The Great Stove Adventure

By now most of you know that I live with my daughter. She has been heating her home with a wood stove for a number of years since the possums pretty much ate out the insulation from under the house and the cost of operating the furnace went through the roof.

At best this is an inefficient way of staying warm. Given the size of her wood stove and the fact it is more an antique than a working appliance (/sarcasm) it didn't do a very good job. On top of that we had to find seasoned wood, arrange to have it delivered, stack it, etc. Then we had to haul wood into the house, start the fires, then remember to keep them going. It was an expensive proposition. It was dirty and messy and inconvenient. On top of everything else it was inefficient in terms of actually heating anything more than the room in which it sits and the room next to it.

I have had days where my hands hurt so bad from the cold that I could barely move them. The dog slept under an afghan on the couch to keep warm. I would routinely wear long underwear, sweats, two shirts and a sweater, plus gloves in the house just to stay reasonably comfortable in the coldest weather. It was, to put it mildly, miserable.

I started talking about replacing the old stove last summer. Susan is a great gal but she's really short on follow-through. It is December now, and she had not yet obtained sufficient wood to get us through the heating season. So earlier this month I just took the bull by the horns and offered to put the entire cost of the replacement on my credit card and she could pay me back half.

I shopped around, did research on the web, talked to people, etc. I researched fuels and different types of stoves. Finally I settled on a pellet stove for several reasons. First off, it's less expensive to fuel than wood, and the pellets are easy to find. It's less messy. It takes minutes every couple of weeks to clean the entire stove. I don't have to hoard cardboard and paper or buy starter logs in order to get a fire going. I don't have to remember to bring in wood or to put it on the fire to keep everything going. There are lots of reasons to get a pellet stove.

So a week ago Saturday we went stove shopping. We found one that we really liked and that was designed for the space we have to heat. It's really pretty. Ok. Pretty shouldn't figure into it, but it's nice that it's pretty. We ordered the stove and Thursday they came and installed it. Within two hours, however, the stove was making weird noises so I called the place where we bought it. After three calls I managed to get someone out. The problems were small, and included the need to tighten some bolts that were loosened in shipping, and the fact that we had gotten a bag of bad pellets. So we shoveled out the pellets, burned down the rest, and yesterday afternoon I vacuumed out the unit and cleaned the burn pan. It's been working well since, though they do have to come out one last time to move the stove very slightly so that one small but annoying buzz stops.

The nice part about the pellet stove, aside from the fact that it works and I am warm even in my room, is that you put a bag of pellets in it and several days later you add another. Depends on how you use the stove really. I don't like sleeping in a warm room, so I turn the stove down to 55 when I go to bed. It turns itself off unless the temperature in the house drops below 55, in which case it starts back up until it's at the right place again. Same during the day. We keep it set at between 68 and 72, but more toward the lower end. Not because we're nuts but because the stove is so efficient that we are comfortably warm at that temperature. So far we're more than happy with the new stove. I am more than happy with hands that work and not having to wear my entire wardrobe just to keep warm.

Tomorrow will be yet another adventure. The stove sits on a brick pad. Over the years the mortar has begun to crumble and the bricks have to be reset before the inspector comes out next week. My daughter's boyfriend was going to do it on Friday. He in fact got started, but then he got sick and didn't get it done. Yesterday, when he was feeling better, he had other things to do. Same with today. I am a person who asks once and expects a reasonable adult to keep their word. He didn't get the work done and I know that tomorrow he'll be gone most of the day with some business he absolutely has to attend to, so the work is not going to get done again.

Then again, that's not an accurate statement. It is, in fact going to get done because I am going to do it. I got out my daughter's home repair book tonight and checked the information in it. There isn't a lot to doing this. I am working with a single layer of brick. The only things I didn't know was how thick to put the mortar and where, and whether or not it went on the bottom of the brick where it meets the wood pedestal or not. I know these things now, so by the time he gets home tomorrow I will have replaced the remaining bricks. They probably won't look as good as if he had done them, but then again they will be done which is fairly important.

One of the most valuable lessons I learned in my life is that when push comes to shove, there is only one person you can every depend on totally and that's yourself. So I do my best to include other people in my life, but I never depend on them to do anything for me. If they do what they say they will do (rare) I am thrilled. If they don't then I do it myself or pay to have it done. It's the same with this. I would lay dollars to donuts that he won't get up early and finish the job before he leaves to do his business. I wish he would, but I absolutely don't believe he will.

So right now we have a great new stove that needs a bit of attention (probably will take 10-15 minutes tops to set it right), and we will soon have the few bricks that came loose around the front edge of the pedestal fixed. I'm later on to figure out a way to put tiles, a mosaic, or something on the bricks to make the whole thing look more like a nice hearth.

Stuff and more Stuff

I have been busier than the proverbial one-armed paper hanger the past few weeks. Somewhere I seem to remember reading that when you retire, you have more spare time and get to do a lot less. Well, with me "retired" is always a relative term anyway, but that's an entirely different story.

I finished one of my Microsoft assignments on the 30th of November and began the next one on December 1. Today I got an evaluation and the old group asked me when I want to start doing the next one next year. This is flattering. My current assignment, which begins today involves writing 589 biographical profiles, is going to take a while to complete as well. So it appears that while "retired" I will be busy throughout the upcoming year, at least part time, which is perfect for me to be honest.

I've discovered that what I need is a new hobby. Well ok, I need another 20 lbs on my butt about as much as I need a new hobby, but that's another story for another day. I've wanted to learn to do beaded flowers. I've made jewelry in the past, so I am familiar with some of the techniques, but beaded flowers are very pretty and very artsy. I was in the craft store yesterday getting some odds and ends and trying to get a picture of a quilt that Sewmouse wanted. I was talking to one of the instructors there. The long and the short of it is that she and I are going to get together some time in February in order to sit down and figure out how to make these intricate, beautiful beaded flowers. I love the idea of working with someone else. It will also fill in for those times I cannot knit. I did so much knitting over the past few months that I have managed to get repetitive stress in my right shoulder, which is getting better now that I am not knitting. I have to do some knitting though because I owe Sewmouse an afghan that is already started, but which I had to put down because of the pain.

I plan to use up a lot of my bits and pieces of yarn by making afghan squares for a local charity, but I had to switch my preferred method from knitting (much faster) to crocheting because I knit right handed (it's my right shoulder that's messed up) but I crochet left handed.

Right now, however, I've been slacking off around the house for so long I am fully expecting a visit from the local board of health if I don't empty some wastebaskets, vacuum, pick up, and wash the dog snot off of the majority of the windows.

I picked up a couple of things while out shopping today that should cause some comments around here. Last year one of my daughter's plants died. It was an old plant and I'm not really sure why it died, but it did. My daughter is insisting that I killed it. So today I saw some gorgeous plants of the same type, and absolutely huge for the price so I got her one. Sewmouse will understand this next one....I got the devil dog from hell a new hedgehog who does not have his sqeakers broken and who is wearing a Santa hat.

Meet Amy

Amy is the latest in my Christmas do-it-yourself accomplishments. She was not as easy to make, unfortunately since the directions were totally hosed up, and it took me literally a day or better to figure out how to make her head and her legs. The stitch counts were all off and two rows were missing on the head.

Amy is my statement against what is happening with imported Chinese toys. Today I heard that more are being recalled, this time because they contain dangerous chemicals that are literally putting children into comas. None have died thus far, but I suppose given the toy's popularity in both the U.S. and in Europe it's simply a matter of time.

I vowed when all of this started that I would not buy anything that was not American made, or that I did not make myself. This is the second of the do it yourself things, and there are two more to go, a sweater, and a hooded poncho.

Amy is not perfect, but Amy was made with love and she is not toxic. Even her stuffing was made right here in this country. I'm really rather proud of her, though I would hasten to add that given the time it takes to make one, she is not something anyone would make for other than the love of doing so or the love of the person for whom she is intended.

So anyway, say hi to Amy. I am sure she is glad to meet you.

I Had an Aha! Moment This Morning

I am sitting at my desk working on an assignment for Microsoft, when I had this Aha! moment.

The job I am doing is very complex. There is a pile of 40 some candidates for outstanding achievement awards. These are a lot of very important people. The job is mind-boggling because the write-ups are so god awful in most cases. Some are rather like trying to read a plate of spaghetti.

My job is to bring order out of chaos, discover what needs to be said that isn't in the documents before me, and then to contact the people involved, get the information, and complete the write-ups. And I have a bit less than two weeks to do it in.

Please understand that for this assignment, Microsoft came looking for me not the other way around. I'm a consultant. This was based on the smallest possible job I did for them sometime last year. I wrote up the proceedings for an off-site series of meetings they held. Someone there was so impressed that when this latest bunch of stuff came up, she asked for me by name, even asking my agency that if I were on assignment that I perhaps could work for them too on weekends and after hours. That was very flattering.

Deciding to take the job was one of my smarter decisions. Now to the aha! moment. I was busy firing off emails all over the globe to the director of this, and VP of that, then sending a suggestion to the manager I'm reporting to telling her of changes that need to be made in the process and volunteering (for money of course) to actually give some form to their current chaotic process (herding cats comes to mind) and write up a guideline to enable people to do a better job up front. That's when it hit me. In the past I have always been sort of overwhelmed by such important people and having to deal with them. I mean, some of these folks have world-wide reputations.

The aha? Well, I'm not only not overwhelmed by them any more, I don't feel at all inferior to them either. While I haven't accomplished the heady levels of technical and managerial they have, in my own way and in my own field I am just as good and just as accomplished. It's done wonders for my ego.

