The Random Yak

Seen on Saturday’s trip to meet friends for Dim Sum in San Francisco’s Chinatown:

A falcon sitting in the front passenger seat of a minivan, waiting for its owner to get back to the car.

No, not a parakeet.  Not a cockatiel, not even a parrot.

A falcon.  And a rather large one at that.  Complete with belled jesses.  In fact, though it wasn’t actually a Saker Falcon, it looked remarkably like this:

But in a car.  Parked on the street.  At a meter.

The bird seemed remarkably interested in people passing by on the street, and not at all scared.  In fact, it tried to snatch my friend’s iPhone out of her hand when she paused to snap some photos – and probably would have succeeded but for the pesky window glass that got in the way.  (Yes, the window was up.  Yes, another window was cracked enough to give it air.)

Once it realized the iPhone wasn’t going to become a new chew toy, the falcon seemed about as interested in watching us as we were in watching him.  He seemed to think some of us looked better upside down (like owls and other predatory birds, falcons have remarkable flexibility in their necks) and didn’t seem aggressive, though I have no doubt anything smaller than a German Shepherd would have a different opinion.  (As I said, it was a very large bird.)

As we walked away, my friends and I tried to decide whether this was par for the course in Chinatown or whether to file it under “strange, no matter where you see it.”

The unanimous vote was for “strange pretty much anywhere.”

***

Note: Saker Falcon Image retrieved from Wikipedia Commons, uploaded/shared by owner/user Qatari and used here under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license.

Last night, after an hour and a half battling on the portion of my lawn that’s rapidly becoming known as the Bermuda (grass) Triangle (time really does begin to lose its meaning there) I was visited by Yak the Younger and The Random Spouse, both of whom remembered my earlier promise to make an ice cream run “when I’ve finished in the yard.”

The resulting conversation went something like this:

YtY: Are you finished in the yard yet?

Me: Not quite.  Look at all this Bermuda grass!  It’s invading the front lawn.

RS: It will still be there tomorrow.  We want ice cream tonight.

Me: (pulling stubbornly at a clump that won’t come free, and inadvertently breaking one of the bricks on the front stairs) The ice cream will be there tomorrow too.

RS: True, but you said you’d get some tonight.

YtY (from across the lawn): Hey…what’s this? Wow.  Nasty.

RS:  What…wait, what is that?  It looks like something puked on the lawn.

YtY: Gross.  No, wait, I remember that from my science textbook.  It’s a fungus.

By now I am off the crabgrass and heading across the lawn.  My new, beautiful lawn, that squishes softly beneath my feet and makes me misty-eyed in the mornings when the dew sparkles on it.

Then I reach the place where The Random Spouse and Yak the Younger are crouched over a roughly twelve-inch wide patch of something that does look remarkably like bright yellow puke.  On my new lawn.

Me:  Well, maybe something did get sick here.

RS: (scornfully) Yeah, right.  What in the neighborhood is big enough to do that and gets this far up on the lawn?  It didn’t just fall from the sky.

Actually, at this point, I am hoping it fell from the sky.  It’s a more reassuring thought than the more likely alternatives.

YtY: I’m telling you, I saw it in the science book.  It’s a fungus.

At which point I get The Feeling.  I’ve had it before.  That sinking feeling you get when you realize the person talking to you is probably right, mainly because in similar situations he’s never been wrong.  When it comes to recognizing the odd, the unusual and the scientifically challenging, Yak the Younger has become a walking encyclopedia.  If the kid says he saw it…he saw it.

Which means there’s a fungus among us.

A quick family conference was held on the lawn while I ran to the garage, pulled out a handful of Scott’s weed killer and ran back to fling it on the offending fungus.  The crystals stuck all over it, but my efforts were met with looks I can only describe as disparaging.

YtY:  You know that’s not going to work, don’t you?

RS:  He’s right.  That’s not a weed.

Me: We don’t know exactly what it is.

YtY:  I do.  It’s a fungus, I’m telling you.

RS:  Well, it’s definitely not a weed.

Me:  I don’t have any fungicide!  But I have this, and I have to do something!

YtY:  How about that ice cream?

