Spring Fever?

Waiting for the Trees

Yep, it's springish out there today. Yesterday, too, really. But there still are no leaves on the trees, so the skyline looks a bit stark yet. Lots of mud, some grass, naked trees, it's Iowa in April.

"It's spring!" I said to my beloved Austrian bride yesterday. "In a few more days we'll be able to get the bike out of storage and go for a ride!"

"Yes," she said in that perfect accent of hers. "It's nice to hear de birds twitching in de trees again."


Time Warp

I could swear I got to work about sixteen hours ago at 8 this morning, but it's not even lunch time yet. Is this what Einstein was referring to when he talked about relativity? To me, I've been sitting here staring at this computer for sixteen hours, when in reality it's only been three hours. So my job has a 16:3 suckiness ratio today.

This afternoon I will go home, do some spring chores (gotta mow and trim real quick, then water the new patch of what I hope will be grass eventually), check my e-mail and grab something to eat. That'll put me at about 6:30, I imagine. Then I'll wait for another twelve hours for it to be 8:30 so I can go to the Chesterfield's jam session. Time is indeed subjective, I guess.

(When I typed "jam session" it came out "ham session." I almost left it that way. It fits. Lots of people on stage hamming it up.)

It's a bit later now. I had to do some actual work, since I am at work, you know. I found it odd that I went home for lunch, sat down, ate a cracker, looked at the clock, and was already late getting back to work. There's that pesky time warp again! Maybe it's a corporate thing... The big businesses got together and decided that from 8 in the a.m. to 5 in the afternoon they're gonna make all the clocks run slower to get more work out of us poor peons while simultaneously shrinking the hour between noon and one to fifteen minutes.


DeLay That

I saw on the news today that Texas Republican Tom DeLay decided not to run for re-election. The former House Majority Leader is awaiting trial on money laundering charges, and is the target of a federal investigation that has revealed that one of his top aides was running a criminal enterprise out of DeLay's office source. Mr. DeLay insists that he has never done anything wrong, yet he's dropping out of the race. To me that implies that he's running scared - he knows that the investigators are going to find something, or the Texas people are going to find him guilty. He's also tied up in the whole Jack Abramoff scandal as well.

On the news, Mr. DeLay said that this was not a fall from grace, as he's always in God's grace. Must be nice to be able to do dirty rotten things with a clear conscience. "God will forgive me. I don't have to apologize or feel guilty for anything, even though I did dirty rotten things." (He didn't say that, actually. I did.)

Mr. DeLay won his primary in Texas, but said he dropped out of the race NOT because he's a dirty rotten man who's done dirty rotten things, but rather because he thinks the Democrats might beat him.

I hope that Mr. DeLay's trials and investigations and whatnot go quickly. I'm tired of seeing him on TV.


What's the Big Hairy Deal?

Katie Couric is the big hairy deal, I guess. Everyone seems to be talking about her moving from whatever inane morning show she's on now to some other network to be an anchor. I'm happy that the networks are having female anchors, but I'm not sure Ms. Couric is a good choice. She seems too giggly while at the same time taking herself WAY too seriously. And she has no neck. That bothers me.

I wish her well - I sincerely do - but I'm still rather skeptical. Who knows? Maybe it was the editor of the inane morning show she was on for the last 15 years that made her do giggly inane pieces. She might be a good journalist who was forced to do silly things.