The harder they fall.

It's not all that often that I get to see something interesting on my walk from the parking garage to the office. I did yesterday, though: I spotted Ralph Sampson.

Admittedly, he sticks out in a crowd. And there he was, on the other side of the street, surrounded by 20 reporters, most with TV cameras that were pointed up at a sharp angle. "Well, that's kind of cool," I thought. "Wonder why he's in town?" And then I realized where he was standing: just outside the Federal courthouse. Not the best way to get your name back in the papers again.

The old man is snoring.

Hurricane Ernesto - well, Tropical Storm Ernesto - well, the unnamed tropical depression formerly known as Ernesto - has come and gone. Leaving 325,000 customers without electricity. Guess who's one of them?

Dominion Electric - that bastion of efficiency - has promised that sometime over the weekend they'll be able to tell people when they might get around to restoring their power.

So much for my planned weekend of watching movies on DVD.

Update: The power came back on by Saturday evening, more than 24 hours after it went off. Still, better then than "by Monday," which is what a number of folks were promised. And the good news about scattered power outages, instead of widespread ones, is that when you go to the grocery store for a bag of ice to keep the food in the refrigerator from going bad - there's still ice available.

Pilots.

I’m always entranced by marketing gimmicks, and NBC certainly needs one. Their poor ratings this summer, mirroring their poor ratings over the last year, have made it difficult for them to build much buzz for their new shows starting this fall. (If no one is watching their programs this summer, then no one will see all their promos for the new fall shows.)

So they came up with what I think is a neat idea: making pilot episodes for a couple of those new shows available through Netflix. A single DVD disk has the pilot episodes – and precious few extras – for Kidnapped (with Dana Delaney, Timothy Hutton, and Jeremy Sisto) and for Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (with Bradley Whitford, Matthew Perry, and Steven Weber, among others).

Okay: it’s no surprise that I was planning to watch Studio 60, it being Aaron Sorkin’s new series. This pilot episode seems to be a good combination of his previous shows, Sports Night and The West Wing, and unlike a lot of new shows, appears to have the characters’ relationships fairly well developed and nailed down. Good writing, good potential for story lines, and I’m guessing it will be the better of the two series this year based on Saturday Night Live. I’m definitely looking forward to it, and to getting hooked on it.

Kidnapped looks like it could be pretty interesting, too: a season-long investigation into, and the (attempted) private recovery of, the child of a very wealthy family. A few concerns: how do they attract viewers who miss the first few episodes? How do they keep the interest and suspense up in the mid-season episodes, and not have them turn into Red-Herrings-of-the-Week? And what do they do at the end of the season? If they don’t get the child back, the series will jump the shark as fast as Lost or Twin Peaks did, and if they do, what happens next season? Kidnapping another member of the family? Or follow an entirely different kidnapping, thereby losing Delaney and Hutton from the series roster? My prediction is that this series will struggle to find its audience, and probably won’t be a great success. I could see it being cancelled mid-season; if it’s more successful, it could be renewed for a second season – but not a third.

If this was amusement, then I'm glad we stayed away from the Torture Park.

I had the day off on Friday. (Well, not so much "off" as "locked out." An unpaid day of vacation, so to speak. At my horrid job as contract attorney, Friday was Moving Day, as they're moving us from one warehouse where the air conditioner doesn't work especially well to another of about the same size - and cramming 50 percent more people in with us. But that's a tale for another time.)

One of the guys I work with has a part time job at the local amusement park (King's Dominion), doing training. (Funny how so many of us have part time jobs elsewhere. And yet - a tale for another time.) The good news is that, as an employee there, he gets a stack of complimentary tickets. So he invited a bunch of us to spend our mandatory day off riding roller coasters and whatnot.

Well, why not? Certainly, the cost was right. And it turns out that only one of our group had not yet been born the last time I went there, back in 1979.

A lot of things had changed since the last time I was there. Many, many new rides. A Water Park. Lots of movie-related things (not surprising, as the present owner is Paramount).

Probably the most important thing that has changed since my last visit? I discovered I'm not as fond of roller coasters as I once was.

Getting to the park, I realized that I wasn't interested in rides that turn me upside down, or in being suspended from something instead of riding in a car. If I look down between my feet and see ground way down there instead of floorboards, I'm not getting on it. And I really wasn't interested in 270 feet of free fall. (See photo above, taken with a telephoto lens - because you don't get that much detail with the naked eye.)

Fine. I could still ride traditional roller coasters, and did. Including the Rebel Yell, one which I recall riding the last time I was there and enjoying it. And I discovered to my horror that I no longer found being loosely strapped into a vehicle hurtling over a 100-foot high precipice down a 75- or 80-degree slope to be "fun."

Further experimentation revealed that other rides having the common thematic element of simulating dashing yourself against the ground from a great height and at a high rate of speed were also ones that I found to be somewhat less than entirely enjoyable.

Some rides were fun, to be sure, and the morning overcast kept the crowds down, so all in all, it was a pleasant way to spend the day. But I'm glad I had a complimentary ticket, instead of one I'd had to pay $40 or more for. (And the free ticket made it easier to put up with the other price gouging - $10 to park and $3.25 for a half-liter bottle of water, for instance.)

It might well be another 27 years before I go back.

Mow, mow, mow the yard.

I mowed my front yard this past weekend, much to my neighbors’ delight. Not especially exciting, to be sure, other than for the fact that it hadn’t been mowed since before Memorial Day.

And not that it had grown all that much in two months. We’ve had lots of heat and very little rain, and the grass responded wisely by not growing. So other than the three weeds that thrived in the drought, there wasn’t much need for a session with the lawnmower. (Well, other than to give the neighbors one thing fewer to glare at me about.)

Forty-five minutes, two-thirds the volume of grass clippings of the previous mowing, and a bucket of perspiration later, I was done. With luck and a continued drought, I won’t have to do that again until Columbus Day.

Like popcorn with margarine and no salt.

It was a disappointing weekend of movies at the Cellar: Disappointing in that good books did not successfully make the transition to the big screen.

Perhaps it’s that we’ve been spoiled of late: The Harry Potter series and the Lord of the Rings trilogy were translated to cinema extremely well, with the story intact and the spirit alive. Movies where it was easy to believe in the new worlds created on the screen, and that the inhabitants truly lived and loved and died within them. Not so with the movies I watched this weekend.

One disappointment was The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. The special effects were excellent, the story seemed complete, and the characters’ speeches seemed to match what I recall from the book (although it’s probably been since junior high school – many, many years ago – that I last read the book). And Tilda Swinton as the White Witch brought a depth to her character that was utterly missing with all other characters in the movie. Other than her and Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, all the characters – alive and animated – had the short range of emotion you would expect to see at a table reading on the first day of rehearsal. Everyone walked through their scenes by rote, bringing no sense of wonder to the land of Narnia and ultimately no soul to the film. A fine example of the observation that a movie needs more than special effects to be good.

A bigger disappointment was The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The special effects were pretty good, although not great, and again, the story seemed to match my memory of the book. This time, though, putting the dialogue into the characters’ mouths worked poorly. The words matched what I recall of the characters’ speech in the book, but it just didn’t work at all well. The visuals, the poor acting, and the cumbersome dialog combined to put me to sleep three or four times during the movie, and at no time was any part of the movie compelling enough to make me want to go back and re-watch what I had slept through.

Perhaps it’s that Douglas Adams’ writing isn’t well-suited to a direct translation to the movies; that the scenes and images he creates play better in the reader’s imagination than they do when realized in a movie. A better adaptation of this book could be found in the computer game for the Commodore-64, and I’d happily recommend playing that to watching this movie.

Another book adaptation I’ve watched recently that wasn’t as good as I’d hoped was The Twelve Chairs, by Mel Brooks. One of his first movies, it had tantalizing glimpses of the humor that blossomed in his next few movies – Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, High Anxiety – but not enough of them to make it qualify as a good, funny movie. Maybe it’s that the underlying book from which the movie was adapted was intended as a biting satire of the Soviet system, and the movie takes its tone from that. Or maybe it’s just that Brooks was still feeling his way as a director. The movie often seems disjointed and without a coherent structure: it has too many plot twists and new scenes for no reason other than Brooks needed five more scenes before he could get to the movie’s end. It really felt as though I was watching a 90-minute version of the hoary old “Tiz Bottle” joke, albeit one without a Tiz Bottle. And yet, a Tiz Bottle joke told by the Mel Brooks who made The Producers would have been a good movie. This one didn’t quite reach that standard.

