Turn Your Head and Cough, Please
Spare Parts and Leftover Screws

Not today, thank you very much. I finally got around to getting my flight physical done today. It was even 8 days before the deadline. There is not much that I hate more than waiting for hours to have some stranger poke and prod me like something one might find in the back of the fridge. However, this visit was a pleasant surprise. I showed up half an hour late so I only had to wait for 45 minutes. When the doctor finally came in, the first thing he did was take my blood pressure. He kind of chuckled when he found the results and mentioned, "120 over 70," or something like that, "that's about as good as it gets." That was about the extent of the physical. Oh yeah, he looked in my eyes with that flashlight thing. I was done before the spots disappeared.

I'm pretty sure that more is generally required for the physical. I didn't stick around to find out.

What Angers My Ire...
Rants and Delusions

I know the title doesn't make any sense, grammatical or otherwise, but it is a phrase that goes back to my high school days. It has been running through my head the last two days.

I made a discovery yesterday. Nobody fixes anything anymore. When something breaks we just throw it away and get a new one. I had no idea the extent that the disposable age has reached. I spent the afternoon driving all over town looking for a receiver speaker for my landline phone (how it broke is an entirely different story, dealing with a wall and a mildly upsetting phone call). All it would take to replace the speaker is two simple solder points. It is not a big deal. Nobody sells parts for anything of that nature anymore. Even Radio Shack looked at me like I was a deranged throwback for wanting to repair it myself. Can't we find a better way to spend our resources? If only everybody had a landfill in their backyard that made the town smell like a giant urinal mint. Perhaps we would think twice about throwing our money away.

By the Numbers
Spare Parts and Leftover Screws

6 - Number of hours spent outside painting today
8 - Number of windows I finished priming
20 - Years since the house has been last painted
93 - Age of the neighbor that told me about the house
3 - Number of times the other neighbor's car alarm was set off by bass thumping ghetto cruisers
1 - Number of times I was offered pot while painting
2 - Number of times I was asked for money to buy "medicine"
13 - Number of gunshots heard within a block of my house
2 - Number of sirens heard after the gunfire
0 - Number of times I thought this was an unusual day

Gotta love Longview...

Hurricane Isabel
Spare Parts and Leftover Screws

This is pretty cool. It is the most defined hurricane I have seen in a long time. Just hope it safely heads back out to sea.