beancounters

Bailin'

We must be crazy to leave. But as of 11 o'clock this morning our landlord won't let us stay here, and they're sending a team of cleaning ladies over as enforcers.

For people who have to leave in 1 1/2 hours, we're surprisingly sanguine. Most folks are sitting and eating breakfast out of the odds and ends we have left in the refrigerator. Someone's tallying what we owe each other in grocery money.  I hear a brother in-law announcing he found the nine of hearts, which has been missing for days. And there's a yellow Lab walking around with a cone collar and a t-shirt on. (Picture to follow.)

Having the laptop here has been a blessing and a curse. Lots of us have been able to check in with work during our vacation. I leave it to you to decide if this fact falls under b. or c.

In other "b. or c." news, the fact we have internet access this year has led me to out myself to my family. I showed one of my sisters in-law that blogs are not just for 20-somethings by pulling up this page. For one horrifying second, I realized she was about to see the picture of her two boys. What would she say? It could have been ugly. But all she did was laugh uproariously, then call the kids over to show them they are famous on the internet. Whew!

Hailin'

We hear it's 103 degrees in Seattle today, and about the same in Oregon. Did we accidentally switch weather? Here in Lake Tahoe, it suddenly rained on us when we were at the beach. Two nephews hid under the inflatable raft which had been propped up with chairs and bolstered with floaties on the back side. A few minutes after I took this pic, more kids piled in, sharing big plates of french fries.

Then, just when we thought it was safe to get in the water, it began to hail! We decided to call it a loss, threw all this crap in our trucks and took off for the cousins' cabin.

Chillin'

Well, the boat's not ours, but Lake Tahoe is our neighbor for a whole week. Yes, it's reunion time again with my in-laws and their (our) extended family.

The cabin we rent every year is much the same as always. Each year, we find little improvements the owners have made (with our rent money). This year, it seems some quite rickety steps were recently replaced with temporary steps. These new steps are rickety in their own right, but were easily anchored with penny nails on our first day here.

There was an emergency over the weekend, when one of my brothers in-law had a seizure. Fortunately, he was treated and released and is back in our midst. Cabin head count as of today: adults - 8; teens - 6; kids & tweens - 3. It's a smaller crew than most years. I, for one, love the novelty of elbow room. But then we have a second cabin about five miles down the road, full of cousins of the adult, teen and child variety. Tonight is the Big Potluck, where I'll secure a final head count.

Invading The Vintage

Invading The Vintage, originally uploaded by Franco Brambilla.

It's Saturday, and it's Comic Con weekend, so you have plenty of time to indulge in some mind-bending alternate history. In this Flickr set, cute aliens invade vintage postcards and the result is pretty cool.

Friday fun: big deal

How to get rid of things - this looks like a helpful site. [Thx, Jen]

Mind-expanding surveys, courtesy of author Clifford Pickover

The avenging unicorn play set - ah, so that's why they have horns! [via Nag]

The bark translator - coming soon from Japan

A Florida city manager is fired for having a wife who's a pr0n star? Hey, with furloughs hitting the public sector everywhere, I think it's very forward-thinking to have a spouse who works in a growth industry.

Wizard rap [YouTube]

Harry Potter, the exhibition! Coming soon to the Boston Museum of Science. Followed by ... San Francisco?

What a cut-up

 

Unlike other viewers, I wasn't shocked to see California's governor wielding a two-foot knife in his latest Twitter video. I mean, this is Arnold we're talking about. He owns an enormous bronze statue of a bear! He shows up at press conferences with things like brooms and jackhammers in his hands! Whatever else can be said about him, the man surely does know the worth of a good visual aid.

Accio Aunt Petunia!

In an unusual move, we saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince for the second time last night. Bunny really wanted to see it again and take a friend. I was going to drop the two of them off at the theatre, but the friend's mother wouldn't let the girl go unless a parent went along. So I thought, hmm, nice excuse to see HP6 again. Then BB said hmm, nice excuse to go with Pam to see HP6 again. Thus it was that we all saw HP6 again.

You're safe in assuming we liked it ... On the face of it, there's much about this movie that could be disappointing. They stripped out almost every sub-plot, the secondary characters who are left are having to pull double-duty, nobody sings "Weasley is Our King," and one of my favorite characters, Aunt Petunia, has gone completely missing. But what we were left with was one strong story, handled with real cinematic flair. If they'd tried to squeeze too many disparate events into this movie, it would have come off disjointed, in my opinion.

Something else I appreciated about this Harry Potter movie - they departed from the first person perspective for a change. In the novels, nothing is learned by the reader unless Harry knows it or hears about it from an outside source. (The exception would be those opening chapters dealing with non Harry-related events, which started appearing in Goblet of Fire.) The result is that Harry rarely learns the Big Secret of any given school year until just after the novel's climax - usually while he is recovering in a bed in the hospital wing, but that's a gripe for another day.

HP movies have for the most part continued in this same vein. But in Half-Blood Prince, something refreshing happened. We got to follow Draco around without Harry, and see - as well as gradually understand - the diabolical work he and the Death Eaters were up to. It was a departure from the norm which served two purposes at once: it showed Draco's very real torment, and it kept the plot moving. All in all, we were very impressed with HP6.

Here's a quiz that'll test your behind-the-scenes knowledge of the movie series. Be ready to make some educated guesses to get through it.

Have wall. Must draw.

Question: If I took a week or so to draw wallpaper and a fireplace on my office wall at work, who would get more mad - our building manager, or the California taxpayers?