(Yes, I have liked some movies I've seen recently. Match Point, for one, although three quarters of the way through it, I wasn't sure. But by the end, I was.)

Chad Vader - Day Shift Manager

The good news is that some people who have too much time on their hands also seem to have a little talent.

Lost in the desert.

Very bizarre: I open my email program, and there's no new email for me. There's been only a couple of new emails since yesterday morning. And none of them are the ones I'd expect to receive even if my correspondents were all on vacation: daily news summary emails, wine lists, spam.

Hmm: the only email I've gotten since 3 a.m. Saturday has been addressed directly to my ISP account, and everything that's missing would have been addressed to my alumni forwarding service at Duke. Hmm.

So I've left the Duke IT people an on-line "problem sheet" and they've sent me an automated email that they'll get to it when they get to it.

If you've sent me something recently and I haven't responded --> I'm using this as my excuse.

Update:
Yes, the email link above works fine.

The Duke IT people got around to it. Well, what they actually got around to was telling me that they aren't responsible for the alumni forwarding service - the alumni association is. And to be helpful, they give me the snail mail address for the alumni association. Thanks. A lot.

I've been busy.

Yes, yes, I know. I haven't been writing much here of late. I plead overwork and silly deadlines at my horrid job, and many hours of watching World Cup matches and referreeing domestic feline disputes. I'll try to be better, but I make no promises.

Customer "service", AOL-style.

You know, not unlike the way that a bull services a cow.

Very funny article in the NY Times yesterday about someone's attempts to cancel his AOL account. Funny, that is, so long as it doesn't happen to you. It took a 21-minute phone call, 15 of which was waiting to talk to a live person. The best part was the conversation with the customer service person, also known as a "retention specialist", who wouldn't let the customer cancel even though the customer used the phrase "Cancel my account" (and close variations) thirty times in that five-minute conversation.

How do we know about this conversation? The customer recorded it. At the moment, the customer's website is down because of all the hits it's received, but YouTube has an NBC news story about the conversation, including a lot of the call.

Field trip.

Saturday, three of the kittens went for a ride. They came in to my contract attorney job with me, as the warehouse we laughingly call our "office" is somewhat more relaxed on the weekends. (Any actual employee of BigLawFirm is off at the beach, sitting under an umbrella with rum drinks in their hands, in preparation for a federal-court-imposed deadline of June 30 to produce a boatload of documents. But we are exhorted to work harder. Go figure.)

Just as with last year's kittens, the three chosen kitties were there to show off to prospective adopters how cute they were, to get some exercise in a room other than their current prison (aka my spare bedroom), and to gain exposure to people other than me, the better to socialize them. Not surprisingly, they were a big hit. Cute and furry and ready to play with anything that looked like a toy, how could they not be?

And just like any good kitten, they ran and played and ran and played until they conked out, and then went to sleep in a heap. And they stayed asleep for an hour or so.

Thus, they were good and rested for the ride home, where they serenaded me with their songs of woe of the terrors of being in a cat carrier.

First in war, first in peace.

I went to the Nationals’ game on Sunday. Good game, as they beat the Phillies 6-0. And the meaningful runs were scored the old-fashioned way: with two outs, they put together a couple of walks and a couple of doubles for the first three runs; all they needed.

My first time to a major league game in ten years. And my first baseball game at RFK since the Senators left in 1971. I don’t know if the game has changed that much since the game I saw in 1996, but the ticket prices certainly have. Good seats, and all, but for forty-five bucks, I’ve come to expect scenery, stage lights, and either an orchestra or a playwright at some point in the production.

Lights! Camera! Inaction!

If a movie producer is the guy responsible for getting a movie made, then Sunday I got to be a movie anti-producer – someone responsible for keeping a movie from being made.

Over the past couple of weeks, they’ve been filming Evan Almighty here in Richmond (among other places). A sequel of sorts to Bruce Almighty, but without Jim Carrey or Jennifer Aniston, whose agents were apparently good enough to preclude a ”must appear in sequel” clause in their contracts for the first movie. Morgan Freeman and Steve Carell are the stars in this one, which has a “Build me an ark!” theme.

The past two weekends, they’ve closed down Main Street in front of the building I work in. We haven’t been able to park in front of the building as usual, but the weather’s been nice enough that the three-block walk we’ve had to take has been a pleasant stroll.

Saturday, they were filming scenes with a Hummer. All I saw was prep work, as I needed to go inside and get to work. (Okay, okay: “to go inside and clock in.”) From what I could see, it looked like they were getting ready to do closeup shots – presumably conversations within the Hummer – with at least one dolly shot coming up to the driver’s window.

Sunday, though, was a bit more exciting. I got to the office just a few minutes too late to see the buffalo, sheep, and goats running up the street. And just the same few minutes too late to be hassled by the movie production folks and the Richmond police, who were keeping people from walking along the sidewalk to the sole entrance to their place of work, some for over half an hour. (By the time I arrived, all the animals were gone and most of the movie folks were on a lunch break, so I was able to walk right up to my building.)

Five of us left work at the same time later that afternoon. Out the door we went, scattering in four different directions. About five steps later, I realized that there were a lot of people around who looked oddly out of place for a Sunday afternoon, because they were dressed in business attire – not the t-shirts and shorts that we and the production staff (and anyone else in his right mind on a beautiful spring afternoon) were wearing. Scattered along the sidewalk, in groups or singly, talking to each other or in mid-stride – and all perfectly still. Hmm, I thought. “Extras. Set up for the next shot, and waiting for the director to call ‘Action!’” Well, no matter: we’re already in the middle of their set-up, we might as well keep on going, and thereby keep them from the shot for another minute or two. (It didn’t occur to me until later that we might not have been in the middle of the set-up – we could just as easily have been in the middle of the take, as they could all be frozen in place though actions of Evan. And if that’s the case, maybe we’ll all show up in a gag reel for the movie.)

They got me back, though. I was parked on a one-way street and needed to cross Main St. to get out of downtown – and the police were keeping traffic from crossing while a take was underway. I had to sit at the intersection through two more takes – maybe 10 or 15 minutes – before I could go on my way.

A cat in the hand.

They're two and a half weeks old now, and while they're starting to walk, they aren't too thrilled about the concept, preferring to stagger instead.

I have good leads on adopting out three of them, and I haven't yet resorted to taking them in to work to show them off.

Mosby is a bit more restless mother than Outdoor Cat was a year ago, and has taken to demanding short releases from her prison into the rest of the house. Much hissing ensues when she spots the Resident Cats. And her forays into the rest of the prison are fairly short, as she suddenly remembers that her kittens are alone.

Open for business. Again.

It would appear that John's Home for Wayward Cats is open for business again.

Mosby gave birth to her kittens about 10 days ago, in a place unknown to me. And it's taken me this long to find them.

My neighbors' house has a flower box built into it - a five-foot high set of walls underneath a kitchen window, open at the top and with metal bars across the top of it that you could put smaller flower boxes onto. Mosby discovered this, and discovered an opening that she could jump down to ground level inside those walls. A safe place to have kittens, she concluded. Mostly protected from the elements, and close enough to my basement door that she could hear me when I came out to feed her.

I think she was surprised when I showed up this afternoon to remove the flower boxes at the top and try to get her and her kittens. She wasn't all that difficult to coax out - it just took some wet cat food. The kittens were a different story, though. They were too far down to reach, and the metal bars would prevent even a skinny person from getting into the structure to get them.

So I had to go fishing. I tied a string to a bucket, and lowered it to the kittens' level. When they didn't rush into the bucket, I encouraged them with a yardstick. Eventually, I was able to raise all five of the little kitties.

They're now in the same luxury hotel suite - known to me as my spare bedroom and to them as a prison - that the Outdoor Cat had last year.

And I'm willing to bet that "fishing for kittens" is more unusual than what you did for Mother's Day.

Good news, bad news.

Well, the good news is that Mosby isn't pregnant.

The bad news is that two days ago, she was.