Realizing the local nursery was closed and I would have to wait until morning to exact my revenge on the vomitous mass clinging tenaciously to my darling lawn, I gave in and went for ice cream.  By the time I returned, the Nasty Thing On the Lawn had begun to darken and shrink slightly.  After another minor debate with YtY about whether this was merely my imagination (his opinion) or actually a positive result of the weed killer (my desperate hope reasoned opinion) we went inside and drowned our my sorrows in ice cream.

First thing this morning on the way to work, I stopped off at the nursery to ask about The Nasty Thing On the Lawn and, hopefully, to pick up some Nasty Thingicide.  Preferably the variety that works on vomitous masses.  (Note: I also got some Bermuda grass killer. Take THAT, Bermuda Triangle!)

Inside the nursery, I had a conversation with a very helpful staff member that went something like this:

Me: Thanks for the Bermuda grass killer.  Have you got anything that kills fungus?  Because I have this really nasty thing on my lawn – it’s not like anything I’ve ever seen before, but I’m pretty sure it’s a fungus.  (See what I did there?  I accepted Yak the Younger’s reality and adopted it as my own!)

Helpful Staff Member: Does it look like dog vomit?

Me: (wondering if I should rename her “helpful stalker”) Yes, actually it does.

Helpful Staff Member:  It’s a fungus.  It’s Dog Vomit Fungus.

Me:  Dog…

Helpful Staff Member:  Yep.  That’s actually it’s name. Pretty gross, huh?

Me: I’d go with ‘pretty accurate’ actually.  Do you have anything that kills it?

Helpful Staff Member:  Not specifically no, but it’s easy to get rid of.  Toss some nitrogen on it and that will speed up the decay cycle.  Then you just have to remove it once it dries up.

Me:  So…something like Scott’s weed and feed?  Just toss it on there?

Helpful Staff Member:  Yeah, that would work great.

Me:  Thanks.  You made my day.

And it wasn’t a lie.  It’s a rare day when everyone in the Random Family gets to be right at the same time.  Yak the Younger gets credit for knowing a fungus when he sees it (even though technically Dog Vomit is a slime mold), The Random Spouse gets credit for pointing out that the ice cream would, in fact, make me feel better, and I’m taking credit for knowing exactly what to do with the Nasty Thing On the Lawn…even if I got there by accident.

Yesterday afternoon I broke my usual Sunday silence to blog a rather entertaining observation regarding the contractor-across-the-street and a lawnmower doing its best to impersonate a civil war cannon.

Not everyone was amused.  In particular, those of the lawnmower persuasion found it less than charming.  At least, that’s what I infer by the rest of the afternoon’s tale.

After dinner I went out front to mow the lawn.  (You remember the new lawn, right?  Good.  Moving on.) Started up the mower, which jumped to life with a satisfying and smokeless roar.  I started down the side of the lawn, but about the time I finished the first strip I remembered that I had lowered the machine to cut the back yard last weekend and had forgotten to raise it again for the front – which still requires the highest setting due to the plushy nature of the new grass.  No complaining there.

Turning off the mower, I bent down to adjust the wheel height.  The first three wheels adjusted easily, but when I tried to release the fourth one the handle caught on one of the little tabs.  I did what any reasonable yak would do: I pulled harder.  Unfortunately, the sticking tab was apparently only a decoy, because it came loose at once, sliding easily into place and putting me slightly off balance.  Without thinking, I reached out to steady myself – and set my left hand directly against the metal vent box and engine casing on the side of the mower.  You know, the one that heats up to approximately five thousand degrees the moment the mower gets turned on.  Yeah, that one.

To my credit, I did not say a Very Bad Word.  To be honest, I didn’t say much of anything, but I think they heard the yelp in Portland.  As in Maine.  All four of the fingers on my left hand seared instantly, and though I took them off the metal as quickly as I touched it, I felt a slight sticking sensation that let me know (as though any doubt remained) that this was Not The Blessing I Hoped For.  It also told me my plans to edge and weed the gardens after I mowed were definitely a thing of the past.

After spending a few seconds staring at my now print-less fingers, and watching a blister rise on the pinky with a rapidity that promised nothing good in my future, I did what any Yak (in shock) would do:  I cranked up the mower and finished the lawn.  The logic behind this went as follows:

1.  In approximately 5 minutes, at least one and probably four of my fingers are going to hurt like nobody’s business.

2.  I should really do something about that.

3.  If I do something about it now, there’s no way this lawn is getting mowed tonight.

4.  The lawn needs mowing.

5.  I’m not going to hurt any worse if I finish the lawn first, and if I get a move on I might even finish before the shock wears off and the stupidity of my actions comes home to roost.

