Stickied, the third attempt

Stickied Introduction:


In order to prepare for a two week trip with my lovely wife to Rome it is necessary for me to write 20 blog posts ahead of time. I don't have a lot of time to do this. I'm not sure I actually have any time to do this. But I have made a sacred charter, somewhere, I think, that says I must post a new blog post everyday. So I wanted to put a stickied explanation of the desperation of my plight at the top of each of my next twenty blog posts.

I am hoping this will explain why my comments might be (checked (X) as appropriate):


__ Brief

__ Incoherent

__ First drafts

__ Silly

__ Unfinished

__ Borderline plagiarized from someone else

__ Borderline plagiarized from myself

__ Petty about the Internet

__ Pandering to the reader

__ Technically illegal in the country of Turkey

xx Ends abruptly

__ Too frank by half

__ Pretty much just the lyrics of some song I like



This particular post is:


01 of 20





Which explains why this introduction all seems so fresh and new to you. It also explains why I am already done.

Stickied, the second attempt

In order to prepare for a two week trip with my lovely wife to Rome it is necessary for me to write 20 blog posts ahead of time. I don't have a lot of time to do this. I'm not sure I actually have any time to do this. But I have made a sacred charter, somewhere, I think, that says I must post a new blog post everyday. 

Why must I do this? Why must I post every day, for no money and to an acclaim that mocks me by lurking in the land of death?

It is maybe:

It's like I have a fire burning, and I have kept it burning for so long that I'm not sure I know how to start it if it goes out. So it's safer to keep it fed and burning all the time. And then the wild animals will be more respectful in the night.

So I wanted to put a stickied explanation of the desperation of my plight at the top of each of my next twenty blog posts. But this one's a little heavy. 

We'll try again tomorrow

Stickied

This is a stickied introduction:


In order to prepare for a two week trip with my lovely wife to Rome it is necessary for me to write 20 blog posts ahead of time. As one of the most expert essay writers you will ever read this is a breeze for me to do. Unfortunately instead of doing it I went shirt shopping in the mall. I got three beautiful linen shirts, but you probably don't want to read about that twenty times in a stickied introduction, so let me try again:


This is a stickied introduction:


In order to prepare for a two week trip with my lovely wife to Rome it is necessary for me to write 20 blog posts ahead of time. Due to the world being really unfair I don't have a lot of time to do this. Actually, I don't have any time to do it. But nothing and no time at all is my bread and butter! And so I, hmm, bread and butter? I could really go for some bread and butter right now. I'll be back in a few minutes. Wait here.

An introduction

If you've been following along here the last few posts you will be aware that I am in a race against time. In order to prepare for a trip to Rome I have to compose 20 or so blog posts in a matter of hours. I have already used up all my available time on a couple of very wordy posts explaining my desperate situation. Then, with each new post, like this one you are reading now, I have to explain the whole thing all over again. I could do this twenty times and that would be great, but  it is surprisingly complicated to explain the same thing over and over again in a new way. In the time it took me to explain this situation to you just now I could have composed dozens of wonderful blog posts we both would have loved. There's one in particular I didn't write that still makes me chuckle. I wish I knew what it was. So would you, if you only knew.

At least. I think so.

But fortunately I have a solution for going forward. I will write an introduction below to be stickied at the top of all my next 20 blog posts. This will explain everything, and then I can simply copy paste my explanation and proceed to heedlessly race ahead with my feverish attempt to entertain and inform you 20 times in what is now an available timeframe of, er, minus two hours and 17 minutes.

Minus two hours and 17 minutes is not a lot of time. Maybe the 17 minutes is not minus because I didn't say "Minus two hours and minus 17 minutes". So I really am only minus one hour and minus 43 minutes.

That's plenty of time.

Still, would you terribly mind if I wrote the stickied introduction for tomorrow's blog post? I'm feeling a tad pressed.