The worse news is that I hadn't been able to convince her to stay inside, so she's had her litter outdoors, under an azalea bush or something.

With luck, she's had them in the crawl space under my house, which will make it easier to find them and corral them all so I can take the kittens inside, thereby making it easier to convince Mosby to stay inside with them.

I guess I have my weekend exploring all set out for me.

I've seen fire, and I've seen rain.

The aroma of burning pine logs is a distinct and pleasant one, and the smell of that smoke conjurs up images of campfires past, of camping trips taken with the family or with Boy Scouts. A very pleasant trip down Memory Lane – until you realize that you’re smelling that pine smoke while inside your house, and you don’t have a fire going in the fireplace.

It was about ten days ago, when a line of powerful thunderstorms moved through the area, bringing the first measurable rainfall in months. Lots of lightning strikes nearby – almost enough to read by inside. Then one of them knocked out the power. Only for three seconds or so, but that was long enough to reset all the electrical appliances in the house. (Most notably, it reset the DVD player, and I’d gotten through almost all of the interminably long – 13 minutes and 20 seconds – end credits to the latest Harry Potter movie. Over 13 minutes! Of end credits! Gah! But that’s a rant for another day.) I wandered towards the office to check on my computer, when I started thinking about campfires of yore.

When I snapped out of my reverie, I realized that I was smelling the smoke while in my basement; with no doors or windows open. That got me moving. I quickly checked around inside to see if I could find the source of the smoke, and when I couldn’t, I went outside to look for flames. Glowing embers, at least. A quick check of my house and my neighbor’s didn’t reveal anything, so I went back inside for a raincoat. (It was still raining pretty hard, of course, but the need to quickly find the fire overrode any desire to stay perfectly dry.)

The smell of the smoke was very strong by my basement door, so that’s where I started my search. In a couple of minutes, I was 75 yards from my house, still looking without finding anything. I ran into some folks from around the corner and down a ways, who were searching from the other direction. They hadn’t seen anything, either, but had called the fire department. Indeed, we could hear the sirens, on the other side of a small woods. “I bet those sirens are from my call,” the neighbor said. “This street has two parts, and they’re not directly connected. They’ll have to go on a three-mile route to get from that part of this street to this one.” Sure enough, about six minutes later, the fire engines roared up. (You know, I’d be concerned about that response time and the fire trucks getting lost, if I lived on that street.)

The neighbors confirmed that they’d made the call, and everyone looked around for the source of the smoke. The firemen told us they’d gotten a lot of phone calls from the area, but no one calling in had actually seen the fire. Another report on the radio revealed that other firemen had now seen the fire, about 3 blocks away from us, across the woods. And with that, these fire trucks turned their sirens on and zoomed away.

By now, the smoke had dissipated, so I went back inside.

Four for the road.

It turns out that the reason I had to watch the borrowed movie is that the guy who loaned it to me was leaving the project, and while he’d forgotten that I had the movie, I hadn’t. And since I didn’t want to admit that I’d had it for months on end and hadn’t yet watched it, or to give it back to him and then get it from Netflix, I needed to watch it right away. Well, first I needed to find it.

At any rate, last week was an interesting week at the project, as four of the thirty or so of us on the project quit during the week: one to concentrate full-time on his solo practice, one to go to a different project (one that pays more, alas), one to work as inside counsel for a large Richmond company, and one to do, well, not much of anything, it would seem.

It’s always interesting when someone leaves our little project for a real job. You’re happy for her, of course, but that happiness is tinged with a feeling of “Why didn’t they pick me?” (Okay, the answer to that question usually is “Because you didn’t apply for it,” but still.) It feels a lot like what I imagine being in an orphanage is like: you’re glad that someone got adopted out into a family, yet at the back of your mind, you wonder whether you weren’t picked because you’re not pretty enough, or something.

That little box.

A few – okay, six or eight – months ago, someone who works on the project at BigLawFirm with me loaned me a movie he thought I should see, “True Romance”. An early Tarantino script, with an ensemble cast including folks who have become a lot more famous since (Brad Pitt, Patricia Arquette, Christian Slater, Gary Oldman, James Gandolfini) and some old favorites (Dennis Weaver, Samuel L. Jackson).

Between the time he loaned it to me and last week, I had forgotten that Tarantino was the writer, and somehow thought it was going to be a relatively light flick, somewhat like “St. Elmo’s Fire”. And since I didn’t look at the box or read the description on the back of the box as I was pulling the tape out, it was a bit of a surprise to me when the movie turned out to be, well, more like a typical Tarantino movie. Still pretty good, of course, but not quite a light romantic comedy or family fare.

In any case, it dawned on me as I was putting the tape into the VCR that the last time I watched a movie on video tape was probably over six years ago, and that this was the first VCR movie I’ve watched since I bought a DVD player. Amazing to see how quickly and thoroughly a new piece of technology (the DVD player) can change one’s habits. I still use the VCR all the time, but only to record stuff from the TV that I’ll watch later. And I bet that when the day comes that I get a DVR – shortly after I get an HDTV, I’m guessing – I’ll stop using the VCR altogether.

Introducing ... Mosby.

It's official. She's Mosby. The winner should contact me soon for official transfer of his or her prize. Bring a cat carrier.

Many of the suggestions were good. I've already had a "Misty" and didn't want to tempt fate by giving her name to another cat who lives outside and could thus share the original's demise by being hit by a car. Decided against "Empress" or "Palpatine" because I just didn't want her to continue working on her Dark Powers to cause lightning to shoot from her paws. Figured that "Erdos" wasn't appropriate because not only could she not write a mathematics paper (or whatever the Cat Equivalent thereof is), she couldn't read one either. (Remember, this is the cat who declined the opportunity to sleep inside the house when it was fifteen degrees outside.)

She has, however, slept inside the house a couple of times this week, and has been introduced to the Inside Cats. Sami is always happy to find another cat to play with, but O. Henry wasn't too pleased at the idea of sharing her house with yet another feline. Not that it mattered much: Mosby was too busy growling and hissing to really tell what the other cats' reactions were.

No topic is too trivial for me to discuss.

For instance, the NCAA pool at my office. 17 of us are taking part. 16 of us are dead for the coming weekend, having predicted as winners in the national semi-finals and finals none of the teams that made it to the Final Four. And the 17th person picked UCLA to win in the semis and lose in the finals. Seven of us correctly predicted exactly one of the Final Four (six, myself included, picked UCLA, and one picked Florida); everyone else was 0-for-the-Final-Four.

The good news is that the final rankings in our pool are almost set: if UCLA wins its semi-final game, the guy that picked them wins the pool; if they lose, he comes in second. And whatever happens, I come in third.

Idle speculation leads to the next question: what are the odds of perfectly predicting the entire 64-team tournament? This article indicates that if every game were a 50-50 proposition, the odds of a perfect bracket are about one in nine million trillion. If you factor in the observation that, more often than not, favorites win their games, the odds are somewhat more reasonable: estimated at between one in 150 million to one in a billion.

Good enough odds that various companies - including AOL and PapaJohn's - have contests promising huge prizes (a million bucks, or a million pizzas) to anyone who correctly picks the entire bracket. They won't have to pay out this year, as no one in any of the contests got through the first weekend with perfect picks.

Still, I'd liked to have picked as well as this guy (who is leading in the Washington Post's bracket contest). Perhaps I could get him to pick stocks for me.

Here are the new resident cats.
This one is Sami, and he's 13 years old.

And the other:
O. Henry. She's about eight.

There and back again.

I've returned from a quick trip to Florida to pick up my father's cats. Not a terribly exciting trip as these things go, although I suppose that's a good thing. Good weather, both ways, so that was a plus. But a one-way distance of 860 miles, with all but the first 2 miles and the last 3 on Interstate highways (or their equivalent) through a relatively flat landscape with no view of mountains or ocean makes for a pretty boring drive. South Carolina is especially interminable, and it's less than 200 miles of the trek.

The cats were very well behaved on the return trip: Sami complained for five minutes every half-hour, and O. Henry complained for the first twenty minutes of each day and not at all thereafter. And they have taken to their new home as though they'd lived here for years. The as-of-yet-not-officially-named gray cat was happy to see me return, bag of cat food in hand. That didn't stop her from giving me a lengthy piece of her mind waiting for the cat food to hit her bowl.

