The Countertop Chronicles

I received about 20 applications for an internship this fall.

None of them were very good (if you know someone who is interested in a great internship – no photocopying, but actually being my shadow as we meet and lobby Government officials (this summers intern will join me at the White House next week, has engaged with Nancy Pelosi (spit) and Harry Reid and successfully negotiated for very specific loopholes in the Waxman Markey bill with me as well as participated in multi party settlement discussions between my clients, DOJ, and Federal Agencies and environmental group and litigated across the country), shoot me an email).

Usually, if there is no one who interests me I just simply decide not to hire someone. I actually pay a decent rate for an intern – it works out to about $35k a year – though its only for 1/3 of the year – still decent for a college kid – and I don’t want to be a baby sitter but want someone who is intellectually stimulating.

Anyway, I got no good resumes. Well, no competent resumes. But I did get one from a girl at a large southern state school. All she listed on her resume as a credential is that she was a bartender/wait staff at a local restaurant and is in a sorority – that by the looks of it – is populated by only very attractive, very tan, girls. Oh, and she wrote a rather interesting paper on prostitution. Which has nothing to do with my area of expertise, but . . . .

the question is, in light of all that, should I consider hiring her?? I’m tempted.

HT to Ron at Reactuate

1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before? Rented a beach house for a month.

2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
No, not really. I had some that I wish I had kept (losing weight, excecise) and others that I am still in the process of working on but which will be done shortly (home repairs) and others where I changed priorities/goals midway through the year.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? I don’t think so.

4. Did anyone close to you die? Yes. My dog.

5. Did you visit anywhere exciting? San Francisco.

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008? Better staff assistance.

7. What date from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? Nothing in particular.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? I taught my son to ride a bike.

9. What was your biggest mistake? I didn’t pay enough attention to my family.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Yes. Injured my back falling off a roof (see #2 above, re exercise).

11. What was the best thing you bought? My dog. A Jeep Commander.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? My wife who had a particularly difficult year.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? John McCain.

14. Where did most of your money go in 2008? Gasoline.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? Training a new puppy.

16. What song will always remind you of 2008? Probably some old Grateful Dead song.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder? Happier.

ii. thinner or fatter? Same.

iii. richer or poorer? Richer. (I just got a big raise)

18. What do you wish you’d done more of? I wish I’d spent more time with my family and helped my wife out with the kids more.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of? Paperwork and political campaigning. I don’t see my self doing any more work on political campaigns after this year. It was a big let down.

20. How did you spend Christmas? In Georgia, with my family, opening presents from 9 am till 11 pm. It was a wonderful day for the children, which made it even better for us parents.

21. Did you fall in love in ‘08? Yes. I’m Italian. I fall in love every time a pretty girl walks by.

22. What was your favorite TV program? Survivor man.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year? No.

24. What was the best book you read? Hmmmm

25. What was your greatest musical discovery? The Golden Animals.

26. What did you want and get? I wanted to beat the famous son of a famous politician. I did.

27. What did you want and not get? An AR-15

28. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I was 37. I gave a presentation to a large group on energy issues at a nondescript Midwestern hotel. Ate a crappy banquet dinner.

29. What’s one thing that would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Spending more time with my family. If my dog hadn’t died.

30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008? Lots of khaki.

31. What kept you sane? The Grateful Dead

32. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? Sarah Palin.

33. What political issue stirred you the most? Gun Control.

34. Who do you miss the most? I miss the friends who I’ve lost contact with.

35. Who was the best new person you met? Not sure.

36. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008? Spend more time with your family. Don’t rush to finish a job that can wait till tomorrow.

37. What are your New Years Resolutions for 2009? That will be coming soon.

Just crossed into Tennessee on the annual winter pilgimage south. Just over the border from virginia I was greated by the beautiful sight of a tommy gun, essentially the size of 4 tractor trailers, advertising a class III firearms dealer Gun Runners USA.

God Bless America and God Bless Tennessee.

It would warrant turning around and getting a picture, but I need to meet SaysUncle and Les Jones for the annual machine gun shoot at Coal Creek Armory. Plus, ill drive right by in a couple of weeks again anyway.

Nada. Zip. Zilch.

Sorry, but I’ve had little inspiration to blog for some time, as you can probably tell. Perhpas I should take a break. Or not. Or just say, watch your feeds. I’ll be back, I’ll be moved at some point.

I just don’t know when.

In the meantime, enjoy some Viola Lee Blues

Details later, but its a killer time to get a deal on a gas guzzling SUV, so much so that I’d never be able to financially justify the price difference for some of the more “environmentally friendly” options I was considering.

Plus, it has an add-on manufacturers lifetime bumper to bumper warranty.

