Blondes with Hammers

Becky and Sally Ann, were doing some carpentry work on a Habitat for Humanity house.

Becky, who was nailing down house siding, would reach into her nail pouch, pull out a nail and either toss it over her shoulder or nail it in.

Sally Ann, figuring this was worth looking into, asked, “Why are you throwing those nails away?"

Becky explained, “When I pull a nail out of my pouch, about half of them have the head on the wrong end and I throw them away."

Sally Ann got completely upset and yelled, “You moron! Those nails aren’t defective! They’re for the other side of the house!"

Frost!

Being southern California types, we generally experience the solid phase of water (i.e., ice) only in the form of ice cubes or that funny white stuff on the outside of our frozen pizza cartons. To see it outside, without any nearby man-made apparatus to create it, is a bit jarring for us. Some of the later-rising folks out here think that naturally-occuring ice is a kind of urban legend — you see, if you don’t get up until 9 or 10 in the morning, you’ll never see frost or ice around here!

Well, here’s the photographic proof that ice really does occur in this neck of the woods. You easterners and northerners can laugh at us all you want — for us, a “cold snap” is when the temperature dips below 60F. And that’s plus 60F, not those horrifying minus temperatures you’re dealing with. I like our version of a cold snap much better…

The three pictures above are plants covered with frost, of course. But the two at right probably aren’t so identifiable. It’s a sort of upside-down icicle (the closest we’ll ever get to a real icicle), formed on a rock just below our bird water’s dripper. One drop of water falls about every 5 seconds onto this rock. With the sub-freezing temperature, the ice seems to have slowly accumulated until it formed this marble-sized protuberance. I was mostly interested in the strange striations that appear in it — I’ve no idea what caused them to form…

Steyn-a-mite!

Put down your coffee for a moment (so you don’t end up blowing it out your nose) and read this new sure-to-be-a-classic Mark Steyn column. A sample:

Mark Steyn: Cheering tidbits lighten otherwise grim week

Fortunately, the Washington Post had that wise old bird David Ignatius to put it in the proper historical context: “This incident,” he mused, “reminds me a bit of Sen. Edward Kennedy’s delay in informing Massachusetts authorities about his role in the fatal automobile accident at Chappaquiddick in 1969."

Hmm. Let’s see. On the one hand, the guy leaves the gal at the bottom of the river struggling for breath pressed up against the window in some small air pocket while he pulls himself out of the briny, staggers home, sleeps it off and saunters in to inform the cops the following day that, oh yeah, there was some broad down there. And, on the other hand, the guy calls 911, has the other fellow taken to the hospital, lets the sheriff know promptly but neglects to fax David Gregory’s make-up girl!

One can only hope others agree with Ignatius' insightful analogy, and that the reprehensible Cheney will be hounded from public life the way Kennedy was all those years ago. One would hate to think folks would just let it slide and three decades from now this Cheney guy will be sitting on some committee picking Supreme Court justices and whatnot.

Come on, Mark…tell us how you really feel!