One of the highlights of the trip was seeing a school-bus-yellow Hummer. (Well, a Hummer H2, like the one above, which I guess is the SUV version of the Machomobile for idiots.) Very bizarre, indeed: why would you buy the vehicle in the pretense that it makes you as rugged as the Marlboro Man, and then paint it to look like a school bus? I suppose it allows you to sneak unseen through the school bus yard on the way to your secret manly spy mission.

The best part of the trip, though, was a 20-minute piece of highway theater in Florida. I'm cruising along at 2 mph over the speed limit in the middle of the three lanes going in my direction, and am passed by someone going perhaps 10 mph over the limit. Then I'm passed by someone else doing 10 miles over the limit - and it becomes pretty clear that this second car is an unmarked police car. (No markings, no lights on top - but a big star on the license plate and a uniformed driver kind of give it away.) The first driver tumbles to the secret and slows to my speed, as does the cop car, now 5 or 6 car lengths ahead of me and no more than 2 lengths behind the first driver. Someone else goes around me pretty quickly, and slams on his brakes when he recognizes the license plate as being the police. I drift over into the righthand lane, the better to watch the vehicular interaction. The first car slides into the middle lane; the cop immediately slides over right behind him.

Cars keep getting added to our little Kabuki group. Someone zooms up in the middle lane and starts to go around - and slows abruptly when he's close enough to see the star on the license plate. Forty-five seconds later, someone else zooms up behind him and starts to go around, only to stop when the immediately previous car slides into the right lane ahead of me, revealing the cop car.

A couple more cars join our pack, always doing the same: overtaking the back car and weaving their way through all the cars going the same speed, until they spot the cop car and slow themselves down. And the whole time, the cop car is no more than 2 car lengths behind the first speeding car.

After about 20 minutes of cruising along like this, now with 12 or 15 cars in our convoy because no one wants to speed past the police car, and with all traffic ahead of our group having gone out of sight long ago, the policeman finally decides to stop messing with the head of the driver in front of him, and pulls into the right lane and accelerates away from us.

A piece of pi, to go.

Tomorrow is World Pi Day. Why tomorrow, of all days? Because you can write "March 14" as 3/14, which ought to look familiar to fans of pi.

A much bigger version of the pi poster above can be found here. Much bigger - a file size of 1.7 mb and what looks to be about 65,000 digits in the background.

Yes, I suppose it's all somewhat irrational.

Name that cat!

It's contest time, here at the Cellars. The little gray outdoor cat needs a name; something better than her temporary name of The Gray Ghost. We've decided that she is, in fact, a female, although that need not limit your choice of a new name for her.

She continues to be skittish, although as The Provider of Food, I am permitted to pet her and briefly pick her up. But I think she's also getting a bit used to being around people, as she seems to like my company for substantial stretches, so long as I'm between five and ten feet away.

The deadline for entries in the Name that Cat! contest is "soon" and all decisions will be final and arbitrary. The winner's prize is yet to be determined, but will include having the winning name given to the cat. And if you live close enough and are easily persuaded, the prize may also include the cat herself.

Yet another self-distribution update.

A few updates on self-distribution by Virginia wineries.

First, this year's legislation remains "tabled" and thus will be dead for this year's session. Don't know whether there was any serious attempt to revive it; if there was, it didn't come to anything.

Second, I got an email from an owner of a Virginia website, in response to one of my earlier postings on self-distribution:

Comment about your post regarding your belief that wineries won't go out of business: I'm having to make the decision of whether to sell my house because the winery can't afford to pay me more, and I'm stuck with an ever-growing mortgage payment because of taxes. And I'm sick of working 3 jobs. We are not a profitable business yet, and probably won't be for another year or so. Even using current projections, profitable means a meager margin. That will now be eaten up by the cost of having to set up and support a separate business entity, warehouse, employees, etc., not to mention making less money per case. The threat is real, and although I believe that everyone needs to be able to play with the big boys when you're talking about business, I built our business model on being able to self-distribute. We will probably survive because we're a bit more established--but if you're thinking about starting up a winery and having to go directly to a distributor, good luck. Perhaps they will pass something that will allow a cooperative that can make the alternative more palatable, but I assure you, there was no exaggeration from my end about the gravity of this development to [my winery].

Fair enough. The owner also went on to note that having their wines in retailers and on restaurant lists helps push customers to visit the winery and to their booth at festivals, which are on-site sales that won't have to go through distributors. So losing the ability to self-distribute hurts both direct and indirect sales.

Finally, with the defeat of the bill, there have now been a few articles in the press about losing self-distribution will hurt wineries. It's too bad these articles didn't appear before the legislative session, when they might have done some good.

Showing your work will not be required.

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

And no, you can't clean the blackboard for extra credit, either.

Another minute of fame.

My local watering-hole had its second annual “Taste That Beer!” competition last night. Well, not a competition, exactly, as Virginia’s alcoholic beverage control laws frown on such things. And certainly not something that would award prizes, either, other than bragging rights. But a blind tasting of 12 different beers, and you try to determine the style and the particular beer.

At last year’s not-a-competition-as-that-would-be-illegal, you may recall, I came in second, one point behind a professional beer writer buddy. So I claimed that he won the professional division (consisting of him) and I won the amateur division (consisting of the other 39 participants present).

This year’s format was different from last year’s (where all you got was the beer, and you had to dredge your memory to come up with styles and beer names): they had a list of 120 beers, broken into 12 groups of 10, one group for each style. Once you guessed (ah, I mean “determined”) the style, you had to pick the actual beer from the 10 possibilities. They awarded 4 points per beer: 1 for the correct style, 1 for the correct location of the brewery (state, if U.S., otherwise country), and 2 for the correct beer. Thus, a total of 48 points were possible.

As usual, it was a lot of fun, in a humbling sort of way. Since you knew what the 12 styles were, you had the opportunity to second-guess yourself. The beer that you thought was the hefeweisen when you had it in the first round might well have been the Belgian light malt when you try a beer three rounds later that tastes more like what a hefeweisen really should taste like. And they admitted that they were going to include some difficult beers to identify, or even to classify.

Once again, I didn’t win. The winner had a total of 11 points. (Yes, out of 48.) Once again, I came in second, one point back. The good news, I suppose, is that the winner wasn’t the professional beer writer (who had 8 points). And thus the bad news is that I can’t even claim to have won the amateur division.

Unlike last year, I had a couple of regrets about the answers I eventually turned in. The one beer I correctly identified was the Smuttynose Smuttinator doppelbock – and I misremembered the state that Smuttynose is brewed in. It’s in New Hampshire, of course, and not Maine as I recalled. (My excuse is that I was remembering having fresh Smuttynose when I visited friends in Maine. Yeah, not that great an excuse.) If I had gotten the state correct, I’d have tied for first, and there would have been a sudden-death taste-off. Or something.

The bigger regret was failing to identify the brown ale. At least I got the style correct. It turns out to have been the Cottonwood Low Down Brown, which is my favorite brown ale and from one of my favorite breweries. But it didn’t taste quite like I remembered – a bit thinner body than I recalled – so I ruled it out, and picked something from the other side of the country. If I had gotten it correct, that would have been three more points in my column, and a clear win. Alas.

Blackout!

To my great surprise, I came home to a dark house last night. And, I'm happy to report, it wasn't that I failed to pay my electric bill. Unless, of course, all my neighbors forgot to pay theirs, too - and that seems unlikely, as most of them are pretty responsible.

It wasn't a lightning strike or an ice storm, as the weather was clear and reasonably nice yesterday. It wasn't even the usual cause of blackouts around here, a hurricane. No, it was the far more typical cause: a tree (or big branch) fell on the above-ground lines.

Well, no surprise, I suppose. When one lives in a residential subdivision that's over 50 years old and was built in a fairly heavily wooded area, one learns that these things happen.

(Don't know when the blackout started, as I no longer have non-digital electric clocks in the house. But the area was dark at 7:30 when I got home from work, and the electricity came back on around midnight and the cable was back by 9 a.m. So the stuff in the freezer is still safe, or so I've convinced myself.)

The Gray Ghost update.

The new outdoor cat is willing - barely - to allow me to touch her, although she still tries to squirm away. But she's hungrier than she is squeamish, so she puts up with it while she's eating. And yes, her fur is soft.