Thanks,

Person Blogging a lot right now and slowly unravelling.

Clock ticks

In order to prepare for being away in Rome on a lovely vacation with my wife I need to dash off 20 blog posts. Unfortunately I only have two hours to do so. Also unfortunately I used up all but eleven minutes writing the first one. This is the second one. I've now used up the last eleven minutes on this paragraph.

So the next 18 or so posts may be a bit hurried.

There may be some minor grammatical errors and a spelling mistake or two over the course of these next couple of weeks. There could be hallucinations, moments of rambling suddenly cut short with a bad pun, syntax problems, and typos. My math may go out of kilter. I will suffer from delusions of grandeur, imaginary conversations with you, visions from god, and extended periods of complaining. There may be unsolicited literary recommendations, tirades about library clerking, and lots of talk about the weather. Lots and lots and lots of talk about the weather. I may be mundane, abstruse, terribly self-involved, pandering, witty, foolish, confusing, and unintelligible. You might like one of these posts so much that you vow elatedly to yourself that you will follow this blog to the ends of the earth only to lose interest three days later and never read it again. I might mention birds. I may go on so endlessly about myself that you think it's about something greater. It is about something greater! Then you will decide, no, it's just about myself. It is! It is all about me!

Things may end abruptly or come to no real conclusion. I may start singing snatches of old songs. There may be art but there probably won't be. Some posts might be terribly short. I might get desperate. I might beg. It could get weird. It might make a lot of sense but not be what either of us thought it was. I might tell you the truth and it won't be recognizable. It could get pretty bad. There may be post after post about practically nothing. It might be a lot to take.

So, business as usual around here then.

What I will do about blogging when I go to Rome

I have been posting at least one written blog post everyday since March 21, 2013. One would think that on the Internet, with its billions of users, this would be unremarkable. That's only five years of regular blogging. And yet, surprisingly, I am the only daily straight up blogger on the Internet over that long a period. I know you can't quite believe that, so I'll wait while you go check for yourself, as you should.

See?

I know, it's weird!

But since I am the only person on the Internet writing regularly one would think I'd be famous. I'm not. I'll wait while you go check.

See?

You didn't check did you?

No, no, you don't have to. My point is merely

Shoot. I don't know what my point is.

Let's refer back to the title of this post:

What I will do about blogging when I go to Rome

Right.

So after writing almost 2,000 posts to no particular acclaim I am still occasionally amazed by the sheer industry of it, but mostly it's done a step at a time, and I don't think about it. Nevertheless, when I go on vacation I have to think about it in a very functional way. How, for instance, am I supposed to simply come up with 20 or so essays so that I'm free to take a few weeks off to vacation with my wife in Rome? On my last long trip, one that was a full month long, I created an entire simulated travelogue in which I pre-wrote a version of the journey we took.

My readers were all terribly confused. It was complicated.

So this year I thought I'd avoid all those unnecessary complications. I'm an old hand at this blogging gig, and so after putting off a solution until the last minute I decided:

Why don't I just sit down and write out 20 or so very clever blog posts over the course of a couple of hours?

So that's what I'm going to do!

Great solution if I say so myself! This is the first one of the bunch and I am almost done with it already. I have a mere 19 more essays to write and, let's see, 11 minutes to do it.

I mjite njieed to tipe fasterr goingag forwarde.

My responsibilities

Hi, I am going to Rome!

"Oh," You ask nervously. "How will you blog everyday?"

What? You read my blog? This is so terribly exciting!

"Well," You say softly. "I don't exactly read it or anything. I just know that it's real important to you cause you mention it a lot."

I do?

"So I just naturally wondered what you'll do about blogging everyday when you're gone in, where was it again?"

Rome.

"Yeah, Rome."

But this is my blog. You're in it.

"I am?"

Yes. You play the part of Reader in Quotes.

"I do?"

Yes, see, you're doing it now. Look at all the things in quotes. That's you!

