Beware of the blob

It's been bucketing down here at Chez Szondy and as I was walking through the garden yesterday I came across these blobs of clear jelly all over the front lawn. Partly out of curiosity and mainly out of fear that these were the vanguard of an alien invasion force, I inspected the watery little interlopers more closely.

At first I thought that the dogs had somehow got their hands on a cold pack and torn it to shreds, but I couldn't find any fragments of plastic bags and the dogs weren't acting the slightest bit guilty (I can always tell when Little Ann has got into the rubbish or raided the bread bin, because she's nowhere to be found). I soon ruled out the jelly falling from the trees or being thrown from the road. I was about to get in the car and flee for the hills before the onslaught of the Martians when I realised that all the jelly was sitting on the thinned-out lawn patches that I'd reseeded last week. A compartment opened in that lumber room I call a brain and recalled a tidbit of information I'd skimmed across.

Five minutes later, a quick googling and I had the answer. It seems that the grass seed that I'd planted not only included fertilizer, but something called polyacrylamide gel, better known as "water crystals." They're a kind of polymer crystal that absorb an insane amount of water and basically act as little canteens for the grass seeds. Very clever, that.

Of course, I could be wrong. In which case, I'm living the first ten minutes of a Hammer sci fi epic.

Man cold

I wish my wife understood the severity of this.

St. Valentine's Day potpourri

I never could get the hang of St. Valentine's Day. Aside from the confusing idea that there's a patron saint of soppy greeting cards, I don't have much time for holiday's that demand a particular emotion be displayed on cue. Christmas I don't mind because it's a large enough holiday that it can encompass a whole spectrum of sentiments from a feeling of goodwill toward men, to mild nostalgia, to barely contained hostility toward people I've spent the rest of the year avoiding. New Years, on the other hand, I can't abide since I passed the age when any excuse for a booze up was welcome. It's like one of those parties full of people in their late 30s desperately trying to having a good time as their youth slips away from them and failing miserably.

St. Valentine's Day (or Valentine's Day or Val Day or VD or whatever) I couldn't stomach when I was single. If I didn't have a girlfriend at the time, it was a tactless reminder that my evenings revolved around B movies and beer, and if I did have one, it reminded me that I was one forgotten bunch of roses from the B&B routine. Now that I'm a family man, it means that I have a pre-scheduled appointment to rekindle romance on a day when the hand of Fate are sure to throw the banana skin of Destiny under my foot.

This year, for example, Der Tag corresponded with a load of insane (and ill-paying) writing gigs, my daughter's midwinter school holidays, and our having to babysit my in-laws dogs. The latter are nice enough canines, though the lab is square in the stupid-but-affectionate category and the border collie is a frustrated lap dog. Add in our own miniature pack (one neurotic and the other jealous) and a seven-year old girl and Chez Szondy was about as peaceful as a Lord of the Flies reunion dinner.

Then there are the absurdities of buying Valentine presents. There was a time when buying something flash like a gold necklace was a winning impulse, but now the wedding band on my left hand is a reminder that the lolly is coming out of company funds and that my better half does the books, so I have to walk a fine line between not showing enough affection and blowing the family budget. So there I was in the local Barnes and Nobles looking for the right gift at the right price.

Have you looked in a bookshop around Valentine's Day? I couldn't' believe it. I expected leather bound copies of Romeo and Juliet and slushy gift books that cost about a quid a page, but I was not prepared for what was on offered. Lovers of History Who Died Horrible Deaths? Vampire Sex Manual? Great Hook Up Lines That Will Bypass Her Frontal Lobes and Head Straight For the amygdala? It's not so much shocking as being back at one of those thirtysomething parties I referred to earlier.

Despite what was cavorting on the display tables like Dutch window girls past their sell by date, I happen to like book shops and very few things bring me more peace than idly thumbing through the tomes–especially if there's a coffee shop attached where I can revive the tissues. Unfortunately, it also means that I start channeling my inner James May, which is not the best match for looking for romantic prezzies. "Oh, look, there's a book on trainspotting and there's a the collected Barsoom novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Now where's that Kama Sutra?"

Just doesn't work.

What also doesn't work is that home life is rarely conducive to maintaining a romantic mood. Take the other evening when my wife was inspecting our daughter's ant colony and fell for the old "Missus! Come look at me mate! I think he's sick or something!" Long story short, she opened the lid of the colony to rescue what she thought was an ant in distress only to have the little arthropod make a break for it across the dresser top. I was summoned to recapture the fugitive, which I did, and as I returned him to the colony while being as gentle as possible with that fragile little life the minute bastard sunk his jaws into my fingertip and pumped half his body weight's worth of formic acid into it. Within five minutes, my finger felt as if someone was pounding it repeatedly with a hammer and deriving a great deal of satisfaction from it.

Do you know what you can do for an ant bite? Absolutely bloody nothing. All you can do is let it run it's course, which in practical terms translates into sitting there with tears streaming down your face while the wife asks you what's wrong and if you want to go to hospital. That, of course, is not an option because all that will happen is that the medicos will tell you to stick your finger in ice water which means that instead of having a finger throbbing with pain, you'll have a very cold finger throbbing with pain. So, I took the coward's way out and downed an Excedrin PM; not because I thought it would relieve the pain, but because it would put me in a drug induced coma where I wouldn't care.

I awoke from this several hours later with a finger that no longer hurting, but still uncomfortably numb so that typing the letters F, R, T, G, V, B, D, and the numbers 5 and 6 is extremely unpleasant. At least it doesn't include any vowels, so small blessings must be counted.

Another thing that doesn't help one stay in the Orphean mood is that the "reimagined" version of Survivors aired last night on BBC America. Regular readers of this column know where this is going. I have little love for modern television in general, the BBC in particular that has fallen so far from its halcyon days of The Pallisars et al, and of remakes especially. My dislike of the latter is so great that my wife often asks me, "What do you want them to do? Just repeat the original episodes?" To which my reply is an emphatic "Yes!"

I rather liked the original version of Survivors back in 1975. The idea of a series where a Red Chinese biowar virus is accidentally released, destroys most of the world's population, and leaves the British Isles with a surviving population of roughly 10,000 was an intriguing idea, though it lacked enough technophobic vampires for my taste–more in the vein of the British quiet catastrophe. It was well-written, well-acted and generally believable, though, produced during the heyday of the self-sufficiency fad, it did overestimate the difficulty of basic living in a depopulated Britain. With warehouses stocked with food and plenty of petrol still to be had to run tractors, it was never explained why our heroes, only a few weeks after the disaster, are struggling to plough fields with horses and grinding flour with a mortar and pestle instead of concentrating on more important things like securing machinery, spare parts, or fuel. Why spend time fixing old machines when new ones are there for the asking? Or why the only weapons they have are shot guns when Sterlings and mortars are only an Army base and a crowbar away.

Compared to the modern version, though the 1975 original was Hamlet. Where the original explained the entire back story of the plague during the opening credits, the remake took approximately the time required for the Alps to form. Where the original killed off the world's population in 20 minutes of screen time, the remake goes into agonising, excruciating detail as I swear I saw all six billion victims expire one by one. Or did it only seem that way? Of course, everything is accompanied by incessant background music including a sad piano tune that was repeated so often that it is surely grounds for prosecution, shaky camera work, and that character-circling cameraman-chased-by-a-badger shot that I thought was placed under a moratorium back in 2005.