And after she eats? She's more than happy to have a conversation with me, so long as I stay five or more feet away, and even better if I'm on the other side of the fence from her.

But she's not interested in coming inside to be warm, even though nights lately have gotten down into the teens.

No, it's not.

A quick little quiz:

What's the correct spelling and punctuation of the federal holiday being celebrated tomorrow (the third Monday in February):
(a) Presidents' Day,
(b) President's Day, or
(c) Presidents Day?

Certainly, if you look in the ads in the paper today, you can find support for all options, sometimes with two or three of the variations being used in the same ad. And it makes a difference, as the first would seem to celebrate all presidents, regardless of how poor they might have been; the second would appear to celebrate a single, albeit anonymous, president; and the last looks like it honors the father-and-son pair of presidents whose last name is "Day."

So which of the possible answers is correct?

You guessed it, this is a trick question. The correct spelling and punctuation of the holiday is "Washington's Birthday".

If it makes you feel better - and I'm not sure it should - the schools systems in Westmoreland County, Virginia, and the City of Alexandria, Virginia (where George Washington was born and where Mount Vernon is located) both refer to the holiday as "Presidents' Day." And shame on them.

A spot of yellow.

Time for the annual posting on how early the crocuses are blooming. I first saw them peeking up on Tuesday last week, but lethargy and the weekend snow kept me from taking their photos until today. (Seventy degrees today - might as well take some photos.)

And yes, the crocus blooms are surrounded by the remains of last year's leaves. When the darn things stay attached to the trees until the middle of December, I figure they can jolly well stay on the ground until I get around to mowing the yard sometime this spring. (My neighbors sometimes figure otherwise, alas.)

Guns don't shoot people.

Dick Cheney shoots people.

Or, if you prefer, Star Wars valentines.

Just not commercially available ones.

Breakfast time at the Cellar door.

The gray cat greeted me this morning. Well, if complaining that breakfast is well overdue can be described as a greeting.

She - or he - still won't let me get within 15 feet, unless there's a closed door between us. So while her/his fur looks soft, for now we'll just have to assume that it is.

And I got to see interaction between the two cats yesterday. This cat was sitting on my back deck, and the "tuxedo" cat (who actually turns out to be black-and-gray tabby-striped with a white hind leg, not that you can easily tell the difference between black and black-and-gray-striped at 11 p.m. as the cat is diving under a parked car) was walking up the steps towards it. You could pretty easily figure out that the gray cat was saying the feline equivalent of "This is MY house and MY territory and MY food so you should just stay away" while the tabby was responding "Yah, yah. It's a free country, and I'll go where I want."

R2 Potatoo.

For those wondering what the next Star Wars / Mr. Potatohead tie-in would be.

And surely there must be someone like that.

The neighborhood cat lady.

You know how hoboes had a whole intricate network of signs they'd mark on fenceposts at people's houses or going into town, indicating such things as "wealthy person lives here" or "tell pitiful story" or "mean sheriff" or, above, "kind woman lives here."

Well, cats must have a similar network.

It would appear that last year's saga of The Outdoor Cat has been making the rounds, as there are now two cats I'm feeding at my back door.

One is a tuxedo cat with a white hind leg, and might well be the father of last summer's kittens. (Or some degree of sibling.) The other is solid gray - almost Russian Blue in color.

Neither one seems to be to interested in making friends with me or in coming inside to sleep, which is perhaps just as well, as I'm scheduled to get my father's two cats sometime this spring. And even I would agree that three or four cats inside the house would be too much.

People with too much time on their hands.

The Lego Suicides - a slideshow of various ways to do yourself in. Using Legos.

Possibly not what the manufacturer had in mind.

Self-distribution: Another update.

It's like a "good news / bad news" joke, except for not being funny.

The good news is that the proposal to allow self-distribution isn't dead yet. The bad news is that it's not especially healthy, either.

Yesterday, the entire General Laws Committee voted to table the bill, thereby keeping it around to be finally voted on at a later time. And it seems pretty clear that the alternative to tabling the measure would have been a vote killing it.

Opposition to the bill is coming from wholesalers, who want to maintain their monopoly stranglehold on the industry. And they've got more money to give to the Delegates than small farm wineries do.

Don't know what can be done to change the minds of people on the Committee. I've suggested to the sponsor of the bill that he try a two-part change:
1) Authorize the self-distribution as a one-year (or better, two-year) test, and
2) Charge the state Alcoholic Beverage Commission (who would issue the licenses and collects the excise taxes) to study how much wine is actually distributed by out-of-state small wineries. It should be easy to find: the wineries would be identified by having to obtain the special license to self-distribute, and the wineries will then have to pay the state excise taxes to the ABC.

My guess is that such a study would show that only a handful of wineries - all located in bordering states - would self-distribute into Virginia, and even then, they'd only be distributing 10 or 20 cases per year. But even if my guess is way off, accurate information from this study would conclusively show whether enacting self-distribution has any impact on the financial viability of wholesalers.

It's that time of year again.

You know, Valentine's Day. And this year, something special: "Law & Order: SUV" Valentines. They make the Marge Simpson candy valentines I gave last year look positively tasteful.

Self-distribution: Update.

Actions of politicians continue to astound, although I really suppose they shouldn't.

On Thursday, the subcommittee (of the House Committee on General Laws, which has jurisdiction over alcohol-related matters) considering HB 1288 - the wineries' self-distribution provision - voted down the provision by a 4-1 tally.

There has been no press coverage of this bill, so it's unclear to me why the delegates voted against the bill. I can think of only two groups who might oppose the legislation: (1) the neo-Prohibitionists, who knee-jerk oppose anything that makes it easier for adults to purchase a product they're legally permitted to purchase, and (2) Virginia wineries who are big enough that they already have distributors in order to get their wines throughout the state and who won't be able to benefit from self-distribution because their contracts with their distributors prohibit it. (And I don't see those Virginia wineries opposing the bill, because their future is dependent on a strong, growing Virginia wine industry.)

Distributors aren't going to oppose the bill, because they don't want the hassle of distributing small wineries' products, when there isn't much profit potential in the small-volume, small-markup wines. But if the bill passes, the Virginia ABC will force distributors to distribute the wines - I've seen it happen in the case of a small microbrewery - with threats to the distributors' licenses. And if that happens, no one involved with the distribution - wineries, distributors, retailers and restaurants, and customers - will be well served.

And plenty of groups - among them, the Virginia Vineyards Association,
Virginia Farm Bureau Federation, Virginia Agribusiness Council, and
Virginia Hospitality and Travel Association - supported the bill.

The good news - to the extent there is any here - is that the bill is scheduled for reconsideration on Tuesday, by the entire House Committee on General Laws. There's still time to contact your representatives (and, more importantly, the members of that committee).

Just in time for the World Cup.

Bumper car soccer. At least it's not on my insurance

Self-distribution.

There has been legislation introduced into this year's General Assembly, designed to address the distribution of wine by in-state wineries; a subject thrown into some turmoil by last year's Supreme Court decision requiring that states not discriminate between in-state and out-of-state wineries. This bill addresses the ability to small wineries to self-distribute their wines, directly to retailers and restaurants, without having to go through a distributor.

Self-distribution seems to be a win-win for all interested parties: Wineries get to make sales to retailers and restaurants without having to yield a portion of the proceeds to distributors, retailers and restaurants get to deal with those who are most interested in selling them the wines, and distributors don't have to concern themselves with low-volume, low-profit wineries.

So this legislation would allow wineries "small enough" to qualify for the federal small winery tax credit (27 CFR 24.278) to self-distribute. Yes, it's an arbitrary cut-off, but at least it's not one easily changed by the Virginia ABC regulators. And yes, I believe that all current Virginia wineries fall under that limit. But my guess is that this set-up would pass muster as being constitutional on its face.

I've heard from two wineries, asking that I contact my state senator and delegate in support of this legislation. That's fine, and a reasonable request. What bothers me about the requests, though, is that they both stray into Parade of Horribles territory, suggesting that some/many/most Virginia wineries will go out of business without the ability to self-distribute, and that some/many/most Virginia wines won't be available at retailers and restaurants. Well, baloney. I suppose that might be true if the legislation didn't pass and these wineries did nothing to find distributors. But I think that if the legislation isn't enacted, those wineries would find it in their best interest to go together and create an independent distributor whose main purpose was to distribute Virginia wines, and I'm sure they'd find support from the retailers and restaurants who would otherwise not have wines available for the customers who want them. Market forces will find a solution to this dilemma, even if the legislature does not.