6.  Vroom.

For the record, I did not finish mowing the lawn before the fingers began hurting, but I did finish before the pain made it impossible to continue.  I then spent the rest of the evening with my fingers on ice (or aloe, in cycles) and reading a decent book I’d been putting off.  The Random Spouse gets major credit and appreciation for limiting the head-shaking and I-told-you-so’s to one startled “You finished the lawn afterward?” and a couple of “You should probably put something on that”s – and for bringing me Tylenol when I forgot to take it the first time.

It wasn’t the most pleasant night I’ve ever had, and I got to the office late this morning as a result of too little sleep, but at least the pain is gone and it looks like I’ll only lose the skin on that one finger.

The take-home lesson in all of this?  Some of you might say “watch where you put your fingers,” but you’d be wrong.  The Lesson Learned here is never, ever, make fun of a lawnmower, even if it isn’t your own.

They hear you.  And they do not forgive.

A reading from The Yak’s Big Book of Garden Wisdom:

“If it’s on fire, you should probably unplug it and/or turn it off.”

I don’t normally blog on Sundays, but for an ox in a ditch, I’ll make an exception.

I was sitting in my office working on a pleasant project when the contractor who recently fixed up the house across the street (To flip. In a bad market.  Should have been my first clue.) showed up to maintain the lawn.  The house is vacant, you see, and although they used cheap sod (which doesn’t look nearly as nice as my own recently-redone swath of green, but I digress) it does occasionally want a clip.  In itself, nothing unusual there.

The contractor went around the corner into the garage, pulled out the mower, and cranked it up … at which point the machine belched out a cloud of acrid-looking smoke larger than the contractor’s F-250 pickup.  About four times larger.  The plume went up like a mushroom cloud, to my amusement and the contractor’s dismay.

Two minutes later I, too, flipped to the dismay side of the aisle.  Because the contractor restarted the mower (sending up a second plume of epic proportions) and started mowing the lawn anyway – with the recalcitrant mower belching smoke like half the tribes of the American Southwest calling for reinforcements.  Seriously – the cannons at Antietam didn’t send up this much smoke.  Yet on and on our contractor friend mowed, blissfully ignoring the billowing clouds of carcinogens wafting across the lawn, over the house, and around the cul de sac.  At least, I assume there was ignoring going on.  At some points the smoke was so thick I couldn’t actually see across the street.

By the end, the contractor was literally running across the lawn, apparently hoping to finish the job before the mower either quit working or exploded in flames.  I watched from the office window, not sure whether to place my money on terminate or incinerate – or both.

Fortunately, the lawn is small (much smaller than mine, due to the wedge-shaped lots and the fact that said contractor turned half the front lawn into ugly_garden_lined_with_rocks_001 rather than sodding the whole thing) and by some miracle the mower actually managed to survive the job.  As I write, the contractor is loading the unruly machine into the F-250, hopefully for a much-needed ride to some garden tool E.R.

That or there’s a civil war re-enactment somewhere that needs a stand-in for the cannon.

If I’m not careful, this could turn into a feature.  (Only in all likelihood, he’d want to write it, and then we’d all be in trouble.)

Last night, while discussing fiction with The Random Spouse and Yak the Younger, the Younger made an interesting comment.

“The problem isn’t that there aren’t good books being published, it’s that all the good books being published seem to have really terrible endings.”

He was referring to something I’ve started calling “Winston Syndrome” – for the unfortunate volleyball companion from the Tom Hanks movie Castaway.  (Note: it took me months to realize that isn’t a title, it’s a descriptive instruction for what we should do with the film.  Consider yourself warned.)

If you haven’t seen the film, and care about spoilers…don’t click.  I’ll see the rest of you after the jump.

(more…)

This morning, while looking for something to post (despite the continuing weeds) I noticed it was national “Cell Phone Tape Day.”

