Apr. 10th, 2011

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Lots of stuff happening around and too me lately. Nothing really momentous, but lots of stuff.

Still getting worked up by my new doctor for high blood pressure and elevated blood sugar. Diagnosis isn't official yet. But both my parents have hypertension, so no real surprise there. I'm still hoping that the blood sugar reading was due to the test being done right after lunch that day. the solution to both of these is to lose weight, and get in better physical shape.

So I'm restarting my diet and more or less daily exercise. both of these died under the onslaught of all the snow last winter. Gotta get my hernia evaluated for clearance for more vigourous exercise. I'm hoping that won't need surgical repair.

My parent's health are getting better. Dad is still recovering from the complications of his hernia surgery and that is likely to take many more months. Mom has flipped into depression, so she is not doing much except existence lately.

My parent's house has a bunch of work needing to be done to it. Roof needs to be redone, and since water got inside the roof, there is a moderate amount of rotten boards and siding around the house that need replacing. The tenants in the rental house are still crooks, and we are going through the slow and expensive process of evicting them for not paying their rent.

The boom lift we rented to fix the roof on the rental house still had a couple weeks left on the contract, so we got it moved home so we could use it on our house. But my youngest brother didn't listen when we told him not to drive it on the muddy yard, and got it stuck in the mud. then my dad and my other two brothers didn't listen to me when I suggested that we call the big honking tow truck to pull it out. So a succession of my brothers and their acomplices have been trying to get the thing unstuck from the mud in the side yard all week. They have moved it around a bit. Mostly they have moved it downward. Now the side yard is all chewed up into a muddy mess, and all four wheels of the lift are axle-deep in the mud. I don't know if even the big honking tow truck will have enough yank in it to pull this out. But, since they disregarded my input on how to get it out, I feel no obligation towards getting the thing out anymore. They took charge of the problem, it's all their's now.

But there are still repairs to perform on the house. I don't know how they are going to get done now. But I'm sure I'll be doing them this summer. *sighs*

To further complicate things, in the swamp behind my parent's house, a developer is sleazing in a small housing development under the 40B low income housing process. The 40B process is designed to bypass all the town zoning rules to allow developers to build low income housing in towns that don't have enough low income housing. Which is the only way that this development would ever be approved, as it is basically being built in a swamp. The septic systems are gonna fail every other spring when the water table rises up. The whole swamp is a 25 year flood plain. Bad place to build a house, let alone the twenty or so units that he intends to build there. But quick profits by sleazeball builders beat out all rationality as long as 25% of the units are the magical low income units that our town has been determined to be low on.

Across the river, another sleazeball builder is using the same 40B process to put in a 100+ unit development in the ten year flood plain. I foresee nothing good happening there.
dalesql: (Pi)
The NESFA meeting is bogged down in discussing the mutinia of reprinting some of the books, so I'm taking a bit of time to catch up on online stuff.

this week I've got my annual review at work. Cross my fingers there, hopes for a small raise in pay there, after a couple years of pay freeze. Also this week is my much delayed appointment to get a crown put in. Between delays from the dental insurance plan approving the treatment plan, then the dentist's office was shut down two different times on the day of my appointments by water problems. Hope it will actually happen this time, as what's left of the tooth is literally falling apart.

next weekend (april 15-17) is the New England folk Festival. http://www.neffa.org/
I'll be volunteering at the festival, mostly setup and teardown as I have other stuff planned for saturday. If you like traditional music and crafts, it's worth a visit. Admission is free, but parking nearby runs out fairly quickly. So if you are bringing kids, or are mobility impaired, come early. It's at Mansfield high school and middle school complex.

The following weekend is ANIME BOSTON. (april 22-24) http://www.animeboston.com/
I'm going to be dealing blackjack in the game room saturday evening and sunday afternoon. If you are coming to the con, consider dropping in to say hello and maybe play a few hands.

I suppose I'll have to send some paperwork to the IRS th is month too. Busy, busy, busy....
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I've been reading in the news periodically about how all the machine guns that the mexican drug gangs have been using in their battles were all being purchased at gun shows in the USA and being smuggled south. Well, I call bullshit on that.

I was at a gun show last week. Yes, there were many pistols and rifles for sale. But, I saw on a table an actual machine gun for sale. The price tag was $26,500. But real full auto AK-47s can be bought in various south american countries for 50-100 dollars US. And the drug cartels already have ongoing arrangements to ship tons of cocaine up from places like Columbia. Why pay that much money for a US machine gun when you can get the same one for a tiny fraction of the cost from people you already have a business arrangement with?

Just doesn't pass the common sense test.

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