My other concern with the requests was that they both urged me to use their cut-and-paste form letter to send to my representatives, without even considering that I could write my own. Knowing that elected representatives ignore obvious form letters, I'd think that asking us to send our own notes of support would have been the better approach.

How'd they do that? Not to mention, Why?

I'm a sucker for cool marketing ploys. Not to the extent that I'd buy a car for one, but I've certainly bought boxes of cereal for the neat premium inside.

In the car category, however, is this ad for the Honda Civic. Appears to be a British ad, so we're unlikely to see it here. (Unless they show it once, during the Super Bowl.) Push the "Watch" button, and be amazed.

Cool, eh?

Weather. Or not.

Bizarre weather of late. (Yes, that's the best excuse I can come up with for not posting lately.) Fairly warm days - each week of the month has had a couple of days in the upper 50's and one making it to the 60's - and little cold weather. And for the past two or three days, lots and lots of wind. (Enough to bring down small limbs from the tree in my front yard. Thankfully, the limbs hit my front yard, too, and not the house.) The wind was blowing so hard this morning - especially when funnelled down the streets of Richmond - that it almost knocked me over; a sensation I last felt while going outside during Hurricane Isabel. Weather- and wind-wise, you'd think it was March.

My suspicion is that we're being set up for a cold and snowy February.

And a couple more.

Recommendations, that is.

When you sit around inside the Atlanta airport for untold hours on end ("Atlanta" is an Indian name, meaning "excessively long waits for no apparent reason"), you have the opportunity to read a lot of books. Thanks to Delta Airlines, I got just that opportunity on my trip out to Colorado. In both directions.

Lance Armstrong's War is an in-depth look at Lance Armstrong's 2004, the year he became the only person to win the Tour de France six times. An interesting approach to a biography: you get a lot more detail about what goes in to winning a Tour and what it's like to be a professional cyclist than in books that cover a longer timespan. (And you have to love the internet: here's an NPR interview with Daniel Coyle, the author. And here's an excerpt.)

And I got out to see Munich this past weekend. Excellent movie. Definitely worth seeing.

Yes, yes; I'm still around.

Trying to recover from the cold I caught on my trip to Colorado over New Year's. The wedding - no, not mine - went off just fine. Let me tell you, though: airplane flights when your ears don't pop properly are no fun at all. They make sitting around for hours and hours and hours in the Atlanta airport, awaiting flights which were delayed for no apparent reason, seem like a party in comparison.

Not my tree.

Although I'm impressed: a Christmas tree with 52 science fiction and fantasy ornaments. And a Yoda on top.

And allow me to repeat: Not my tree.

Oh, not much. You?

Well, it’s clear I’m having troubles thinking of things to write about – the curse of having a boring, boring life – so I’ll take this opportunity to note books and movies I‘ve liked in the past couple of months.

Books first. Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell won the Hugo award last year (and a host of others), and is sort of a Harry Potter for adults. Not in any salacious way, you understand; just with more adult themes and without the gee-whiz excitement of the Potter books. It’s a story of the return of Magic to England, and is set in the early 1800s. And written in the style of a novel written in the mid-1800s. Great fun, and a long enough book that it will last both legs of a cross-country plane flight. And most of a snow-bound week between flights.

Assassination Vacation, by Sarah Vowell, recounts the author’s pilgrimages to sites related to presidential assassinations and assassination attempts, and is hilarious. While you actually learn little historical tidbits – such as the Curse of Robert Todd Lincoln – it’s the wonderful stories that make the book so enjoyable. The book’s opening line was enough to get me hooked: “Going to Ford’s Theater for the play is like going to Hooters for the food.”

Movies. I saw King Kong last weekend. Very good, and certainly worth the bother of going to a theater to see it on the big screen. Although it's 3 hours and 7 minutes long, it goes by quickly and I never found myself looking for the remote control to fast-forward to the next scene. To be sure, a number of five-minute scenes could have been shortened by a minute and a half, but even then, you wouldn't be taking out "bad" material - you'd be tightening up scenes that went on longer only to show off the computer graphics (which were excellent, for the most part).

I’m not entirely sure that the original King Kong needed to be remade, but this was a worthy remake. I last saw the original on the big screen at a film festival in Charlottesville about 6 or 7 years ago, where it was introduced by Fay Wray. That was fun, too.

At this year’s Virginia Film Festival, I saw Nine Lives. Nine interlocking short stories, each filmed in a single shot so that you get a palpable feeling of “real time.” Excellent ensemble cast: Kathy Bates, Sissy Spacek, Robin Wright Penn, Ian McShane, Aidan Quinn, and many, many others. I think it hasn’t had a real national release yet, so you might be able to catch it in the theater.

DVDs from Netflix. No surprise: I’m an unabashed fan of Netflix. Among the things I’ve gotten from Netflix lately that I’ve liked a lot are the Firefly series, The Fog of War, the Wonderfalls series, and the Jancis Robinson wine series. And I’ve finally gotten around to seeing Sling Blade. But the real joy of Netflix – over and above not having to drive to the dreadful video rental place and wandering around searching the racks for something other than fifty copies of the latest Deuce Bigalow schlockfest – is the ability to see the interesting “little” movie that you’ll never find at Blockbuster and never see on HBO. Here are a couple that I’ve seen in the past month:

Second Generation. Essentially a made-for-TV movie, but since it was made for British TV, it’s orders of magnitude better than American networks’ TV movies. It’s King Lear set amidst Indian immigrants around London, and filled with excellent Indian actors you’ll recognize, even if you don’t immediately know all the names: among them are Parminder Nagra, Om Puri, and Anupam Kher.

Edge of Madness. A Canadian movie, set in the last half of the nineteenth century. A girl who is not yet a young woman is “placed” from an orphanage to be the wife of someone who is a settler in the mostly-deserted Western provinces. Someone who’s not all that good a settler, and not all that good a husband. Excellent dramatic performance in this murder mystery by Caroline Dhavernas (who gave excellent comedic performances in Wonderfalls), and one in which she doesn’t have to hide her natural French accent.

Where's Rosemary Woods when you really need her?

Not that kind of hardware store, alas.

Time for a trip to the hardware store, it seems. To make copies of my house keys, so I can give a set to the neighbor or hide one or something.

Out of the house I bounded this afternoon, all set to go to the UPS place to send off a package. (Christmas presents? Hah! Far too early for that. A birthday present. And no, it's probably not for you.) Got the package? Check. Got the Netflix envelope to drop off at the Post office? Check. Got my wallet? Check. Okay, we're ready to roll! Slam the door behind me, make sure it's good and locked, and away we go!

Got my keys?

Hmmm. This trip could be both much longer and much shorter than I had anticipated.

The choice seemed to be between calling a locksmith to open the door and finding a more direct method through a window or something. Which is likely to be cheaper? Okay, forget the locksmith.

Wander around the house to see whether I've inadvertently left a window open, unlikely as that might seem in the middle of winter. No such luck.

So I picked a basement window to be sacrificed. I found something to try to pry out all the putty around the window, in hopes of somehow being able to ease the window out of the frame without breaking it. Twenty minutes and a cracked-but-not-broken window later, I gave up on that scheme: putty that's dried into place over fifty years just wasn't going to be easily persuaded to give up its grip.

(Twenty minutes was long enough for me, too. I was afraid that the neighbors across my back-yard fence might wonder what was going on over there, with all that banging against the window and that shifty-looking person skulking around the back of the house. Any longer, and they might call 911 - and I really didn't want to be the day's entertainment for Richmond's Finest.)

The window was no match to the business end of a wrench, however.

So tomorrow's list includes a visit to the hardware store, for a set of spare keys. And, oh yes, a new window pane. And putty.

Christmas list.

On the off chance you are wondering what to get me for Christmas, and you have $600 burning a hole in your pocket, you could always get me a life-size Yoda Statue. Not that I'm exactly sure what "life-size" means in this particular context. Presumably something other than "two-dimensional."

