The Presidential Inauguration Committee just issued a statement saying, "We had always intended and planned for Rt. Rev. Robinson’s invocation to be included in the televised portion of yesterday’s program. We regret the error in executing this plan – but are gratified that hundreds of thousands of people who gathered on the mall heard his eloquent prayer for our nation that was a fitting start to our event.” — PIC communications director Josh Earnest.
Okay…from all the books on German culture I’ve been reading lately, is this is something like saying Pope Still Catholic, or Bears Found To Prefer Woods To Port-A-Johns. Germans and angst are like southerners and barbecue.
Did HBO cave in the face of conservative outcries over Rev. Robinson’s selection for this event? Did the Inaugural committee rush Rev. Robinson onstage and off before the broadcast was slated to begin? Whatever the case may be, this is a cold slap. HBO has some serious explaining to do, as does the Inaugural committee.
Harvey Milk is screaming in his metaphorical grave right now.
It’s a good question, and this scenario fits nicely with the alleged technical difficulties I keep hearing about, that prevented Robinson’s words from even being clearly heard by the crowd that was there: I have friends who work as sound engineers, I’ve been with them as they did their work in various settings, and I’m here to tell you that they work hard at choreographing each and every microphone and pickup’s settings for each and every element of an event. I have no idea how the video side of it works but I’d be surprised if it was any less intricate. If Robinson was rushed out before the stage crew and the technical engineers were ready for him that would explain the fumbling around, and possibly even the video black-out. The only problem with this scenerio of course, is it still doesn’t explain why the Gay Men’s Chorus was closeted.
One fuckup I can accept. It’s still unacceptable, amateurish, unprofessional behavior that gay Americans have every right to be pissed off about and demand an apology for, but I can be convinced that one was a fuckup. Two of them that Just Happen to target the gay presence at this event and only the gay presence at this event and it’s staringly obvious that it was deliberate. The only question now is who engineered it?
I’m reading elsewhere that Dianne Feinstein heads the inagural committee. Well, there’s a good place to start. People just assume that since she was Mayor of San Francisco after Harvey Milk and George Moscone were assasinated that she’s a friend of the gay community. Nothing could be further from the truth…
After the 1978 death of Harvey Milk in San Francisco, gay rights activist Tom Brougham came up with a definition of domestic partnership that is now universally used, and was designed to include everything about marriage except sexual orientation. According to Brougham, the definition was that the couple must be more than 18 years old and mentally competent to make a contract. Furthermore, his position was that domestic partners must publicly declare the partnership and pledge to be responsible for each other.
In 1982, Brougham’s definition was modified by Supervisor Harry Britt (a gay man appointed to replace Harvey Milk). Britt’s version was adopted and passed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, but Dianne Feinstein, mayor of San Francisco at the time, came under intense pressure from the Catholic Church and subsequently vetoed the bill. Not until 1989 was a domestic partnership law adopted in the city of San Francisco…
Note that we have been fighting for marriage rights since the 1970s. Next time some ignorant jackass asks you why same-sex marriage has suddenly become such a big deal with teh gays, slap them upside the head with the biggest, thickest history book you can find.
A recall attempt was made after Feinstein vetoed Britt’s bill, to get her booted out of office. The gay community was massively pissed off. But Feinstein calculated that there weren’t enough gay people in San Francisco who cared enough about domestic partnership in the disco 70s to sign enough recall petitions to get it to the point of their actually being a vote. But another group of pissed off San Franciscans, gun owners, were already circulating a recall petition on her after she signed some new gun control measure or another. Many gay folk simply started adding their names to that one. That gave it enough signatures that a vote was actually held, much to her shock.
She survived it. Ever since when asked about it she has not only never apologized, she has insisted vetoing the bill was the right thing to do. Feinstein is that sort of democrat that blocks progress on equality far more then outright bigots manage, because they keep conning people into believing they’ll do the right thing once in office and then when it actually comes time to do the right thing, they don’t.
I wonder if another Catholic Bishop whispered into Feinstein’s ear again, that she’d better not be seen giving anything to the gays…
Contacted Sunday night by AfterElton.com concerning the exclusion of Robinson’s prayer, HBO said via email, "The producer of the concert has said that the Presidential Inaugural Committee made the decision to keep the invocation as part of the pre-show."
