Day 622 – Busy busy busy

Hours of Daylight – 9:03

Anybody who has read Kurt Vonnegut will immediately recognize where the title of today’s post comes from. Yes, it’s from “Cat’s Cradle” and is the phrase a Bokononist utters when remarking on the complexity of the universe. Note there is no qualitative measure applied to the phrase, i.e. it could apply equally to something good or bad.

While i have, for a change, actually been pretty busy, i cannot escape the fact that others, especially our esteemed elected officials, have also been busy. They have been busy protecting the homeland from the shadowy hordes of terrorists who wish to bring us doom and destruction. To achive this lofty goal requires positively obscene piles of cash and therefore the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon received the budgets they asked for at the expense of all things not homeland security and pentagon related.

Why is this on my mind? Well, aside from the fact i believe the whole notion of “homeland security” is the single largest scam ever pulled, my wife’s research center (aka her job) is funded by a federal budget earmark. The war machine got its money, but for everything else funding remains at last year’s levels and all earmarks are removed. Bottom line: game over. Now of course nothing involving the fed is ever that simple. The HHS budget has yet to even be voted on, but the odds earmarks will be added back in is slim to none. Besides by the time the budget even gets to a vote her money will have run out. That being said there is a very slim chance Boise State University might elect to carry her center until a final budget vote happens, but neither she nor i have much confidence in that happening. Stay tuned for further developments.

But more importantly where have i been all these past 28 days? Well, we went a-yurtin’ for Thanksgiving. Then we went to San Francisco. I love San Francisco. I would very much like to try try living there and will soon begin a concerted effort to find a job there. I’m not exactly confident i’ll find one, but i’m going to hunt like i’ve got a purpose.

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Next we depart on Saturday the 23rd for a full week on the road in the Vanagon. Destination: Death Valley California. We plan on at least one side trip to Zion National Park simply because we’ll be driving pretty close by and it’s yet another of the parks i’ve always wanted to see. If (and that is one big honkin’ if) we’re still here come spring we’ll probably do another trip to Bryce Canyon, but i think that would be too much for one trip. Death Valley, Zion, and Bryce? Hardly have enough time to take a few photos at each place.

Livingroomtree_20061204Lastly Annette and i finally did something we missed out on last year: we bought a christmas tree. I’ll never forget the immortal words of Johnny Fever from WKRP in Cincinnati, “in the spirit of the season we killed a tree for you” and even though it is the death of a little pine tree it is simply so beautiful and so pagen to have a decorated tree in the house. We’ll un-decorate it before departing for Death Valley, move it out onto the deck, then re-adorn it with suet balls and birdseed. Once back from the trip we’ll recycle the tree into mulch. Busy busy busy.