Posted inHome life

Further evidence of male idiocy

Now, there's a title for a book, a really long book. I have an item to contribute to it. Not involving me, of course. That would be ridiculous, to think that I have ever, am now, or will in the future engage in any act that could fall under the rubric of "male idiocy" (the skeptical laughter from cyberspace is already ringing in my ears). No, this is about the bird I like to affectionately call Bastard Robin, or even nicer names, depending upon how many tons of bird poop I find splashed on my Volvo wagon each day. I'm…
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Posted inEntertainment

Roger Dodger

This was an unexpected pleasurable DVD find, made possible by the usually-reliable "two thumbs up" notice on the front cover. I don't think this movie got much notice when it was first released, which figures: it is quirky and full of great dialogue, but not much sex or violence (lots of talk about sex--little explicit action). Roger is an advertising executive who, not surprisingly, has a way with words, and a way of using words to seduce women. The only problem is that he falls prey to his own bullshit and can't separate his malarkey from his real self--assuming he…
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Posted inEntertainment Family

Academy Awards reprise

I knew it! As I surmised in my last post, I knew there was no way that Laurel and I, who go to movies at real theatres regularly, could have only gotten 10 Oscar winners right, while my sister and brother-in-law, who spend about half the year in St. Lucia, where movie-going plays a second (or nineteeth) fiddle to margarita drinking and lying in the hammocking, could have gotten 16 and 17 Oscars right. Today Carol Ann fessed up in a revealing email message: "Anyway, you were right on our internet use for winning the annual first prize. Bob actually…
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Posted inMiscellany

Laugh when it hurts too much to cry

With all the serious insanity flying around the front page of the newspaper and CNN nowadays, it is great to be put in touch with someone who can laugh at it all. One of the (two or three) HinesSight readers, Randy Smith, told me about Neal Pollack's weblog, and I became an instant fan. Sucked into Pollack's web by his shameless self-promotion, I even bought both of his books via Amazon, where I learned that his first book was the inaugural title of McSweeney's Book, Dave Egger's (author of "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius") publishing arm. And that's all…
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Posted inNeighborhood

Keep those coyote control ideas coming

[Update: I've observed that some people find this post via a "coyote control" Google search. What you'll read below is , obviously, a tongue-in-cheek approach to coyote control. If you want to know the truth about coyote control, take a look at some other posts I've written on the subject of controlling predators: "Is killing cougars a wildlife service?" and "Coyote debates."] I've heard from a fellow Spring Lake Estates resident who has got his shotgun facing in the right direction when it comes to controlling the coyotes around here. It's refreshing to find someone who cuts through the B.S.…
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Posted inEntertainment

Academy Awards impressions

Should have gone with my heart, "Bowling for Columbine," rather than calculating, "they'd never vote for Michael Moore"...would have won with 11 picks, rather than tying with Laurel and one other person who also had 10 at Jim Ramsey's traditional vegetarian AA potluck...regardless, 10 or 11 is still pretty pathetic; my sister and brother-in-law report they got 16 and 17 respectively, ending up the top two at their AA get-together...congratulations! though don't I recall you saying, Carol Ann, that you do advance research on the Internet, checking out the projected winners from various sources, and then averaging them all together?...doesn't…
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Posted inNeighborhood

Victory! (but the war may not be over yet)

No, we're not talking about Iraq, but about Laurel's fight to stop further partitioning (a.k.a. subdividing) of lots in Spring Lake Estates. The report from the Marion County hearings officer arrived in the mail today. She denied the Nielsen's application to partition their Oak Drive lot. We're still digesting her findings, but clearly all of Laurel's hard work researching well deepenings and replacements, plus the competent hydrogeology reviews by Malia Kapillis, paid off. The hearings officer cited numerous errors and omissions in the original hydrogeology report prepared by Nick Coffey for the Nielsens, most of which were pointed out by…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Home life

Good and bad of March 17

The good: its our anniversary, which we cleverly managed to make St. Patrick's Day, so whenever images of green beer and drunken Irishpeople start to run through my head I know it's time to start making romantic preparations. Which, this year (our 13th, which isn't bad because we're not superstitious, knock on wood) didn't require a lot of time. I guess a man knows he's been married a dozen plus years when the big present you decide to give your wife is finally fixing two mouse problems--in our well pump enclosure and (more disgustingly) our medicine drawer--and she is happy…
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Posted inHome life Sustainability

Week in review

God, that sounds like some sort of PBS public affairs program, "Week in Review." But that’s what it's been, more than a week since my last HinesSight entry, so duty calls me to summarize it all in a single blaze of what-we've-been-up-to-but-haven't-uttered-a-peep-about. Well, the most traumatic event, from which it took me several days to recover, was logging onto the L.L. Bean web site, ready to accomplish my bi-or tri-annual jeans buying in the usual minute or two, and making a horrifying, absolutely impossible to believe, discovery. L.L. Bean had discontinued selling black natural fit jeans, and had changed the…
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Posted inHome life

Clearly, a message from God

What other explanation is there? I open up the newspaper this morning, and there in the Saturday “Auto” section is a glowing review of the Mini-Cooper. I got to drive one of the original Mini-Coopers exactly one time, circa 1967, when a college friend much more knowledgeable about cars than I urged me to test drive one, as an alternative to a VW bug that I was thinking of buying. That test drive is still fresh in my mind, or, at least, as fresh as any experience from the 60s can be, for reasons that should be obvious, but which…
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