"Really?" You ask. "Do I do anything else?"

No. You pretty much just read my blog and whenever a question needs to be asked you ask it.

"Wow. That's pretty neat. That means I never have to go to the Dentist. Wait, that means I don't experience pain!"

Yep.

"Wait!" You cry out in excitement. "This means I will live forever! I will never die! I am immortal!"

I guess. I mean, as long as I'm writing my blog.

"Oh my God! What will you do about blogging when you go to Rome?"

Our efficiency department

Dear Staff:


As a public library we answer to the community. The taxpayers fund us with their hard-earned income. That is why it behooves us to operate with as much efficiency as possible. And it is for this reason that we have formed the new Libraries Efficiency Committee, or LiEfCo. This committee is the result of a lot of hard work from the Board, the Executive Committee, and our new County Initiative on Department Improvement. We engaged the outside consulting firm Lean Business Inc. to help set up our new committee designed to make our library smarter and more efficient than it's ever been. As a recognition of the importance of our new initiative we will be hanging new banners in the staff areas that read:

Work Smarter and See What Happens!

-LiEfCo


And we urge you to do just that! We on LiEfCo look forward to a lot of exciting improvements in the year to come, but we don't think we know everything. We want to hear your ideas too! So we're asking that each one of you log in to the County portal where you will find a link to our new LiEfCo Center. This will be the hub from which you will access our exciting efficiency initiatives. Create a user name under the LiEfCo tab "new user". This user name should include your full work email and a random 16 digit number that you'll want to note down and keep in a safe place. If you do this correctly it will bring up the Staff History page. Fill out your work history and the questionnaire. Then link to your County Training account and list this as part of your training. This will auto-generate a code. Enter this code exactly (without spaces) into the LiEfCo hub as it asks for it. You will need to enter it three times and then select all the pictures that have trees in them. Remember that bushes are not trees and that some plants are just tall and not actually trees. If you choose incorrectly don't worry. Simply log out of everything and shut down your computer. When you restart the computer it will request an authentication code that you can get by logging into the County Authentication Code site (if you have an account), or simply by calling Downtown Automation Services at the phone number listed on the County Contacts tab of the County Intra-net. When you pass the Tree Verification step you will be asked to create a password. It can be anything you want but must include seven letters, four numbers, an asterisk, a piece of toast, and a snippet of html code from your official staff page.

This will not log you into your account but it will look like you are logged into your account. To log into your new account you will need to log out, exit from all County sites, and then restart your computer. When your computer restarts it will require a County Authentication Code (see above). Follow the links from the County Portal to your Staff Training Page. From the dropdown "Links" choose LiEfCo and simply log in there. This will authenticate your required LiEfCo Training on your Staff Training Page. If there are any problems please talk to your Manager.

Once you are logged into LiEfCo you will be presented with an array of options. None of these are live yet except for the "Efficiency Recommendations Forms" tab. Click on the option "Remote Surveys". This will take you to an external website hosted by Lean Business Inc. Create an account there and under "Work host" choose "National" then "Public" then "Partnerships" then "County" then "Libraries" then "Forms" then "Fill out" the "Yes" then "I am sure" then "No, I have not changed my mind" then "Confirm" then log in again when it asks.  After a few simple, self explanatory steps you will find the Efficiency Recommendations Form. Fill it out and submit it. After you submit it there will be a "Print it out" option. Print it out. Sign it. Scan it into to a computer. Log in to your completed training and attach it to the completed training titled "Joining LiEfCo". Once it is attached choose "Print all". Sign the document at the bottom. Make a copy and then shred the original. Dip the copy in lacquer. Drip dry it on a clothesline until stiff. Frame and submit to Human Resources: Attention LiEfCo. We will carefully consider your suggestions and in six to eight weeks you will receive a certificate of participation and a Twix candy bar. Thank you!