Sticker price – $36,959 plus $3,500 for warranty.

Countertops out the door price (tax, tags, etc) – $22.5k ($19.5k + 2k +1k) +72 month loan at 5.9% (its nice to have a credit score of 750+)

Well, there is something fundamentally wrong with the road system in Virginia. Somewhere, someone, screwed up in a tremendous way, and frankly I doubt this state will ever be able to fix what is wrong. And no, simply throwing money at Northern Virginia isn’t the solution – in fact, the idiots at VDOT have shown time and again that more money only leads to more ill considered worthless projects.

No, things need to be peeled back – and the entire morass needs to be examined and perhaps, if possible, ripped up and started all over.

Case in point:

I was supposed to do three things on Saturday. I was going to head down to meet my trainer and work with the dog. Then, I was going to head over to Richmond to the Virginia Sportsman’s Show – I had free tickets compliments of the Roanoke Times. Then, we were gonna race back up to NoVA and shoot some skeet.

We had it timed out right, but then we hit the Virginia road system.

Dog Training
Told the trainer, I’d be there at 10:30 with my buddy. We were gonna work the dog a couple of hours in the field . . . shooting some birds over him and working on different retrieving scenarios. I left, for the hour and 45 minute drive, at 8:30. No traffic at all, till I got to I-95 – and then just sat. And crawled. Finally making it to Fredericksburg at 10:30 and not getting down to his place till noon. Where I got to spend all of 15 minutes with him because I was so damn late.

Sportsman Show
We then left, drove on I64 over to Richmond. No problems here, and the sportsman show was neat. Great, impressive, buck collection. Someone clearly has better property to hunt than I do. Saw lots of neat hunting gadgets, almost bought a couple of duck calls, and got to speak with some hunting guides. All in all, it would have been worthwhile, except I was so ticked off about not getting to train with the dog it just ruined the whole experience for me.

Skeet Shooting
We raced on out of the Sportsman Show by 2:00pm, with what should have been a 90 minute drive on a lazy Saturday afternoon to get to shoot skeet. Heh. By 3:30 we had traveled 30 miles and reached Fredericksburg, where I tried to hop on VA17 to save time – and went 3 miles in 1 hour – before bailing and hopping back on 95. In another hour we moved another 25 miles and I was able to hop on VA 234 to cut across over to Mannassas. By then, it was nearly 6 and having sat in a car for 8 hours already it was too late to do much skeet shooting – so we hopped on I66 – and sat for another hour, not getting home till 7:30.

Thanks Virginia, For Ruining My Day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sunday
I made up for it Sunday.

Started the day looking at canoes. I think I found a great one – I’ll be testing it out tonight to see if I want to buy it. Its an Old Town Duck Hunter – about an 18 year old canoe – thats perfect for hunting as well as for trips down the river with the family.

From there, I threw my kayak in the Potomac at Pennyfield lock. It was a gorgeous ride.

I paddled up into the islands and explored them a bit, taking coordinates on my GPS and checking out how they had eroded since last duck season. Your not allowed to built permanent blinds on them, but we constructed a series of makeshift blinds with deadfalls, etc. last season that survived most of the winter. Unfortunatly, it doesn’t look like any survived the spring floods. Whats more, there was a fair bit of erosion going on, and some new channels opened up.

I ran into this guy right in front of one of our old blinds.

I also got out and did a bit of scouting in one of the areas I go deer hunting. The corn didn’t look so good, but they had a real healthy crop of beans. It should be a good season!

Well, I’d have to say as a one of the many carry permit holders who hasn’t committed a crime as a carry permit holder, and generally doesn’t try to hard to raise my google fu through weird google bombs utilizing terms like carry permit holders, I’m offended that their carry permit holders ranking isn’t even lower.

Hope you enjoyed them, I made some of my own.

Long story short, I was cleaning gutters on the roof of my soooper secret North Georgia Mountain hideaway when the ladder gave way from under me.

Next thing I know, I’m lying on the ground 12 feet down, after trying to break my back on the fence railing (thank god the ladder saved me).

Stuck me in an Ambulence in trauma (neck and back brace) and ran me a good 30 minutes into Chattanooga. Spent the evening and most of the morning with the good folks at Memorial Hospital.

Just released, with some wicked bruising and pulled back (still having trouble breathing) and a weeks supply of narcotics and muscle relaxers.

More later . . . .

Sure, gas is just hitting $4 a gallon here in Northern Virginia (actually, I filled up for $3.79 yesterday) but I’m not that worried. Even with an SUV. I suspect things will be tight this summer, as speculators run rampant (blame the press) but as with everything market related the laws of supply and demand will hold true again and you can bet that price will begin to creep down as American’s conserve less and can justify, economically, more efficient vehicles.

