Italians, that’s who. Welcome to the internals of Gepetto, an Andreja Premium Espresso Maker by QuikMill. That’s right, “Gepetto”, because we have a name for everything around our house, given our tendency toward anthropomorphism. Gepetto, an Italian, you may recall was the impoverished woodcarver of Pinocchio. Don’t ask.

Why did I need to open Gepetto for surgery? Because the low water float magnet is no longer actuating the sensor, and so the circuit remains open (closed?), and so the alarm — intermintent Beep! Beep ! Beep! – won’t be quiet. This greatly annoys me, Happy Wife and especially the doggies, and fractures the prayer-like quiet of our morning.

To make sure the problem was in fact the tiny magnet in the float and not the whatchamacallit controller board, I took a big honkin’ wall magnet, one that could suck metal filings to it from one city block away, and moved it gently behind the sensor actuator until, Bingo!, no more alarm. Good, the whatchamacallit board was in fact not fried, and this was good seeing as the New York service man on the phone estimated a replacement was in the neighborhood of $160! One float, by contrast, $10.50. Less shipping. I ordered two. Two, because one float detects low water, and another one detects really low water. To hear the really low water alarm go off — loud, interminable Beeeeeeeeeep! — you’d think there was a fire in the house. Lucy, especially, does not like that alarm.

And so, because our tendency to anthropomorphism extends to pieces & parts, I imagined the two magnets might be in cahoots. That is, one misbehaves, gets replaced, and then the other gets to thinkin’, “I can misbehave, too.” So you have evidence one is bad and you try to do the repair on the cheap and replace just that one magnet. You reassemble Gepetto, put him snugly back on the counter where he lives, plug him in, fill his reservoir with water, switch him on and ….Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!

No. For $10.50, you think,  this can be avoided.

Two magnetic floats due in the mail today. ~$28 w/shipping. What a country.

Janet Yellin (left), nominee for new Fed chief, reminded me a bit of another woman I know. One parts her hair on the left, the other on the right. A coincidence I assume, not an indication of their political handedness.

Hint: A former Fed chief was in this other woman’s Inner Circle for some time.