Today I admit that I’m no good at driving a vehicle towing another vehicle… ever. At any time. Or place. I can do it if you make me and if there’s no one else available. But I won’t ever do it to anyone’s satisfaction.

It would be durn handy to blame this lack of ability on me being female, but I’ve witnessed males that aren’t any better at it than I am. I really feel sorry for those guys because they can’t get out of doing this as easily as I can.

Oh yeah, I do NOT mind playing the “but I’m a girl” card when it’s to my advantage. In exchange, I don’t mind guys playing the “but I’m a guy” card occasionally. (Occasionally… because I’m a girl and can also play the feminist card. See how this works? Yes… I knew you would

Backstory: Our yard isn’t that big, but it has this ditch near the street. It was always a problem to mow, but since the city “cleaned” the ditch it’s much worse. It’s never been doable on a riding lawn mower. It’s been a few years since either my husband or myself have been able to mow the ditch with a push mower and now the city has made even that impossible no matter how young and strong the wielder of the mower might be.

To readers that know my husband, it’s no surprise that he tried to mow this small area with a riding lawn mower anyway.

Several times. Since the last time he tried it resulted in neighbors pulling the overturned lawnmower off him, he really has been more careful. Really. This time, he just got the lawnmower stuck and wanted me to pull it out with the pickup while he guided it around the tree guarding the ditch.

And I DID IT!!! Yay me! But before I got into the truck (after carefully surveying the situation) I extracted several promises from him. One is that he will never ever try to mow that part of the ditch. The second was that he will either get one of the (at least two, maybe more) weed-eaters that we own fixed and use them instead.

He’s off right now seeing about getting a weed-eater in operating order.

The third promise I asked for… well, he didn’t promise, so I won’t elaborate.

One of the bad things following the passage of Obamacare and Sarah Palin’s invocation of “death panels” is that now it’s considered necessary by some (certainly not all) conservatives and libertarians to automatically assume that any research finding that might also reduce costs is automatically some variant of “rationing” or on the slippery slope to a “death panel”.

To wit – this one by Althouse, linked last week by Instapundit following a link to Dr. Helen’s rather innocuous post on rates of prostate screenings.

No matter how I look at it, I can’t see the relationship between the rates of prostate screening, pain research, pap smears, expense, fairness, and the Buffett-rule that Glenn Reynolds apparently finds obvious. So now I’m wondering about him falling for or into mere drama where anything can be taken to be “rationing”. Or a precursor of a “death panel”.

Is stretching an idea, meme, partisan point, etc., to the breaking point the same as jumping the shark? If not, it should be!

It’s hard when my immediate family is now so far apart. When we get together, we tend to try to do too much to make sure we at least touch on everyone’s favorite thing.

And try as we might, we can’t all seem to get together in one place ever anymore. Someone always can’t make it. A few are gone from us in all but spirit. In one sad way, they’ll be making more family get-togethers than before.

This Easter weekend, my daughters, one son-in-law, my sister, and of course my incredibly sweet, beautiful, handsome grandchildren are spending approximately 30 hours together at my father’s house.

My step-mom is not in the best of health right now, so us young ‘uns are doing the work: planning, shopping, cooking, etc.

Planning! How can we fit 50 years of holiday traditions into 30 hours? And that’s just the menu…

So far, we’ve eliminated fried shrimp, hash browns, and homemade bread… but  added mushrooms, steak, bearnaise sauce, and Lucky Charms. (I’m in charge of the Lucky Charms. I even volunteered for the job.)

Yep… a drive-thru window at a payday cash loan company.

However, I do think she’s done a fine job creating tour posters for these bands.

You can vote for them here and here.

Go ahead… click. You know you want to see them and vote for them! (I’m not savvy enough to figure out how to post the images that are also links to the voting page.)

He was not reassured.

Since that action was possible under existing criminal laws, why is legislation that layers obscuring civil penalties against entities not engaged in criminal activities needed to protect intellectual property?

One might be forgiven for wondering if the push for such legislation stems from something other than the desire to prevent theft of intellectual property. Maybe these Harvard Business Review bloggers have it right: it’s a legislative attempt by big companies with vested interests to protect their downside.

On the surface, SOPA and PIPA aim to make it difficult to steal intellectual property by making it difficult to use legal tools like the internet to “fence” their loot. I’ve got no problem with that idea.

I’ve not read SOPA, but I did read PIPA yesterday and cannot find where it makes it more difficult for the criminals. It makes it more difficult only on those producing the tools by shifting the burden of law enforcement to businesses.

It makes just about as much sense to charge International Paper with the responsibility of making sure that none of the paper it produces is ever used in a ransom note. Or regulating the sale of paper to only registered users.

UPDATE: Another reason why SOPA and PIPA are not needed is that the purveyors of intellectual property most often stolen — music and movies — are not hurting economically from piracy as much as you’d think from the publicity.

…bleeding revenue to piracy is going to be a problem to the extent that your product is a hit… (rtwt)

In short, piracy is certainly one problem in a world filled with problems. But politicians and journalists seem to have been persuaded to take it largely on faith that it’s a uniquely dire and pressing problem that demands dramatic remedies with little time for deliberation.  On the data available so far, though, reports of the death of the industry seem much exaggerated.

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Reading a decent freebie Kindle murder mystery, I’m annoyed at the carelessness of the author. One night it’s moonless after a storm clears intimating a certain time of the month. The next night it’s a 3/4 moon. I feel mislead by the first description of the weather and lack of clarification of whether it was cloudy.

This one is better than some of the other free novels. At least the author manages to keep his characters’ names straight. I would have been happier with some waxing accuracy instead of waning. I would have been impressed had the author described it as a gibbous moon.

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Via DrX, Buying the Body of Christ. In that excellent essay about how the communion wafer entered the capitalist marketplace, there’s a mention of a “Chasid Cup” which I didn’t find a link to but I did find the “Celecup” which also packages the grape juice and wafer together in easy single servings:

• No Special Preparation Required
• No Refrigeration Necessary
• Three – Six Month extended shelf life
• Time Saved During Church Services
• Strict Hygienic Packaging Standards
• Allows For Communion In a Variety of Settings
• Can Be Transported Without Spillage
• Sized For Standard Communion Trays

I think it’s “Time Saved During Church Services” that is really strange. “Andale, andale… we haven’t got all morning ya know!” Followed by an admonishment not to litter and maybe a reminder to help the arthritics who may not get theirs opened quickly enough.

Nothing above is meant to disparage Christianity, but I cannot imagine ever being comfortable or feeling worshipful in a church that used this product on a regular basis, especially one that used it to save time.

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I’m not sure why my husband decided to buy a bottle of Glenfiddich 15 year old Scotch for me, but I’m grateful. It is very nice. And it follows the Christmas gift of Samalens XO Armagnac from my sister. Y’all keep this up and I’m not going to be satisfied with box wines.

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“So we let him sleep it off…”

Goodnight!