On behalf of the whole 43 member new committee on library efficiency (LiEfCo!):


We appreciate all you do to make us lean, smart, and efficient!


Thank you! We're just so excited about this project!



Feldenstein Calypso,

Assistant SubSecretary to the LiEfCo Secretary for efficiency within LiEfCo, at LiEfCo

How the world works

I was shelving in the fiction section, at the "P's" in "Twain, Mark" to be more specific, when one of my big time managers walked by. We both sighed in the exact same way at the exact same time. Then we regarded each other.

"I'm standing here," I said "Tired of shelving, thinking how fun it might be to make big decisions and boss everyone around."

"And I'm standing here," My boss said "Tired of petty responsibilities, and refereeing infighting, while longing for the zen-like peace of shelving."

Then we realized that we just happened to look exactly alike! So we swapped jackets and glasses and agreed to change jobs for a week.

"I'll be keeping my salary though." My boss said.

Fire at library!

I was at the front desk of the library. Actually, I had left the front desk and was helping a man on the computers. I felt that I had a solution for his problem when suddenly the fire alarm rang out. It was loud! The building had to be evacuated immediately!

Recently in this very space I told you how I was learning a wee bit of Italian for our upcoming trip to Rome. Everyday in the car I listen to our "Italian for Travelers" CD. I have been particularly taken with the emergency section where people yell in Italian "Help, thief!" and "Call the Police!" and, of course, "FIRE!", or, as it is on the CD, "FUOCO!". I like it so much that for days I've been wandering the library crying out "Fuoco!"

So I was well-practiced. And when fire truly came to my library I was there to heroically yell "Fuoco!"

Which no one understood because we are in Minnesota and almost no one speaks Italian here.

So everyone died.







Or they would have, but it turned out to just be a drill.

Can you imagine anything worse?

They say one should not be too quick to judge, but when one is regularly surrounded by thousands and thousands of books such advice is untenable. My interest is piqued over some title at the library dozens upon dozens of times every day that I work. I can't sit down to an hour of careful consideration for each of these titles. I have to design careful analytical tools to discard or keep these books in as little time as possible. I have had to learn to be an extremely efficient judge of books.

I'm not going to go into my full panoply of techniques in this particular post. I just wanted to share with you my starting one:

One second buys two, and two seconds buys ten.

I used this method just this afternoon while shelving in non fiction. I was working with cookbooks and came across a nice looking one. It was called something like Homemade Foods to Make and Give. That was one second of interesting right there, and it bought two. So I randomly opened the book. There was a picture of something all wrapped up in crafty papers and a recipe title: Zucchini Mustard Tea Bread.

It did not buy ten more seconds.

A review of The Fireroast Cafe burrito

I was thinking about this burrito I had at The Fireroast Cafe late this morning with my wife. I was thinking it was a very bad burrito and that I would write a scathing review of it and put it on the Internet. There millions of people would read about the bad burrito, and I would be revenged upon Fireroast Cafe!

But then I thought:

What did The Fireroast Cafe ever do to me?

Except maybe serve me an $8 burrito that was not to my taste.

I don't want The Fireroast Cafe to suffer. I want them to thrive and prosper. I want to help them.

So I offer the recipe for how not to make a burrito:

How Not to Make a Burrito

1. Mix together cooked rice, black beans, corn, and peppers, possibly in a big pot. Cook until hot and soft.

2. Mix in a trace amount of cheese to disappear into the hot mass.

3. Dish out a generous glop onto a big flour tortilla and add absolutely no fresh ingredients of any kind. Especially don't add any avocado.

4. Roll it all up proper burrito fashion and cook it handsomely in a panini press until it has nice grill marks and parts of it are luke warm and parts are scalding hot.

5. Enjoy the not very good burrito somehow, if you can. Also burn your lip. 



"Well fine." You think, especially if you're the owner of The Fireroast Cafe checking your reviews on the Internet. "That's all perfectly condemnatory. But then tell me, smart guy, how should I make a burrito?!"