I think this happened in part because I am being treated as an expert and my opinions and suggestions are being respected with this group. They act as if I walk on water. I am referring to the local Microsoft group for which I am working, not the broader company or all of these technical geniuses with whom I am dealing. I honestly needed this. It's done an enormous amount for my self-esteem. It doesn't hurt that I get to work at home, set my own hours, etc. It also doesn't hurt to be told that people are so impressed by me and my work that they are asking my manager for a place in the queue for my services as each project is finished.

On some level I know my own expertise and worth. But on another I needed to hear it from someone other than the little voice inside my head. This next couple of weeks are going to be brutal. There is nowhere near enough time before the deadline. I'll meet it of course. I've already let management know I will be going into overtime and weekends. I have strategies for doing research until the answers to my emails begins coming in, and there are a very few of the nomination write-ups that are actually good enough and which contain sufficient information for me to begin the final drafts of those.

In the end I will do it. But I'll also turn around and refine their process so that next year whoever does this will not have nearly the hard time I am. In their defense, I should add that this program only started last year, so the guidelines have not really been set. They will be next year because I will set them. I feel very good about me this morning.

Frustration

I am frustrated enough to bite the dog today. I have a new assignment with Microsoft with a very tight deadline. I have 42 files to read, understand, research, rewrite, and turn in. I have two weeks from Monday to do it.

For some reason known only the the Microsoft network itself, the damned electronic babysitter will not allow me to access the site I need to be able to download the files I have to work on. The system administrator has worked for two days to try to remedy this and thus far we have failed miserably. This morning I still don't have access. Of course I didn't know that for two hours because the damned auto-update feature is also bugged and defective and didn't work, thus denying me access to any of the Microsoft site. Yes. I am being paid for that time. That's beside the point. Finally my daughter the systems administrator, fixes it for me and the updates get updated.

So I go out to the page I so desperately need. Still no access. For 20 of the files, I have paper copies. If things get desperate by Monday, I can enter these by hand and thus have files to work on. I have enough work for today and about halfway into Monday before I have to start doing this in order to move ahead. For those other 22 files, there is no way. If I cannot even see what they say, I can't assess what is good or bad, what is missing, or what research/interviews I have to do to bring them up to speed.

I am not terribly efficient when I am this frustrated, I admit. I need to start my interviews/research etc. on Monday once I am fully up to speed on what is needed on these current files. This I can do. However, with 10 working days to do it all, I am not happy with the idea that 22 files are out there I can't even read much less work on. I take great pride in the quality of my work. I work fast. I am willing and able to work long hours and weekends when necessary (nice paychecks btw when I do that).

So I have fired off a note to my boss and am going back to work on what I have. By the end of the day at least 20 files will be annotated as to who I need to contact, what information I need, and what research I need to do online to make sure that the story is written well. Monday I start on that and pray. I plan to hand enter only the file I most currently will be working on in the hope that somewhere along the line this mess gets fixed and I won't have to do all of them.

Grrrr......I don't need this.

I am So Excited

As many of you know, I am very political. I generally have an opinion on almost everything. Today I was listening to CNN when Jack Cafferty asked what we thought that the new embassy in Iraq, which has had huge overruns, has now had its opening postponed indefinitely. He asked what that said about the Bush administration.

I dashed off a response. Of course I didn't think to keep a copy of it. I just heard my entire comment read on CNN during the Situation Room. I was so excited. So I started dinking around with my mail program and found the original comment. Here it is:

"That boondoggle of an embassy will stand as a permanent monument to George Bush's ineptitude, and the failure of his policies in Iraq. It was started with inadequate knowledge and planning, carried out without oversight and apparently without a master plan for success, and in the end will stand empty as a hollow tribute to everything that went wrong over there. Mr. Bush cannot afford to fund health programs for poor children but he has no problem dumping money down a rat hole with projects such as this."

Yeah, I know it's a very little thing, but damn.

Meet Max

This is Max. He's a hand-made stuffed dog that I am giving my granddaughter for Christmas this year. I've been alarmed over the entire toy thing with all the poison paint and other things, and I don't know what is safe and what is not.

From my point of view, all the toys that are going to be put on the shelves for us to buy this Christmas season have already been manufactured and are either in store warehouses, already on the shelves, or in transit. We know from the reports that there are going to be many more recalls before Christmas is actually upon us. For that reason I determined not to buy anything that is not made in this country this year. I will not risk the well-being of my precious granddaughter for the profits of some greedy toy company who won't even do the basic quality control one would expect of any manufacturer, but especially for those who are importing toys from third world countries where safety and quality standards are all but nonexistent.

Max isn't perfect. Then again neither is his owner. On the other hand, Max is made with a lot of love, he's soft, cuddly, washable, and he contains nothing toxic. From his yarn to his stuffing he was manufactured in this country. He is safe. To me anyway, that's a lot more important than the fact he is not entirely perfect. He looks handmade. I suppose that's because he is. Funny how that works.

Anyway, Max meet the world. World, meet Max.

Another One Bites The Dust

In a good way this time. I got another one of my afghan projects for Christmas finished. This is for my ex-son-in-law and his new wife. It's pretty but I'm glad it's done and I can move on to all the other things I need to get finished.

It looks nice and will be something useful as well. I guess you can't ask for anything more than that.

I have had to redo the body of the stuffed dog I am making. I did something stupid and ruined the first one. But that is just one evening's work, so it's not that big a deal. I have also started yet another afghan. This is my next to the last one. From there I need to finish all the things for my granddaughter, and make my daughter's present as well.

This winter I will do something very unusual for me. First, and more important, I'll be working hard to finish Sewmouse's quilt for her. In addition, I plan to make a couple of sweaters and a couple of pair of socks for someone I almost never make anything for......me.

A Wonderful URL

Man, do I have a deal for you. If you're one of those who is inundated with credit card offers in the mail every week, there is a way out. go to this link and you will be able to opt out of receiving this annoying bits of paper for five years. If you wish, you can mail in a form that opts you out permanently.

Note the "s" at the end of HTTP. That's for secure. I just did it and can't wait to see if it actually lowers the numbers of these things I get virtually daily. It would be so nice if it did.

Moving Right Along

I just got back from Michaels, the local craft store, where I picked up the materials to make a cute crocheted basset hound. Thank you Sewmouse for that and the many other patterns you found and sent me.

I checked my Christmas giving list. I was able to delete one of the afghans I was going to send, but the yarn is now redirected to a sweater for my granddaughter. The timing will be tight because I am going to make all of her Christmas gifts this year, which I was not planning to do until very recently. I simply cannot justify buying any toys until this entire recall thing is resolved, and I am convinced that the contaminated Chinese-made toys are already in the warehouses and are going to be sold to us for our kids then recalled after Christmas.

I am nearly finished with one afghan, and have two more to finish by Christmas, plus all of Rachel's gifts. I'm going to be one busy camper for this upcoming season. Still, I have over three months, so if I really work hard, I'll get it all done in time. The little kid stuff can be done at the same time as other things, one small piece at a time, then assembled and stuffed at the last moment. My daughter can help me make some of the plastic canvas things. That should be fun for her as well.

I wish this were not the case, though I admit I'm having fun planning all of this, and will feel an enormous sense of accomplishment when everything is finished. I will be posting pictures of things as they are finished, so everyone can keep track of my progress. Wish me luck people, this is a huge amount of new work that I hadn't counted on having to do. Still, my granddaughter is precious to me, and she's worth the added work. I won't risk poisoning her for corporate profit.

Spin! Spin! Spin!

The Facts

1. At the beginning of the year President Bush proposed a troop surge of approximately 30,000 troops. His stated purpose was to provide additional security on the ground to give the Iraqi government the breathing room it needed to implement some hard diplomatic solutions to Iraq's problems.
   
   
2. At Congress's behest and with Mr. Bush's full and public support, 18 benchmarks were established that would provide a concrete and measurable gauge by which progress toward the stated goals could be measured.
   
   
3. Iraqi President Nuri al-Maliki went on television in a widely viewed address to both his nation and the people of the United States and assured us that not only would they fully meet all of the benchmarks, but they would exceed them.
   

The above facts are indisputable. They happened and are easy verified by going back and reading the stories in the press during that time. So now we have the base established. The bottom line is, that according to Congress, Mr. Bush, and Mr. al-Maliki, the only measure of success is whether or not the benchmarks are met. That is all the surge was intended to accomplish.

What Happened?

The "surge" went into Iraq. It was shortly after the surge began that we learned that rather than working on the political reconciliation and other issues as they had promised, the Iraqi government was planning a two-month long holiday at the end of the "surge." This left no appreciable time from when the last of the U.S. troops hit the ground and they were expected to produce the results they promised. While Washington managed to bully them down to only one month of sipping tea and popping bon bons by the pool while our soldiers died, they still managed to accomplish virtually nothing.

Over the past week two reports have surfaced. One states that while the Iraqi army is making some limited progress, it will be from between 12-18 months before they can even begin to assume any sort of leading roll in Iraq's defense. In an interview with those who wrote the report (on Meet The Press) they estimate it will be 3-6 years before this transition can be expected to be completed. The same report concluded that the National Police, run by the Department of the Interior, is so corrupt and so sectarian that it should just be disbanded and reorganized.

The Iraqi government has fulfilled 3 of the 18 benchmarks and has made no progress whatever on the really essential ones. Large blocks of the government and the parliament has resigned or withdrawn because of this lack of will. Ethnic cleansing on the part of the Shiite militias in Baghdad goes on unchecked and nearly 2 million have fled the country. More than that have fled the city as one Sunni neighborhood after another are given the choice of either leaving or being murdered.