Now, back when I carried a cell phone – and I admit, it’s been close to a decade since I carried one – breakage was a problem.  At the time, I was in-house counsel for a service-provider-who-shall-not-be-named, and a free mobile phone was one of the perks of the job.  (It also meant they could reach me any time, any where, for any question from the field, so yeah – these aren’t the perks you’re looking for.) The phone in question was a high end flip-style phone (cutting edge at the time, though it’s the kindergarten model now) and occasionally breakage did happen.  Not my phone (it didn’t get used enough) but in the department and especially among the tower techs, it was common to see phones held together with duct tape until the company issued new ones.  Nobody paid much attention.  If it worked, it worked, and to a certain extent a phone sporting a strip of electrical, duct or other industrial tape kind of said “Hey, I’m a working phone, you don’t like it, Louie and the boys will come explain a few things.”

Since leaving that job, however, I admit I hadn’t seen much cell phone tape.  (Haven’t heard them referred to as “cell phones” in a while, either, since most people now call them something else entirely.)

In my deliberately-fostered ignorance of all things mobile-phonesque, I wondered whether a cottage industry had grown up of which I was unaware.  Tape to repair broken cell phones, perhaps in a variety of matching colors and/or patterns?  (Admit it, in your darkest moments you realize there’s Hannah Montana tape out there somewhere.)

As someone who frequently fails to understand the modern urge to toss out things the moment they get chipped, to say nothing of broken, I admit I was pleasantly surprised.  Someone out there not only found a way to fix cell phones, but the idea caught on!  The ancient, silver-striped phones of my (relative) youth had given birth to a whole generation of fixers.  My heart was proud.

Until I took a closer look at the 2010 holiday list and realized that the observance isn’t today, it’s tomorrow, and it isn’t “cell phone tape day,” it’s cellophane tape day.

And so, in the immortal words of Emily Litella….

… nevermind.

A Canadian teen who wanted to wear a kilt to his High School graduation ceremony found himself a bit off-kilter after the school principal rejected his proposed attire.

Hamish Jacobs’ family emigrated to Canada from Scotland in 1965.  In recognition of his Scottish roots, he planned to borrow an uncle’s kilt and wear the family tartan to his High School graduation.  The apparently polite and obedient Jacobs asked the school Principal’s permission to wear the kilt, but was denied.

According to the linked story, Jacobs had a genuine desire to wear the kilt (which, incidentally, is still appropriate male attire at formal functions in parts of Scotland) to honor his ancestry and upbringing – which, apparently, had a substantial Scottish influence.  His family was proud of the decision.  The school was not.

I can understand a school implementing a dress code for graduation, and forbidding students to wear clothing that would disrupt what should be a solemn and important day.  That said, if the school isn’t requiring a uniform (and if it was, nothing in the article said so) and refused solely because the kilt isn’t pants (which I suspect) then the Principal called this one incorrectly.  If students are permitted to select their own graduation attire, they should be allowed to make choices which (within appropriate bounds) reflect their heritage and their personalities.

Yes, this may require a little more supervision on the part of adults-in-charge, but if the school doesn’t want to take the time, there’s always the good old cap and gown (which I suspect has reached such favor in the United States partly because it does eliminate the dress issue altogether) or a similar uniform requirement.

Don’t even try to tell me that allowing a kilt would “require” the district to grant every special request, either.  This isn’t even close to “allowing boys to wear dresses” for reasons too numerous to mention.  In the end, it boils down to “do you have a legitimate reason to ask to wear this item of clothing, which for the record is accepted male dress in your family’s country of origin” – and in Jacobs’ case, the answer is yes.  I wouldn’t expect the school to forbid a Sikh to leave his turban home or a Muslim girl to uncover her head.  Yes, the difference there is religion, and not just culture or heritage, but if a student wants to memorialize an important day with a reasonably pertinent nod to the parents who got him (or her) to graduation day, I say let them do it.

Besides … he ate haggis, for crying out loud.  The boy deserves some recognition.

I’ve always been a fan of the old story about the child walking along the beach tossing starfish back into the ocean.

The starfish, left behind when the tide receded, were making their way toward the water, now too far away to reach before the sun’s rays baked the life from their slow-moving forms.  The child walked along the beach picking up the starfish and tossing them back into the water, one by one.

An adult stopped the child to point out the futility of his task.  “Look at how many there are,” the adult said, pointing at the line of creeping starfish up and down the coast, tracing their desperately slow trails as far as the eye could see.  “Most of them will die.  You can’t get to them in time.  Even if you did, they’ll just be back on the shore tomorrow.  You’ll never make a difference.”

