Tag Archives: house

Down to the wire…

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Today being the single most non-productive work day in my professional life, I had time to ponder the ineptitude with witch our elected officials are managing the country’s business. As we march on towards midnight on the east coast, a few words come to mind. Among them are pathetic, inexcusable, farcical, shameful, and just plain disgusting. Watching these “representatives” of the people allow the government to slip minute by minute towards shutdown, insolvency, and deadlock should be disheartening to anyone who goes to work every day and is actually expected to get their job done.

A friend posted something on my Facebook wall this morning, that I think sums it up better than I can at the moment: “Other countries may have coups, revolutions, and collapses, but a government so deadlocked it simply ceases to function seems to be an exclusively American phenomenon.” The quote is attributed to Foreign Policy, and it should be plastered on all of our minds the next time we head to the polls. That the government of our republic can be thrown into this kind of turmoil by congressional inability to accomplish one of the few tasks specifically assigned to it by the Constitution would be laughable if it weren’t so pathetic.

I’m embarrassed for them… and for us.

Plan? What plan?

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I’ve seen some jacked up things in my time with Uncle Sam, but nothing in that time even comes close to the inability of senior departmental officials to communicate even the most basic of information to the workforce. The same workforce they’ll be asking in a few hours to execute a currently unknown plan to shut down a very large portion of the department. Surely at this stage there’s a plan, right? I mean it’s been in a file somewhere collecting dust since the early 1980s and occasionally trotted out and updated once or twice a decade since then under circumstances very similar to these. All I’m suggesting is that hows and whats of standing down the department shouldn’t really be a surprise to you at this point.

One of the things they beat into our heads at Army school way back in 2003 was that leadership is mostly about taking care of people. That and not losing too many things. Losing things is considered bad form in a leader and is frowned upon. From what I’ve observed from the belly of the beast over the last four days, not one member of Official Washington has shown anything passing for a shred of leadership ability… or really displayed any redeeming social value whatsoever.

Homeowners Confederation…

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It seems that there are now enough lots in the subdivision sold to warrant the handover of the homeowner’s association from the builder to the actual homeowners. Actually, it’s not the builder… Two of them went bankrupt trying to build the place out, so we’re actually dealing with the a holding company who probably can’t get the place handed over fast enough.

Usually I wouldn’t bother with these meetings, but in the interests of trying to hold the usual extremists at bay, I figure showing up is the least I can do. Given the level of neighborly involvement here, I fully expect this to be a homeowner’s confederation rather than an actual rule-making or enforcement body. Once I’ve assured myself that the couple of activists aren’t going to run away with things, I plan on going back to ignoring 99% of what goes on here.

Dog…

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I’ve been kicking it around for a long time and I think I want a dog. I know I’m not home on a consistent enough basis at this point to even think about getting one, but having a dog would be nice. There was always a dog nocking around while I was growing up and now that I’ve got the space the only thing holding me back is the amount of time I’m not here. I’m putting a bookmark in the idea, but it’s going to on my list of things to do… How’s that for your random thought of the day?

Rock…

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It was supposed to be a project over the long weekend, but coming home this evening, I found (literally) a ton of field stone had been shoved off a truck and spread across my front yard. That’s the sort of utter disorganization and chaos that I simply can’t tolerate. Three hours later, the front flower beds are edged, the pallet is broken down, and I may never be able to stand up straight again. The light was fading fast when I was wrapping up, but as far as I can tell, it looks damned good for my first effort at dry stone stacking. It’s always fun when home improvement meets OCD.