And the cast. Oh, Lord the cast! This being the 21st century BBC, Survivors wasn't cast so much with dramatic possibilities in mind as in making sure that the multiculti quotas are all filled and give the impression that the non-white percentage of the British population is approximately that of South Africa. This is rather difficult on a show where you posit a survival rate of 1 in 5000. With those sort of odds, and the fact that non-whites make up about 8 percent of the population and that most of those are in cities where a pandemic would cause the most damage, it's most likely that Survivors would have a cast whiter than the audience at an Osmonds concert. The racism and condescension behind this sort of casting gets on my wick. I wouldn't mind if the BBC did this out of poetic licence. Hell, if including Patterson Joseph, the only decent actor in this train wreck, means indulging in poetic licence, then I'll vote for one that can bend the space time continuum. Or if it had been for some dramatic reason to make some sort of point germane to the plot, it might have been justifiable. But instead the BBC rolls out a tiresome checklist that could come from any other programme on the schedule where the sole purpose is not be "hideously white", bourgeois, or to look anything like Middle Britain. There is the,

• Middlesex banker's wife heroine becomes Scottish lower middle class.
• The Saudi playboy with the perpetual metrosexual stubble
• A character who in the original was a shifty, middle aged Welsh tramp and is now a hunky English killer with a MYSTERIOUS PAST
• The white helicopter pilot who is now a black survivalist
  
• A devout Muslim boy who will no doubt act as the moral conscience of the show
• The obligatory black person in a position of ultimate authority (also female for bonus points)
  
• The doctor who is the obligatory homosexual
• Tweedy boy's school teacher becomes Outward Bound hiking instructor
• The selfish trollop becomes, no prizes, the selfish trollop
  
• And, of course, The Others. Sorry, the ones in the sinister Laboratory.
  

All of them belong to the only classes that the BBC recognises: lower middle, professional, under, aggressively ethnic, and political. Unsurprisingly, the only groups not represented are the working, middle, upper middle, and upper classes that in New Labour Britain are utterly invisible–unless they're victims and villains, of course, and then only rarely.

This isn't so much Survivors as Lost with a Survivors' twist. The characters aren't characters from whom plots grow organically. They're not even plausible. I could believe George Baker's trade unionist as the would-be dictator in the original, but an undersecretary of media relations or whatever she was as the 21st century Cromwell? Pull the other one. They're a collection of quirks and traits to hang soap opera complications on. And where the original was a tragedy of losing a comfortable old world that morphs into the adventure of building a new world, this is the destruction of a degenerate and unpleasant world that morphs into the pointless meanderings of a load of emotional cripples.

The original made the audience pine for what was lost while making them curious with what sort of world is to come and it did so with great economy. It also provided us with characters who are believable and for whom we can develop sympathies. In the remake, we have a slow, turgid exploration of characters who aren't worth the effort. They are shallow, stereotypical, overacted, emotionally incontinent, overacted, pointlessly motivated, overacted, self-centred, overacted, humourless, overacted, and overacted. The new version pretends to have mysteries and dilemmas, but the mysteries turn out to be conundrums that once revealed fail to move the plot forward one iota and dilemmas that are nothing but a means for the producers to stave off the inevitable moment when the audience realises that the story is going absolutely nowhere. If there is any premise to this series, it is not about the fragility of civilisation, but rather a Minitruth warning to the inmates of the nanny state about how horrible it would be if The Party that is mother and father to them went away.

In other words, there wasn't anything worth watching on the telly.

The upshot of all this is that St. Valentine's Day is just too complicated to become romantic on command, so we're going to have our own SVD when the mood strikes us.

Let's just hope it isn't in the produce section again down the Safeway. Last time the magistrate didn't have much of a sense of humour about it.

Site down

My hosting service, in its infinite wisdom, is shifting servers and didn't bother to tell me they were doing it today, so I've no way to post this. That makes this both an explanation of why the site is down and an exercise in futility because you shan't be reading this until it comes back up again (and only Providence knows when that will be).

Cold and contrast

What a difference a year makes. Last year, Chez Szondy was hit by record cold and snow that left us stranded at home for nearly a fortnight, destroyed one of our cars in the ensuing floods, and forced me to finally admit that I live in the country and buy what is basically a small four-wheel drive truck that pretends it's a car. Now, the entire northern hemisphere is blasted with arctic temperatures and insane snowfalls from the American Midwest to Beijing, and Britain faces the traditional St. Hilary's Day cold with another delivery of snow. Meanwhile, at Chez Szondy is enjoying a rainy 50° F. because all that cold air on the other side of the Cascades acts as a barrier that causes the warm El Niño winds off the pacific to pile up on this side.

It's a nice change, but instead of my enforced rest from tending the garden, the wife is already hauling out the seed catalogues and talking about Spring vegetables.

Swings and roundabouts, I suppose.

Skating with disaster

When my daughter joined the Brownies I thought, "This will be an easy gig. I'll drop her off at the weekly meetings while I nip off for a browse through the bookstore or a quick pint. There'll probably be some camping come summer, but I'm an old woodsman, so it'll be a lark."

What I hadn't counted on is that things have changed radically with scouting since I was a lad–especially in the distaff organisation. Now they not only get their merit badges for woodcraft, but for field trips. The first one was to a movie day where the girl scouts commandeered an entire multiplex so the Brownies could run riot in their jammies without inconveniencing the general public. I figured it would be great. The wife and I would drop the daughter off, go have a coffee, and get some shopping done. Nope. Somehow we got sucked into the festivities and before I knew it, I ended up sitting through Planet 51. If you haven't seen it, you are blessed above all Creation. If you have, then your life can only get better from here.

On Saturday, we had the second field trip. This time to a roller rink. This was not a good thing because the Szondy family is utterly hopeless at any sport that does not involve firearms, edged weapons, sails, or horses. My daughter had never been on skates in her young life and the wife and my only time on the things was ten years ago when we bought each other in-line skates for our birthdays and sent them back promptly after the wife broke her coccyx and I had to avoid hitting a tree by landing flat on my back. Thank God for heavy jeans and leather jackets or I'd be paying for a skin grafter's yacht now.

It was with this memory that we drove to the rink in Everett, which had been taken over by hordes of girl scouts, parents, and assorted teenagers. After the typical logistical nightmares of such a situation and my doing battle with a series of lockers that ate my coins without actually locking, we put on our skates and the first thing I thought was, "Who in his right mind ever thought that nailing wheels to your shoes was a good idea?"

And that was while I was on the carpet. On the rink itself all I could think was that the wood looked very, very hard. We took our first tentative steps and soon we developed our individual styles. My daughter, being the lightest, closest to the ground, and least prone to breakage, fell down a lot, but soon discovered how to propel herself while remaining upright. She was the slowest child on the rink, but she could go in more or less a straight line. The wife also managed to remain upright, though this was because she was trying desperately not to fall on top of our daughter. I can't give you the fine points of how they were doing because I was otherwise occupied. At first, I tried to simply stand in one spot, but that didn't prove possible because every time I tried to balance I started to roll somewhere. Then I discovered that the wheels on the skates weren't aligned, so my legs started to splay as I tried to coast. This was not good.

But it could have been worse.

And it was.

I soon found that the only way I could balance was to lift one foot briefly, coast for a fraction of a second, and then switch to the other foot. This kept me from falling down, but I also discovered that this was HOW YOU WENT FASTER!!

I sped up and, not knowing how to slow down and unable to coast, I kept speeding up more. Since my auxiliary balancing method involved wild flailing of arms, I cut a less than dignified position. Facing death square in the face, I wondered if this would turn out to be a Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton episode. As I crashed into a set of heavily armoured speakers, I settled for Harold Lloyd.

