When asking the pharmacist for advice, it is usually considered out of bounds to ask the pharmacist to look at the thing on your back so that she can recommend what you put on it.

And no, the pharmacy doesn’t sell brain bleach for the image that flashed through my mind of what Quasimodo might have on her back that caused that interaction.

• Someday, I will move somewhere where there is nothing but soft loamy soil down a few feet.  It seems everywhere I’ve ever had to dig a hole I run into clay, and it’s getting quite tiresome to have to spend more time getting the dirt off the shovel than it did getting it on. 
• Digging out a low hill side to set garden beds is a wonderful workout.  The five pounds of muddy clay on each of my shoes alone made for a great leg regimin.
• The new garden boxes are constructed, placed, set, and staked into the ground.  Now to fill them with dirt.
• BooBoo quote of the day:  “Daddy, you’re a mess.”  At the time, you couldn’t tell that my pants were green, and my white tee shirt looked like it had been through a cement mixer at a terra cotta plant.  The boy seems to have a gift for understatement.
• You know you’ve done a good days work when the shower water running off of you is orange for the first three or four minutes.
• This year we really tried to plan our outside work in that sweet spot between freezing cold and boiling hot.  However, the weather isn’t cooperating.  It was 80+ degrees out with humidity today.  In March.  I’m beginning to think I’m a weather jinx.
• It’s amazing how good a hot meal, a Guinness, and some aspirin can make you feel.

When drafting and trouble-shooting a perl script, it is not enough to make sure everything is formatted properly, gets and processes its inputs, and opens and writes to all of the necessary logs.  It is also necessary to put the commands that actually do what you bloody well wanted the script to do in the bloody script in the first bloody place.

F.M.L.

Well, that’s two hours of my life I’ll never be able to give back to myself.

• When the day starts by reading a 102 degree fever in your youngest, it’s not a good sign.
• I love our pediatrician.  Not only was she able to get us in early today, but her office staff is prepared for just about everything.  The power went out in the office about halfway through our appointment.  The staff calmly found their way around the office by the light of their cellphones, broke out flashlights and chem-lights, and distributed them to the young patients so they wouldn’t be afraid of the sudden dark.
• Holding a 50 pound four year old down so that samples for strep throat and influenza can be taken should be considered a martial art.
• Good news – Boo was negative for strep
• Bad news – Boo was positive for influenza
• Worse news – I just took my own temperature, and it’s just a hair shy of 100 degrees.
• My doctor was gracious enough to call in prescriptions for Tamiflu for Irish Woman, Girlie Bear, and me. Hopefully this means I will be back to 100% in a few days.
• Thank goodness for good insurance.  The retail price for a 5 day dose of children’s Tamiflu is over $200.  Our cost was about $35.

• You know you’re a grownup when sleeping in past 7 AM feels absolutely decedent.
• Spring must be here.  The wait to check out at the hardware store/lumber yard was 30 minutes, and all of the men had outdoor project supplies.
• Requests to purchase chicks to raise for meat and eggs have been officially denied by higher command.
• Borrowing a method of accounting from another blogger, I can report that today I bought three Mosin Nagant 91/30 rifles worth of lumber and hardware this morning.
• It’s amazing how easily and quickly I can knock together raised garden beds when I refuse to do anything until Irish Woman provides me with a to-scale diagram of what she wants, complete with measurements.
• Just for future reference, two 1″ X 6″ boards lined up do not come to a 12 inch expanse.  It comes to 11 3/8 inches.  Please plan accordingly.
• Also, remember how to multiply complex fractions.
• When I get to heaven, I’m going to look up the Irish Woman’s ancestors and thank them profusely  for giving her good taste in bourbon.
• There ain’t no drama like family drama, ’cause family drama don’t stop.

• It’s a sad state of affairs when you consider spending more on a new roof than you did on your first three cars combined as a “good deal”.
• There is nothing quite as funky as the stuff you find underneath and behind a set of wooden shelves that have been in the basement as long as the house has stood.
• A set of new steel shelves looks so nice before you put all your crap on it.
• I have given even more proof to the household belief that I cannot do a project without bleeding all over it.
• There is something satisfying about being able to report to your wife that the dishes are all done, the laundry is caught up, all of the floors have been mopped, and the pizza man is on his way when she gets home.
• Laying down for a ‘nap’ at 6 PM and not waking up until 6 AM the next morning feels pretty darn good.

If your wife is debating whether she wants to eat the left-over Chinese food from last night or the hamburger stew she made tonight for dinner, do not use the phrase “You ought to eat your own dog food” when she asks for your input.

Like I said on Friday, parts of my area got the hammer dropped on them pretty hard by tornadoes, rain, and now snow.  The towns of Marysville and Henryville, Indiana, and West Liberty, Kentucky, and a lot of other places are hurting right now.  The outpouring of support from Louisville and beyond has been immense.

