Once Again, I rant about out municipal government supplied, Tax dollar paid for Snow removal.

   Will the damn Snow ever end? I don't know what is worse, getting a behemoth two feet of the white stuff in one shot ot getting 4 to 6 inches every few days for a month. This much I do know:
   The wall of snow along the curb on my steet is now as high as the car windows, and backing out of your driveway is an adventure. You really can't see very far, or if anyone is coming. During the day it is worse because of sunglare on the White snow, but at least at night you can see the reflection from an oncoming car's lights.
    Once again I would like to ask the Township Snow Plow Drivers what is the point of plowing all the snow in the development onto my side of the street?
    Do you take a perverse pleasure in creating a four foot high, three feet deep frozen wall of ice at the end of my driveway, (and That of my neighbors?)
   I broke the wooden handle of a Steel shovel trying to break it down and make it manageable to move. My Neighbor's Snowblower literally blew up trying to penetrate that thing.
    Then the Township had the nerve to send someone around to make sure we had cleared our sidewalks, or face possible fines? The Township Dump Trucks/Plows go down the street with such speed that they threw the several feet of acculated snow not just to the curb, but they also buried many of the sidewalks that had been cleared with more than a foot of slushy ice, which as the temperature dropped into the teens, became rock hard. Try Shoveling that!  Thank you Township!

   Okay, I am done now. I spent several hours this weeken Shoveling the excessive snow and ice off my back deck. I don't want the excessive weight to buckle it.  I'm glad I dropped the gym membership last year. God knows I get more exercise now outside in the elements.
  

In Trexlertown, some people are still stuffing their faces, but I don't think the economy is doing all that well.

    I have had a problem lately posting. I write every day, and the ideas always seem brilliant and funny when they are flowing from my fingertips to the keyboard. I have a rule about waiting a day to post, and nothing seems to pass muster when I come back to it. I have started wondering if maybe I am being too critical of my own work. Am I self conscious about my vision issues? Spell check doesn't always catch everything, and I hate it when I come back to a post a couple of days later and see a glaring mistake in syntax or spelling.
    Anyway, yesterday my wife and I went out to lunch, and three of the largest people I have ever seen weight wise were seated nearby. I have had my own weight issues in life, so I don't offer criticism easily. We can't really afford to eat out all the time, but we try to budget an occasional nice meal for ourselves, and this was a nice place that had reasonably priced steak.

     My question is, am I wrong to think that you shouldn't demand that a restaurant serve you another meal if you already ate the one you were given? These folks cleared off several appetizers and entrees, literally licking the plates clean. Then when the waitress asked them if their food was acceptable, they said no, and wanted it redone.
    In my opinion they had no shame, but a manager came to their table and they were eventually fed again. In contrast. my wife and I took much of our meal home to have later for dinner. There's no way we could have forced ourselves to indulge in the amount of food our neighbors at the other table consumed. To be honest, I thought they were downright gluttonous.
   
   I guess the manager felt it was better to keep them fat and happy than endure a possible scene if he had denied their demands.

   And that got me to thinking about how those gluttonous people truly represented what is wrong with a segment of American culture. There are people who just don't realize when they are indulging in too much of a good thing, and that it is really bad for them.

   Whether it is real estate speculators, Wall Street Greed whores, or Banks playing fast and lose with financial regulations, there are plain old Americans living on Main Street who don't know when enough is enough. They just gotta have more. And to keep the system going, someone enabled them and gave them what they wanted.

    One of these days the system is going to run out of fuel. In some cases it is Government printed Money. In other cases it is questionable loans made on overvalued real estate, but it all boils down to people spending money they truly don't have to have things they don't need, like too big of a house, or more food than they should rationally consume.
    Eventually the appetite of the greedy insatiable pigs at all levels is going to get introduced to the stringent diet of Macaroni and cheese that many of us regularly deal with.
    And you know what?
   They will probably demand that the Government make MORE available for them.

   We really need to start considering how to live within our means. I am fortunate that I am working, but from what I am seeing in the warehouse district, with many companies not even offering full time hours, I don't think the recovery is all it is cracked up to be. I don't think people are getting the message of what has happened in the last 3 years, and they haven't really felt the pain yet.

The Murphy's Law of Housecleaning if you own dogs

I am like most people, I have weekends off from work, and that is when I do my share of housecleaning.
  If you have dogs, you know there is a bit more effort involved.

  We had a few inches of snow Friday Morning, and that meant our two Spaniels, Lucy and Sally would get their feet wet. That's no big deal, we have a tile floor in our foyer, and it's no big deal to contain them and wipe them down when they come back in, so they don't track wet puppy paw prints all over the house.

    Unless of course, you are me.

     Sometimes I bring absentmindedness to a whole new level. Saturday Morning I put them out and started mopping all the floors in the common areas. When I finished, I used an old towel to wipe them down, giving them a nice, clean, and shiny look.

    Then I went to let the dogs back in. Silly me, I forgot to put up the dog gate keeping them in the foyer before I opened the door.
     Damned if little 14 year old Lucy didn't trot on by and proceed to inspect every foot of the hallway, kitchen, and washroom that I had mopped while I tried to dry off Sally. It would be pointless to yell at Lucy, first, because she is deaf as a board, and second, I doubt she would understand what I was saying anyway.

    So I ended up closing them in the TV room for a few minutes while I did the cleaning all over again.

    The dog gate has wide slats that allow them to watch me, much like jailed prisoners watching a trustee mop the cell block.  Their eyes were wide, and literally bled with tears for me to take pity on them and let them help. I'm not that gullible. I do the same when I wash the bedsheets. Ever try to change bed linens with a dog that wants to help by jumping on the bed? I wouldn't advise it.

      Murphy's Law says that what can go wrong will go wrong. I would like to offer an addendum to that. Having a dog doubles the chances of things going wrong, but also quadruples the odds that you will laugh about it. And that is a Law I believe most of us can live with.