The next hour involved me rocketing in eccentric circles around the rink. I swerved like a Spitfire with a busted tail as I tried to avoid other skaters. When that didn't work, colliding with the wall was generally my other option. I gave up on flying into the seating area after my one attempt ended with my involuntarily molesting a woman.

Fortunately, most people knew I was coming by my continuous shouts of "Oh, God! Oh, Jesus!" I must point out here that those were not in any way taking our Lord's name in vain. Let's just say that a lot of promises were made out there.

As to how my family was doing, they were pretty much a passing blur as I shot by like a terrified comet. The only other time I was so scared was at that very same rink on that very night when I was in the gents trying to use the urinal while on skates. Being so frighteneed I'd pee myself gave the situation a certain irony.

Unsurprisingly, the wife and I contrived to sit out most of the last hour of the skating while we nursed a couple of bottles of water and speculated whether anything on the snack bar menu was edible. Meanwhile, my daughter was having the time of her life as the management turned down the lights and organised a Hokey Cokey contest and a race. In true Szondy tradition, she was dead last by a wide margin, but didn't care.

Next up: Sky diving blindfolded and slathered in barbecue sauce into an alligator farm.

Can't be worse.

Roofing update

The re-roofing project at Chez Szondy is almost finished, though it had a fairly shaky start. Aside from the weather problem and needing to constantly soothe a pair of dogs, one of whom is a hopeless neurotic, I discovered that the roofers had sub-contracted to a firm called Howard, Fine & Howard ("We've got shingles!").

I had some misgivings when as soon as they arrived two of the roofers dropped their tool bags on the feet of the one with the pudding-bowl haircut who then slapped the other two and dragged them off by their ears, but they all seemed enthusiastic, so I let that pass. However, I'm not sure that OSHA would be too happy if they'd seen the the roofers hit each other with a ladder eight times in thirty seconds and then upsetting a bucket of tar that landed square on the head of the balding roofer with the insanely curly haircut.

Of course, I was holding a swank dinner party while the roofers were there. I didn't anticipate any problems, but when we sat down I discovered to my horror that the roofers were at table as well dressed in the worst-fitting tuxedos I'd ever seen. I tried to bluff it out, but before I knew what was happening the fat one was having a fight with a bowl of oyster stew that kept eating his spoon and squirting milk at him while the other two were trying to crush each other's noses with nut crackers. I'm not entirely sure what happened next, but one thing led to another and suddenly the 60 assorted cream pies I had sitting on the sideboard were flying through the air and I was knocked out by a flower pot that fell off a shelf for no readily apparent reason.

I woke up a while later in hospital faced with a doctor who was smoking a huge cigar and I swear a mustache and eyebrows made out greasepaint and he asked me to turn my head and whinny, but perhaps that was the concussion.

Your Flying Car Awaits

Yesterday was one of those frustrating sort of days where you wish a "skip" button was available. First off, I'd wrenched my back a couple of days before–not in one of those heroic episodes of trying to juggle boulders or practicing the hammer throw, but in one of those annoying ones that involve turning in just the wrong way while picking up a bag of groceries. With one innocent turn of the waist I have been left with a sacroiliac that is a concentrated zone of agony. That's if I just sit still, of course. If I stand up (or rather try to stand up), I'm trapped at a 45° angle while my left leg has all the structural integrity of overcooked rotini. It takes a lot of teeth-gritting and the sort of keep-your-mind-off-it attitude normally associated with holding one's hand over a lit candle while jabbing a taser in the thigh, but I can manage to get more or less upright. I can even walk and if I do it long enough both the limp and the pain more or less disappear. Unfortunately, if I stop walking or sit down, it hurts just as much as the reverse. And did I mention that the whole thing has a knock-on effect that makes it impossible to cough properly, aggravates my ulcer, and leaves me desperately in need of a cup of tea, yet in no condition to enjoy it? If not, I just did.

Of course, the other part of my day was that it rained in that way that it does only in Britain and the Pacific Northwest; that cold, endless downpour that is neither a shower nor a storm, but possesses that relentless quality that leaves the air itself damp, sucks up any source of warmth like a sponge, and after two hours convinces everyone that it has always rained like this and any memory to the contrary is merely a fever dream.

This also meant that it was far too wet for the roofers to work. Whether this was out of consideration for not turning our bedrooms into swimming pools or their understandable desire not to skid screaming off of a slick Cape Cod roof is a question for another time, but it did leave me with the worst of situations. It's bad enough to lose a day's work because I'm fleeing the hammers and scaffolding crowd, but it's even worse when said crowd doesn't show and a whole day of work opens up and I haven't any real plans to take advantage of it.

It does, however put me in the perfect mood for reviewing books.

The item in question, Your Flying Car Awaits: Robot Butlers, Lunar Vacations, and Other Dead-Wrong Predictions of the Twentieth Century by Paul Mil0 (HarperCollins 2009), at first seems right up my atomic-powered alley. It is, after all, about Future Past. However, a book doesn't inspire much confidence when it's contradicted by its own title, since Your Flying Car Awaits deals with predictions that weren't "dead wrong" as well as those that were.

Unlike most recent works on Future Past, this one avoids the usual assemblage of magazine covers and images in favour of solid prose. As the title suggests, Mr Milo deals with predictions about the 21st century, but his list is a very vague one (Prediction: Cloning. Answer: Did that in the 19th century. Next.) and the treatment is equally vague and haphazard with each topic given little more than a cursory treatment. Mr Milo covers a wide variety of topics from flying cars to mind control, but his treatment is very shallow and perfunctory to the point where he blithely mixes decades of entirely separate developments. For example, in dealing with the Picturephone, Mr Milo manages to leap fifty years from Metropolis to Dick Tracy to Space: 1999 in a single sentence with what can only be described as acrobatics. Worse, he consistently does so without citing any sort of sources. I don't mean neat scholarly footnotes filling up half the page. I mean Mr Milo doesn't bother with perfunctory references or even a bibliography, so it's impossible to follow up anything that might be of real interest and one is often left with no more citation of a fact than attributing it to "a French engineer". It's an approach that a web page can get away with, but the whole point of a book in the Internet age is to give the reader scope and sustained insight, not the experience of involuntary surfing.

This was intended as a popular work and Mr Milo tries for a light touch. However, the book is really too serious in its approach to be humourous and too humourous to be serious. In fact, much of the humour is heavy handed and a bit condescending. Mr Milo would have been better served by another rewrite and editing out the humour entirely in favour of dealing with his topics in more depth and greater rigour.

The most glaring problem with Your Flying Car Awaits is ironic. Mr Milo has a very poor grasp of history (he cites Howard Zinn as a reliable authority!) and technology, and even poorer empathy, which is vital in understanding a subject like Future Past. He often acts as though the present is a target and that those in the past should be judged on how close their "predictions" come to the mark, though even a second's reflection would reveal that this is an unfair and unrealistic criteria. It's downright absurd when applied to political predictions since, by their very nature such prognostications will have an accuracy of precisely nil. The irony is that while Mr Milo writes about a succession of men and women who were blinded by the prejudices of their time, he is blind to his own. He's very much a mainstream American liberal of the more unreflective variety who regards it as reasonable to always use the word "housewife" with scare quotes for no readily apparent reason and has such a complacent set of leftist beliefs that he regards the simplistic socialism of Edward Bellamy's 1888 satire Looking Backwards as a reasonable goal without a moment's thought that it is only reasonable if you buy into Mr Bellamy's utopia, but an utter nightmare if you don't. It also doesn't help when Mr Milo happily espouses the possibility of outlawing war (I'd have thought that sort of pacifism died at Munich) and a one-world government when the outcome of the previous exponents of those very ideas in Mr Milo's own book might suggest to him that he's merely drawing a target on his own back. And in case anyone thinks that it is Mr Milo's politics that forms my objection to his book, I would point out that the pacificism/one-world stuff comes toward the end of the work, by which time I was having trouble even paying attention.

