Woot!
With the Ks coming next week (with Kitten), the Big Plan is to do some major work in the Old Guest Room to turn it into the New Katherine Room. Which presupposes moving everything out of the Old Guest Room. Which presupposes a place to move it to.
The obvious place being the Loft, temporarily. Except that the left was Full of Stuff, i.e., all the stuff that was left from the New Guest Room conversion.
- Boxes of stuff Margie had brought home from a couple of office moves.
- Boxes of cables and keyboards and other technology cruft from a decade in the house
- Three old PCs — four, including Katherine’s used notebook.
- Bits and pieces, dribs and drabs.
All. Done.
Margie stuff sorted, lots tossed, rest put away or reboxed to take back to the office.
Cables and keyboards and couplers (oh my!) all sorted out into their own boxes and esconced in nice new quarters in the basement.
Hard drives removed from old PCs, and remainder set in my car to take back to my office for recycling.
Remaining boxes and hangers-on put away.
Ready for action!
A good, solid, hard day’s work for us both, I can see more of the loft than I have in the last 9 months, and I feel quite entitled to a beer (or three) and goofing off this evening (and going to a game tomorrow). Huzzah!
Comments are (mutter mutter) re-enabled. (I’ve reported the problem, honest.)
(No, really — if I mean to turn off comments, I’ll mention it in the post.)
De e-mailed this “since comments are off on this entry.” I’m going to assume that she would have commented thus (and apologies if not):
You said: “Now, that said … yes, there were those from the very
beginning who despised Bush, who intensely disliked his avowed
policies and plans — and many who, from Day 1, were calling for his
impeachment.
“If the public as a whole (and the “useless media,” as BD calls them)
have some responsibility for letting Bush & Co. get away with it for
so long (and they — we — do), so, too, do his direst political
opponents, who ratcheted the rhetoric to 11 from the very beginning,
and thus did their cause no good.”
While I think your intention was to say something along the lines of,
“Excessive rhetorical intensity is a bit like crying wolf,” it comes
across here as, “Put up with relatively unethical behavior, because
it’s going to get worse, and your protests will be more effective
later.” The whistle-blowers are part of the problem?
From what I understand, there really was no point at which the Bush
regime was ethical or unethical-but-somehow-justified. Even before
the election scandal itself, there never was a point at which choosing
Cheney as a running mate was an ethically clear decision, and there
never was a point at which Bush implied 1) he wouldn’t support the
so-called conservative politics of the moment over the Constitution,
2) he would stay out of bed with his political supporters, and 3) he
was anything but an incompetent idiot (see his history in Texas).
(Not impeachable things in themselves, of course.)
The US got exactly what we deserved. No matter what the truth of the
matter was in the Florida elections, the vote count was close
enough–and confirmed by reelection–that it was clear that people
weren’t consistently, clearly against the kind of unethical behavior
that Bush was *promising.* Gore was not charming, and I don’t think
he could have run the country well. Kerry was a weasel, and ditto.
But Bush never showed himself to be anything but short-sighted and
mean-spirited–but at least he was more charming than Gore (at the
time) or Kerry.
People aren’t mad about the unethical behavior now because they
weren’t mad about it then: they’re mad because they thought Bush
would do, however unethically, a better job of running the country,
and it turned out they sold out for no reason.
Will 2009 fix things? I doubt it, unless we get a real leader, not a
partisan game-player.
My intent was certainly more as you attribute it than how you suggest it came across.
That said, picking one’s battles is a basic strategy. There’s a tension between choosing the moment of greatest effectiveness and expressing one’s opinion as things unfold. Ratcheting things up prematurely can be wasteful and counter-productive. Waiting until the “right moment” can mean one never acts.
I agree with you fully here.
I agree (thus my comment that it was more Bush’s lack of success than what he did that has brought down his approval and, one hopes, the election prospects of his party).
Alas, the present state of American politics is such to make it difficult for someone not a partisan game-player to succeed in the primaries.
That said, I’m ready for the devil-I-don’t-know over the devil-I-do. There isn’t anyone on the GOP ticket I’d choose, at present, over any of the top four Dem contenders, even if I have problems with each of them.