• Please put some wean in Halloween

    My first mistake every fall is buying Halloween candy that I like. It’s never a sure thing that we’ll have any left when the last Trick-or-Treater comes by the house… with me going through the candy like an 80’s rock band went through hair spray. On Halloween night you can find me in my recliner, looking like some caricature of good ‘ole fashioned American Excess. I’ve got one hand on the remote and the other in the candy jar, sitting in a pile of my own empty wrappers.

    I’d have more self-control at a 1/2 off sale at the Apple Store.

  • The “PC” defense

    There was a great article in the St Pete Times several months ago (11/1/2006).

    The gist of the article was that a couple of right-wing-nuts from Hernando County went off on a Muslim group that wanted to have a party at a county park. It started with a Hernando County Commissioner’s wife writing a letter to the editor of the St Pete Times, the Times making a follow-up call for comment, and moved on to the whole thing turning into something a little ugly. Lest we think these were isolated folks, voicing a lonely opinion, the piece characterized the couple in question as “the first couple of Hernando County’s Republican Party.”

    Here are some excerpts from the article:

    A Hernando County commissioner said Tuesday that he is “in total agreement” with a letter his wife wrote calling Islam a “hateful, frightening religion.”

    “Overall, worldwide, it certainly is,” said Commissioner Tom Hogan Sr. “Don’t you read your own paper?”

    “There’s a saying out there, and there’s some truth to it, that not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims. It’s their thing.”

    “Even if they have gotten citizenship, they are not true Americans in my opinion. They all want to kill us.”

    … political correctness keeps many from speaking out. “These people are trying to kill us. They want to kill us. Why can’t you understand that? They say that. It’s written in their bible.”

    She said moderate Muslims haven’t done enough to condemn and stop terrorists. “I don’t want to sound like a raving maniac, but I think some raving is in order,” she said.

    Do these people have a legitimate beef against the “sensitivity police,” or is this nothing more than the raving of people whose beliefs have fallen victim to stereotype and prejudice?

    You didn’t ask but I’ll tell you what I think anyway: right or wrong, it was an irresponsible thing to say. The fact remains that there are millions of peacefull muslims in this country and this kind of talk smacks of justification for mistreatment or abuse.

  • Good News!

    With two October ticks left on the calendar I’m going to take a terrible chance. So far the month of October has been a budgetary success. It marks the first full month of fiscal restraint and we’ve done better than I expected. By all estimates we’re going to come in under budget, with a couple of key fixed expense categories under historical averages. The big one is groceries; our single biggest budget outlay. Using a combined approach: watching the extras, planning meals, eliminating prepared/frozen meals, and seeking less expensive alternatives (to name brands); it looks like we’re going to cut our grocery expenses for the month by a whopping thirty percent. I don’t mind singing my own praises… thirty percent is a pretty big number, in this context.

    Most importantly, we were able to save money without a single night where my wife and I refused to speak to each other. We came pretty close – like when I popped her for dropping a twenty on Busch Gardens’ food three weeks ago. Although in my defense Busch Gardens’ food is pretty lousy, especially when you consider the Golden Arches across the street at a quarter the price. Anytime Mickey D compares favorably to anyone’s food, you know there’s a good point just waiting to be made.

    In leisure news, this weekend past went pretty well… sports news not withstanding. With all of this cool weather I had the opportunity to vary my sitting around; alternating rooms and the outdoors. Adam was the biggest beneficiary, taking the opportunity to master his slide-climbing technique, brush up on his sidewalk chalking, and take up a new activity: citrus slinging. The limes on our tree out back were ripe for the picking and I had the kids out back for the semi-annual lime-aid event. Beth and I picked the prime candidates for a refreshing drink, while Adam claimed the low-hanging fruit purely for sport.

    The little guy had a ball (pun intended), and the rest of us learned that limes have surprising resiliency.

    My biggest mistake of the weekend was demonstrating the use of a big stick (recently liberated from a sizable tree limb) in the place of a three iron. Somebody had a lot of fun though.