After listening in silence, the child bent down, picked up another starfish, and tossed it back into the water.  With a knowing smile, he looked at the grown-up and replied, “Made a difference to that one.”

Earlier in the semester, I posted a blog entry that started off fuming about the general apathy (to put it mildly) that characterized the students in the college course I’m teaching this semester.  More than half didn’t even bother to study for the exam – or so their scores suggested.  (Arguably, anyone who studies even a little should be able to score more than 35 points out of 100.  I had ten below that mark.) Deciding to focus on the ones for whom I could make a difference, I pressed on, refusing to allow myself discouragement in light of the ones who did not only well, but brilliantly – and thereby proved I was not actually wasting my time.

Flash forward another six weeks, and on Monday my students took the final exam.  Last night I started grading.  As expected, a number have done poorly.  How poorly, only time and completion of the grading will tell.  (I grade all the exams one page at a time – page 1 of all exams, then page 2 of all exams, etc to ensure uniformity.  It also helps me not to pay attention to whose exam I’m grading at any given moment.) But last night, as I started grading, a few exams began to stand out.  Some, as expected, because their producers failed to study, with the expected results.  Some because their owners did remarkably well.

And then there was one that stood out because I didn’t expect it.  An exam that contained some mistakes, but also showed a remarkable level of understanding on more than an average number of topics.  I noticed this one in particular because it made some mistakes that seemed out of place in an otherwise solid showing.  Since the school doesn’t use blind grading, I flipped to the front cover and took a look at the name.

The exam belongs to one of the students who performed the worst on the midterm.  Someone who showed less than no inclination to spend any time or effort paying attention.  Someone who I could tell was disappointed in the midterm grade, and who showed initial signs of real concern thereafter, but made no visual attempt to change.  The student still sat with the same group of students as before, and engaged in the same behaviors that made it appear this student (gender withheld to protect the guilty) would go from failure to failure without really caring much – and probably reviling me as a martinet (or, more likely, a lower-scoring verbal analogue).

Instead, this one changed.  Instead of winding up beached in the scorching sun of a final exam that could negatively impact the student’s educational career, this one decided to study. This one actually learned something from the midterm, and learned a number of other things in time to reveal that knowledge on the final.

This one is going to pass.

I’m always pleased to teach the students who want to learn.  The ones who study hard, perform well and generally make teaching an enjoyable experience for the person at the front of the room.  The ones who actually care about knowledge gained as much as the letter on the report card.

But every once in a while, a student surprises you.  A surprise you never expected, and one you never forget.  I don’t know if this student’s new-found dedication will last beyond the boundaries of this course, or whether the encouraging note I intend to write on the final exam will have a lasting impact.  But for one brief – and in my case, lasting – moment, I can say with great joy:

I made a difference to that one.  (And that one made a difference to me.)

Came to the office today with every intention of putting up some kind of entertaining, pre-Mother’s Day Weekend (hi mom!  Happy Mother’s Day!) post.

Four hours later…I still got nothin’

Don’t take it personally.  It’s not you…it’s me.

heh.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there.  Here’s hoping someone does something very nice for you.

(On a tip of the horns to Slashfood:)

Legislators in Louisiana have rejected a pair of proposed bills that would have regulated “healthy” versus “unhealthy” foods and banned Louisiana residents participating in state food stamp-type programs (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) from using state assistance funds to purchase “unhealthy” foods.

Thank you, Louisiana, for taking an important stand on individual freedom and against the nanny-state ideology.

I understand that people don’t always make good choices about what to put in their bodies.  Or on their bodies.  Or around their bodies.  In fact, people make astonishingly poor choices every day, in such large numbers that it’s something of a miracle the human race hasn’t humiliated and eaten itself into oblivion. That said, one of the fundamental notions upon which the United States was founded was the idea that each person has the right to eat, sleep, think and work as he or she sees fit (with reasonable exceptions necessary to maintain public order and prevent literal suicidal/homicidal/maniacal tendencies).

In shorter words: if I want to stuff myself with M&Ms, french fries and root beer, in the comfort and privacy of my own home, that’s my right as a free, adult citizen of these United States.  If you don’t like it, shove off, skippy.

Now, I’m not saying these choices come without consequences.  If I do elect to maintain myself on nothing but sugar, peanut butter and booze, my health will probably suffer.  And yes, as the Louisiana legislator responsible for the bill pointed out, to the extent the state is responsible for my medical care, the state pays the penalty for my lack of foresight and/or common sense.