Uncertain as to whether or not that meant that HBO was contractually prevented from airing the pre-show, we followed up, but none of the spokespeople available Sunday night could answer that question with absolute certainty.
However, it does seem that the network’s position is that they had nothing to do with the decision.
So who made the decision to closet the Gay Men’s Chorus? Dan Savage sums it up nicely here …
When you’re throwing folks a bone it’s a good idea to make sure they can, you know, see the bone.
It’s five in the morning here in Baltimore, and already my mailbox is chock full of outrage over this. From the Gay Democrats mail list to the local Baltimore lists its everywhere. Everywhere but Google news which seems to think that Robinson’s prayer was seen by the whole nation. Over at Science Blogs they’re calling it an Historic inaugural slap in the face to LGBT community. One commenter there posted this…
We’d like to have you speak at our inaugural event…
We’d like to put your face up on the screen
Look around you; all you see are Democratic eyes.
Stroll around the Mall until it’s time to speak
And here’s to you, Bishop Robinson,
CNN—your speech they wouldn’t show
Wo wo wo
Bless us with tears, Bishop Robinson,
Heaven knows it can’t be cos you’re gay
Hey hey hey, hey hey hey….
Use another camera while the Bishop says his prayer.
Put it on a crowd scene for the broadcast
Keep him in the closet, Bishop Robinson’s not there
Most of all, we’ve got to hide him from the kids
Shoo, shoo, to you, Bishop Robinson,
CNN—your speech they wouldn’t show
Wo wo wo
Bless us with tears, Bishop Robinson,
Heaven knows it can’t be cos you’re gay
Hey hey hey, hey hey hey….
Standing on the marble steps, with Lincoln looking down
Going through the motions for TV
Laugh about it, Shout about it, Try to spread the word
Anyway, the Bishop wasn’t heard
Where have you gone, Marian Anderson?
The GMC is singing just like you
Ooo ooo ooo
What’s that you say, Bishop Robinson?
CNN sure kept you locked away
Hey hey hey… hey hey hey…
Several people over at Daily KOS, are covering this. DrFood mentions, via Pam’s House Blend, that you couldn’t even hear Robinson on NPR…
Bishop Gene Robinson gave a beautiful invocation at the inaugural concert today. I know because I read it here. (Full text below the fold.) I didn’t see it on HBO. Apparently you couldn’t see it on CNN or PBS. (*see update below) An angry commenter on Pam’s House Blend says you couldn’t even hear it on NPR.
Craigkg is reporting that even those in the crowd at the Lincoln Memorial might not have been able to hear Robinson’s Prayer…
In fact, it is being reported by some who were in attendance that when Rev Robinson delivered his invocation, the speakers were either turned down or off all together.
The situation with Rev. Robinson and Rev. Warren has become so incredibly similar to the fiasco involving Donnie McClurkin and Rev. Andy Sidden its not even funny. Before the South Carolina primary, Obama held a concert for black evangelicals and invited gospel singer and "ex-gay" homophobe Donnie McClurkin to sing and emcee the event. GLBT activists reacted by denouncing McClurkin’s claims that gays can change their sexual orientation (aka be saved) and Obama for having such a divisive anti-gay figure associated with his campaign. The GLBT community is rightly very sensitive to the legitimization of the ex-gay movement and the severe psychological damage reparative therapy can have of those subjected to this (being kind here) torture. After some hemming and hawing Obama announced he did not agree with McClurkin’s views on gays, tried to reinterate his own support of the GLBT community and announced that an invocation at the concert would be delivered by openly gay minister, the Rev. Andy Sidden. It was highly questioned at the time having a white gay minister deliver the prayer when several black gay ministers were available and willing to give it. At the concert, Rev. Sidden delivered his prayer in front of a largely unoccupied venue as most people were outside still filing in. Reports put the crowd at one quarter to one third of the eventual attendance at best. McClurkin went on to emcee and perform in front of the full crowd and delivered his own god saved me from my gayness statement…
At Talking Points Memo…there is the Top Ten Reasons Why HBO Censored Gene Robinson…
1. HBO sound system cannot broadcast gay voices.
2. Program ran over schedule, so HBO went back in their time machine and cut the beginning of the live broadcast.
3. Appearance of a gay men’s chorus went way over HBO’s ‘gay quota’ for the event.
4. HBO is a family-friendly network that does not carry offensive material like frontal nudity, profanity, or bishops.
5. Ellen DeGeneres was jealous.
6. Dumbledore was jealous.
7. HBO was warned that terrorists were watching for a signal that America was gay weak.
8. Rick Warren was jealous.
9. Everyone knows all gays are atheists.
10. Sarah Palin used her special anti-Russian spyware to block the signal.
A search of Getty Images, NYTimes.com and WaPo slide shows turned up nothing. In short, I found no visual evidence that an invocation was ever said.