Since the beginning of Mr. Bush's "war on terror" (as if you can make a war on either an emotion or a tactic) terrorist incidents worldwide have increased 500%.

Most military leaders point to small and limited improvements on the ground and claim that the "surge" is working. The surge is working only if the Iraqi government has achieved its reconciliation goals and has completed the benchmarks. They have done neither.

The Spin

Mr. Bush, et. al have been been in a frenzy of spinning for the past two weeks. Mr. Bush now claims that any sign, no matter how small, of military progress on the ground is "proof" that the surge is working. Now I grant you if small or measurable success on the ground were the goal Mr. Bush, Congress, and Mr. al-Maliki had named as the indicator of success, then this would be true. Unfortunately however, it is not what they all said would measure success. Only political success would do that and there has been no political movement, much less success.

Most experts on the region agree that without a political solution there is absolutely no way for the U.S. to ever stabilize Iraq. Even now, were all of the foreign fighters to leave today, the levels of violence on the ground would barely abate because they are no longer the problem. Iraq is embroiled in a sectarian civil war. here is no solution to that other than a political one onto which all of the parties sign.

General Petraeus is expected to testify before congress tomorrow, and the ambassador to Iraq on Wednesday. They are expected to spout the party line that the surge is "succeeding" while acknowledging that only a few minor benchmarks have been reached and that no diplomatic moves have been made toward political reconciliation. He is expected to recommend (ala Mr. Bush's orders) that we leave the troops there to die for another six months or so to give the Iraqi government time to work on political solutions. I am positive he will not explain how this is expected to happen and why now when they have utterly failed to regard it as sufficiently important to even stay in session and work.

Mr. Bush and his crew of merry vagabonds continue to insist that the majority of the fighting on the ground right now in Iraq is the result of actions of al-Qaeda members in the country. Every civilian and military expert who has been there over the past six months agree almost to the man that this is not true. The violence now is between various Muslim sects and the divisions within those sects. In Baghdad, for instance, The Shittes are clearing out the Sunnis at a record pace so it's not surprising that when you couple fewer people with more military boots on the ground, the level of violence has gone down in some places there. Overall, however, the death toll of civilians last month exceeded the month before by quite a bit.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line that will be concluded by most reasonable people other than the 29%ers who believe Mr. Bush walks his dog on the lake every morning are as follows:

1. Given the stated purpose of the surge, it has failed. While there are a few small military successes to point to, military success was not why the surge was implemented.
   
   
2. The al-Maliki government either outright lied or misrepresented what progress they could reasonably be expected to achieve in the six months they were given, and that even then they didn't even try to meet the goals.
   
   
3. General Petraeus will concentrate on presenting congress with the rosiest possible picture of the conditions on the ground in Iraq, will lobby for more time, and will studiously ignore the real reason for the surge in the first place. He will pretend that military success on the ground is the reason for the surge.
   
   
4. Congress will conclude that the surge is a failure, but will almost certainly cave in and give Mr. Bush a blank check. All the time making (or trying to make) political hay over Mr. Bush's war, which a few of them honestly wish to continue and perhaps even get worse before the upcoming elections so as to generate a very real anti-Republican backlash.
   
   
   
5. Mr. al-Maliki will go on television sometime toward the end of the week, probably after Mr. Bush gives his blowing sunshine address to the nation either Thursday or Friday, and will appear openly defiant and repeat his offer for us to leave right now and his assertion that they can do just fine thank you without us. I urge the President and congress to take him up on it.

Conclusion

It might sound cynical to some, but I don't feel this dog and pony show will accomplish anything or will change any minds. Mr. Bush will get his blank check and our troops will continue to die. The government of Iraq will fall sometime within the next four months leaving the country in even more chaos than it is currently. The civil war will continue unabated until the country splits into three separate and warring provinces. Finally, we will be there, and we intend to be there, for at least the next five to seven years and probably more. Remember, you heard it here first.

Mattel Arrogance

"Mattel Chairman and Chief Executive Robert Eckert said in an interview that the company discloses problems on its own timetable because it believes both the law and the commission’s enforcement practices are unreasonable. Mattel said it should be able to evaluate hazards internally before alerting any outsiders, regardless of what the law says." Wall Street Journal, August 7, 2007

This is a quote that says more than I believe Mr. Eckert really wanted to say about how Mattel feels about this whole toy recall thing. The Consumer Protection Agency requires that all such discoveries be reported within 24 hours. What he is saying is that he doesn't care about the law; he clearly believes that Mattel is above the law in this instance, but also that he doesn't care that millions of our children are being slowly poisoned while Mattel executives and lawyers dither around trying to find a way to spin this information to their favor.

From everything I've read in the past two days, these recent recalls and toxic toys from China are merely the tip of the iceberg. There will be many many more of these in the coming months, and there is an extremely good chance that Mattel and the other toymakers already know about them, but are delaying the recalls. Again while our children suffer what could be permanent brain damage in the interim.

While thinking about this this morning, I realized something else. The lead-in cycle for toy manufacture, especially when the manufacturing has been sent all the way to China, is quite long. Months I would guess. Many of the toys being currently recalled were intended for this upcoming Christmas season. Then it hit me. I'm willing to bet that Mattel and the other big toy makers are going to put many of the toys that they know are contaminated, but which have not been declared with the CPA and recalled, on the shelves to sell for Christmas. Then, a month or two after Christmas they will "discover" that the toys are contaminated with lead and heaven knows what else, and will issue a big recall. Of course the money will already be in their pockets, and the last quarter earnings reported to Wall Street, so the stock will be much less seriously impacted.

The losers here? Well first and foremost will be our children, who will have all those months (as they had the past many) to become contaminated with lead and other unhealthy substances. Mattel apparently doesn't care about that, despite Mr. Eckert's avowal that he too has children. I will bet none of his children or grandchildren if he has any, were allowed to keep a single one of those toys a minute beyond the day that Mr. Eckert first became aware they were toxic. Too bad he didn't care enough to do that for our children rather than let them ingest this poison for what he admits were months.

I for one will not be purchasing any toy made in China this coming Christmas season. I will also not purchase any toy which I cannot determine the country of origin immediately. Sewmouse has some cute patterns for kids toys that are either knitted or crocheted. I am getting them from her and will make my granddaughter some for Christmas. Then I will make her a cute fuzzy poncho, and a nice knitted sweater. I won't risk poisoning her so Mattel can have a good bottom line.

I urge any parent or grandparent who loves their children to do the same. Don't trust any of the major toy manufacturers. They have already proven themselves willing to endanger our children for their own arrogant and selfish reasons. Buy your toys at craft fairs, from friends and neighbors, make them yourself, or seek out the small toy manufacturers who still operate in this country. You can find them on the Internet. Don't risk poisoning those you love. The toy manufacturers have proven they don't care about these children; it's our job to protect them until this mess is sorted out.

The Depths of Stupidity

There are some sorts of stupidity that seem to defy time and situation. I ran into the same one in two places this past weekend.

You all remember my daughter's ungrateful friend. The one I wrote about a couple of times here. She's the one for whom "thank you" is a difficult concept, and personal responsibility a mystery. She's with a guy right now who will, one day soon, hospitalize her. He becomes more violent and more abusive toward her every time he gets drunk which is several times a week. But that's another story. She has also lost custody of one child who simply didn't like her lifestyle (she was with an abusive lesbian for a while) and voluntarily gave up the custody of her 8 year old son because he was an inconvenience to her new romance. Well, Ms. Bright As Hell, now may be pregnant with Mr. Abusive's child.

It's difficult to believe that in the 21st Century there are still people who don't equate sex and pregnancy and take one of the many avenues of birth control available to anyone. This woman has no more right to bring another child into this world than I do considering marrying Tom Cruise. The difference is that I wouldn't have Tom Cruise. She's too irresponsible to have another child. Yet here she is, potentially pregnant because she was too lazy and too stupid to take a simple precaution.

I said two....remember? Well, the second is my great nephew. He just graduated from high school, was headed off to college, and was going to be the first (possibly only) of that generation to do so and what happens? He gets his girlfriend pregnant. Exactly what part of birth control is such a difficult concept to grasp? It's not as if he wants a kid at this age. It's not as if either of them do, but again we have too lazy, too stupid, and too irresponsible to take simple precautions.
I find it next to impossible to believe that any adult in this country doesn't know about the ready availability of birth control and doesn't realize how thoroughly having a baby when you don't want one can screw up your life. Of course neither of these people who do not believe in birth control believe in abortion either, so one and possibly two more unwanted humans will grace the planet. One will probably be well cared for and loved at some point, but the other will not and will at best be neglected and resented. That's really a bad start for any life.

Rule number one in life is "people are stupid." If you are ever amazed at something someone does, simply refer back to rule number one.

Am I Being Thin-Skinned?

I've been wondering this past week if I am being a bit thin-skinned. A couple of weeks ago my daughter's friend was given an assignment at work. She was supposed to update a report that was originally written by one of their regional managers. She had no idea about how that could be done and my daughter volunteered to help her out.

Personally I thought she should have told her manager the truth; she doesn't have a clue as to where to even start and probably couldn't do an adequate job. This girl is a bit light in the loafers in the intelligence department to begin with. I don't mean she's exactly stupid, but she has no interest in this kind of heavy thinking and analysis. However, she was not willing to do that. She figured my daughter could update the report, then she'd take the credit for it at work.