And if you're especially thrifty and know someone else who would like a life-size Yoda for Christmas - perhaps yourself? - you'll be delighted to know that if you buy two at one time, the second is 20% off. (I suppose there's also the chance that people will consider you to be at least 20% off to spend $600 for a Yoda statue, but you're willing to take that risk for me, aren't you?)

No lard; just snow.

A fairly peaceful snowstorm, at least at my house. And early enough in the season that by afternoon, the top of the snow was covered with leaves that are only now deciding that it's time to fall.

It was a bit more exciting last night. Driving home from work, as I got within three miles of my home, I realized that the electricity was out - no traffic lights, no lights on the houses, and I'd bet no heat, if there was no electricity at my house. And about a mile and a half from my house, the police had blocked off the street. Not a good sign. As I circled around to approach my neighborhood from another direction, though, I got into an area where the electricity was still on, and it was on at my house when I got there.

And the other excitement came in the middle of the night, awakening to the crack of branches high in the tree in my front yard (and the subsequent thuds when they hit the ground). Sounded worse than it was, though, as I discovered only a couple of 15-foot branches had come down. Not on the electric wires, not through my roof. A good result.

Falls Like Lard.

Or, you know, maybe not.

There's a "Winter Storm Watch" for the area, starting tonight and lasting through Tuesday night. And if it really does snow, they're calling for as much as 2 to 4 inches - on grassy areas.

Doesn't stop the TV stations from going into their usual headless-chicken panic mode. Crawls across the bottom of the screen every half-hour or so, and occasionally breaking into coverage to show their forecast maps. And the 11:00 news shows trotted out their packaged clips of Department of Transportation trucks filling up with salt and sand to put on the roads and the "crowds" at the grocery stores. (In fact, to my surprise, the grocery store I typically go to had a normal amount of customers and plenty of bread and milk on the shelves at 7 p.m. this evening.)

My favorite part of the TV weather reports was the forecast map of what areas could expect in the way of precipitation over the next 48 hours. Probably too much information to fit into a single map, but Hey! they tried. They had the map of Virginia, split into about 5 different colored bands, from "All Rain" in the band closest to the ocean, through "Mixed Precipitation" and "Sleet" (these two seemed to cover the Richmond area), "Snow" and ending with "Heavy Snow" (in the mountains). The best parts of the map, though, were the other little comments on the map. Most were informative ("4 to 10 inches" near Charlottesville), but over the mountains was this odd little phrase: "Falls Like Lard".

No idea what it means. I can't imagine snow falling so heavily that one might mistake it for lard, and I've seen a lot of intense snowfalls. Even a thunder-snowstorm, once. But lard? Yuk. Although I suppose it would make for much more substantial snowmen.

I just send 'em on.

Gleaned from an email:

When my father turned 52, I remember, he made the comment: "They used to say
I'm a real card -- now I'm a whole deck."

Do you have any respect for Law Reviews? If so, why?

Case in point: the Michigan Law Review, Vol. 104, publication date of May 2006, has an article entitled "Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy" (only an abstract of the article is currently available).

It purports to examine what the Harry Potter series has to tell us about government and bureaucracy. (Bad and bad, respectively.) 'Cause that's the whole reason J.K. Rowling wrote the series.

Leave it to law professors to suck all the fun out of things.

Overheard at work.

It's always fun to listen to folks as they chatter away at work, oblivious to what they're saying or who's listening. And given that we work in a glorified warehouse, at computers set up on folding tables, and that what we're doing is incredibly boring and tedious, matched with an utter lack of challenge, it's no surprise that odd subjects are discussed at length - and often, at excessive length - and that strange and revealing statements are made.

Today, one guy spent a lot of time at the shared computer with internet access, planning his December vacation to Thailand. He plans to travel light, with a small bag containing only underwear and condoms, as he expects to be able to buy anything else he needs - such as shorts and t-shirts - when he gets there. He says that Thailand is on the State Department's list of countries to avoid because of possible danger, and that just makes it all more attractive to him. "I do crazy [stuff]. I went to Belfast when it was really, really bad, just because it was." Yes, this all qualifies as crazy. But to be honest, the whippersnapper isn't old enough to have been in Belfast when it was really dangerous.

Earlier this week, one woman was talking about health food, which is good for you because it's healthy and all and they couldn't call it "health food" if it weren't actually healthy, and she started discussing Omega 3 oils. She proudly noted that kelp is a wonderful source for Omega 3 oils (normally found in fish) because: "Kelp is a fish kind of thing. You know, it's a living thing that lives in the sea." You learn something every day, and that day we learned that the green leafy stuff you find in the ocean and used to call "seaweed" is actually "fish."

She further redeemed herself the next day, when she noted "I'm kind of a pseudo-intellectual." I'd have thought that a pseudo-intellectual was something you either were or were not, and no "kind of" about it.

Still, the best conversation of the week had to be the one about popcorn. Movie-theater popcorn, to be precise, piping hot and complete with salt and melted butter. "And then," it was explained to us, "you open the small package of M&Ms you brought into the theater with you [it being too expensive to buy the M&Ms at the snack bar] and pour them into the popcorn." Apparently the heat of the popcorn heats the chocolate in the M&M, but not enough to cause it to split the shell. And the salt and butter play off against the crunchy nature of the shell and the sweetness of the chocolate. None of the three of us listening to the tale had ever heard of mixing M&Ms with popcorn, and I've had my share of movie-theater popcorn over the years but never with M&Ms. When asked, however, someone at the next bunch of tables said that she did it too.

I've had chocolate-covered popcorn before (usually purchased at a Boy Scout fundraiser), so the concept isn't entirely foreign, I suppose. But chocolate with hot popcorn was a new one to me, and mixing in melted butter just makes me shudder.

Hallowe'en is over, so it's time for Christmas decorations to come out.

And this year, you can have an authentic replica of Charlie Brown's Pathetic Christmas Tree. For a mere $24. Still, for that price, you'll get to keep the tree for many sad years to come.

And on the other extreme, the local paper is taking applications for houses to list on this year's Tacky Christmas Lights tour.

How are people in Pennsylvania smarter than people in Kansas? Well, eventually.

Election results from Pennsylvania: All eight seats on the Dover, PA school board were won by pro-evolution supporters and all eight losers were supporters of so-called intelligent design.

Give people a choice between teaching their children science or filling their heads with rubbish, and they'll usually make the right choice.

If only wishing could make it so.

Gleaned from an e-mail, anonymously authored:

Moderator: We're here today to debate the hot new topic, evolution versus Intelligent Des---

(Scientist pulls out baseball bat.)

Moderator: Hey, what are you doing?

(Scientist breaks Intelligent Design advocate's kneecap.)

Intelligent Design advocate: YEAAARRRRGGGHHHH! YOU BROKE MY KNEECAP!

Scientist: Perhaps it only appears that I broke your kneecap. Certainly, all the evidence points to the hypothesis I broke your kneecap. For example, your kneecap is broken; it appears to be a fresh wound; and I am holding a baseball bat, which is spattered with your blood. However, a mere preponderance of evidence doesn't mean anything. Perhaps your kneecap was designed that way. Certainly, there are some features of the current situation that are inexplicable according to the "naturalistic" explanation you have just advanced, such as the exact contours of the excruciating pain that you are experiencing right now.

Intelligent Design advocate: AAAAH! THE PAIN!

Scientist: Frankly, I personally find it completely implausible that the random actions of a scientist such as myself could cause pain of this particular kind. I have no precise explanation for why I find this hypothesis implausible --- it just is. Your knee must have been designed that way!

Intelligent Design advocate: YOU BASTARD! YOU KNOW YOU DID IT!

Scientist: I surely do not. How can we know anything for certain? Frankly, I think we should expose people to all points of view. Furthermore, you should really re-examine whether your hypothesis is scientific at all: the breaking of your kneecap happened in the past, so we can't rewind and run it over again, like a laboratory experiment. Even if we could, it wouldn't prove that I broke your kneecap the previous time. Plus, let's not even get into the fact that the entire universe might have just popped into existence right before I said this sentence, with all the evidence of my alleged kneecap-breaking already pre-formed.