A friend of ours was caught in the tornado in Henryville when she was on the way to the Catholic church there for a fish fry.  She got to the church basement just as the tornado hit, and has been working there pretty much non-stop since.  She reports that a group of people from Louisville showed up on Saturday to help, and have been doing everything they can.  One of them looked for a place to put the trash and debris they were clearing away from the church and its area, and asked where the dumpsters were.  Her answer was simply “There aren’t any.  They blew away.”  Our friend reports that the lady made a cell-phone call to 1-800-GOT-JUNK, a business that specializes in hauling off stuff and renting dumpsters.  After she explained where she was calling from and what she needed, she was patched through to the top of that companies food chain, and was told to expect dumpsters and trucks by sundown.  By sundown, trucks, dumpsters, and other supplies had arrived in the area.

Another lady in that group noticed that the water wasn’t working and that the toilets had to be hand filled.  She made a call to several of the companies in the area that rent port-a-potties, and on Sunday they started trucking them in.

One of my brother-in-laws is an EMT with one of the local ambulance companies, and he’s been at work pretty much non-stop since Friday morning.  He’s not sharing any of the stories of what he’s been doing, but I know he’s exhausted.  Today he took a break and posted about two programs from Duracell that I want to point out.  First, there’s the “Power Those Who Protect Us” campaign, in which the company donated 18,000,000 batteries to volunteer fire departments around the country.  Some of those batteries are being used in the recovery and relief efforts in Indiana and Kentucky right now.  He also said that the Duracell Power Relief Trailer is also making the rounds in the area. This program allows people in impacted areas to recharge devices, use satellite phones, and use computers to get messages out.

My BIL also reports that the Tide detergent people are helping out with their Loads of Hope program. This effort brings brings a mobile laundry to disaster zones so that those in need have clean clothes.  It’s a sanitation and morale booster, and a lot of us know just how good it feels to put on clean clothes after days spent working in filthy conditions.

I’m sure there are other examples I don’t know specifics about.  My friend in Henryville reports that the basement of that Catholic church is stuffed to the gills with donated relief supplies, and they’re being replaced as fast as they can be given out.  Someone is donating those supplies, and someone is transporting them into the disaster zone.  No-one seems to be advertising their work, so I can’t finger those doing it.

So what’s my point?

We just witnessed a summer where the media splashed scenes of people protesting the evils of large corporations.  Companies were accused of being crooked thieves who did nothing but suck the lifeblood out of communities and the common man.  We were led to believe that capitalism and corporations could never be a force for good.

In these communities, large corporations are giving back to their customers when they need it.  They’re not asking for payment to do it, and other than having their logo on the side of the trucks and the bags they hand out, they’re not asking for people to buy their product.  All they’re doing is making sure that what they can do, they are doing.

Now I ask, where are the Occupy Louisville people?  Are they breaking down their tents, cleaning them up, and donating them to families that need the shelter?  Are they travelling the 30 miles or so from downtown Louisville to help clean up or hand out relief supplies?  I see no evidence of it on the news, and no reports from people I know who are actually working in the disaster zones.

We, as people who believe that even with all of its inherent flaws the market finds a way to do good, need to stress these things when confronted by those who want to tear the system down.  When I see an army of hippies descending on these areas, I will listen more intently to their chants about the evils of capitalism.  When their energy is focused on aiding those truly in need, I will buy that their hearts are in the right place.

Until then, I’m just going to remember the ‘evil’ corporations that opened their pocketbooks and warehouses to help people I know.

• I love ceiling fans.  However, we should substitute time on a chain gang for a few years installing them on ceilings that are just barely too tall to reach comfortably.
• History sometimes rhymes.  After the 1974 tornado outbreak, it snowed.  Friday, it was in the high 70’s and muggy, followed by F3 and F4 tornadoes. Today, it was 40 degrees and snowing.
• We got lucky and got the shingles for our new roof at 1/3 the price we expected to.  I guess sometimes the stars line up just right.  No, I am not doing my own roof.  I’ve done that enough for one lifetime, thank you very much.
• Irish Woman and the kids planted 72 broccoli and cauliflower seeds.  Either they’re expecting a lot of seeds to not sprout, or I’m going to be building more garden beds than I expect.
• I must be doing something right.  Girlie Bear and I watched the first episode of “Band of Brothers” on Friday, and now she wants to watch the rest and read the book.  Heck, this might make a good excuse to buy her her very own Garand.
• I have the coolest wife in the world.  She asked me what calibers I am low on in the ammunition stockpile and then suggested that the family needs an iPad.
• You know when you’re in a rural eatery when you hear a mother use the term “slap the stupid out of you” when correcting one of her children and no-one bats an eye.

Jim Cantore from the Weather Channel is in Louisville.  I will take that as a bad omen.

Every time I see him, the weather sucks where he is.  I’m beginning to think he’s a jinx.

I mean, correlation means causation, right?