More Rambling....

“Today is NOT a good day for riding a bicycle” I was told Tuesday by a lady at the airport.

She was correct. It was the first time this year that I wished I had used the car instead.

About an inch of rain fell during the 11-mile trip and my rain gear completely failed. For some reason, my “waterproof” rain jacket leaked. And my “waterproof” rain pants leaked. My shoes filled with water. I was soaking wet from top to bottom.

When I finally got home and changed into dry clothes, I had to drink a couple pots of Earl Gray just to get the body temperature back to normal.

Later I watched the election results on TV. It was nice to see a balance of power return to Washington, D.C., but the talking heads were unbearable. Wolf Blitzer is a drone and I can’t stand Anderson Cooper. Jeff Greenfield is torture.

Then there’s Bill O’Reilly. I heard him on the radio the other day. He has boiled everything down to SPs (secular progressives) and “Culture Warriors.” You can determine which one you are by visiting his website and taking a test. Oddly enough, Ted Haggard would qualify as a “Culture Warrior,” even though he enjoys snorting meth and engaging in forbidden man sex and cheating on his wife. Go figure.

Of course, O’Reilly’s entire premise is simplistic, ridiculous and patently false. It’s a little make believe world that he lives in. What’s next? You’re either a Hamburglar or Mayor McCheese? You can be one, or the other. That’s it.

Look around at your friends and neighbors. Are their views black and white? Do they all fit into neat little categories? Do you? Probably not. Most of us believe in a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, and we're full of contradictions. And we change our minds. We flip and flop, and flip again. We're all over the map.

There are a lot of extremely intelligent and articulate conservatives out there who have interesting and illuminating things to say. Why waste the airwaves with dipshits like O’Reilly, Hannity et al?

But I digress.

The mindless blathering got to me so I did something I haven’t done since last winter – I played Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. I rarely play video games, but it was my day off and I had about 90 minutes to “kill” before we planned to watch a movie.

For those not familiar with the Vice City, it’s a game in which you play a bad ass thug named Tommy Vercetti. He goes to Vice City to transact a cocaine deal, but it’s a setup and he loses everything.

Now he must get the money back. To do so, he has to interact with all sorts of low-life gangsters. But that’s not a problem, because Tony is a low-life gangster himself. He’s cool. He doesn’t take shit from anybody.

You go on missions – jury intimidation, executions, building demolition. You start riots, destroy things and kill people. Lots of car-jacking.

It’s non-stop fun and action, with a rockin’ 1980s soundtrack. It’s a great game. It’s like you become a character in your favorite gangster movie. Rated M for mature.

After chasing a fat guy down the streets of Vice City and cutting him in half with a chainsaw, I get hungry, which brings up my favorite topic – food.

Fall is the time to eat squash. I’ve been making a lot of zucchini pancakes. That’s a pretty boneheadedly simple thing to make. Grate, add an egg, some salt and spice. Fry. Eat.

I recently stopped by the Grace Good Shepherd garden on Hiller Road to chat with Stan. Next thing I knew I had a backpack filled with different types of squash. This was in addition to the zucchini I had already purchased at the store.

Spaghetti squash lived up to its name. After cutting it and cleaning out the seeds, you bake the hell out of it and then use a fork to scrape out the meat. It looks like spaghetti. Being that it looks like spaghetti, a logical thing to do is serve it like spaghetti with sauce. Pretty good stuff. And healthy.


Every morning I inspect the new roof on the garage and hope to hell that I don’t find any leaks. I put a lot of time, effort and money into that roof this summer and, if it were to leak, there’s a good chance I would crawl into the fetal position and start sobbing. Well, maybe not. I’d probably try to figure out how to fix it.

The good news is that I’ve yet to find a single leak. The real test will come after some serious windstorms.

Speaking of roofing, I found a sweet pair of tin snips today while biking to work. They were in the roadway at Sutter and Central. They probably fell off a construction rig leaving Thomas Home Center. Tin snips are a handy tool.

I’m hoping that this becomes a trend – free tools in the roadway. I’ll keep my eyes open.