All in all, a very frustrating and superficial work that is rather like seeing a vast array of glasses at a wine tasting and discovering that they all contain coloured water.

Normal service will resume

We've got the workmen replacing the roof on Chez Szondy and as they're a) making a great deal of noise, b) freaking out the dogs so badly that I'll be spending most of the day at the dog park and c) slinging old shingles perilously close to the satellite antenna, posting may be a tad light.

Happy New year

Cream of Tartar

In the words of P G Wodehouse, Christmas almost has us by the throat, so yesterday I decided that there was nothing else for it but to sally forth and buy what we needed for Christmas dinner. Actually, it was for Christmas Eve dinner because we're spending Christmas day driving all over the Pacific Northwest, or a fair fraction of it, visiting friends and relatives. I know that sounds a bit odd, but this is because, despite their reputation for being big eaters, Americans are positively dainty around the holidays. Even their Thanksgiving meals would be scarcely a entrée at an English Christmas. And I've never seen a crate of milk stout rolled out in America after the cheese course–maybe because they don't have one. Not for them gorging on rafts of appetisers, three meat courses, meat pies, smoked salmon, mince pies, savoury courses, desserts, nuts, and then washing the entire lot with an eclectic mix of wine, beer and spirits like Mr Creosote on a binge. Leave it at the turkey and stuffing and call it good, says your average American. The means that they are something the British are not on Christmas day: Mobile.

The upshot of all this is that Christmas dinner at Chez Szondy is put forward to the night before so we can drive up and down the Puget Sound area to watch friends and relatives not eating and drinking. It also means that a) I have to cut down on my traditional caloric and alcoholic intake at our family dinner because b) I am not going to be allowed to sleep through Boxing Day like a civilised human being and c) I have to take my seven-year old daughter to the supermarket on Sunday to pick up the viands.

Normally, I rather enjoy doing the grocery shopping. It allows me to indulge in one of my favourite activities of not spending money. Do we need butter this week? No, I bought a pallet load at the wholesale place last month. Name brand macaroni and cheese or the store brand that's a fourth of the price? The store brand's a little chewy, but you can still swallow it, so let's get that. 2006 Mouton Rothschild at $999.99 a bottle or half a dozen of the "two-buck chuck"? Don't even ask; just pass the corkscrew. This is not a normal Sunday, however. It's five days before Christmas and not only are the crowds insane, but the Salvation Army bell ringer has gone over to the Dark Side and is rolling on the floor in an eye-gouging match with a Buddhist monk over the last Zhu Zhu Pets Hamster. Since I'm staying in the food section, except for a detour to pick up some sporks out of the camping department (long story), I figure I'm relatively safe aside from the day-release patients who think the shopping trolleys are bumper cars.

For the most part, we're doing okay. We get the ham, the bread, the stuffing, and the rest without much incident. Even my daughter is relatively quiet because a few more synapses have linked up in her young brain and she's discovered that reading isn't that hard after all, so she's sitting in the child seat quietly reading a book about vampire squids. We're home free, I think. That is, until I got to the bottom of the list where lurked the Cream of Tartar that my wife wanted.

Now I'm not entirely sure what Cream of Tartar is, except that it's a fancy name for potassium bitartrate, and I have no idea as to what it's used for, but I do know that it's in the spice section and that's easy enough to find. It's where over a dozen people are milling around, hunting up and down the shelves like there's been a massive coincidence and everyone has simultaneously lost their ferrets there. I manage to squeeze myself, daughter and trolley into the throng and join them as I look for the Cream of Tartar. Pretty soon, I'm completely lost. Cream of Tartar is nowhere to be found despite there being 582,612 varieties of salt. Then I overhear the other shoppers talking to each other. I discover two things. First, there is no Cream of Tartar on the shelves and second, that every one there was also looking for the same, albeit absent, C of T.

Soon, a young shop assistant appears and in calm tones suggesting someone who is trying to take a caribou away from a hungry polar bear announces that there is no Cream of Tartar left. The crowd begins to turn ugly in that way that Eisenstein tried so hard to capture on film and the beleaguered young shop assistant keeps one eye on the nearest exit while his right hand gropes among the fish boil packets for a suitable weapon to defend himself with. Any second now., I think, something is going to set them off and there'll be a pram rolling down the steps in no time.

But before the the scalpel of Fate can reach the frisky puppy of Destiny, I jump on top of a crate of marshmallow fluff and with hands in the air shout, "Listen to me! Listen to me! You can use white vinegar! In equal proportions!"

A hush falls over the nascent mob. Then a murmuring starts as some shoppers start asking where the white vinegar is while others remain committed Cream of Tartar purists. A small, sharp-faced woman starts extolling the merits of white vinegar on teleological grounds. A large man with heavy red jowls bellows that Cream of Tartar was good enough for his father and it's good enough for him. A man in a jacket a size too large for him starts to ask if salad dressing will do, but is glared into silence. Soon the crowd starts arguing. A schism forms with the battle lines drawn between the Tartarists and the Vinegarites. Before you could say "two for one sale" a tin of Allspice strikes a man who looks remarkably like Keir Hardie clean in the face and a full-blown religious war erupts in Aisle 5. It was at this point that my daughter and I make our escape through Soft Toys.

By last reports, the violence has since spread to Produce, the Deli section has declared itself a free republic, Notions is ablaze, and the store manager has lashed himself and a Japanese friend to the lobster tank. State officials trying to restore order have not ruled out air strikes at this time.

As for the Szondy family, I think we'll do a Chinese takeaway this year.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving from Ephemeral Isle

Back Saturday

Found while browsing

I was surfing the net when I came across this blog entry by Frederik Pohl that includes a link to Tales of Future Past.

Demonstrating my innate maturity, my first reaction was, "Cool. Fred Pohl reads my stuff."

Tales of Future Past update

I'm pleased to announce a major update to Tales of Future Past, including two new sections: Project Moonbase & Jonny Quest. In addition to this, there are over 80 new pages added throughout the site including a doubling in size of the Thunderbirds section.

Enjoy.

Mr. Szondy is not at all well.

In other news, I've been laid low by the flu, so I'm taking things easy today.

Ringtone ruminations

The fascinating thing about progress is that it's so uneven. Get a better engine and the electrics lag behind. Get a better processor and the memory is still clunky. And then there's the cases where one step forward is six billion steps back.

Take telephones. The development of the cell phone has revolutionised communications. Not only has it allowed people to remain in touch pretty much anywhere that's in sight of a cell tower, but it's allowed parts of the world that would have taken decades to wire together to be hooked into the global network in a matter of days, if not quicker. Whole stretches of Africa and Asia can leap from the 19th to the 21st century with the erection of a few towers or even just having a blimp show up. Furthermore, the handsets have in less than a decade become so sophisticated and complex that "phone" has become an historical anachronism that hardly describes what is essentially a handheld computer that lets you place a call almost as an afterthought.

