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first time in the 40s
Friday, January 23 2009
Today temperatures reached up into the 40s for the first time since this year and I took advantage of the situation to do some more insulating of the outside details of the greenhouse's masonry foundation. Later I made substantial progress at my goal of veneering the inside of the concrete block walls with Portland cement, giving its surface an organic, cavelike texture (nobody except a Guantanamo inmate with Stockholm Syndrome appreciates bare concrete block as a surface).
Further taking advantage of the weather, I went down the Stick Trail and felled a smallish dead Chestnut Oak. As I was cutting it into pieces where it lay upon the snow, I realized my blade was as dull as a frisbee. So I aborted the project. Later this evening I sat on the ottoman in the laboratory and sharpened all of the chain's teeth. It's the perfect thing to do when listening to a podcast. In this case I was listening to the latest one from Radiolab which featured a wonderful history of the Periodic Table of the Elements and a story of an entymologist who let a bot fly maggot grow to maturity in his scalp.
I found myself sneezing a lot today, which suggested I might be coming down with a cold. And then Gretchen said she felt she had something developing in the back of her throat. It was happening again: we were both getting sick at the same time. Usually when this happens Gretchen thinks I'm making it up and doesn't believe I'm actually sick until I have an objectively-measure fever. This time, though, she didn't quibble. By early this evening she'd taken to bed and was complaining of body aches.
At some point today I stumbled upon a glorious page at the Heritage Foundation hosting hundreds of non-ironic thank yous posted for recently-departed President George W. Bush. Based on their uniformly-saccharin content and the absence of even the subtlest barb, it seemed like a tightly-moderated operation. OverwhelmingEvidence.com this was not. So I composed a thank you that I hoped would be able to limbo beneath the moderation. This is what I wrote:
Thank you President Bush for not being gentle with the terrorists who would destroy us. I know it's hard for some people to understand that sometimes one has to bend morality itself in order to accommodate new reality, such as the mind-blowingly existential threat of terrorists in Central Asian caves. But we got a lot of good information from the despicable folks who were waterboarded, leading in turn to a lot of excellent decisionmaking for the past eight years. Too bad all of that is coming to an end.
[It languished for over a day in moderation limbo but was eventually added.] Evidently I've found the basis for an amusing web-based diversion: what is the wackiest post you can make to the Thank You President Bush board that will survive the moderators? Try for yourself:
If any of your posts make it, send them to me!
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?090123 feedback
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