Intelligent Design advocate: That's a load of bullshit sophistry! Get me a doctor and a lawyer, not necessarily in that order, and we'll see how tha tplays in court!

Scientist (turning to audience): And so we see, ladies and gentlemen, when push comes to shove, advocates of Intelligent Design do not actually believe any of the arguments that they profess to believe. When it comes to matters that hit home, they prefer evidence, the scientific method, testable hypotheses, and naturalistic explanations. In fact, they strongly prefer naturalistic explanations over supernatural hocus-pocus or metaphysical wankery. It is only within the reality-distortion field of their ideological crusade that they give credence to the flimsy, ridiculous arguments which we so commonly see on display. I must confess, it kind of felt good, for once, to be the one spouting free-form bullshit; it's so terribly easy and relaxing, compared to marshaling rigorous arguments backed up by empirical evidence. But I fear that if I were to continue, then it would be habit-forming, and bad for my soul. Therefore, I bid you adieu.

The first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

It's that time of year again: Election Day in the Old Dominion. Virginia has its state elections in the off-years. This year's election includes the statewide elections for governor, lt. governor, and attorney general.

It looks like a close election for Governor this year, with polls going back and forth as to who's leading, and always within the margin of error. Neither candidate is much of a gem, and it's pretty much "a pox on both your houses." Still, the Democratic candidate is only chicken pox, while the Republican is smallpox.

The Republican wins the award for sleaziest ads. He had a series of TV ads with relatives of murdered people (or, you know, bad actors pretending to be relatives of murdered people) complaining that the Democratic candidate voluntarily represented the accused defendants and actually tried to have juries find the defendants "innocent" and therefore, he cannot be trusted to be governor. 'Cause, you know, providing criminal defendants with a fair trial or otherwise trying to implement the Sixth Amendment is always a disqualification for public office. And what makes this series especially bad? The Republican candidate has spent the last four years as the state's attorney general.

He also wins the award for sleaziest printed ads. There's an independent candidate running, getting about 4 or 5 percent of the vote. A former Republican, although not as much of an idiot as the one the Republicans nominated. Still, clearly a Republican. Friday, I received a flyer in the mail, purporting to be an "Official Democratic Voting Guide for Governor," claiming to show the differences between the Democratic candidate and the Independent, and "clearly" establishing that the more progressive candidate is the Independent. And who sent out this ad? Not the Virginia Democratic party, who you'd think would be the only ones who would authorize an official party voting guide, and not the Independent candidate. In very small type, the ad discloses that it was authorized by the Republican candidate.

And the phone has been ringing off the hook, as somehow both parties consider me to be a strong supporter. So I've gotten taped pleas direct from each candidate this weekend, and taped pleas from former NY mayor Rudy Giuliani, who probably should be paying attention to the NY mayoral race instead, and from Virginia's Senator George Allen, who I knew to be a loudmouthed drooling moron when I was in law school, and he's not improved with age. Plus real-person phone calls from each party, inviting me to Election Eve pep rallies. Yeah, think I'll pass.

The good news is that by Wednesday, all the campaigning will be over. The bad news is that by Wednesday, one of them will be elected.

Kinky for Governor!

No, not here in Virginia, alas. Although he'd surely be better than any of the candidates currently running. Down in Texas, where Willie Nelson hosted a fundraiser for the Kinky Friedman campaign. Running as an independent, Friedman would surely make a better governor than some of Texas's recent ones. Better song-writer, too.

Where does a 25-foot tall gorilla sleep?

Why, anywhere he wants to, of course.

And if he should happen to want to sleep inside a movie theater, it would appear that he can sleep for 3 hours at a time. That's the current length of Peter Jackson's version of King Kong. And Universal is getting a little worried. A movie theater can show a 3-hour movie about half as many times during a day as it could a 1 1/2-hour movie, and since they'd charge the same admission price for each, they'd end up with half the revenue. And since movie studios now try to have huge opening weekends - aiming for half their total ticket sales on the opening weekend - cutting the number of showings in half will go against that strategy.

Still, if anyone can successfully make a long, special-effects movie that people will want to go see long after the opening weekend, you'd think Peter Jackson would be the one. The Lord of the Rings trilogy was certainly no slouch at the box office.

And for comparison, the 1933 version (with Fay Wray) ran 100 minutes, and the 1976 version (the one with, yeah, I can't remember either) ran 134 minutes.

Under the weather.

I seem to have been visited - and possibly possessed - by spirits of my former cats.

I've had a cold for the past week. Usually, colds live in my sinuses for about four days and then move to my chest for two weeks. Not this one: this cold started out in my sinuses for about a day and moved directly into my chest, pausing only to give a heck of a sore throat in the process.

But the real difference has been the feline symptoms. I'll sleep for 10 hours at a time, get up and read my email, and go back to bed for a nap. I'll turn up my nose at perfectly good food. I'll cough up really rude stuff - not hairballs, as one might expect, but (trust me!) other matter that's at least as bad.

But the best symptom is what it's done to my voice, which is now somewhat gravelly and lower in pitch, and I feel like I'm doing a Barry White imitation. Well, not a good one. But the cat connection is that if I sigh and it goes through my vocal cords, I can produce that cat noise that is halfway between a growl and a purr. The noise that a cat makes if she's unhappy with you but wants you to keep petting her anyway. Which is about how I feel, waiting for this cold to run its course.

Well, I see I've been out of bed for about an hour. Time to go back to sleep.

When it rains.

Saturday was the day for the Tour of Hope bike ride, and Friday afternoon, I dutifully drove up to the DC area with my bike so I could ride in it. Bright and early – or possibly so early that it didn't really qualify as “bright” – I hopped into the car and drove over to Glen Echo, where the ride would start.

Imagine my surprise to see that there were only 5 cars in the parking lot (left). Great big field, clearly set up as a staging area to add those of us who were taking part in a shorter, less strenuous version of the ride. (The longer ride was not only 40 miles longer, it had a minimum speed limit of 17 mph. As I have difficulties keeping it at 15 mph for half the distance of the longer ride, I decided the shorter ride was going to be more appropriate this year.) 200 riders were going to start here, joining the 1300 who had started up near Columbia, Maryland. Plus the 26 who had just ridden cross-county, plus Lance Armstrong and a couple of other Tour dignitaries.

I tracked down the folks from the organizing committee – they were easy to spot, as they were the only people around. It turns out that the event had been cancelled. It had been raining hard in the area for 48 hours – thanks to a visit from the remnants of Tropical Storm Tammy – and there were a number of places along the route where the roads had been flooded. So, in the interests of safety, they reluctantly decided to cancel.

You understand, when I drove over to the starting point, I had my camera with me but not my bicycle. It was raining, and reasonably hard with no sign of letting up. And I don't ride my bike in the rain. (I've had enough bike accidents and broken enough body parts that I truly have no need to tempt fate.) But there are enough lunatics out there who happily ride in dangerous conditions that I figured that there would still be three or five hundred riders, and I wanted to get some shots of that crowd.

They also cancelled the outdoor festivities to take place at the finishing line, at the Ellipse. Also not that hard a choice, as most of the Ellipse was under 4 or 6 inches of standing water. But they still wanted to hold the welcoming celebration for the cross-country riders and the enthusiastic talks by Lance and other folks, so they moved that inside one of the hotels near the Ellipse. One of the goals of this year’s Tour of Hope was to raise awareness and acceptance of clinical trials, without which it is difficult to get new treatments. Lance made a point of thanking those who had taken part in clinical trials 25 years ago, trials which led to the drug treatments he took for his cancer nine years ago. And he noted that some of those in those trials are still around today.

I still think it'd be fun to do this ride, especially in a large group. And in nice weather.

There's always next year.

Today's Sign of the Apocalypse.

Available at my local grocery store. A power saw for carving pumpkins. 'Cause it's just too darn hard to cut into a pumpkin with a non-powered knife.

Perhaps they'll also have a powered device for de-gooping the interior of the pumpkin.

The return of Spaceman Spiff.

Well, not so much "return" as "visit." The Complete Calvin and Hobbes is being published, a three-volume, 1500-page art book, containing every Calvin and Hobbes comic strip ever published.

Wonderful comic strip. It's difficult to realize that it's been ten years since Calvin and Hobbes last got onto their sled to go out and explore the world.