In too deep? Cut it out.

Well, I suppose the big news around here right now is that we topped out at 80 F today, March 25, missing the all-time record by a mere 8 degrees. It was a great day all around.

And in other news, I took a circular saw to the outmoded whirlpool bathtub on the main floor, and converted it to a walk-in type. These are very popular and very expensive amongst the assisted-living crowd, but I’m sure the net effect was to lower our property values by a few thousand Washingtons.

The whirlpool sides were too high for J to vault comfortably, and the tub never belonged there in the first place. A standard tub was removed, and some space in an adjoining closet had been annexed to provide for the bigger receptacle. Before we bought the place, the contractor who had been fixing it for the owner had to change a lot of plumbing and stop a serious leak in the drain system. Even that wasn’t enough to make the tub all that attractive to bathers. The whirlpool initially coughed up green water and plaster dust, and despite repeated cleanings, it seemed unlikely ever to resemble something that would be found in Better Homes and Gardens. We used it only twice in two years.

A shower stall, on the other hand, would prove prohibitively expensive. So I cut to the chase, so to speak, and over two days fashioned the new look. The problem of supporting the shower curtain over the 20 inch open space was solved with a plexiglass panel that hooks over the side of the tub. The electrical connections have been rendered inoperative, which will solve the problem of guests thinking they’re turning on the vent fan and getting an obscene burp from the jacuzzi. The old nozzles have been covered by glued-on rubber drain stoppers.

There’s still work to do. The water in the Great Miami Aquifer is notoriously hard, and it takes only a few weeks for rust stains to attach to walls and curtains. The easy part is finished. Now I gotta clean the grout.

SMART for life.

Rebuilding a computer that's gone bad is not easy. It takes a lot of time and better-than-average familiarity with the inner workings of a computer.

I've been trying to do that now for two days for a colleague. But this computer presents its own set of issues. The hard drive (as most do) has a "health monitor" called SMART, which warns you when you boot it that the disk drive is pretty well on its last legs, and you best get your act together and save anything worth saving to another medium before the drive goes to the big recycle center in the sky.

Rather than get into the boring details, let me just say that we're on the way to recovery. It won't be perfect, but neither will it be a total loss.

Wouldn't it be nice if we had a SMART system built into our lives that would start flashing warnings like "Death is Nature's way of telling you to slow down" when you're veering towards self-destruction? I'm not talking, necessarily, about the physical part. There's tons of physicians willing to take your case if you are interested.

No, what I mean is, I guess, a kind of seventh sense that says "you know, given your future potential, you need to start wearing a helmet when you're on your Harley." And then, just in case you missed the message, it would accompany the text crawler with an in-skull video of a morgue drawer being pulled out, with you in a torn leather jacket sleeping the eternal sleep of the un-helmeted. And you'd see that vision periodically, like every time you turned the ignition key.

I don't think it's that we're by design inclined to ignore wisdom when it confronts us. It may be more that we obey the Law of Inertia more than we know: things like to keep on doing what they're already doing. Same holds true of those asteroids that are supposed to collide with earth over the next few decades. Ditto for beliefs, biases and bodies.

Trouble is, if you obey the Law of Inertia, the Law of Averages will gitcha.

To our daylight, the times change.

Another fine day, with another cold night. And the end of a weekend that costs us an hour of sleep.

J had an enormous cold, probably the worst one she's ever had, brought to her by the friendly infant elfin granddaughter who chose to share her infection by coughing in her grandmother's face. Or perhaps her grandmother aimed her at her face accidentally by playing a grandmother game, known as "I'll Get You to Smile Even If I Have to Let You Cough in My Face."

On the animal front, Gary the Groundhog put in two or three appearances. We had not seen him since last fall. It appears that he may have wintered under the tool shed at the back of our neighbor's garage.

Sitting out on the deck this early evening, basking in a warmth that was tempered by the occasional gust of lingering chill wind from Canada, we saw Ardie again. This time, s/he was flying just about 60 feet above the rooftops, probably wanting a closer look at the critters on the deck. A house finch landed on our handrail and cocked a worried eye at us. He took off again and landed a little farther away. Finally deciding, most likely, that we posed no serious threat, he flew down to the sunflower seed feeder to join the other boys and girls who are always there if there is anything left.

Little Red, the tiny red squirrel who valiantly dragged a snowman's scarf halfway across the yard but abandoned the effort when he saw how improbably difficult it would be to haul it up the tree, appeared late in the afternoon. After skittering about amongst connecting branches, he sat on a limb about twenty feet away to partake of something nutlike. We could hear his tiny teeth clicking against each other as he devoured whatever it was.

I finally got to meet and chat with a neighbor lady for the first time in two years. As we mused about this and that, I learned about some of the original gossip and the changes that had been made during the many years she had lived on the street. I had not realized, for example, that the demolition crews were already at work on one of our city's two hospitals.

And so, it was another fine day. Almost enough to take the mind off the global warring crises.

Delight come and we wanna stay home.

Was that a day!

With the temperature soaring into the Fahrenheit of warmth, and the sun blazing down with only minimal pollution to stop it, the back of winter was broken today. Lovers were strolling down the streets in short-sleeved shirts and tattoos, while motorists' elbows appeared once more on the left side of their cars.

J and I sat out on the deck for the first time since winter began. The birds were beginning their spring rituals of alternately singing and fighting for territory. After a while, Ardy flew over. Shortly after that, Ardy-Two followed in his trail. Most spectacular was the persistent pecking of the pileated woodpecker who decided to put on a show for us in the trees in the back lot.

