MY TO DO LIST FOR 2012

At the beginning of each spring I write a to-do list for the coming summer. 

This year my list included:

1.    Replace knob on bathroom door – done.

2.    Install new water heater – done.

3.    Replace water lines under house with PEX tubing - done.

4.    Replace slid track on pocket door upstairs bedroom – not done.

5.    Install baseboards in living room – not done.

6.    Install coat hangers in mud room – not done.

7.    Install weather flap on door of motorcycle shed – not done

8.    Install gutters on front of house – not done

9.    Install gutters on wood shed – done.

10.   Repair tile on front step – done.

11.   Install overhead storage in motorcycle shed – not

12.    Paint canoe – not

13.    Finish back porch – not

14.     Paint front door – not.

15.     Install new front storm door – not.

16.     Replace porch light with motion light – not.

17.     Build storage shelves on back porch – not.

18.      Install shade (which I purchased and is still in a box) on sun roof window at top of stairs – not done.

19.     Haul stones from quarry for walkways and drive way – not.

20.     Build a new raised bed and fill with compost – not done.

I was complaining to a friend of mine while bowling that I felt guilty about not completing my TO-DO List for this summer.   He is a man near my age and he explained to me the problem is not my lack of commitment in completing the list, but the problem is the time frame itself.  

He has me convinced and it makes sense.

Next year instead of a 2013 SUMMER TO-DO List I will put together:

THE OL’BUZZARD’S TEN YEAR TO-DO LIST

And if I am still alive and the list is not completed at the end of ten years I will add an extension and kick it down the road like the U.S. Congress.

the Ol'Buzzard

THE DEBT, THE DEFICIT AND NUMBERS

The candidates from both parties constantly throw out numbers about our Nations debt and indebtedness.   As TV consumers we hear these numbers but they don’t register:   ten million dollars to Sesame Street – three billion dollars for a new military aircraft - sixteen trillion dollar national debt.

Let’s break this down to Sesame Street understanding.   The Count might instruct:

If you take a drum stick and bang it on the table once every second, it will take you twelve days (24 hours a day seven days a week) to bang out one million.

It will take you thirty-two years to bang out one billion.

It will take you thirty-two thousand years to bang out one trillion. 

Honey Boo Boo’s sister has two thumbs, and she is the only one in her family that can count to eleven without taking off her shoes.   How can we understand numbers that we are physically unable to count? 

the Ol’Buzzard

A ZEN STORY

A man joins a monastery that is known to be very strict: the monks at this monastery are only allowed to speak two words every ten years.  

After ten years the man comes before the master and is asked, “What have you to say?”

The man answers, “Bed Hard.”

Ten years later he again comes before the master and is asked, “What have you got to say?”

“Food stinks,” the man replies.

Again, ten years later the comes before the master and is asked, “What have you got to say?’

“I quit!”

“Well I am not surprised,” replies the master, “all you ever do is complain.”

It is all right to quit.

the Ol'Buzzard

WINTER, MAKING BREAD AND OTHER STUFF

We have moved from fall to pre-winter here in northeastern Maine.  A big wind the other night pretty much stripped the trees.   The night temps are in the thirties and day temps in the fifties and it is time to pull out the winter clothes.  

Our house is small so I pack all my winter duds in a duffle in the spring, and bring them back out in the late fall.  I am at heart a winter person and I actually love dressing in long johns, jeans, wool shirts and boots – that is what I have worn most of my life and what I am most comfortable in. 

The Ol'Buzzard in winter mode.  

 

Last night I put together a blueberry bread in the bread machine, and even though I messed up on adding ingredients it came out great. The blue berries are local – we buy them at the farm market and freeze them for winter use.    I had a piece of blueberry toast this morning with a cup of tea and tonight we will have French toast (made with the blueberry bread) and bacon. 

My lovely wife and I have been using  bread machines since 1985  when we began teaching in an Athabascan Indian village in Alaska and store bought bread wasn’t available.   The machines are great, and once you get use to using them you can turn out a perfect loaf of bread every time. 