Well, my daughter started and figured out that she can't do it either. Given enough time she probably could have done something that would be at least adequate, but while she's very bright she's not a writer. So guess who volunteered to help out? I've been doing this type of research and writing for well over 20 years. It wasn't exactly rocket science despite me not having access to the expensive statistics the original writer had.

The report took me about four days to research, think about, then write, edit and assemble. At my current billable rate, that would have cost the company quite a bit had they hired me to do it. It's an acceptable analysis but nothing exceptional in keeping with the idea that this woman is going to present it as her own work.

Now we come to the gist of this story. Even though I kept the vocabulary and even the depth of the report on a level with what she might be expected to produce, it still turned out a lot better than anything she could have managed. Some of the things I discovered and wrote about will be useful for the managers who are using it for planning for the upcoming year. The problem is this young lady doesn't understand much of what I wrote. She was supposed to sit down with me and ask questions so that she understood well enough not to look stupid if her manager questioned her. She never did. She turns the report in later today (I'm having another sleepless night which is why I'm writing this at 2:00 in the morning).

So to my question: am I being a bit thin-skinned because I am miffed that this girl has never spoken directly to me about this project? She's never asked a question, commented on the quality of the report, or....the big one....so much as said thank you. I don't expect her to act as if I'm some wonderful person etc. for helping her out of a tight corner, but is an email saying "thanks for the report" too much to expect for four days work? She was here picking up some of her things last night and never even bothered to say a word to me though we were in the same room several times.

When I get paid for my work, I still generally get some comment on the quality of the work I do and often get thanks. Is it too much to expect a simple thank you when someone bails your ass out of a tight situation? Again, I am not talking anything effusive. Just two words to acknowledge that I bothered to take the time and effort (which I will not do again as a result of this).

Political Ads

There are two political ads showing up on the cable channels recently. One has a woman claiming to be the mother of a soldier serving in Iraq and the other is supposed to be a soldier serving over there. The gist of their comments is that the current "surge" is working, showing amazing progress, and laying a path for the end of the war, and more or less imploring people to be more patient and that things are working out. More or less same stuff different day.

But then the tone changes, and they each begin explaining that the reason we have to stay in Iraq has to do with 9/11 and they try very hard to say without every saying it that Iraq was somehow involved in 9/11.

This is a very old administration tactic that has been repeated continually even while those saying it are confirming that they know this is a lie. The Bush administration wants very much for us to tie the 9/11 attacks to Iraq so they have some justification for their continuing this war. It's unfortunate for them that it's been proven beyond a reasonable doubt by anyone including Mr. Bush that this simply is not the case. So while they cannot make the claim directly, they can make it indirectly by talking about the two events in the same context without ever saying that they are related. Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney do this constantly.

So what has this to do with these ads? I wanted to know the same thing. There is a new website out there called politFact which resides at politfact.com; I went there and posed the question to their people, describing these ads and asking who was behind them. That was this morning. This afternoon I heard from the Washington Bureau Chief for the St. Petersburg Times. He said he had heard that these ads were going to be coming out, but didn't know that they had hit the air. The person behind them is Ari Fleischer, Mr. Bush's former press secretary. By extension that means at least that the Republican National Committee has its mark on them somewhere.

The guy from the site is now checking this out to find copies of the ads and to determine exactly who is doing what. I kind of like that. While my part in exposing this is teensy, it allows me a temporary illusion of being a politico or perhaps a mini-reporter. Talk about fulfilling a dream. *big ol' grin*

I was a little self-indulgent

I'm not generally the self-indulgent type. I buy things because they are something I need and then I toss something else out so the dresser and/or closet doesn't get overloaded. However, yesterday I bought something for no reason other than it was really pretty. It's a nightgown and robe set. Off white with pink and purple flowers on the hem and a few other places on the gown, and as the base of the robe. It's soft and feminine. Not two of my better traits generally. I haven't worn the robe yet, but the gown is really soft and nice.

Today I've been working on the area we just cleaned out. I've almost finished tossing all the old mail, bags, boxes, etc. Will do that by the end of today. If/when we do get my things out of storage, I already have an area mapped out there for my big oak bookcase. It will replace two smaller and not very pretty ones that sit there now. Lots more space and looks better. We're just chipping away at things and they are getting done. I like that.

Today I need to run up to Office Depot for some folders. I need them to finish the reordering I'm doing in my own room. It's like 90% finished now. Makes me feel good and it really looks organized and cool. Yay for organized and cool.

I really do need to measure and figure out where to get insulated curtains for my bedroom. That would look terrific and would be a boon this winter when it gets really cold in here even with the small heater. Every time I try to find something the sizes are all wrong or the hardware is ridiculously overpriced. I really do want something very very simple.

It's Another One of "Those" Days

I have bored to death today. I am not exactly sure why since it's not as if I don't have plenty to do all the time. It's more a matter of deciding what I can manage to get to every day than finding things that need to be done.

I still want to get more organized. I tend to pick away at it and it gets a bit better as time goes on, but it's more two steps forward and one step back. I really want to write more and I'm working on that. I've managed to do something like a page a day on my book the past several days, which is nowhere near what I actually want to accomplish. It's funny. I typed that last sentence, noiced a messy spot on my desk and stopped typing this to lean the place up. It looks a lot better and now a lot of things I don't really need are resting in the waste basket to be tossed out tomorrow morning.

The good news is that I will finish another project probably within a week and a half. That's one less major thing to worry about. It will reduce the number of afghans I have to make for Christmas to three, one of which is quite small--more of a lap robe than a real afghan, but a very pretty pattern. I also have my daughter's present to sew, but as involved as it appears to me at the moment, I have a sneaking suspicion that once the zipper is in properly the rest will follow.

My daughter's friend moved her junk (well a lot of it anyway) out of the house today. She's been using the place as an unpaid storage unit and Susan got tired of it, particularly after her boyfriend again attacked my daughter verbally calling her some pretty foul names and then obsessing over the size of her boyfriend's penis. That last one strikes me as odd as I can't imagine why he would care if the guy even had one or not.

This boyfriend (her girlfriend's boyfriend) is a time bomb as far as I am concerned. He's already shoved her around a couple of times, and has been extremely verbally abusive to her as well. The girlfriend is a nice enough girl but she's one of these people who allows life to simply blow her from place to place and she simply sticks wherever she lands for as long as she can before she's blown on. One of these days he's going to go over the edge and we'll be visiting the friend in the hospital. It's not a matter of if, but merely a matter of when. The guy becomes more abusive every time he has one of these episodes.

It's still cold and damp here, but the weather is due to take a turn for the better and might actually break 80 sometime toward the end of the week. We haven't had much of a summer but when I see what the rest of the country got, I am not going to complain too much. Ours is preferable to theirs any time.

Right now I am going to read for a few minutes then get my butt into bed. I promised to take my daughter to the park and ride in the morning since her regular ride will be on vacation this coming week. I don't mind. It will give me a perfect excuse to stop by Starbucks on the way home and treat myself to a special coffee. I don't do it often, but I think I will this time. I deserve a treat to start my week off.

It's Good News

Today I took my daughter's dog to the vet for a checkup. The last time he was there his liver enzyme levels were so high they were dangerous. The vet suggested we try something natural first which takes the form of fish oil capsules and a dietary supplement called SAM-e. Today (two weeks later) we were going to see how this worked.

The word fabulously would be the best choice. From having levels elevated two and three times normal, everything is back within normal ranges. He's doing very well on pure dietary supplements. We'll take him back for a follow up about Christmas time or there about. The bonus is that the fish oil capsules also fixed a problem he was having with dry skin. Now his coat just shines.

It's about time we have happy news in this family. My daughter has lost two dogs in a year and a half. This one is her baby and his loss would have been utterly devastating. But for once things worked out. I'm a happy camper.

Sometimes Things Really Do Work Out

Last night my daughter and I were discussing an item in the news about a five-year-old Iraqi boy who was grabbed by masked men, doused with gasoline, then set on fire. He survived by is horribly scarred. The story spoke of how he went from a happy little kid to someone afraid to go outside, and said he was so scarred and ugly that he wanted to die, even at that age. The pictures bore out the horror of what had been done to him.

We both hoped that since this story was making the rounds on television and on the Website that maybe someone here in the U.S. would find the good will and the money to bring him over here and fix him. Today I got a note from her and went to find the story. Sure enough; a major burn center here in the U.S. is flying him over here and will pay all his expenses to fix his face and the other areas of his body that were so horribly burned.

The child's mother said that he's not smiled or laughed since the attack, but today he was running through the house laughing at the news. He is very excited, and what's most exciting for him, as I suppose it would be for any six year old, is that he gets to go on an airplane.

The burn center says it's going to be a long road for this child, but the prognosis is fairly good that they can make a huge difference. Sometimes things really do work out. Now if someone could only find those who did this to a child and douse them with gasoline. I would volunteer to be the one to toss the match.

Another Week Shot to Hell

I managed to get through another week relatively unscathed. I've been thinking for a while that I need to get away for a weekend or something like that. I'm not sure exactly where I would go though. I even considered checking into a hotel in the downtown area and then using it as a base of operations to visit the market, do some shopping, etc. Two things stop me on that one....first is that crime in that area is way up for some reason, and second because they are redoing the main freeway between here and there and traffic is an utter nightmare. There are other places. I shall persevere.

I planned to get much more done this week than I actually have. This isn't exactly new but things kept coming up. I finally got the cigarette lighter thingie in my car fixed. Well sort of anyway. They removed the broken lighter, which I don't need as I am not dumb enough to smoke (other than when I am on fire, of course) but I do need some way to charge my navigation unit. Now I have one. It was rather neat. I am considering taking the car back to the same place to get the heater repaired, but in this state we have like 4-5 cold days a year and the heater works on other than those days. Not sure what's wrong with it. It was a bummer when I lived somewhere where the temperature could be sub-zero for weeks on end.