You'd think that with all that capability the cell phone would have the field all to itself. Then a call comes in and the old GPO models just walk away with the prize.

When I was a lad, the standard issue phones where rubbish. They were either hard, black Bakelite blocks or over-engineered plastic with heavy flexes, often wired straight into the wall, and had all the audio quality of a porridge container and a bit of string. They did, however, have one redeeming quality: When a call came in the bells were so loud that you jumped screaming out of the chair. It was crude, but it did the job. Then for forty or so years, the boffins studied the characteristics of the human ear, how people determine the direction of sound, how they react to this or that tone, and how to create the perfect alert signal so that a precise message could be communicated with the minimum of effort.

Then they came up with the Select Your Own Ringtone for the cell phone and a half century of progress went right out the window. At first, it seems like a brilliant idea. Why put up with the tyranny of bells and beeps when you can have your favourite tunes to alert you to calls? That's what I thought when I had the clever idea of programming my phone with custom ringtones so that I knew who was calling before I picked up. So, I downloaded a couple of tunes to do the job. Since I'm fond of James Bond films, I used the Bond theme for general calls and the Mars movement from Holst's Planets suite for family calls. Then I relearned something that was already known for half a century: Low notes are harder to hear than high notes and both my selections were full of bass and minor keys.

By "relearn" I mean that I found out after I missed half a dozen calls and cheesed off the wife to no end. So I started looking for what tones were on offer for my phone and among all the hideous pop tunes and lame jokes I found (hurrah) some 1960s British telephone tones. Unfortunately, it wasn't the bells, but the little Brrp Brrp that you hear on the handset that, for obvious reasons, were designed not to blast your eardrums out. You'd have thought they'd have realised that it's a bit self defeating.

This raises an interesting point. On the one hand, you've got a device carried around in everyone's pocket that is the greatest boom to communication and the greatest invasion of privacy in human history. True, you can stay in touch with the entire world, but you also can't get away from the world. There's no point leaving the office or popping down to the pub for a quiet pint because you little electronic tattletale will be right with you. On the other hand, thanks to a pointless choice, at least you have an excuse when you say "Sorry, I didn't get your call."

Even aggravation has a silver lining.

Stomach trouble

I've definitely operating under a handicap this week. I suspect that I'm suffering from an ulcer and before I head off to the medicos to get dosed with barium solution and other indignities, I'm putting myself on a regime of rantidine tablets and a bland diet to see if the symptoms persist.

"Bland" is a misleading term. For the most part, it just means sticking to foods that don't irritate the stomach or oesophegus lining, don't generate gas, and don't encourage peristalsis (that's all the churning and squeezing that the GI tract gets up to as it goes about its business). So, no spicy foods, no whole grains, no raw fruits or vegetables, fried foods, smoked meats, or strong cheeses. I don't mind the cottage cheese, rice puddings, poached eggs, white bread. Nor am I too annoyed at all the milk and ice water I'm using to keep it down. And I actually like grilled chicken breasts and steamed vegetables. I am, however, put out that I had to go on this regime while the fridge is well stocked with ham, sharp cheddar, sausages, and fresh apples. I suspect that they're deliberately taunting me. I'm also not used to having to think twice before nibbling on something. I had one ginger biscuit yesterday and within five minutes I was reminded why I'm on the boiled carrots.

The hardest part is that I am reduced a very occasional glass of the cheap plonk and ONE cup of tea a day. For a man who has a thin stream of blood running through his caffeine system, that is a hard cross to bear. It's made even worse because I have to sleep propped up on pillows to keep the stomach acid from sloshing up the dinner pipe. It's bad enough not getting a decent night's sleep, but without a full pot to counteract it in the morning and another sustaining brew up in the afternoon, I'm a) dragging through the day, b) more bad tempered than usual, and c) falling asleep in the car while waiting to pick up my daughter from school. How the deuce the Romans managed to conquer the known would without cuppa, I cannot fathom.

Vini, Vedi, Vi....ZZZZZZZZZZ...

School days

I'm beginning to suspect the autumn is sentient–or maybe the seasons in general are, but autumn certainly. The daughter started school yesterday and it was as if someone had reached over to summer and flipped a switch. The harsh sun was suddenly replaced by cloudy skies and mists in the hills that didn't burn off until midday. The air smelled of fresh rain and the ground was moist and soft; not the hard, dusty clay. Even the plants got into the act. The brown, dead grass was giving way to green shoots, the leaves on the trees was starting to turn colour here and there, and the sunflowers were suddenly three times as large and threatening to crash to the ground under their own weight.

There was also a lot more activity than I'd expected so early for the past three months. The road was filled with excited kids heading for the bus stop, people carriers were filling with more kids, and dogs could be heard all over the place as they joined in on the general excitement. My daughter got out of bed so early and with so little complaint that I made a quick check for outer space seed pods. She'd been looking forward to the start of school and the chance to show off her new clothes to friends she hadn't seen since June that she'd had her rucksack packed for a week and we had to hide her school shoes to keep her from sleeping in them. For my part, I was relearning how to make lunches and how to face the day on nothing but a cup of tea in a plastic travel mug.

Of course, the road repair services used the occasion to show off their organisational prowess. Not only had they blocked off the valley road in order to install a new drain, but they also reduced the road through Woodinville to a single lane while they simultaneously rerouted a crossing lane, moved a string of utility poles, and trimmed the verges. That's why I had to take a ten mile detour through Monroe. How they managed not to dismantle the bridges leading in and out before I got there, I have no idea.

The upshot of all this is that for the first time since spring I have Chez Szondy to myself with the exception of Carl the Cattle Dog and Little Ann. They pretty much leave me be except for the odd demand to hang out in the garden with them and Carl's periodic attempts to kill the neighbour's cat, who hasn't caught on that Carl hates his guts and keeps wandering into the yard. That wouldn't be so bad, except that Carl keeps forgetting about the invisible fence when he's in full chase, gets zapped, and then sits in the road and cries until I go out and carry him back inside. Other than that, it's pretty quiet and now find myself actually being able to work while the sun is up and to complete various odd jobs without a seven-year old magically appearing under foot such as crawling around under the wife's car trying to figure out how to reattach a plastic fairing that should never have been included in the basic design in the first place, is impossible to put back on without removing the engine, and I then had to do the job one-handed with a cable tie that took me the better part of a very uncomfortable two hours out of my life that I'll never get back, thank you very much, Chrysler Corporation.

But I digress.

Maskerade

There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!

It's the daughter's last week of summer hols before starting second grade, she has her best friend Otis over for a two-day sleepover, the wife is taking a week off of work, and I'm stuck in one of those horrible ruts in between gainful employment and selling some more articles. Basically, this translates into everyone being on holiday and I don't have any solid excuse to not join in. The upshot is that I'm pretty much away from the keyboard and the wine bottle remains corked until damn near midnight.

On the other hand, it does give me an excuse to catch up on the huge stack of Terry Pratchetts that I got from the library the other day. Regular readers of EI know that I regard it as proof of unfair world that the likes of J K Rowling and Stephanie Meyer become gazillionaires despite the fact that neither has any real imagination nor can they string a competent sentence together for toffee while Pratchett is still something of a niche market. Come to think of it, given his wit and love of language, perhaps the fact that he's not on the cover of Match or dragged through the tabloids like a scent bag at a fox hunt every other week is proof that life is at least just.