Wherein lies the real solution to the problem. (more…)

(Another good thing: not losing to myself in public…)

Today’s Random Thought/One Good Thing brought to you by: the two-headed bobtail lizard of Australia.

Once again, BBC News has published the glorious truth that nothing of note goes on in the UK of a Friday.  Or anywhere else in the world, apparently.  “The Big Picture” of The World as We Know it boils down to this: sometimes the bobtail lizard has babies with two heads.  And sometimes those heads don’t like one another very much.

The twoheaded bobtail (a variety of skink – which might explain the negative attitude, since skinks are notoriously bad-tempered) was “rescued” by a reptile park (U.S. English, read “zoo-like place where animals live in captivity”) in Perth, Australia.  The heads share control of the creature’s back legs, but seem to have completely separate brains.  The larger head also seems less than fond of its conjoined twin, and has attacked it from time to time.  Probably for waking it up for bathroom visits in the middle of the night.  (I told you…no coffee after nine!) Or something.

So if today’s not going well for you, and you’re looking forward to 5:00 because nothing else seems to be going your way, take a moment and ponder the fact that you’re not a short-lived, two-headed skink attached for life to half a creature that wants to kill you just because it finds your potty habits inconvenient.  Makes the rest of it seem a little brighter, no?

As the title suggests…I’m a little preoccupied today.  It originally seemed fitting that I’d pick today to do the taxes – seeing as April 13, 2010 was the originally-scheduled Tax Freedom Day.  But as it happens, certain tax cuts (though not any I noticed impacting my life…) scooted the day up to April 9.

The good news?  You’re no longer working for Uncle Sam.  As of the 9th, you’re earning income for yourself and your family.

The bad news?  He let you keep part of it during the first three months, so you have to keep sending him part of it now.

Off to the salt mines.  I’ll let you know if I find any diamonds – but don’t hold your breath.

Updated:  Work complete!

That doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll have more to say, but at least I’ve got that task done for another year.

It’s been a weedy week, to say the least.  Between grading midterms at the-university-where-I-thought-I-was-finished-teaching (never underestimate the power of a friendly department chair with a special request for “one more round”), a looming deadline with the Patent and Trademark Office (for the record “likelihood of confusion” during the response drafting stage isn’t the type that sinks you) and both Yak the Younger and The Random Spouse under the weather in one way or another…it’s been one of those weeks we don’t tend to talk about on the blog.  And yeah, I mention it now because in some corner of This Side of the Mountain, when the sun shines on the new grass and the wind smells sweet…my delusional self thinks it might excuse not blogging.

Not so much.

Because even with grades to shirk, deadlines to ignore and a couple of less-than-healthy family members at home, it is a beautiful day.  One of those mornings where the phrase “God’s in His Heaven and All’s Right With the World” seems absolutely and presently true.  There’s fresh coffee in the pot, a breakfast burrito on the counter, and I’m probably one ill-timed smirk from getting slapped for my unreasonable happiness.

Yeah, it’s one of those weeks too.

Funny how they can happen at the very same time, isn’t it?

As of April 2, a new FTC regulation requires websites offering “free credit report” services to display the following message:

THIS NOTICE IS REQUIRED BY LAW. Read more at FTC.GOV. You have the right to a free credit report from AnnualCreditReport.com or 877-322-8228, the ONLY authorized source under federal law.

(Note: before this morning, I didn’t even realize there was a government-approved site for obtaining free copies of my credit report.  Nor, quite frankly, did-or-do I care.)

In addition, the websites must have a clickable button link which reads “take me to the authorized source” and links  to both the FTC website and the authorized AnnualCreditReport website.

Apparently the mandatory  “We’ve been PWNED by the FTC” banner didn’t make it out of committee.  (At least not in its literal form.)

The regulation exists to help consumers separate truly free credit reports (we’re entitled to one every year, free of charge, from the official source) from those offered by companies that offer “free” reports but then charge customers for other services (most commonly credit monitoring – something we each can-and-should do on our own).  In the grand scheme of things, I actually think it’s a good idea.  If you’ve read here for more than a month, you know my position on individual responsibility – as well as big government and the nanny state.  That said, I have a healthy loathing for businesses that take advantage of the unwary and the uneducated.  Free means free – or should – and using the lure of a free credit check (not to mention the threat of identity theft and other serious dangers) to obtain the personal information of an unsuspecting individual who thinks you’re just trying to help them, only to turn around and use that information to sell them products – or even just harass them with advertising – means you rank somewhere between toe fungus and the stuff that gathers in the bottom of the garbage disposal.  (On a good day.  When I’m feeling generous.)