More mess with my daughter's dog. His liver enzymes are way up. It has nothing to do with the last poisoning episode, and the vet doesn't know what it might be. We'll know more in a week. I would hate to see my daughter lose the last of her three dogs so soon after the last. This one is really her baby. For now he's a happy camper because he gets a new mini-meal in the morning when I give him the pills. It's easier than trying to stuff them down his throat. He weighs over 60 lbs. so you can see the problem.

I even managed to get stuff done on my story. I'll have Ch. 21 done today. This is progress. I really want to do some stuff on getting my car entirely cleaned out. For today that's going to mean getting stuff out of the trunk that's been there since half past forever, putting my roadside and first aid kit into a nice bag I bought for them, and bringing a couple of baskets into the house.

Other than that, I'm not interested in doing to very much.

A productive weekend

I actually managed to get some things done this weekend. In addition to what I discussed before, I managed to empty my bedroom bookshelves, sort through them, reshelf those I'm keeping, and put four canvas shopping bags full of books in the other room pending a trip to Half Price Books tomorrow sometime. Tomorrow I'll do the same thing to my desktop, cleaning out the papers and things I don't need, tossing other things, and cleaning off the dresser. At some point my bedroom will be clean. This is a good thing.

I've been chipping away at my other big project, my car, for the past week. I have the interior cleaned out and have used Armor All on most of it. Still a bit remaining on that. I bought a bag the other day, and it will hold my roadside emergency kit and the first aid kit. Right now the emergency kit is in a big unwieldy plastic thingie. That's just the beginning. I have to get the entire trunk emptied out. That's when the real work begins. From there it needs to go to a place near here where I can vacuum out the entire interior and trunk. Then I'll run it through the carwash.

From there it needs to be polished. That's going to take me some time because I get tired. Finally, when all of that is done, I'll use some shampoo I have to clean the seats, and buy new floor mats. Mine are shot. Poor old car deserves some TLC. I already have the polish and the seat cleaner. It will be nice to see it looking more like a car and less like a rolling trash bag.

I'm rather proud of getting some of the detailed cleaning done. I have other areas in the house that need to be tackled too. There is a never-ending supply of them unfortunately. Still, it keeps me off the streets and out of the bars, so I suppose it's not all bad.

Finishing Things

I'm please that this weekend has been one in which I actually got some things finished. Finished is a nice word.

I always have a ton of projects going at any given time. I have a fairly restless mind and get bored easily. Lots of years ago I figured out that if I had many things going there was always something else to pick up if I got tired of what I had in my hands.

Right now, the infamous striped socks are finished. I finished two parts of a sampler afghan I am making for Christmas giving and I pieced together half of the finished afghan. This one has 16 pieces which are then sewn together, and finished with a nice border. It's pretty but it's fairly intricate. The piece I finished was the 9th piece. I have the 10th started. I still have three afghans to do by Christmas and one sewing project.

I managed to finish a major part (maybe all) of a chapter of a book I'm working on. This is important because with my sleep problems, finding the energy to be creative is often a difficult situation, and this was the second day in a row I was able to write and to write things that were fairly good. I have also been able to do more reading and more outlining and work on story ideas that have nothing to do with this particular story. I have three stories in play at the moment and two more in the background, all of which could be books if I could just get them finished. The current effort is on Chapter 21. It has some holes, but is more or less half way finished. One other story has 8 chapters finished, all quality work. the two in the background are fully developed stories, but only one has any writing finished, and that is a completed screenplay. The other is fully outlined and ready to go, but it doesn't feel ready yet. The last one is a work in progress. I have the basics in mind, but there are major answers waiting to come into being before I can consider it a story rather than just a good story idea.

I did something yesterday that is very rare for me. I found a pattern and bought some yarn to make something for myself. I rarely make things for me. I'm not sure why, but I just don't. This is what is called a "bed jacket". It's crocheted, which I was not happy with, as I'm on a knitting kick. However, it is perfect for what I want. I tend to like to sleep with my arms outside of the covers, and my arms get really cold especially in the winter. This will help. I am thinking of actually knitting myself a sweater in the dead of winter this year after I finish Sew's quilt and the pile of Christmas afghans and other handwork projects. If I can manage the time, I might make my granddaughter a pair of these crazy striped socks. Not sure since they are a lot of work.

Finishing things is important for me. I need to do more of it. I have a number of projects I want to get done. Some are handcrafts, but others are things such as cleaning out my bookcase, sorting the books and getting them back up in some sort of order, and hauling a pile of them to Half Price Books. I have way too many books and some are ready to wend their way to the book store where someone else can benefit from them.

Right now, however, I need to finish this entry and to get myself into the shower. I have quite a bit I want to finish today, even though it is Sunday. It's cloudy and cold today and has been raining, so working in the yard is out of the question today. I need to do inside stuff for a while.

I am not a happy camper!

It's a bit before 11:00 and I'm sitting here exhausted, both emotionally and physically. I just came back from leaving my daughter's dog at the vet. He poisoned himself again tonight.

Just what exactly is so damned hard about closing a gate? I have been finding the kitchen gates open repeatedly over the past few days and have asked those responsible to just be considerate enough to latch the damned things. We know the dog will get into almost anything. The gates prevent that, but not when they are open. I've caught him in the kitchen three times in the past four days, but luckily I heard him. This time I didn't. He ate a piece of cheese, a small amount of chocolate (bad enough) and at least a dozen raisin English muffins. Raisins can cause kidney failure in dogs. He had a huge amount of them, and the vet was only able to get a small amount by causing him to vomit.

So he's in the vet. He'll be there a couple of days. The vet can't say if he'll be ok because they don't really know what triggers the toxicity in dogs when it comes to raisins. They're hoping to head that off with close supervision, lots of IV fluids, and some other treatments. We won't know until the danger period is over and that's a minimum of 24 hours. Maybe as much as three days.

I am angry. There's no reason for an adult to be so damned irresponsible.

Random Musings

Today has been a busy day. Also one with a lot of ups and downs. I started by sleeping too late, which is an up for me since the night before I had not slept much at all. After coffee and breakfast I headed into the front yard to finish a project to root out all of the wild blackberry vines that had grown back since the last time. This was my second day of attacks; I did a large bunch yesterday.

Today the garden fought back and I wound up with both of my arms pretty badly scratched and two deep gouges in my right calf where I hit a piece of broken deadwood under some heavy foliage....twice. It is aching and is red and angry looking right now, despite me washing it and applying an antibiotic cream immediately after I came inside. But I won in the end and the area is blackberry vine free for the moment. A temporary victory but one I'll take. Tomorrow I will have to go out and pick up all the stuff I cut down today which will almost certainly fill the yard waste recycle bin again. Then I am going to water my garden and begin some modest pruning on the bushes out there. Over time I will get some control on the front yard and it will look very nice.

I decided to take a break after all the work and went to see the latest Harry Potter film again. After I paid for my ticket and a small popcorn, I concluded that I would be going to the theater for movies much less often. It's just gotten to a tipping point with me. For all but a very few movies (and those will be without popcorn *sob*) I will just wait and buy the DVD when it comes out. The cost is close enough to the same now that it no longer makes sense to go to the theater, as much as I enjoy it. They have simply priced themselves out of my market. Oh well.

When I got home I had an email that was a real ego booster. I retired last year about this time. Not because I wanted to, but because I couldn't find any work in my own field, though lord knows I tried hard enough. A couple of months ago I got a call for a 2-3 day job (I wrote about this previously so there's no need to go into details). That contract was up yesterday and they had talked about extending it for another month so I could pick up some other odd jobs for them.

Yesterday I gave a small presentation to the management team there about how to write. Today I got a request to extend my contract until the end of November. This means a lot to me. Not because this is a big important job, because frankly it's not. Rather it means a lot because these folks came looking for me by name, and because it allows me to retire feeling good about myself. I wasn't feeling very good this time last year. It's allowed me to regain a lot of my self-respect and confidence. It's allowing me to go out at the top of my game. That's not so bad really.

So tomorrow I start another phase as I try to get a handle on all of the things I am trying to do every day. I've got to get a bit of a system down so I can ensure that I get housework done, gardening because it's good for me and I like it, writing because it's my life, and then progress on all the stuff I am making for Christmas as gifts. It makes for a very very busy day. I'm busier now that I'm retired than I ever was when I was working full time.

For now, however, I am going to get this done and get to bed. I'm tired. My leg aches, and I need to put some itch cream on all of the other scratches because they are itching like mad. I look as if I lost a couple of rounds with a really pissed off cat.

This is my sock

Well, ok. So it is not really my sock. It's my daughter's sock, but I made it. A while ago I got a wild hair to see if I can still make socks. I could years ago, and it really hasn't gotten all that much harder over time. They're using five needles rather than the four I used when I was first knitting socks, but that's sort of minor.

My daughter has been going through some fairly hard times recently and she's been really down. I thought maybe a pair of really wild, hand-knit socks would cheer her up if the only thing she ever did with them was to wear them to keep her feet warm in the winter. So I let her pick out the yarn.

I had forgotten how thin sock yarn really is and how much of a pita the first few rows are to get done as things tend to twist and be hard to keep straight. After that, however, it's a piece of cake. So yesterday the sock was finished. I took it in for the real acid test. To try it on her. I was a bit nervous as knitted stuff can be odd when it comes to sizing and I dreaded the idea it might prove to be too big and need to be redone. It fit perfectly, however, so sock #1 is finished and the second one has been started. Since it takes 9 rows to equal one inch the second sock will take me a few days to complete. The needles are about the size of very long matchsticks. Still, all in all it doesn't look bad.