Currently, I'm ploughing through Maskerade; Pratchett's take on opera, which one chap said has been around for 400 years and nobody has caught on to the joke yet. More specifically, it's his take on the Phantom of the Opera–a passable French novel that was made into a classic silent film, four sound remakes that descended in quality with each go, and an Andrew Lloyd Bloody Webber musical that I still contend is grounds for prosecution. Prachett places the story in Ankh-Morpork, throws in a couple of witches and a Junoesque country girl hoping to hit the Big Time, and things play out from there in the usual Pratchett fashion of people caught up in events that are spinning entirely out of control while DEATH (he speaks in all caps, you see) is ready to lead off those who are kicked out of bounds.

Since I can't put the Prachett version up without facing that little problem called infringement of copyright, I'll settle for a taste of Lon Chaney in the role that made more people abandon the stalls for the gods than any other film.

Enjoy.

Semi-hiatus

Family matters are going to be absorbing a lot of my time over the next month. Posting will be light, but I'll try to front load some special items, so keep checking back.

101 degrees Fahrenheit

Update: Make that 105 degrees.

Slow week

You may have noticed that posting has been a bit light this week. That's because we're getting ready for my daughter's seventh birthday this weekend and my mother is visiting Chez Szondy for the occasion. When that's added to the usual anthill-kickings of life, it makes getting anything done a herculean task.

On the upside, it gave me a perfect excuse to make a run to the off licence. If my mum is going to be in the house, much as I love the old dear, I intend to have a large drink in my hand as often as possible.

Independence Day

Deadline day

Once again the deadline looms, so posting will be scarce today

Sick Day

Entries are a bit thin today. The wife thought she was having heart problems, so it was off to Casualty with the Missus hooked up to all sorts of freaky machines. Turned out to be just a bad case of heartburn, thank God, but it did send the entire day up the spout.

Still, better safe than sorry when all's said and done.

The Deadline Knocks

Another deadline day.

Back tomorrow.

Apologies

Sorry about the absence today. Technology has once again been beaten into submission.

Tummy Bug Update

Good news: The daughter is fit for duty. The bad news: I've got the bug now.

Sick Day

An absolutely wretched time here at Chez Szondy. The daughter had a touch of stomach flu last night and had to spend the night in our bed with a bucket on standby. This is not one of those things that lends itself to a good night's sleep. First, you're up far too late. Second, bedclothes and jammies have to be changed at least once. Add to that the fact that you can't turn over properly, a nightlight is glaring in your face, the dogs are completely confused, and you have to sleep with one ear open for any sound of a warning tummy gurgle and getting so little rest that you might as well get the crossword and be done with it. The upshot is that you end up greeting the dawn with all the enthusiasm of an approaching rent collector.

The good part about being a freelancer is that keeping the daughter home from school is no problem. The bad part is that I get bugger all done when it becomes clear that the crisis has passed, so I end up cleaning the bathrooms and weeding the garden between bouts of Junior Monopoly (Disney Channel edition).

And people wonder why I get frantic around deadline.

The Deadline Cometh

The dreaded Deadline looms, so I'll be back tomorrow.

Earth Hour

Tax Time

One of the special joys of being a freelance writer comes at tax time. Tax forms are never fun to deal with at the best of times. What the "best time" is, I have no idea. I've never known anyone to approach a return with a smile on their lips and a song in their hearts–even people who get paid to do it for a living. For me it's especially unfun. For filing purposes, I have to register as a business even though the entire commercial empire consists of me, a desk and the computer. This means that filling out the returns is something of a nightmare because I have to go through the same hoops as the corner cheese shop and Boeing. I never have the slightest notion of which forms I need or what documents I have to have to go with them. This means that I spend hours downloading pdf files, going over complicated instructions, trying to log on to sites that seem to have a personal grudge against me, talking to help desk types who mentally pigeon hole me with the guy who sells pencils out of a tin cup, and then ending up at a dead end because I need to enter a code number that nobody sent me in the first place

I actually only need to fill in two lines of the gigantic, complicated documents (Yes, I made money. No, I'm not getting a bit of Obama's trillion dollar feather bed), but wading through the lines to find the relevant boxes is like some surreal journey. "Royalties" I understand. I also get "Service and Other Activities". I even understand "Gambling Income". It's when I turn the page and face a "Syrup Tax" and and "Renewable Energy System Credit" that I get truly lost. Then I come across "Cigar Tax" and I start thinking that I should bury my Rosa Cubas in the back garden just to be on the safe side. Shortly after that, I reach this stage:

Then I give up and let the wife do the returns.

Cheese

It was President's Day at Chez Szondy; a day that I thought would be signified by nothing more ominous than a lack of postal deliveries and trying to get a day's work done with two dogs and a six-year old in attendance while the wife is off on a business trip to Oregon. What I hadn't reckoned with is that one of the neighbour kids was having a birthday party today. A birthday party an hour's drive away. At a place called Chuck E Cheese's.

If you live somewhere on the outskirts of Ulan Bator and have never heard of Mr Cheese, then you no doubt also are not sharing the feeling of dread that is gripping the hearts of everyone who has. Chuck E Cheese's is, depending on how you look at it, either a child-oriented games arcade that serves hideous food or the nastiest pizzeria on Earth with video games. Either way, walking into one is to be hit in the face with a simultaneous blast of electronic noise and the lingering odour of burned pizza. And, of course, the eating tables, the service areas, and the games are all so crowded together that grown ups spend most of their time trying not to step on a munchkin.

On the upside, the harried mother of the birthday boy gave my daughter a cup full of tokens so she could spend a blissful hour whacking moles, bunching ducks, shooting zombies and never getting a crack at the Mechwarrior console with the combat seat equipped with joystick and throttle–the only halfway interesting game in the place. After that, it was a feast of overdone pizza and cake, though due to her allergies the daughter had to make do with McDonalds and fig newtons. The highlight of the afternoon was when Mr Cheese himself appeared to entertain the party. We were lucky. He was in town appearing at the Tulalip Casino in Marysville. If we'd been in last week, it would have been Michael Crawford doing a few sets.

One thing I have learned though. If The Cheese people really want to clean up, the should get a licence and sell drinks to the adults–especially if the bar didn't open until they'd been in the place for at least an hour.

They'd make a bloody fortune.

Snow Days–Again

I spoke too soon about the five hour chauffeur days being a thing of the past. I was woken at 2 AM this morning by a wet nose in my face that signified that the hairier members of the household had to go potty and when I let them back in I noticed that the dark brown dog and the black and white dog had changed into two white dogs.

Yes, it was snowing, which meant that the Molotov was getting its first test by fire. Or ice in this case. It wasn't a heavy snow and the worst problem was the usual black ice on the steeper bits, but the Molotov came through with flying colours. We were also fortunate that the snow only clung to the high altitudes, so that once we got into the valley it was more or less plain sailing except for the odd idiot in the ditch for whom ice is an abstract concept.

Though it's still an arctic scene outside, it's at least warm enough that the roads cleared and I could get back up the hill relatively easily. The real test will probably come tonight when we're expected to get hit with more snow. In which case, it may be time for some world-class cocking about.

Car News

We're back up to standard on the automotive front at Chez Szondy. After a bit of internet shopping and test driving we are now back up to two cars, which means that I'm no longer getting up at 6 AM and spending five hours a day playing chauffeur; and the daughter and I aren't trapped in the house on the weekends.