I don't know. Surprise me.

How to schedule

Where I work, at a largish library, we are scheduled throughout the day on an hourly basis. This is a ticklish business. Scheduling is too important and too big a job for anyone but a manager to do. It's practically a full time job, unless there's no manager around, in which case some random clerk will fix up the schedule, which usually takes a minute or two, but only because they drag it out to feel important.

I have never been in charge of the schedule. But I have patched it, and, more importantly I have spent decades being its victim and beneficiary. This has taught me a few things. Hopefully enough to teach you all our important rules on...

How To Schedule

version 7.28

1. If someone is really good at some job in particular make sure that they are never there more than anyone else as that would be undemocratic.

2. If someone has a hard time, for any reason, with any particular job, make sure to assign them there regularly to prove that you're on to their tricks.

3. Don't assign people who like each other together as they'll just natter on and get along and stuff.

4. Regularly schedule one person in two places at the same time. This will convince everyone that scheduling is a hard, complicated, and dicey procedure.

5. Give people an absolute minimum of time for their projects, unless they look busy and unhealthily obsessed with them, at which point you should assign them to it practically all the time.

6. Don't adjust staffing and job assignments according to workflow and how busy things are. You are already forced to spend way too much time on scheduling to micromanage at that level!

7. When a particularly difficult hole in the schedule comes up or is pointed out to you always plug yourself into the hole like you're a martyr saving the day. Then, instead of doing that job, let everyone cover for you while you go into your office to work on the schedule.

8. Remember: It's not a schedule, it's a reflection of how you feel about everyone.

9. Try not to sweat it too much. No matter what you do there's always going to be some disgruntled wiseacre posting a satirical list of your tiny scheduling shortcomings on the Internet.

Learning Italian

I am finally buckling down to learn Italian for my upcoming trip to Rome. My goals are modest; I merely want to be able to tell people in perfect and natural Italian that I can't really speak Italian. This will confuse them so much that they will speak to me in Italian, but at that point the onus will be on them!

"What onus?" You ask.

Good question!

Anyway, it's a fair bit of work to learn Italian even to this admittedly paltry level, partly because it requires a background knowledge of greetings and numbers and rhythms and the ability to apologize to people. You have to get enough sense of language and the confidence to be able to clearly tell people you don't understand anything, especially in the stressful hurly burly of Roman life.

So the way I am learning all this mastery of non Italian is through a language CD my wife and I keep on a flash drive in our car. Lately I listen to it all the time. It's a good CD, but there is one part I particularly love and cannot stop practicing. It's the emergency section.

With real alarm the Italian speaker cries out "Fuoco!"

This means "Fire!" All day at work I walk around yelling "Fire!" But I do it in Italian, so no one is particularly alarmed. After "Fuoco!" on the CD they yell "Aiuto!"

That means "Help!"

Then there's "Ladro!" Which means "Thief!" This goes really well with "Aiuto!" So whenever anyone sets off the alarm at the security gates of my library I get to cry out "Aiuto, ladro!" which would probably be offensive to a library patron who innocently has a book from another library system that's setting off our security, but only if they were Italian and they understood that what I was yelling at them was "Help, thief!"

Fortunately I have a solution for the off chance that an Italian might be visiting our library and I yelled "Thief!" at them, or screamed that there was a fire, or that someone should call a doctor ("Chiami un dottore!").

I will look reassuringly at them. "Mi dispiace," I will say. "Non parlo davvero Italiano."

Depending upon my delivery, they might understand.

Shall I explain soccer to you?

A co-worker of mine follows a few sports pretty closely. She saw something about Premier League Football on a sports show she was watching and decided she would like to know about soccer. She looked it up on the Internet, but it was seriously confusing. All the leagues and tournaments and presumption of previous knowledge can be bewildering for a neophyte soccer fan. But she was pretty sure I knew something about soccer. So she decided to ask me.