Me, I’m gonna keep driving my 1996 Grand Cherokee. One, its paid for. Two, it only has 110,000 miles on it. And three, I boosted its fuel efficiency 20% this week, going from a paltry 18.5 mpg to 24.5 mpg – or about $15 per fill up. Now thats real money (and will help buy me some eggs and milk)

How? Well, Glen linked to this story on Fuel Efficiency tips and I simply took the first it to heart. I set the on board display to show current mileage and knowing I got about 18.5 mpg with it generally tried to drive at a pace that stayed above that.

Here’s the top 4 tips I followed:

1. Track Your Mileage in Real Time
2. Only Brake When You Have to
3. Always Stay Alert on the Road
4. Drive Like You’re on a Bike

It wasn’t too hard. A couple of things – I never went over 60 miles per hour (that seemed to be the magic threshold where mileage really dropped off. Thats ok, 60 is plenty fast where I was driving. I suspect on the highway, if I got up to cruising speeds, it would handle it too). I also slowed down slowly, trying to conserve momentum, and when I was at a traffic light, I accelerated slowly. Thats it. I didn’t even resort to the old standby of putting the car in neutral to coast down big hills.

I’ll try that next week.

The oldest turned 6 today. I can’t believe how fast they grow. He’s officially not a little boy anymore. Makes me want to cry.

Cool gifts include a Beta fighting fish, which he immediatly named “King of all Fish”. And that’s the only way we are allowed to refer to him.

Also got a zip wire. (Yeah!!!!) And a Nintendo DS and the Complete Lego Star Wars saga game. Too cool!!

In other news, I learned he shared a birthday with Adolf Hitler. Didn’t know that till today. Put that together with the fact that our youngest shares a name with the author of the Turner Diaries and the conspiracy artists are gonna have a field day.

We finished our meeting in the city of blues around 4:30 yesterday and settled in at Hooters downtown for some conference tournament excitment.

When we arrived, ran into colleuges who skipped out early. At noon.

They had set a goal, they were going to drink every last BLUE aluminum bottle of Bud Light there.

At 5, when we showed up, they had a pile of 80 empties stacked up. By 7, the mission was completed – the entire supply of commemorative bottles was consumed by our guys. 6 cases.. And the night was young. I’ve got no idea what the final tab was, but they were there till closing – at 1 am. They spent a total of 13 hours drinking. Had to be some kind of record

Me?? I headed off across the street to Mike Shanahan’s, a sports themed steakhouse to watch UNC – Duke.

Duke lost. Yeah!!!

We had fat steaks, and copious amounts of booze. Total tab, for 10, was $965. Which wasn’t too bad, I didn’t think, considering all we drank there.

Steaks, which were thick and well marbled ran $35-45. Service was generally adequate, with on glaring exception,, though I thought my steak was overcooked. I ordered it blue rare, and it was light pink.

Sides at $7 left something to be desired. Wild rice dish was small but well seasoned. Asparagus were a little soft for me, and served only with butter. I would have expected some cream sauce option at least.

Creme Brule was fantastic, but desert was marred by the fact that our coffee came about 10 minutes after we finished desert. Considering the profit center that the desert course is to a restaurant, and the lasting flavor it leaves, this was simply unacceptable. And while the restaurant was jam packed busy when we arrived, by the time we got to desert we were one of the few tables left.

Got back to the hotel, and ended up whyling the night away drinking Rye whiskey with depressed Creighton fans.

iN S. lOUIS.

wITH cREIGHTON FRANS.

DRINKING al ot.

at a duelling piano bar.

Total midwest experience. who njnew they ahad so many hottie slutts?
Wow.

Go Creighton.

in other news, we acutioned off a shotgun – it went for a lot. Guy from Tennessee bought it. Just as i fuugoired.

also, im in the wall street hournal today

good deal.

Self, you need to meet the guy who moved in a couple of houses down a across the street with the white Honda mini van and VCDL bumper stickers on his car.

at and ungodly hour for San Fran.

Took Washington Flyer for the first time to the airport. Its very efficient. They pocked me up in a nice luxury SUV and drop me off right at the terminal for $37 (including the tip). Considering convenience and that it costs $20 a day to park, its a great no hassle deal.

Flying Virgin. Cool. Richard b ranson is a rock star. Entire experience is enjoyable, from quick check in, small well designed boarding pass (picture coming soon) to the lack of terrorists at check in

More, including pics, later

Sitting here, in the arm chair. A 1 year old asleep on my left leg and a 9 week old puppy asleep on my right.