End of an Era

Friday night I drove to my nearest Borders book store to pick up my copy of the last Harry Potter book. As I waited in line and watched the hundreds of people around me, I realized that Mr. Potter and his friends are more than just characters in a story. They have been a uniting factor for people of all ages across the world who have gladly immersed themselves in that world of witches and magic that coexisted with our own.

Now it's over. I finished reading the story yesterday evening. What was somewhat amusing is that most of the "spoilers" everyone was so upset about were not true to begin with and were probably more in the nature of an enormous publicity stunt. Some of what happened was happily predictable. Some of it left me laughing out loud because all the clues were there and I missed them. All but one of my favorite characters survived. Some I knew must die did. Others I thought probably should die, didn't. In the end, however, it came out as it should and the adventure is over.

Ms. Rowling has said she will not write any more about Harry and his friends, and I applaud her decision as much as I feel a touch of sadness that there will be no more of Harry and his friends. I've seen far too many wonderful ideas taken to such extremes as to become ridiculous. The Frank Herbert Dune books come to mind. Dune itself is a masterpiece. It should have remained a solitary book. It saddens me to see that the series continues long after the original author's death. There are a number of other such series that either should have ended long ago or which should never have become series in the first place. So stick by your guns, Jo. You're doing the right thing.

Bah. Humbug!

I really do hate the 4th of July. Fireworks, except for municipal displays, are forbidden in our area, especially firecrackers. Which means the noise starts about breakfast time and continues unabated until the wee hours of the morning. Right now it's nearly 9:30 at night and the din is nowhere near abating.

My daughter has a dog. He's getting older and he really stresses out with all the noise. The vet can't give him sedatives because of his age, so he gets anxious and jumpy. It was getting pretty bad earlier this evening, so I shut all the windows despite the heat, and brought him into my room. Then I put on a CD I just got of classical pieces selected specifically to be relaxing and soothing. The noise outside is loud and continuous yet he's asleep on the bed with the music playing in the background. I know it's silly to think that the music is helping him cope with the noise and stress of the 4th, but he's honestly sacked out.

My daughter took him into her room a bit ago and he got really agitated and was whining and running around, so she let him out. I put the music back on for him, and he's back asleep. I think he's dreaming about chasing a rabbit. His feet are twitching and he's barking in his sleep. Silly dog.

The Garden

I am not sure why I'm so attached to my little garden. There is just something about growing stuff, particularly flowers, that makes me happy. The picture is a container of nasturtiums that I planted earlier and which are just now coming into full bloom. I can actually smell them from my chair when I have the living room window open.

I want to work with my daughter later this summer and fall to put in two new flower beds and get new dirt into two more. I can't wait to see what all the new flowers will look like come spring.

Our vegetable garden is doing well too. We have lots of baby squashes, broccoli, and tomato plants (I'm still waiting for the first baby tomato) and other things. Susan saw some baby peppers today as well, so that's a good thing. Most of my pepper plants died without ever forming a new leaf, as did most of my cucumber plants. I do have two remaining cucumbers and three or four peppers which might do something.

I'm currently waiting on a big pot of sweet peas. It's finally decided to produce lots of baby flower buds, but is still a few days of good weather away from showing any color. I'm patient.

Gardening is sort of like therapy for me. I don't worry about things, and I love the results. I'm already making plans to prune the big evergreen shrubs and azaleas and rhododendrons so that next year they will produce many more flowers. Next spring the back deck will be ablaze with spring flowers. I've already ordered the bulbs to put in. At some point, if I get the side flower bed in, I'll put in iris.

Good News

About a week ago I got a call from an agency with whom I have done business in the past. They said that there was a 2-3 day job at Microsoft that needed doing and I had been asked for by name based on an equally brief job I did for them sometime last year. They were horribly vague about what the job was. Something about doing a styleguide for a website. I'm retired now and can always use money; besides, I've been bored of late and this would be a nice change.

Today I went to Microsoft and met with the new team for the first time. My recruiter is a blithering idiot. She didn't really understand what the job was at all. My boss knew that, and begged the silly twit to just let her call me and explain. So now I know. It's not 2-3 days. It's part time for seven weeks and probably more. It's not just doing the styleguide, but also writing parts of the website, helping with site design, data flow, concepts and all sorts of other cool and interesting stuffs. I will be working from home most of the time and going into the office once a week or as needed. If things work out, then there are vague "other" projects stretching out for quite a ways.

What is ideal about this job is that it will come in spurts. A few hours here a few more there. I like the people. The pay is decent. On the way out of the building the other tech writer asked me if I would consider taking emergency overflow if she got backed up. I told her to bring it on.

So I am feeling sort or smug at the moment. This is a real job. It's doing stuff that interests me. It's a good group of people. I cannot imagine how it could be better at the moment.

Of course I always feel the need to keep off the streets and out of the bars, so I am also writing a short blog column called Media Criticism. It's found at: http://www.mediacritiques.com if you are interested in checking it out.

Political History

This time the political history I am writing about is my own. It shows how a regular person gets sucked and and addicted to politics for a lifetime.

My indoctrination into politics started in high school. I was in a Civics class. We were broken up into groups, each of which was to design a public opinion project and write a report on our findings. The only parameter is that it had to be something to do with government. My group decided to investigate opinion on the city manager form of government recently adopted by our city. We designed a questionnaire, picked places we could get people to interview, and picked some city officials to talk to. A short time later, we were told we couldn't do our project. Somehow word of what we wanted to do had somehow gotten to someone in city government and they called the school and complained. That ended that. I never forgot it. It was the beginning of my involvement in politics.

I admit I was pretty naive back then. I remember signing members of the Montana government into a conference one day. I asked this nice man what he did. The laughter was deafening. He was the governor. But he was a very nice guy and was polite. I was so embarassed. The next day I got a nice note from him. I remembered that.

When I returned to the Seattle area, I got married and began getting involved again. I remember meeting this very Kennedyeque young banker named Chase who was running for the Senate. He didn't have a chance, but he was so appealing politically. I remember bouncing around the dark country roads of rural Washington in a bus with him and his campaign staff (I was just a grunt) attending town meetings. He was a Republican as I recall. It was on this campaign that I met Ted Bundy. Yes. That Ted Bundy. Met is a relative term. I knew him well enough to say "good morning, Mr. Budy."

I was involved in the Vietnam anti-war movement and later joined a campaign to elect a state Senator one last time before he retired. I did a lot in that one, running some of the nuts and bolts parts of the campaign out of my house. It was a political machine against a very right wing nutcase of an opponent who was the former mayor of our city. It was pretty funny. We won even though our candidate was so old he couldn't make public appearances. Don't get me wrong. He was as sharp as they come. He was just frail physically. What was sad is that a few months after the election, he died. It was at his funeral that I met Warren Magnusen and Scoop Jackson. (Please understand that none of these people could be classified as friends other than the old senator. They were people I worked for sometimes politically).

From there I received a phone call one evening late from a man I barely knew. He mentioned another friend. He had been told I was politically savvy and that I could write. He wanted me to meet him and two other local political types at a really sort of questionable waterfront breakfast cafe the next morning at like 6:30 in the morning. It was all highly hush hush. Of course I went. Seems that our illustrious right wing city council had finally stepped over two many lines to be tolerated (like awarding cable TV contracts to their friends rather than using a bidding process, an some others). These three men represented a group of pretty prominent people in our town. They asked me to join them as the publicist for a recall effort. The political evaluation was that of the five members they were targeting for recall, we had a very good chance of getting three of them recalled. I went home, wrote up and called in the press release (a reporter was waiting for it). It was published almost unchanged. Months later we held a victory party in almost stunned silence. We had recalled all five and the city council was without a quorum.

This and the following event set the tone for my political interest for the rest of my life. Being down there in the trenches doing the real work was wonderful and I loved it. The final incident involved a phone call I got just after the city council thing was settled. A man introduced himself as the deputy mayor and unoffical head of the city council. He told me I had been nominated for one of the vacant council seats, and wanted to set up the first of what was to be a long interview process. I thought he was a friend playing a practical joke. It took me rounds of apologies once I realized he was who he said he was and that he was serious. The interview process was fascinating. It was the only time in my life that reporters called me about me. In the end the process for that particular seat came down to me, and another woman who was a personal friend of mine. I found out years later that the determining factor in the end was that her children were school aged and mine were not, so she had more free time. That was it. Pretty flattering.

I was hooked. I've been politically active and involved since. This was back in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This brief contact with the internal workings of politics in this country really opened my eyes. I love it to be honest. If there were a campaign where I could materially contribute today I'd be doing it. I don't mean just answering telephones and stuffing envelopes this time. I've seen so much and met so many people. It's funny how much different politics appears from the inside looking out, and I was never one of the inner cadre (other than for the recall). Political campaigns are exciting because they are a win/lose situation and have a definite end date.

I'll leave you with my most embarassing political moment ever. I had put together my candidates booth for a candidate's fair at the local mall. I was manning the booth, answering questions, handing out campaign literature, etc. It was the candidate I told you about who couldn't make personal appearances. My husband showed up with our kids. He kept our son with him and I took our daughter for a walk to see the other booths. I guess I never stopped to think that even a five year old listens when adults talk around the house. She looked really cute in a red, white, and blue dress and a banner across it with our candidate's name. She had on a white straw campaign hat. She's a tiny little redhead and was cute. She really caught people's eye. Let's call the opposition candidate Bob Smith. My daughter was asking me the names of the various people at the booths. As we passed Bob Smith's booth I told her that was Bob Smith. In a little girl voice that carries to the ends of the universe and beyond, she looked him in the eye and yelled "Bob Smith. Bleh." If there had been a way of simply sinking through the floor, I would have. The laughter was deafening.