You're right; best not to take chances either way. Maybe I should launch a wall-drawing project here at home. My husband would get mad, but at least he couldn't blow the whistle on me to the Governor.

CA budget deal

I haven't read the budget deal crafted by the Big 5 & not sure I will be able to take it all in until this non budget-related headache goes away. But I'm told our three furlough days are still in effect, and there's a potential for more salary cuts. Last night BB & I received ballots to vote for a strike. Hoping it doesn't remotely come to that, but we'll see.

Tuesday mash

Mashups are the most fun when you know all the songs thrown into the mix. This was a great rendition, not only for the tunes but the effort taken to make it look like Diamond Dave is singing with the Fab Four.

Just another mashup Monday

I love mashups. Love them. I used to find them offered all over the internet, in the days before the RIAA got all huffy. I even used to pass them around by making mashup CDs for my friends. Their reactions were always less enthusiastic than I'd hoped for. But who cares? I don't need friends; I have you people. Here's a new mashup that will make you laugh on a Monday.

Mashable (ha!) has the low-down.

Friday fun

 

On such a summer's daaay ... More funny furlough Friday shirts available at Zazzle.

I thought of my brother when I read Shane kevelling about his old Hot Wheels collection. Dan and I could play for hours with the Hot Wheels cars they handed out at the Shell station, back in the days when the gas station used to do that sort of thing. The stations were all staffed by men who walked out and filled up your gas tank themselves. Yes, it's true. And they'd wash the car windows and check the oil at no extra charge. And when we were finished there, the whole family would go to a drive-in and order brontosaurus burgers. Shut up.

Living with Jesus [click on the cartoon to biggify]

Gail Collins deconstructs the Sotomayor hearings this week. Yep, this was as funny as I thought!

Speaking of Sotomayor, this week's installment of Auto-Tune the News is about getting another shortie on the bench, yo. Brilliant. [YouTube] 

Hmm, Friday. Friday. Now, let's see. What were we going to do on Friday?

Oh, yeah, that was it. See you tonight, Dumbledore! I'll buy the popcorn ...

Tauntaun sleeping bag?

Tauntaun Sleeping Bag

Yep, I guess so! The word is this bag, originally posted as an April Fool's joke, might be produced for real if Lucas will sign ze papers. This is perfect for the tyke who loves The Empire Strikes Back - and isn't squeamish. [via Laughing Squid]

Gaining perspective from the Venetians

It's Saturday, so you have plenty of time to explore perspective. Literally.

Pick up a few artistic tricks from the Venetian artist Caneletto, and then use them to put together your own masterpiece. Post it on your blog or your FB page. Here, I'll start:

I was particularly excited to float an elephant and a tourist or two in the ocean. That's Italian!

Speaking of Caneletto, I'd never really known about him before I started this post. I visited a few sites to see examples of his work. I was struck by the similarities between these and traditional American postcards. No wonder people collect postcards as works of art.

Furlough Friday: Signs

Well, here in California, most of us are back on furlough Fridays as of today. State workers were docked two days' pay per month starting in February (after a couple of bureaucratic hiccups), but we were allowed to either take those unpaid days off, or bank them for later. In this way, we were able to keep the offices open five days a week.

As of this month, however, Arnold has imposed three furlough days per month, plus ordered that they be taken on Fridays, to save on building maintenance costs on those days. He'd like to take away another 5%, which might result in a fourth furlough day down the road.

My husband and I are two state workers out of the many, and we can't help but read the signs that say this is not only about the money, but about political blackmail.

1) There is no safety in numbers. Over 200,000 employees can have their salary cut 14% by one former action hero, just like that.

2)  It doesn't seem to matter from which fund a salary originates. For instance, Employment Development Department state workers are actually paid from federal accounts, not from the state's General Fund. The state does not pay EDD salaries. So what's the deal with docking their pay 14%?

3) Worse for the EDD employees: so okay, the state gives EDD employees "furlough days" by docking their pay 14%, but then won't let the employees take those days off. EDD employees must work anyway, because applications for Unemployment Insurance are still going through the roof. (BB's working today, and he says the mood in the office is ugly.)

4) Arnold tries to justify deep cuts to the in-home health care program by claiming that state-paid home health care workers are responsible for defrauding the state by 25%. But he can't come up with a definitive place where such a high number comes from.

State workers completely understand that costs must be cut. But against all logic, Arnold is cutting costs with an axe instead of a scalpel. Maybe he's playing with the livelihood of public employees to try and blackmail the legislature into passing a budget he feels he can sign.

[Yo, Sacbee! You do not have my permission to reprint this blog post. Kthx.]

Twaddiction

Honestly, I thought it would be higher. Must get to work on that whole tweeting-in-the-restroom thing!

And as long as we're on the subject, here are the 46 stages of Twitter. I'd say they're totally accurate, and that I've bounced through stages 30 - 45 at least a dozen times already ...

Disaster a go-go

Dig it! Here's the official trailer for 2012 ...
and here's the parody. All the disaster but with a psychedelic beat!

Andean voodoo?

Machu Picchu Post from Machu Picchu Post Team on Vimeo.

[via The Daily Dish]

Die Fail Whale

Twitter, to its credit, doesn't crash or max its capacity as much as it used to - with the notable exception of the death of Michael Jackson. Boy, that day will live in Twitter infamy. But now there's a game that helps us take out frustrations on Twitter's mascot: Die Fail Whale.

The object of the game will be abundantly clear. Just don't forget to reload!

4th of July Fireworks

St. Louis 4th of July Fireworks, originally uploaded by Creativity+ Timothy K Hamilton.

Happy Independence Day, blogfolk! Have a great weekend ...