I said "Are you sure? I can kind of go on once I get started."

"No, no." She exclaimed. "I'm sure. I want to know."

But I suspected the limits of her interest. And after just three hours I could tell she was already regretting it.

Top ten super hidden gems of Rome

1. Ponte Rotto

It's a bridge, just off the south tip of Isola Tiberina, you know, in the river. You can't walk on it because it's broken. That flood in 1598 was such a drag! By the time Turner drew it it still had three arches, but after 2,100 years now, we're down to this one arch. So, like, hurry!


2. La Strega Nocciola

It's a gelateria in the Spanish Steps area. But I don't mean the whole gelateria, just the metal bin that contains the lavender flavor.


3. Brick number 27 near Via Monterone 26 (count 27 bricks from the wall vent)

It's just a really special brick, but I'll admit it looks a lot like all the other bricks.


4. The Pinturicchio Frescoes in the Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo

There are 487 better paintings in Rome. There are better paintings than these right in the same church! But, oh these are lovely. So so so lovely. I love them. So just for the hell of it ignore other completely bewildering and mind-blowing Caravaggios nearby, and head over here like you're a Pinturicchio scholar, which, compared to everyone else there, you already practically are!


5. The couch at the window of the cafe I've sworn not to tell anyone about.

Sorry. But you have to admit that's pretty super hidden. And yes, it's good, so good I've been sworn not to tell anyone.


6. Piazza Borghese

Sure, it's a comparatively unremarkable, but also perfectly nice and central, Roman Piazza. It also hosts a little prints and booksellers market regularly where we have sometimes bought vintage postcards. But of course the amazing thing is that this, yes, this is the very spot where the beloved classic movie When in Rome, starring Kristen Bell and Josh Duhamel, was filmed! Partly. With a fake fountain. And when I say "Classic" I mean it got a 25 percent score on metacritic and was critically reviled.

But that doesn't mean it wasn't totally charming. And this is where it happened!


7. Feral art exhibit along the fence in front of the Augustus Mausoleum.

Is it still there? At the fence? On the wall? It's worth taking a chance. It's like a 3D cartoon of the Rome tourist experience.


8. Chiesa di San Rocco

You go in and to the left there is a nave decorated to look like a stone grotto. I just like it. And it's hidden. And it's my list. I don't expect you to like everything here, and besides, you'll be so high from seeing where they filmed the Kristen Bell fountain scenes that you'll barely notice the disappointment.


9. The Palazzo Barberini Cafe

I'll save you the trouble of your exhaustive Internet search and a lot of awkward questions with the Barberini Museum Staff. There is no cafe. I refer to the highly entertaining coin-op espresso machine in a vestibule (a large vestibule) at the Bernini Stairs.


10. I lost it!

This was the best one too! But it is so hidden that I misplaced it. I'm pretty sure it is somewhere sort of near the Vicolo del Divino Amore. Just spend a few fruitless hours poking about near there and it'll probably turn it up. Trust me.

Top ten super hidden gems of Rome, an introduction

My wife and I will soon be going to Rome. This will be our fourth trip. The last trip was only a year and a half ago, and it was for a month, so I'm pretty well acquainted with all the main sights of the city. And as an inveterate researcher and travel blogger I can tell you it doesn't add much to the discussion to say:

"You're going to Rome? You might want to check out the Pantheon."

You've got to dig deeper!

I have dug deeper!

I am going to tell you about the secret, hidden, off-the-beaten-path, little known treasures of Rome.

Now a neophyte traveler might wonder "Rome has over 200 epic, world class, live-up-to-the-hype tourist sights. Why would I need to seek out the obscure ones?"

Thank you for your question neophyte! You will find that even if you go to Rome for a month, and you tramp in and out of every famous place you possibly can, the only question anyone will ever ask when you return is if you went to the one place you didn't go. 

