Random musings …<\/p>\n
You might remember (and possibly even care!) that I’ve been sanding cabinets<\/a> in hopes of returning my kitchen to its 1950s splendor. You guys have been more than helpful with advice. It was so good I even took most of it!<\/p>\n Today’s been dry and sunny, so I spent the afternoon outside with cabinet doors, paint stripper, and an orbital sander. Pleasant work in pleasant conditions. But I got depressingly little done, and when I look at the acres of cabinets left to do, I quail (and perhaps even mallard and condor).<\/p>\n So I had a bloody Mary and contemplated bagging this operation and doing something easier but maybe a little quirky. Like painting the cabinets black. Or at least charcoal gray (very 50s looking, that, especially with the ridiculous pink countertops). I’m not sure whether that’s the bloody Mary talking or just common sense. The wood is turning out to have a lot of damage — water stains, burns, gouges — and it’s not as if it’s anything particularly elegant or has stunningly well-matched grain or anything. It’s just old, damaged maple veneer.<\/p>\n So am I just lazy, or would painting the cabinets (a weekend’s work, rather than an entire winter’s) be the course of wisdom? <\/p>\n Maybe another bloody Mary would help me decide.<\/p>\n —–<\/p>\n For the last few weeks I’ve been the assigned email contact for the local animal-rescue group. Can’t say I really know what I’m doing yet. I just forward legitimate messages to the various board members or foster families, reply to what I can, and delete the spam. <\/p>\n This morning an email arrived from what looked like a possibly legitimate source. But it contained nothing but a link, which didn’t look legitimate at all. So I deleted the message.<\/p>\n Few hours later, an email comes in from the same address — a real one this time — frothing with illiterate indignation. To wit:<\/p>\n I have not sent anything as far a connecting up to any links to any of you…..so my thanks go out to my daughter and her husband … for letting me know that I should change my password to my hotmail account ASAP…as each and every one of you should do too. Do it now….don’t wait!!<\/p>\n Seems like that some people in this world have nothing better to do with their time and their little lifes, than to get into other peoples personal business and destroy things.<\/p>\n So, I apologize for the acts of some poor fool out there in this big wide world, that has nothing better to do than to breach someones contact list and attatch a virus to it……..I hope that they catch them and hang them by their toenails!!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Notice: Not the slightest indication she realizes that the “fool” who hijacked her address book isn’t the only fool involved here. <\/p>\n Somehow, this woman strikes me as a one-person microcosm of the real world: a piss-poor education, a complete lack of any sense of responsibility, an iron sense of entitlement, cluelessness about self-defense, a conviction of her own superiority, and a certainty that everybody else should be harshly punished for “making” her a victim.<\/p>\n —–<\/p>\n Apparently, there’s a scientific reason<\/a> why airline food tasts so awful. I don’t buy it, though. That doesn’t explain why it usually looks<\/i> as Swanson’s TV-Dinnerish<\/a> as it tastes.<\/p>\n —–<\/p>\n