THE BLUEBERRY RECIPE I USE:

½ cup of water

½ cup of milk

1 egg

4 cups of stone ground white flour

½ cup of oatmeal

1 teaspoon of cinnamon

1 teaspoon of nutmeg

1/3 cup of sugar

¾ teaspoon of salt

3 tablespoons of butter

1 ½ teaspoons of yeast

2/3 cups of blueberries

Mix the water, milk and egg and pour into the bread pan.  Place all the rest ingredients in the pan except for the blueberries that you will add later.  Set the machine to the two pound (or medium) fruit and nut cycle and press start.   After one hour remove the dough and the paddle from the bread machine.  Place the dough on a counter top and using your hands press it into a long sheet as wide as the bread machine bread pan is long and down to about ¾ inch thick.  Distribute the blueberries on the sheet of dough and then roll the dough into a loaf and put it back into the bread pan without the paddle.  Place the pan back into the bread machine to continue rising and baking.   When the bell rings remove the blueberry loaf and let it coon for an hour before eating.

Leaving the paddle out at this stage keeps from having the hole in the bottom of the loaf that you always get from bread machines. 

We use a Breadman Ultra that we bought at Target for less than $100. We have had four bread machines and this is the best we have used.   You can get cheaper but they do not stand up to regular use, and there is no need to ever pay more than $100 because you are just getting name recognition and options that you will never use.  In Alaska we bought an expensive Swedish bread machine with two paddles and were never satisfied with it.   When we returned to Maine we repurchased a Breadman.

Well, the frost is definitely on the pumpkin and we are switching to our winter mode. We had some snow to the north of us this week; but I am holding off winterizing the motorcycle in hope of one or two more moderate days to ride.  When we were younger (I was forty and she was in her twenties) my wife and I road a motorcycle (Yamaha 650) in all sorts of weather as our primary source of transportation: we don’t have to do that now.

We have our oil tank filled and our wood supply is in, the truck has 5w-30 oil and there is a new spark plug in the snow blower.   So bring it on.   I may complain in late February, but now I am looking forward to those dark, snowy, grey days when my wife and I will bask in front of the wood stove with good books and a bottle of wine. 

the Ol’Buzzard

THE VP DEBATE

This is an excerpt from a letter I wrote to a friend this morning :

 The VP debates are tonight.  I don’t know if I will watch.  The debates leave me in such an aggravated state I don’t think if it is worth the annoyance. Any way, over the next week, which ever side is down will try to spin it.  I can’t believe that this late in the election season people will switch their vote on the basis of debate charisma.    

What can we do (other than cast our vote) – we are really powerless on the outcome.   One person one vote really doesn't elect, because the way the system is set up a President can win the popular vote and lose the election…The founding fathers ( I hate that phrase) felt that the average man was not knowledgeable enough to be trusted to vote  his own best interest so they came up with the electoral  college – they have been proven right on the first assumption, but the manipulated system of the electoral college is little better.   

Humans are pack animals, or cult animals, or mob animals – which ever you prefer…we need to belong to a group…we need to identify with a group…and groups can be manipulated by charismatic alpha males.  It doesn't matter if the group is a clan, a religion, a race, a party, a state or a nation.    The greater good usually turns out to be the grater bad for some sub section – minority without power.   Group power throughout history has always been destructive to the human race in general – wars, genocide, suppression, the inquisition: all manners of atrocities against our own kind are committed by people in power manipulating their group.  These people who manipulate are themselves part of a group - and their agenda is personal power and wealth.  This election is a macrocosm of that premise.   

There is no answer; there are too many people in the world to be able to live an independent libertarian life; and the need for group identity often trumps our best interest.     It is not our nature to be concerned beyond our own group and never will be – we are the base human animal: we will interact only with the group of our identity, and we can not change.  

With the world population doubling every forty years we are bound to come into more and more conflict for energy, food, and land space.  The idea that our group might cooperate with all other people in the world – other groups, for the greater good of humanity is a pipe dream.   Not a great proposition to look forward to (never end a sentence with a preposition – fuck it, rules (like spelling) are meant to be bent as long as the understanding is clear.)  

I want to belong to the group that looks out for me - but at what cost?  

the Ol'Buzzard 

OLD MAN'S 2 a.m. CALLING

He stands before

Her porcelain throne

Watching liquid

c

a

s

c

a

d

i

n

g

Into the small pond

Below

Clean water turning

a golden hue.

PISSING

THE NEW PEEK AND PUKE DIET

Gained to much weight over the summer?

Want to try a guaranteed to work diet?

And it's free 

EVERY TIME YOU ARE HUNGRY

TAKE A PEEK AT THIS PICTURE

Brought to you as a community service

by the Ol'Buzzard