Wed, Jun 9th - 10:19PM

Durant's Rousseau and Revolution, p. 840
135.2 miles
hot

107 recordings of 26 types.

Rasmussen: -18: 46/54

Today we skipped Mass in order to finish clearing the living room and moving the furniture so Juan and his cousin could scrape off the pad. I set up the laptop in the kitchen.  Rich had the television in the fireplace, which worked nicely. They were supposed to come at 9 or 9:30 and about 10 I was thinking 'I could say something rude about "Mexican Time."'  However, when they did come, at 10:30, they set right to work.

It soon became apparent that the shovel they brought wasn't the tool for the job and the scraping blade Rich had was the right thing.  Except he had to keep sharpening it. He went to get another blade and another tool.  The guys kept right on working.  They scraped for almost 3 hours, then helped move the furniture from the dining room back to the living room and broke for lunch.  Which only took them 20 or 25 minutes, and back they came, scraping and scraping.

I was having a terrible time staying awake so lay down for a quick nap, and while I thought I stayed awake I was apparently out for 30 minutes, because they were done and ready to leave. I thought maybe I'd been bitten by a flea because I had an itch, but it's since expanded and is behaving like poison oak, probably from yesterday. Argh.

Rich is amusing. He figures a tip in the restaurant to the last penny, and before taxes.  But he gave the guys almost 20%, plus one of the blades. It's obvious he can't picture himself slinging plates, but was REALLY relieved not to be scraping the floor!!! And they definitely earned it. We put down carpet pieces to make it a little more comfortable till we get the carpet.

This is from the morning, Rich having cut out a swathe of carpet to use later.

D-Day: Google blorfs again, but Bing is nice.

More laser-like focus on the oil spill.
I will not rest until -- oh look, George Lopez!

The Anchoress is really really ticked that 0bama knew about the spill scope from day 1: 

Hey, America, I knew it was hopeless, and I couldn’t change anything, so I couldn’t see the point of accepting the help of 17 nations offering their technology and their expertise in attempting to contain the damage as much as possible; no point in even attempting to use supertankers to try to remove as much oil from the surface as possible, even if they have to do it for months.

Hey, America, I knew it was bad, so there was no sense in telling you anything, or in helping Governor Jindal try to protect the marshlands and coasts of Louisiana.
...
We’ve just spent years listening to ungenerous, miserable people excoriate President Bush for calmly taking 7 minutes, after learning of the attacks of 9/11, to allow his Secret Service to do their thing and to–with a great deal of composure–take his leave from a classroom without managing to scare the children or give an impression of fear that would be put before the nation and the world.

After watching President Obama take six weeks to process the terrible news he was given–pressing forward with golf, vacations, parties and fund-raisers in order to not scare the nation–even if that it meant he seemed a little disengaged from the BP Oil disaster, I never want to hear another sneering, idiotic My Pet Goat joke, again.
...
Instapundit and reader note Obama’s weak responses to any disasters that don’t affect a Democrat-majority. And Moe Lane has the chart to prove it.

0bamateurism of the week:
I went with “fully engaged”. These get harder to decide each week. So many great choices that show the complete lack of competence from our president. A comedy writer could not come up with some of this stuff.

chief on June 6, 2010 at 2:45 PM

Three bribes Mickey Kaus would accept.

Michael Goodwin says 0bama's not up to the job. "What started out as a whiff of rookie incompetence has become a suffocating odor. It's hard to find a single area where Obama's policies are a convincing success."

BP Oil Crisis Explained.
There were steps that could have been taken after the spill, but weren’t. Why not?

For that I do bloody well blame the President, and he should understand it because he’s the one telling us that government is there to protect us. The fine print is that they may be there for that purpose, but they so suck at it.

Wed, Jun 9th - 5:19PM

Durant's Rousseau and Revolution, p. 840
135.2 miles
hot

107 recordings of 27 types.

Rasmussen: -17: 45/54

The Google doodle is for Dennis Gabor's 110th birthday.  These are the same people who let Memorial Day go. Aha. I found a complete compilation of them. I love January 4 of this year.

Today we went to Vacaville to meet up with my cousin. And, surprise, to get some caches!
She told me the skating party where Jim would be was 3-5 so we figured we'd leave here at 12, get some caching in, and then meet them about 4. 

Our first caches were just south of Dixon, pretty well completing that town.  We got a look at the National Veterans' Cemetery.  It's huge.  Then we went along Midway avenue and got all but one of the caches, then headed south on Browns Valley Road into Vacaville.  There's one really really nice cache, glued to a rock and stuck in a rock wall. I was dubious to look for this one, afraid of snakes.

I'd planned on doing a six-cache Easter Egg series that would lead to another cache, but we couldn't find the first two eggs, so gave it up. Instead, we went to Centennial Park where there was an older cache.  In fact, the text tells about some pine trees which are no more, possibly victims of the bugs which didn't get caught in the bug traps also discussed. I looked in the juniper and looked and looked, and suddenly spied the cache!  I think it was the juniper in the Easter egg series, however, that scratched my hand and gave me a big owie. OTOH, I also seem to have picked up some poison oak, so maybe that happened there.

And so to the skating rink. The place is huge, so we spent a lot of time looking for my cousin, then I called her.  She'd found out the party wasn't till 3:45 to 7, and so she was on her way (at 3:45.)  Hmm. So we went off to find a couple more caches.  Still no one when we got back, but I'd spied a Starbucks... and I got a frappachino while Rich checked out nearby caches. Three of them in the area.  We were looking for the second one when my cousin called.  Then, again, I couldn't find her inside and called... I went through a door and there she was, answering me. This about 4:30.

We got caught up quite a bit while Jim tried to ice skate.  Finally, they were finished and we took them to find the last cache.  Jim was a bit bored when, after following the arrow to the right area, the grownups kept poking around in the bushes.  Eventually Rich found the cache and then let Jim find it.  Suddenly, he wasn't bored, he wanted to go find another, and another, and another...

We had a pleasant dinner at Outback. I teased them both.  Jim, who had started out shy, was really loosening up by the end.  He's off to spend the summer with his dad tomorrow.

Mark Finan
@mikebravo11 The last 90 was Sept 27. That is a very long stretch for Sac. I think you have to go back to the 20s to find a longer one  about 5 hours ago

Lileks
Working on the Gallery of Regrettable Food 15th anniversary website. My life's work consists of making fun of aspics.

0bama loses the left?

sukietawdry
Who's the aging queen standing next to the president?

George Bush is a prolific reader. Obama is not. George Bush reads history. Obama does not (as is evidenced by the historical references he makes which are almost always wrong). George Bush is married to a former librarian who used her time as First Lady to promoted reading and literacy and hosted a series of poetry reading in the WH. So, I can assure Sir Paul that the former president would know what a library is.

gemoftheocean99
Gee, you mean even the really stupid people are catching on?
It was obvious to anyone with half a brain that Zero was a thin skinned narcissistic jackass. I love the fact that even some of his "Base" is suddenly getting it that if Zero doesn't even take care of his welfare queen illegal alien aunt or his brother living in a shack in Kenya, that he sure as hell ain't going to pick up a mortgage check for someone he doesn't know. The one silver lining is the people who are/were his biggest supporters will be stomped on the most. And frankly, they deserve every bit of pain and suffering for letting this poseur kill the economy and kill jobs.

Instapundit: Obama fooled enough of the people, for long enough. Don’t blame them for wising up now. Better late than never.

(I hope it's not TOO late!)