Like "Did you go to the Colosseum?"

There are, technically, three answers to this question:

1. Yes! (But, if this is your answer they won't be asking this question. They will instead be asking about some other place you couldn't get to because you got caught up in the lines at the Colosseum for longer than you expected).

2. No. (Mumbled ashamedly, like you somehow failed your $8,000 vacation to Italy).

or...

3. Pfft. The Colosseum is for amateurs! You do realize it's broken don't you? And that anyone can go and they all do? No, I spent that time poking around illegally in the Mausoleum of Augustus. I brought back what I think is part of his femur. (At which point just keep talking because if you take a single breath they will change the subject since people only pretend to want to hear all about your vacation). 


But it's not just about your superiority and being a more awesome traveler than everyone else, which, as you might gather from the above passage, no one but you will care about anyway, and probably not you very much either when it comes right down to it.

It's about fun. Enjoyment. Satisfaction.

I can't fault your desire to see the Sistine Ceiling, Piazza Navona, the Pantheon, or the Colosseum (though you do realize that the Colosseum is broken and looted, don't you?). Depending on your taste one of these gloried sights might be the greatest experience of your entire 11 hours in Rome. But it also helps to have something a little personal too, something not in the guidebooks, with no pictures on the Internet, that is all yours. Something that is almost like a magical accident, which is the best part of travel, just with the slightest help on your way over to it. 

Which is what I will offer here tomorrow. But first you probably need to gather yourself, and go get a pen and paper for notes. But you're definitely going to want to tune in tomorrow for my top ten list of super hidden gems of Rome. So you might want to save this page for future reference traveler. I have found the best way to do that is to put a piece of tracing paper over this screen and copy everything in colored pencils.

But if there's a new-fangled technique you prefer don't let me stand in the way.

Ideas from the bottom up

Somewhere way back in the early part of Winter I put forth an idea in conversation with my bosses. They kind of liked it, and, getting that sinking feeling that all the things that made it such a good idea might erode away, I tried to emphasize its important features as much as possible. 

Then, resignedly, I let it go. 

Eventually I forgot about it.

But after four or five months it was suddenly unveiled: a new policy, a feature of our work lives. Sure enough most of the good parts were gone, washed away in time. 

I thought:

A good idea is a good idea, until it is taken under consideration.

But after an hour of extreme bitterness, and five or six of sadness, I am willing to become friends with it if I can, in honor of our old acquaintance.

Weather warnings

As I write, my County of Hennepin is under two weather alerts. All my little bookmarked weather sites are glowing with a cautionary orange. And I really like these warnings.

The first one shows that we are under a Fire Weather Watch. Apparently the weather and ground conditions are ripe for spreading even the tiniest spark into a raging fire. We are strongly advised to all stop burning garbage in the backyard, and to keep our magnifying glasses carefully in the shade, and that even a weekend barbecue is probably a bad idea.

And usually we would need to be respectful of this warning, and usually I would be. If only it weren't for the second warning. 

We are under a River Flood Warning too!

So go ahead and have a lovely patio bonfire to celebrate the dry and glorious Spring weather. And if it gets out of control, as there's a good chance it will, fear not. The river will be flooding through here momentarily to put it all out.

Another missing post

So I went out for another Thursday morning walk. I had some blog ideas to come up with. And nothing gets the blog ideas rolling like a bit of incandescent rage. Nothing quite stokes the old genius like the agony of human existence, the pain of being, the sweet burn of injustice. I just had to get that hate train rolling for some raw material, then pound it till it's stretchy and malleable, then shape it into something funny, put a hat on it, and gut it.

So it was just a matter of getting started when I was distracted. I can't remember what exactly it was; a cat walking across the street? The blueness of the sky? A recognition that it was a lovely day to have off? Something sweet my wife said to me, still ringing in my ears, before she went to work? Spring?

And I lost the string.

I had nothing. It was beautiful.