We won’t even start on the annoying nature of some of their TV ads – though they have earned the distinction of being the only advertisers to have earned their own Family Rule.  (Yak Household Rule #87: If a free credit ad comes on the TV, the person with the remote must immediately mute sound.  Failure to successfully mute said advertiser within 1.5 seconds results in loss of remote privileges for the remainder of the evening or until the next Custodian of the Remote fails to comply with Rule 87.)

Speaking of which: it appears the FTC is also imposing a variation of this mandatory wording on television and radio ads (effective September 1).  This I can’t wait to see.  Here’s hoping they require audio as well as visual.  Either way, it warms the cockles of my shaggy heart to think of the trouble this will cause for at least one company’s ad men.  It’s not exactly what they deserve for creating one of the worst advertising earworms known to man, but it’s a start and I’ll take it.  After all, it’s probably not strictly Constitutional to drag them through the streets behind a herd of incontinent buffalo, no matter how much I’d like to see it.

Still, it’s nice to see Big Gov’mint do something right for a change.

* For those still unclear on the concept: All your base are belong to us.

(Tip of the horns, Creditbloggers.)

(…and yes, it IS rather a winnie-the-pooh sort of a morning.)

I have a lawn.

Wednesday afternoon, the workmen finished installing the sprinkler lines (but not the heads, wherein lies a tale…) and rolling out the new sod lawn.  A sod lawn which, even to my untrained and crabgrass-fearing mind, is nothing short of spectacular. You see, the grass is … green.  All of it. At the same time.  And it’s fuzzy and sticking up in the air, instead of lying limp and defeated as my lawns usually do.

It also has a remarkable lack of crabgrass.  (Also, somewhat regrettably, dandelions and clover, but I have no doubt the yellow-and-silver harbingers of summer will return as soon as the lawn across the street comes back to life. Most of mine come from there anyway.)

Unfortunately, what it does not have is sprinklers.

Or, more specifically, sprinkler heads.  Which means the sprinklers still don’t work.  Which means my weekend plans just went up in sprinkles…since that’s what I’ll be doing two to three times a day between now and Monday to ensure the survival of the new lawn.

Unless, of course, the sprinkler guys respond to my three telephone messages (yes, three…because if you give me multiple contact numbers and a reason to use them, you can expect me to do it) letting them know I was willing to put up with a week’s delay-for-various-causes when it came to getting the pre-sod parts of the project done, but I don’t appreciate extended delays that threaten to ruin all the work and expense that went before it.

I intend to spend a good two or three years killing this lawn, and nobody’s going to deprive me of that pleasure.

Now, I might have been just a bit more forceful than I needed to be in leaving the messages, but in my world, if you sign a detail-oriented, time-sensitive contract, you need to live up to your end of the deal.  I’ve lived up to my end, and I have the painful bank records to prove it.

I’m not to the naming-names and pointing fingers stage, primarily because the guys seem to have done really good work so far and I still anticipate giving them a very positive review when everything’s complete.  I also believe in giving people every opportunity – and plenty of rope – to hang themselves if they want to.  Sometimes people end up making something useful with it instead.   We can skip the many other good reasons not to publicly bemoan a problem still in the course of being solved, because I’m well aware of the public nature of this forum and the inability of a blogger to really withdraw anything once it’s been set free in the Googleverse.

I will not let the publish button go down on my anger.

In truth, I wish I hadn’t let the answering machine go down on it quite so quickly either – though if it saves the lawn I’m willing to take the chance.

An hour and a half has passed since the last of my calls, and the landscapers haven’t called me back yet.  I’m hoping they make some arrangements to spare me a weekend’s worth of lawn triage, though you and I both know I’ll do it if I have to.  I’m attached to the thing, you see, and willing to go to some trouble to see that it returns the favor.

Somehow I doubt I’ll hear from the landscapers any time soon, however.

Even I have to admit, my fears about my dying lawn seem much less pressing … now that it’s raining.