I miss this level of participation to this day. The memories still make me smile.

The Little Things

Sometimes I think in our rush through our lives that we forget to step back and enjoy the little, inconsequential things that make you happy nevertheless. Yesterday and today there were several of those for me.

It started when I dropped my daughter off for one of her appointments. I needed to stop by the grocery store to pick up some things. While waiting to check out I noticed some nice, canvas grocery bags with nice sturdy handles. My daughter and I had been talking about doing away with the whole plastic bag thing for some time. These bags seems to do the trick. When the clerk put my purchases in one of them, I was amazed at how really big they were and how much the held compared to how they looked folded up. The best part was the price. $1.25 each. I got four and was telling Sewmouse about them last night. So now four more will be wending their way East sometime early in the week (probably Tuesday).

I decided to do some weeding in the garden. I'm always looking for ways of removing more weeds and gaining more garden space. Some time ago I planted seven lily bulbs. They had never come up, so I figured they were like the other bulbs I bought from the same place, and just let it go and forgot about them. As I was pulling up blackberry vine roots, I noticed this really weird little plant. I looked closer and realized it had to be one of my lilies. Nothing else is quite as odd looking as new lilies. Then I saw two more. I expect the others will be joining us one of these days.

The next job was watering the garden, though I could have spared myself that chore as it rained last night anyway. About three weeks ago I planted a nice healthy rhubarb root in a nice area out there. Given that it won't really produce until next year, I didn't expect to see anything of it until sometime around mid-summer. Well, there in the middle of the bed were these two tiny, wrinkly little green leaves. As I looked closer I could see barely a shred of red where the stalks would be coming up. My daughter loves rhubarb. It looks as if I got something going here. It made me feel really good. Kinda pathetic if you think of it. I got all excited over two little green wrinkly rhubarb leaves and a little bit of stem.

Today we had another of those, but it didn't pertain to plants. Last week this funny white spot had appeared on the kitchen floor. I didn't know what it was. This morning our roommate was cleaning up something and she scrubbed at it with a scrubber sponge. She called on us to come and look. I had been trying to find something that would clean the kitchen floor, but was worried about buildup I saw around the edge. Well, because of the wax I was using, there had been a steady buildup of wax and dirt over the past year or so. The only thing that was going to get all that buildup off the floor was ammonia and I am the only one who doesn't get sick smelling the fumes, so I made a deal with the two girls...I will do the big work, and you'll finish it off. That worked. As a result we now have a really clean kitchen, the smell is dissipating, and we all feel pretty smug.

None of these things is important. Each by itself or even collectively are really immaterial. But each one made me feel happy. There's a lot to be said for a little happy feeling scattered across your day.

Back to Work

I am really hoping to get back to work part-time soon. I've identified four real opportunities to write online and have submitted my resume and application to each of them. The pay isn't enormous, but then neither is the time expenditure. It would be sufficient money for me to augment my income and pay for some trips I want to take. It would also keep me busy and off the streets and out of the bars.

We'll see if I get any of them. My absolute favorite would be as a political blogger. I'm opinionated enough and well enough informed that it would be a piece of cake for me to do this. Imagine being paid for doing something I do anyway. Tres cool.

At any rate, we'll see. I would love to keep my mind active and get back the feeling of accomplishment that writing something good always gives me.

The New Immigration Reform Bill

The text of the new Senate Comprehensive Immigration bill (Senate Bill 1348) is approximately 350 pages long. It was my intention to read and comment on it all. This proved to be impossible in the time I allotted myself for the task, and given the complexity of the bill. Therefore, I skipped the sections on college visas and adoptions, and skimmed through a number of others.

There are a lot of very interesting things in this bill. Many of them would be good things if they were every implemented. However, the bill clearly states that if segments are not implemented, it will not stop the rest of the bill from applying. In other words, they can grant the amnesty and put the guest worker program in place without implementing heavy border security and cracking down on employers. There are a lot of reports required in the bill; however, there is no provision for making any of these reports public. They are to be delivered either to congress or to the Secretary of Homeland Security.

There are provisions in this bill for nearly everyone to hate. The feedback that is coming in says that most illegals will not even apply for the amnesty because they fear the government’s ability to be able to track them and also because of the fees and penalties associated with the program, and the provision that they must leave the country to make the initial provisional amnesty permanent.

Amnesty

The single most disturbing part of this bill is the granting of instant amnesty (which they provisional legal status). When this bill passes, any illegal can apply for an adjustment of status and be granted instant provisional legal status without so much as a background check, or without paying a dime if they were here on January 1, 2007. This is a provisional status but allows them to work and precludes them being picked up and deported. After they do this, then they have to fulfill all the provisions regarding English, background checks, criminal record checks, paying of fines, etc. Opinion: By granting them legal status to be and work here, even provisional status, puts them at the head of the line in terms of immigration. They are then free to stay here for however long the system takes while those who applied legally are still outside the country sitting on their hands waiting for their chance to come here.

To have their provisional amnesty converted to permanent resident status, an illegal must:

• Pay a fine of $5000.
• File and pay income taxes. They cannot claim refund or earned income credit.
• Must have worked three of the past five years. Employment requirement is waived for someone who was pregnant most of the time, or who was physically or mentally handicapped. They exempt people under 20 and over 65.
• Provide proof of employment. It accepts as proof of employment the sworn testimony of your relatives.
• Prove English proficiency and pass a citizenship test. The last two are waived for the mentally retarded and those over 65.
• Head of household must return to his/her home country to apply for permanent legal status. Those failing to depart and reenter within the 8 year period are barred for applying again for ten years and, if caught will be heavily fined and deported.

The section on what they have to do and the rules, etc. is extensive and confusing. It will require lawyers to interpret it for them. An interesting clause considering it effectively names employers guilty of employing illegals. To circumvent this, the bill provides that information provided on employers of illegals are protected and cannot be made public in any way. Opinion: The information also could not be made public so that the public is aware of who the greatest abusers of U.S. law actually are.

The conditional permanent residence is granted immediately for six years. There is a clause in the bill that will allow illegals, even those breaking the rules, to remain if deporting them would mean a hardship on their spouse or family. Opinion: This is an open door to abuse.

Deep within the bill is a provision that appears to exempt anyone who snuck into this country before January 1, 1972 and who doesn’t have a criminal record, from further examination and grants them immediate amnesty (no they don’t call it that) or legal status. Anyone who came here on forged documents 10 or more years ago doesn’t have to pay for this crime in any way. They are granted criminal amnesty. There are zero penalties for these people.

All aliens are required to report their current addresses to INS. Failure to do so is a deportable offense when the person is caught.

The bill grants the Secretary of Homeland Security the absolute and unreviewable power to suspend any aspect of the requirements for anyone for any reason.

Border Security

There is a lot of language in this bill regarding physical and other forms of border security. There is a very long section on the southern border fencing. However, if you read it closely, you’ll see that every inch of previously erected fence is included in what appear to be new fencing totals. The total include 370 miles of fence and another 500 miles of vehicle barriers. These are to be completed within two years. In addition to this general fencing, there would be additional fences built in the Yuma and Tucson Arizona areas, which are high crossing regions.

Included in this will be aerial surveillance, roads and vehicle barriers, and other ways of finding and stopping those attempting to cross the border. There is also a large increase in staffing to interdict illegals.

The bill clearly states the prohibition on using the National Guard or our military to guard or protect our borders in any way that involved actual interdiction. Opinion: This is probably put in there as a sop to Mexico and to ensure them that we’re not really going to get serious about stopping illegals from flooding across the southern border.

There is also a provision that is repeated numerous times across the document that forbids state entities and municipalities to enforce immigration law. Opinion: This seems to be added to protect illegals from such things as the rash of new local and state laws designed to combat federal inaction and inertia. Overall this could be a very significant provision that would tie the hands of those communities and states most deeply affected by illegal immigration.

One provision of this bill permits foreign-owned companies to bid on and obtain contracts for implementing the various programs to ensure our border security. Opinion: This seems like an enormously stupid thing to do considering that this is our border security we’re talking about. It’s just my opinion, but only American companies and workers should be allowed any portion of the design or implementation of any aspect of any project within the United States that deals with security issues, whether border security or any other type of security.

Increased Staffing

This bill is looking to add a lot of new employees into all aspects of the immigration process from clerks to clear out the backlog to more INS agents and port inspectors. Over five years this would add 2500 port inspectors. 250 Deputy U.S. Marshals, and 1,000 agents to investigate human smuggling. Over the same period, 11,600 Border Patrol agents. Twenty percent of these new Border Patrol Agents will be assigned to the Canadian border.

One of the first things I noticed when reading about this is a clause requiring a report to be written on the advisability of contracting training for these new hires out to private companies. Opinion: This is probably opening the door to no-bid contracts to some Senator or Administration favored private company such as Halliburton.

The bill calls for a National Security Plan that is to be submitted to congress within a year of the bill’s passage. Opinion: I would have thought that given the severity of the problem that such a plan would already exist.

Guest Worker Programs

There are quite a few different types of temporary and guest worker programs described in this bill. Each has its own set of rules and regulations.