The sound of the motorcycle was again heard in the land. Harley a day goes by without it once spring comes. And yet, we're early. Officially we're still a couple of weeks away. Nevertheless, we savor every beautiful day that does not mandate the closing of double-paned windows and the locking of storm doors.

So too the incredible realization that THERE ARE NO BUGS OUT HERE!

Summer is beautiful in its own way, but this few weeks of early spring allow the spirit to revive without the droning and piercing of insect wings and mouth parts. It is possible to eat outdoors without ingesting unwanted extra protein supplements.

More subtly, I guess it's the realization that it can only get better: that soon the annoyance of having to don two coats and mitts and the occasional tuque will give way to the ease of exiting without extra drapery.

We were meant to live this way.

Time tickets away.

Today proved to be a bit harrowing. It was the day immediately before the scheduled 8:30 a.m. court appearance mandated for any driver who doesn't pay a ticket on time. In my case, it was a ticket previously blogged that would have involved $130 for driving without valid license tags.

I had made two telephone attempts last week, plus an appearance in person at the court offices to pay the fine. There would be no point in contesting it. It would have been obvious because the bright yellow sticker was four months out of date, while I had it in my head that license plate renewals were valid for two years, just like operator permits.

But after a couple of phone calls to the police department which included not being able to contact the officer involved, I panicked and drove once more to the court office. Again, they found no evidence that a ticket had been written. At that point, they checked with the police office next door, and determined that the charge had been dismissed.

Needless to say, I was grateful. I told them that I was sorry I couldn't buy roses for them, but that the two ladies in the office should consider themselves bouqueted. If that's a verb. Actually, I don't think I knew what I was saying.

The whole thing saved me shelling out $130.00

I later contacted the officer who reassured me that it was indeed dismissed. I told him that what I had learned from all this was that it wouldn't happen again, he replied, "I think that's a pretty safe bet. Have a nice day!"

It was a nice day. Thank you, officer. You two, ladies.

Do bears sleep in the woods?

Did you ever wonder where bears go in the winter? I think I found the place. The Thrift Shop.

Every time J and I visit the local thrift stores, whether they are Thrift Shops or Salvation Army stores or Goodwill outlets, we inevitably see evidence that bears hibernate in these stores by choice.

First, they put a tag on their toes, with a number on it. This number apparently is a warning to whoever interrupts their sleep that there will be some small price to pay for this action.

Then, they find themselves a place to hang out, which may sometimes be a hook or a shelf, or a table or even an old couch or rocking chair. I have seen a number of them holed up in a big hammock made of netting. As soon as things settle down, they apparently go to sleep. I always think that the ones that hang upside down are somewhat batty.

In the light of global warming, this strange habit of bears may be a good thing. Even in cold, remote Russia, there are bears that are going without hibernating. It is important, I think, that some bears, not just sun-bears, preserve this longstanding tradition of hibernation.

When you approach a tagged bear and turn over its toe tag to see what its number is, it inevitably wakes up and leaps into your arms. It seems heartless to put the animal back after that. And so a bear or two will generally find itself snuggling into your bed or a bookshelf or a mantel, settling back into a far more comfortable state of hibernation.

The latest one is Ferguson.

It ain't no calamity, Jane.

For the past two days, the library where I work has been dead in the water. It all began when four out of the five disk drives on our main server failed at the same time. These drives operate in a mode in which every bit of data which is written to the first drive is copied to the remaining drives so that if one drive fails, another one instantly takes over. This is the way banks and other transaction-intensive systems work.

In the best traditions of "the show must go on", I did not cancel the seniors computer class on Friday. One computer was working, which was the instructor's machine, because it was able to bypass the computer that regulates access to our public computers. So I set up the projector, and the five people who were registered arrived, and we commenced with something more akin to a demonstration than a hands-on session.

The subject was Microsoft Word XP, and we worked out way through a few of the more interesting things, like how to put tables into a document, and how to put pictures into tables. Suddenly the lights flickered several times, and the entire place plunged into darkness. The lights then came back on, and the computer rebooted and I resumed where I left off: showing how the Declaration of Independence could be imported from a website into a two-column newsletter.

The lights flickered and dropped a second time, and the computer died once more. One of the students rose and put on her coat, at which point we all agreed it was time to leave. Meanwhile, anyone who was in the library building and not on staff pretty much exited as well.

It turned out that the cause of this problem was a cold front that brought wind gusts to 50 miles an hour and higher. So now the library was without power as well as without a computer system.

It is a very rare occurrence for most libraries to be closed at times when they are normally open. Sometimes patrons become upset and unreasonable in their reaction to the closing, especially those who use the library primarily as a form of public shelter when other institutions are closed. Parents who are accustomed to leaving their latchkey children in the library until they can pick them up after work are also affected. But normally, libraries tend to stay open as long as they can without endangering the public or the staff.

Schools, with all the liabilities involved in busing and child care tend to close at the slightest sign of disruption. That didn't happen in Cincinnati this year at the commencement of our first major storm. For some reason, the administration dismissed the kids at the usual time, even though there was icing and snow happening earlier in the day. As a result there were reports of some children sitting on school buses for five hours before they arrived home. The next storm, things were different. The schools were closed even though the roads were pretty much clear.

In this area, the schools have five "calamity days" before time has to be made up. According to the Free Dictionary, a calamity is:
  1. An event that brings terrible loss, lasting distress, or severe affliction; a disaster: A hurricane would be a calamity for this low-lying coastal region.
  2. Dire distress resulting from loss or tragedy.

Seems like a bit of semantic escalation to call a winter storm a calamity. Perhaps "inconvenience days" would be a more reasonable term. Calamity? Think Katrina. Think Iraq.