Aack

Mixed Emotions

I'm conflicted.

How can one feel sad and happy both about the same event?

You see, Thing 2's rabbit, Snowball, finally got to the geriatric point of her life that we had to intervene. (Remember Thing 1's rabbit?) It hurts to see a child have to deal with the decision to put an animal down and then go through with the process. She was very mature about it and she knows that the rabbit is better off, but it still hurts a bit.

On the flip side, I'm glad to be rid of the overgrown rodent. Now I'll have a place to park an ATV this winter. So you see, I have to walk carefully when displaying any type of jubilation I might feel.

I'm conflcted.

That's Outrageous!

A friend of ours introduced us to Neuticles recently through an article found online at CNN. Talk about journalistic integrity. Really, you can't beat that kind of gripping life story...or can you?

I may have found one to top it...not that I was looking. Apparently there is a company that will now take the cremated remains of the dearly departed and turn them into precious gems. Yep - diamonds. I quote from LifeGem's website:

"After extensive research and development, we have discovered how to extract the carbon from existing cremated remains. This process begins with a portion of remains from any standard cremation."

FoxNews did a quick human interst blurb on the company in 2002. I must have missed it. I can honestly say that that is truly bizarre.

Remember folks, if you have an insane amount of cash, then Love Lives On...for you, but if you don't, then you must not love your dearly departed very much. Seriously...if you want an heirloom diamond, I'll save you a few bucks...send me $10K (half what they are asking) and I'll send you a nice quality diamond ready for mounting.

The Big & Small Of It

Check out this slide show to put your life on this rock into perspective.

Links of Interest

I'm cleaning out my mailbox at work and have come across some links that I want to explore at a later date, so I'm posting them here.

Showing tonight in a sky near you... [Link]

Top 10 U.S. Natural Disaster Worries...[Link]

26 Foot Giant Squid - Live...[Link]

More to come I'm sure.

Great Quote

From a co-worker in response to a message detailing an unneeded large scale project that must be justified anyway...

"All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way.
People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes,
and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome."

-George Orwell

Weird Memories

For lunch today, I had a Marie Callender's chicken pot pie. The pie itself was delicious, but the memories it brought back...

It's funny how the smell & taste of something can affect your memories. At first, the pie was just sustenance. "It's all BTU's" as a friend of mine often says. However, I flipped it out of it's handy cooking container, upside down, into a bowl I keep at work. Hmm, that was an odd memory twinge. Next, I poked into the flaky crust on the bottom and proceeded to mix the entire bottom into the contents of the pie. Weird, I've been here before.

I proceeded to eat the contents of the pie, just like I did when I was a kid! Last, but not least, I then devoured the remaining shell as I relived past childhood memories of doing the same thing.

Quite the experience. I wonder what the kids will remember 20 years from now?

Dumb Ideas

Here is an entertaining yet informative article on The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security. A must read for anyone responsible for the IT structure in their office. It may only provide a high level synopsis, but there is plenty of substance too.

People Box

I have spent most of the last 4 days playing in a People Box. Don't know what a People Box is? Let me describe it. It's about 13' wide by 30' long and is filled with sand and rock. Oh, and it has these pipes in it that make water go in different directions and a special pump to pump said water. The pipes also have holes in them so you can make pretty designs. The whole process would have been a lot more fun if it hadn't been hovering around 30º F (give or take 10 degrees), but I did have a big tractor to play with.

I've spent a lot of time in it and frankly I'm tired of it. Someone else can play in it now.

Still don't know what a People Box is? Well, it's very similar to a cat box, except you don't have to clean it out but once every 10 to 15 years or so. A People Box is in reality...

...a leach field. It's what us ruralized folks send our waste water to (by way of a septic tank).

I am purposefully not posting any before pics. Y'all can thank me by sending large quantities of $20 bills to help offset the expense of this endeavor.

To begin with, we had to get all the components needed to reline the leach field - lots of sand and rock (you can't see the 4 dump truck loads of sand in this picture):

Then you have to get a big earth mover to dig out the old leach field. It was a nasty ordeal and in the process we discovered that the leach field had stopped working a long time ago...you don't want to know how we figured that out...

Seeing as how I want to be able to sell this place when it is time to move on, I have to follow certain codes. ONe of which is depth of sand and rock. Here I am checking to see if we have indeed gone deep enough:

When we finally go the pit cleaned out (can you say roto-rooter?), it looked fairly decent:

Now we start to put it all back together. First the sand:

Then the rock and pipe. But what's this, it snowed last night. @!#$@^%:

Today it warmed up quite nicely (it got up to 43º F) and I was able to comlete the pipe laying:

This is where we currently stand. Tomorrow I take deliverey of the final load of rock, then we cover the rock with a semi-permeable fabric and then a bunch of dirt goes on top to insulate it.

I'm tired and sore. Can someone else finish this for me please.

I should also mention that I had a very dedicated friend helping me with this. If it were up to me, I would have paid someone to do it. But then, I tried that and they apparently didn't want my hard earned cash. This way I might get to hang onto a little more of it...maybe.

Fini

30 days, several thousand miles, restless nights, and hot humid days. Tomorrow we began the slow trek back home. Before then I will be in Purvis, MS, Atlanta, GA, Seattle, Anchorage and then home to Fairbanks. I should be home in about 53 hours.

Do you think I'm counting?