Temporary Guest Workers. This classification does not include agricultural workers, who have their own separate program. There is a special clause in the bill to permit fashion models to come in. Workers would have to undergo a background check and medical check. Must have received a job offer. $500 visa fee. These temporary workers cannot convert their status to immigrant. Must leave if unemployed for 60 days, with a ton of exceptions. If they fail to leave, they are barred from applying for any form of admission for ten years. Comment: Television reports that spouse and kids may only come for a short visit every two years is incorrect. They are eligible to accompany the worker.

While the bill identifies English as the unifying language of the United States, it does not require that guest workers be fluent in English and it requires that instructions and other printed matter be given the prospective employee in their own language.

These temporary workers must be paid prevailing local wages. People who are already here are not allowed to apply for the temporary worker program from within the U.S. These temporary workers cannot convert their status to permanent resident and must return home at the end of their visas. Their visas are renewable one time.

Agricultural Workers. These will enter under a special blue card provision. They must get a special card and be registered in a database. They can keep their spouses and children in the U.S. They are barred from welfare and other social services for five years. These temporary workers have to be provided either housing or a housing allowance. This can include labor camps. They are not eligible for permanent residence and they must return home at the end of a specified time.

Protecting American Workers

Protections for American workers include the clause that all jobs must be advertised nationally through such places as Employment Security databases and the like. Any job from which a qualified American has been fired cannot be filled by a temporary guest worker for six months. Any job for which a qualified American applies must be filled by an American. Requires prevailing wages and health coverage for at least on the job types of injuries and problems. There is also a clause that forbids importing guest workers in non-agricultural jobs into any metropolitan area which has an unemployment rate of 9% or more. It contains some whistleblower protection as well, which would be necessary given how people will spend more time finding ways to avoid complying with the law than they will obeying it.

Permanent Residents Applying From Outside the Country

There is currently a huge backlog of people who have taken the legal route to apply. This is a long and cumbersome process which can take over ten years to complete. A number of strategies are suggested in this bill which would considerably speed clearing of this backlog from hiring more people to automating many areas of the process.

They have also redesigned the manner in which the applications are approved. In the past a family connection moved you to the head of the line above any other consideration. The majority of visas granted each year were family related. Under the new provisions of this law, there will be a point system assigned that will grant the majority of new visas to people who are in occupations for which a shortage currently exists here, such as nurses have, who are college graduates (especially in technical subjects and sciences), who have advanced degrees, who speak fluent English, and several other such qualifiers.

New immigrants are required to submit fingerprints: The bill allows them to do this within 30 days of arriving here. This would permit people to get here for which there is no biometric identification, then simply disappear and would make them much harder to track.

A Wealth of Databases

This bill is full of proposals for numerous, interactive databases. One of these would be a national security database to track those on the various programs who are here legally, and to allow employers and others to quickly and easily determine a person’s status. Opinion: They have been trying for over ten years to upgrade the Internal Revenue computers without any appreciable success but with a cost of tens of millions of dollars. Now they’re saying they can have this entire new system up, running, and talking to other government databases within a year.

One of the provisions of the new identification cards that will be a major part of the new database tracking system will be the inclusion of fingerprints, a photograph, and such information as date of birth, etc. This information is designed to make it more difficult to fake these identification cards, particularly since the information the card includes will be in the database. Forging such a card infers the ability to hack into the database and insert data.

Another federal database is planned to help various federal agencies coordinate information on human smugglers. This database will be expected to talk to the databases in the other agencies. Opinion: We shall see if that actually happens, since most federal databases still cannot talk to one another and the ability to do so was supposed to be developed immediately following 9/11 because of the missed clues that might have prevented the attack had one federal agency had access to the information in another’s database.

The bill contains a large number of provisions designed to provide tracking for visas, and a variety of other legal documents at points of entry into the United. States. The overall intent seems to be to finally be able to actually know when someone here on a visa leaves the country, and by extension, to know who has not left who should have. These would include the collection of pictures and fingerprints at the border as people entered and exited the United States. The bill provides that no later than October 26, 2008 that all documents used to identify aliens within the United States be machine readable, and that the readers be in place and operational. Opinion: I personally find this almost laughable. The federal government can’t do the simplest things quickly. This involves designing a large scale identification system, training people to use it, and having the database that it will connect to designed and running within a year and a half. They won’t even be able to issue bids in that time.

An interesting provision here is that the federal government can also require the same biometric information be given by legal permanent U.S. residents as they enter and leave the country. Included with this provision is one that is repeated throughout this bill, granting the Secretary of Homeland Security the right to suspend or ignore any aspect of this bill he wishes without explanation and without accountability.

The bill gives the government 30 days after passage of the bill to inform congress that technology to do this has been developed. This provision also includes the idea that legal citizens could request that their legal status be included on their driver’s license. The license would then be used as an identification document at the border. The state may not require said citizenship be put on the driver’s license and cannot share information they obtain this way with anyone, even if it would identify illegals. Opinion: The federal government can’t take a potty break in 30 days, much less develop technology for a program of this size.

Immigration law violators of all sort will be listed in the national crime information database. Someone whose name is entered here by mistake can petition to have their name removed. Opinion: I find this ironic as hell. American citizens who are mistakenly put on a terrorist watch list cannot get their name off those lists even when they are including babies and other such people who couldn’t possibly be terrorists.

Working With Other Countries

One interesting provision of this new law is working with Guatamala and Beliz, including large grants and providing lots of equipment to help them deal with border jumpers heading for Mexico and eventually the United States across their northern borders. An added part is that we will be setting up and administering a database to track gang activities in these countries as well as in the United States and Mexico. Of course we will be footing the bill.

The section of cooperative effort with Mexico to curb illegal immigration is interesting. It includes million of dollars that the U.S. will pay the Mexican government for training programs and for developing economic opportunities for people in Mexico. Opinion: Most of this money will probably go into the pockets of corrupt Mexican officials. Also, it seems ironic to me that we will go out of our way to provide job training and economic opportunity to Mexicans, yet we do a really poor job of doing the same thing for our own citizens.

One really excellent idea in this bill is designed to solve a very large problem with regard to other countries refusing to repatriate their nationals when they are caught here illegally. This bill dictates that any country that refuses to repatriate their own citizens will have all visas to come here suspended until such a time as they choose to comply. Of course there is the usual caveat that the Secretary of Homeland Security can ignore these provisions at will.

Miscellaneous Ideas

There is one small provision that exempts Cubans from all provisions of this act, most particularly the mandatory detention sections. At least that’s what I believe the phrase “The mandatory detention requirement in subsection (a) does not apply to any alien who is a native or citizen of a country in the Western Hemisphere with whose government the United States does not have full diplomatic relations” means. I’m not sure there is any other country in the Western Hemisphere with whom the U.S. does not have full diplomatic relations. It also exempts the children of Philippine war veterans.

Grants full citizenship to any non-citizen who serves two years in the military. It’s not clear from the clause if this includes illegals.

One idea that would facilitate the travel of U.S. citizens is what is called a Passport Card. This would allow those crossing the Canadian and Mexican borders regularly, and also vacationing people going on cruises and such things to have acceptable identification. This same idea also suggests the establishment of a frequent crosser database to speed such people across the borders without undue delays. This would include background checks, criminal checks, and includes people who don’t appear on any of the watch lists.

One clause this writer particularly liked was one which would reimburse small local governments for the expense they incur in dealing with illegals they catch smuggling drugs or people across the border, prior to turning them over to INS.

There are a number of provisions in this bill designed to crack down on forgers, human smugglers, drug runners and other low lives. There is also a provision to stop catch and release of illegals. To accommodate the expected numbers of detainees, the government is to look into retaining and reopening military facilities that were closed under previous base closing initiatives. These are to be regarded as a first choice before building new facilities.

Opinion: The bill contains what I regard as cop-out language exempting churches and other religious organizations who choose to defy U.S. law regarding illegals without repercussions.

Employer Repercussions

There is a clause in this bill which applies the criminal forfeiture laws to anyone who knowingly employs 10 or more illegals in any 12 month period. It also imposes heavy fines and up to ten years in prison. The provision also denies anyone other than INS officers from arresting or detaining illegals even when they are discovered. This would preclude local cops from arresting houses full of illegals. Opinion: This feature alone would stop most illegal border crossings by drying up the jobs if there is actually an intent to enforce it.

Legal aliens who get caught in the enforcement mess that is sure to result from this act are entitled to be reimbursed for lost wages. In addition, there is a cap on attorney fees for assisting people get their money. The cap is really big for one person ($25,000) but would be quite effective in eliminating nuisance suits by class action lawyers.

The Secretary of Homeland Security can exempt businesses who routinely hire large numbers of illegals from the penalties associated with doing so. Otherwise, there are heavy fines and jail sentences for anyone who doesn’t check an employee’s status once the databases are up and running.

A report is required to assess the impact of millions of new recipients for a variety of social service programs in the U.S. There is no provision in this law to bar those getting instant legality from applying for any of these programs.

English Language

Declares English to be the “national language of the United States.” The exact language is as follows: The Government of the United States shall preserve and enhance the role of English as the national language of the United States of America. Unless otherwise authorized or provided by law, no person has a right, entitlement, or claim to have the Government of the United States or any of its officials or representatives act, communicate, perform or provide services, or provide materials in any language other than English. If exceptions are made, that does not create a legal entitlement to additional services in that language or any language other than English. If any forms are issued by the Federal Government in a language other than English (or such forms are completed in a language other than English), the English language version of the form is the sole authority for all legal purposes.

This clause is directly contradicted by a previous clause which mandates production of any number of documents in languages other than English.