We've also learned our lesson and after three years admit that city cars are rubbish in the country, so rather than getting another little commuter car that will probably end up smashed, drowned or buried in snow, we've bought a secondhand 4X4 that will not only keep us from being snowbound so often, but is also dog-friendly and has enough power for hauling around all the haulage that needs hauling.

It's a 1997 Chevrolet Blazer, but seeing as we discovered after buying it that the petrol cap was an old rag (since replaced) I have decided to call it "Molotov".

Digging Out

Things are warmer and soggier at Chez Szondy and the daughter and I made our first trip to town in over a week. Chez Szondy got off lightly with only a small tree and a couple of bushes crushed, but other haven't been so lucky, such as this farmer, whose steel shed was once an elegant curve and now, thanks to several tons of snow, a crumpled mass on top of a pair of tractors.

Even he did better than his neighbour who grows flowers under cover. His entire set of plastic green houses are now so many flattened tangles of plastic and aluminium.

Looks like the clean up is going to be more than taking care of a few broken branches, ditched cars and collapsed woodsheds.

Thawing Out

After over a fortnight of freezing temperatures and serial snow storms, the weather at Chez Szondy has finally turned to something other than the sort that makes me want to say "I am just going outside and may be some time" every time I leave the room.

It's been a hell of a time, with the Cruiser's cooling system blown out and stranded at the dealer's in Monroe, the Hunmobile (AKA the Volkswagen Jetta) marooned a mile and a half away unable to get up the mountain, both the satellite antennae buried under mounds of snow, intermittent power outages, and my brilliant plan for stocking up against bad weather going pear shaped because with everyone trapped at home during a mini ice age the stock of firewood that I thought would last until March is now almost exhausted and the wine supply so alarmingly low that I was trying to figure out how to make snow shoes out of a pair of old squash rackets.

The thaw came a couple of days ago, though it didn't help much, as we hadn't any motor transport and there's a hundred feet of unploughed road between us and the main road anyway. Fortunately, the wife was able to borrow her father's four-wheel drive truck yesterday. Unfortunately, she managed to get it stuck this morning at an angle right outside our drive in a bank of snow and a ditch that required myself, the neighbour, two shovels, a cup of tea, and a lot of slaloming and cursing to get it out again. Also, fortunately, the main road was finally clear enough to retrieve the Hunmobile with a minimum of towing, but unfortunately, our decision that we really need a second car that is more suitable to the country means that we had to change our minds about scrapping the Cruiser in favour of getting it fixed so we'd have something to trade in later.

The lessons learned from all this: Invest in more wood, general supplies, a generator, and a lot more booze; get the wife on video stating that in the future she will believe me when I say we're definitely snowed in and thus avoid anymore death-or-glory breakout attempts; teach the dogs to tow a sled while carrying a note down to the off licence in the event of a real emergency; and remember the next time that the cruiser seems ready to conk out to drive it off a cliff so we can get the insurance to declare it a write off.

Now I suppose I should go into town, look for survivors, and see if civilisation can be rebuilt.

Ice Station Szondy

I've a low-grade fever, I'm as sick as a parrot and I'm still snowed in, so how did I spend the day? Up a ladder knocking snow off the satellite antennas so I can regain contact with the outside world and getting thoroughly covered in the wet white stuff in the process.

Well, at least I've been watching some DVDs to keep my mind off of the whole winter storm situation; A Christmas Carol, Ice Station Zebra, The Thing From Another World, Scott of the Antarctic, etc.

Snow Days

Winter has hit Chez Szondy with a vengeance–actually, it's more like a foot and a half of vengeance with about 15 degrees of frost and roads that aren't passable by anything that doesn't have four-wheel drive and chains. It's the sort of thing that we've anticipated and having laid in enough wood and supplies (booze) to last until the next thaw the whole thing is less of a hardship than an adventure.

At least, that's what it should have been, except my wife's company has decided to complete a massive wadge of work before Christmas and she felt duty bound to try to make it there on Saturday. That's simple enough to say, but in practice that meant spending Friday shoveling a hundred-foot stretch of road, pushing the Hunmobile backwards inch by icy inch along it to the main road, bundling wife & child into the machine, pushing it to a start, and then leaping into the passenger's seat while the car was rolling along at five miles per hour. Then it was literally tobogganning down the mountain, a nail-biting ride into Monroe to buy tyre chains, running around in said chains (I'm leaving out the dirty, miserable, painfully cold job of puttin them on) in search of petrol in a town that hasn't seen a fuel tanker get through in a week, and then back home where we threw the chains (twice) on the steepest, slushiest and most appalling stretch of road on the mountain and ended up stuck at the bottom of the hill in the gathering twilight. I then started to walk alone up the mile and a half home to collect a sled so I could walk back down and then haul the family back up in the dark.

Man-hauling; where did I see that before? Ah, yes. Scott of the Antarctic. They all died in that one, didn't they?

Fortunately, one of our neighbours came by in his Jeep and saved us all from the Adventure at the cost of little more than an unsolicited loaf of pumpkin cake.

The outcome: The Hunmobile is now stuck down the bottom of the road, the wife has given up on the idea of bullying into work in favour of remote Internet access and teleconferences, which is a good thing since with another storm breaking today she'd have been stuck forty miles away until Christmas at least, and I've made her promise to believe me whenever I tell her that the roads are impassable.

Now the question is whether I'll be able to post this. The weather has all but knocked out our satellite feeds, so this is a bit like posting an electronic note in a cyberbottle.

Or something.

The Deadline

Some writers were inspired by Woodward and Bernstein, I was inspired by Carl Kolchak. Explains a few things.

I'm facing a double-whammy of deadlines and editors that I hate to see cry, so entries will be a bit light.

PT Cruising No More

I write a lot of articles about motor cars, but I can't say that I have any great love for them. Maybe it's because I've always preferred to play around with electrical circuits rather than fan belts or maybe it's because the cars I've owned have always been based strictly on what I can afford rather than what interested me. Or maybe it's because where a broken computer means falling back on things like pencils and paper, a broken car means being stranded miles from anywhere with the prospect of a whacking great repair bill at the end of it.

Or maybe it's because said strandings happen at the most inconvenient times.

Take yesterday. I'd had an appalling string of circumstances that had begun with my having the rare luxury of being a week ahead on my work and ended with my being five days behind and only four days to hit two deadlines. I'd planned my day out accordingly and cleared my schedule so that I could make my phone calls and pound out my articles in short order. The only thing I had to do was drop off my daughter at school and then it was back home to the keyboard. It was bloody cold with ten to fifteen degrees of frost, but that isn't too bad. Unless the car heater on the PT Cruiser refuses to kick in, that is–which it didn't. Then it's a bone-numbing episode with the daughter huddled under a blanket and my wiling away the time by wondering whether my fingers or toes would be lost first to frostbite.

But such cheery thoughts were soon banished as I saw the engine temperature gauge creep up from its usual operating zone and closer and closer to the red. That's scary enough in town or on the motorway, but when you're winding through mountain roads past farm and field ten miles from the nearest garage, that gets to be a bit hairy. Still, it wasn't actually in the red, nor were there any scary beeps and blinking lights, so I kept one eye on the needle and soldiered on. I dropped the daughter off at her school, checked the water level in the reserve tank , let the machine cool down, then ran it in idle for about twenty minutes. Everything seemed normal, so I figured that it was just a product of the cold and decided to try for home while my luck held.

It held alright; like a gallon of buckshot in a wet paper bag. I didn't get a mile and a half before the temperature shot up and I stalled at an intersection. Fortunately, I was able to get it running again by letting it sit for a half hour while I pounded my head on the steering wheel. Deciding not to take any more chances, I got on the motorway and made for the nearest service station.

It's the sort of gamble I've made many times before with blinking petrol gauges, cranky brakes, and whining tyres, but this time luck ran out and as I made to turn left at the lights, the PT Cruiser gasped its last and died. I almost wepted; partly out of sentiment for the valiant chariot, but mainly because the tin sod had not only conked out in the middle of traffic, but the gearbox was jammed, so I couldn't even be pushed.

So began several hours of phone calls to the insurance company, then to the wife to pick me up, arrangements for a tow, discovering the tow companies are insanely busy in snowy weather, standing in the freezing cold warning motorists to go 'round me (0ne of whom I swore was Santa Claus) and counting up how many asked me if they could help against those who thought I was deliberately parked there just to annoy them. Finally, two state troopers and a tow truck later, the Cruiser was hauled to the Chrysler dealer in Monroe, where I asked them to have a quick look at the damage before Chrysler went bankrupt–not that that would be likely after I answered the phone at home a couple of hours later and was quoted a repair price so high that any government bailout would be redundant in comparison. So, now my family is faced with the choice of either pouring an insane amount of cash into a car that never ran well since the day we bought it, or finding some alternative mode of transport.

Needless to say, I am now in the market for a secondhand motorbike with a sidecar.

Can't be worse.

Thanksgiving

It's Thanksgiving here at Chez Szondy, so I'm off for a couple of days of family time.

Back Saturday.

A Port in a Storm

I have a six-year old, two dogs, and a wife who voluntarily watches Made of Honor on the office telly.

I need this.

Mind you, are alternatives.

Vespa Questions

About a week ago, my wife took a turn in the dark on the country lanes to Chez Szondy a bit too fast and discovered that Dukes of Hazzard-style jumps are not as fun as they look on television. She wasn't hurt, thank heavens, but the Honda is a write-off, so while we're waiting for the insurance settlement to come through, we're shopping for a new motor and the wife has the idea that we should get a cheap commuter car and spend the difference on a motorbike for quick trips into town.

Jeremy Clarkson has been good enough to give the case against.

Normal Service Will Resume Shortly

Sorry

I'm in the middle of a maddening computer problem that has involved returning my computer to factory settings during which all my email for the past five months has been lost.

If you've sent me a recent email and I haven't responded, I apologise for being unable to do so.

Bandwidth Recovered

Right. I've got a new router installed with a new security system. Now the swine who's been downloading Lawrence of Arabia in HD every morning at 3AM can find someone else's wireless bandwidth to sponge off.

Light Blogging

I'm facing multiple deadlines this week, so entries may be a bit light for the next couple of days.

Such is the life of a freelance writer.

Independence Day

It's Independence Day in the States, so I'm off for some family time.

Back tomorrow.

Summertime

Happy Father's Day

It's Father's Day at Chez Szondy, which meant breakfast in bed (fortunately my wife helped with the fry up, so everyone survived), a morning at the dog park and a chore-free afternoon leading up to a massive steak and a cigar in the PM.

The day's even sunny. Someone is obviously asleep at the switch.

Upgrade Woes

I'm installing a new computer to replace the five-year old laptop I've been relying on and, like most things at Chez Szondy, this simple phrase hides a frightening story.

It was bad enough when I ordered the thing only to learn that after the company in question (which I will not name, though it rhymes with bell) trousered the money and then put a "hold" for the exact same amount, which left me in Canada with half my current account suddenly unavailable. I didn't think they could top this, but they did by arranging to deliver it yesterday during the only brief time I was not home and five minutes before I returned and with the promise that it will be delivered today in the pouring rain. No doubt at such a time and in such a manner as to give Little Ann, the younger of our two dogs, time to eat an entire PC and monitor.

Then there is the deal that I made with the wife that if we could tweak the budget enough to get a new computer we would swap around the bedroom and the office, which involves much lifting, carrying, unscrewing, dismantling, reassembling, rescrewing with a lot of dusting, wiping, hoovering, painting, steam cleaning and general mucking about as one can imagine and which has no prospect of actually being completed any time in the near future, so I look forward to the prospect of spending the next fortnight being unable to leave the house because I can't find my trousers. Even my wife, whose idea this was, had second thoughts–actually, a full-blown panic attack at two AM, but she wisely decided not to wake me because my reaction would have been predictable, to put it mildly.

Not that the representatives of homo sapiens have all the rough of it. We moved the bed last night, the underside of which is Carl the Cattle Dog's place of refuge from an uncertain world and he found himself faced with a unique situation; unwelcome change and no place to hide from it. Even after we put the bed back together again Carl was still in a state of shock and spent the night curled up hard against the back of my knees.

And this is all just on the furniture moving front. Wait until I get to moving getting all the electronics moved and sorted out.

I've allocated plenty of wailing and gnashing of teeth time.

Update: Please welcome the Zen 7000; designation for the latest edition of the the Zen network at Chez Szondy. Now for oodles of installing and configuring.

Hyperion

The Hyperion uranium hydride nuclear battery; less than five feet tall, puts out 70 megawatts, and is a snip at $30 million.

With an output like that I could run Chez Szondy and still have enough left over for a nice little death ray.

Nerf N-Strike Vulcan EBF-25

The kids will NEVER go on my lawn again!

Happy Mother's Day

It's Mother's Day here at Chez Szondy, so I'm off for a bit of quality time.

Back tomorrow.

The Omega Van

One of the advantages of living in the foothills of the Cascades is that it simplifies planning for a disaster. After all, living in a place where people flee to rather than from eliminates a whole raft of problems because evacuation isn't part of the equation.

Mind you, that's assuming that forest fires, nuclear fallout and Martian invasions are off the menu, so I still keep a set of three-day packs in the boot of the Honda just in case the balloon goes up and I have to get the family to Alaska. However, after seeing Campa USA's all-in-one survival system, I may have to "up my game", as the kids say.

Compost Awareness Week

Just a reminder that May 4-10 is Compost Awareness Week.

Mind you, every week is compost awareness week at Chez Szondy, but that depends on how warm the day is and which way the wind is blowing.

Global Warming Update

This is April at Chez Szondy.

APRIL!!!!!

Interlude

I've family visiting this weekend, so Chez Szondy is in a bit of a tizzy. Back tomorrow.

Crime Wave at Chez Szondy

Last weekend, the snowstorm overburdened one of our trees so badly that it went crashing down in our front garden. We'd planned to cut it up for fire wood, but my mother, who is visiting us at Chez Szondy, has told me over the phone that some men came, cut the tree up and carted it away.

I can only assume that it is either the landscapers in a fit of industriousness or we've been hit by an international gang of arbor thieves. If the latter, then I'll be spending a fortune on padlocks and cables.

Earth Hour Update

Well, I can confirm that Earth Hour was a roaring success. Within minutes of the Space Needle in Seattle (where all the power is hydroelectric!) going dark as a sacrifice to Blessed Gaia in an effort to fight global warming, Chez Szondy was hit by two degrees of frost and three inches of snow.

Any more successes like this and we'll be wrestling polar bears in August.

Update: Tim Blair calls Shennanigans.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day

It's Saint Patrick's Day at Chez Szondy, so while I'm tucking into slow-cooked corned beef and cabbage and a few pints of Guinness, here is the late, great Dave Allen to take up the slack.

Enjoy.



And for you married-types; yes, I did have to put the slow cooker out in the garage.