The TVBarn blogger lists three options for team Obama to handle this: 1) Claim it was a technical glitch, 2) Admit they never intended for Robinson to be seen on national TV, 3) Admit they screwed up. My money is on 1, and they’ll stick stubbornly with it no matter how many people point out that the event began without any problems precisely on time, and that the "glitch" only happened during Robinson’s prayer, and that it still doesn’t explain why the Gay Men’s Chorus was closeted.
Could it be that the American media has finally decided these public events should be 100% secular? Don’t count on it, friends, because you know as well as I do that pop-pastor Rick Warren will be front and center and at full volume to kick off President-Elect Obama’s formal Inauguration on Tuesday.
Today’s event at the Lincoln Memorial was entitled We Are One, but apparently We Are Minus One is closer to the truth.
When Barack Obama chose anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-porn Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration, gays and lesbians—still smarting from Prop 8—were understandably upset. Well, I thought our dismay was understandable. But a lot of folks in the comments threads here, there, and everywhere disagreed. Barack was just trying to bring the country together, to find common ground, and Rick Warren invited him to his church, and how dare you get upset, trust the man, let him get into office before you start grousing at him about this, why are you worrying about symbolism when it’s policy that matters, and blah blah blah.
…
Then when Barack Obama chose Gene Robinson, the gay Episcopal bishop, to give the invocation at tonight’s pre-inaugural festivities—the concert tonight at the Lincoln Memorial—the folks defending Obama were all like, "SEE? Obama is bringing the country together! Anti-gay preachers, gay preachers—everyone is equal and equally welcome!" And Gene Robinson did give the invocation at tonight’s concert…and his words were very moving. You can read the full text of Robinson’s prayer here.
But if you were watching HBO’s broadcast of tonight’s concert you didn’t see Robinson, or hear his remarks… because Robinson’s invocation wasn’t included in the broadcast. Skipped over during the live broadcast, edited out of the rebroadcast.
Dig it. Not just skipped over, but edited out. And Bishop Robinson wasn’t the only thing edited out…
How about the fact that tonight’s other big gay moment—the D.C. gay men’s chorus singing with Josh Groban—passed without the chorus, unlike every other performer, being identified?
Nice. Welcome to morning in America. No matter what little token we may think we’ve managed to win, never doubt the ability or the willingness of the corporate media to make sure we remain invisible. And it’s not just that they’d rather have republicans in power then democrats. It’s not just that allowing people to see their gay and lesbian neighbors for the human beings we are, makes it hard for us to be the monsters we have to become every election year so that republicans can gay bash their way into winning elections. Homophobia is as much a fact of life in the high testosterone boardrooms of corporate America as it is in the megachurch stadium seating big screen TV cathedrals of the heartland. They hate us. First of all you have to understand that they hate us.
The democrats are sill late in coming to this fight. Obama and his people probably genuinely thought they were being actively inclusive in bringing in Gene Robinson. They were probably totally blind-sided by all this. Like a lot of decent rational people, they just don’t get the depth of contempt toward gay people. They never believe it until they actually see it for themselves. You can’t just take a rhetorical stand in favor of gay equality. You can’t just make a few gestures of sympathy and expect any progress to be made. This is a knife fight. They hate us. They hate us with a venom that is as bottomless as it is bitter. Every inch of progress in this fight, every inch, every painful, bloody inch of progress we make toward equality, toward the day when we are free to love and hope and dream and make decent lives for ourselves to the best of our ability, is its own poisonous scorched earth total war. Every inch. It will be like that right up to the bitter end and for generations after. They hate us. They will never stop hating us. Of course HBO censored Gene Robinson. Of course they shoved the Gay Men’s chorus into the closet. The corporate media will keep on making us invisable, will keep on shoving us back into the closet, will enable the demonization of gay people, and look the other way at the toll of death and destruction until someone makes them stop. Asking politely will not change one single solitary thing. They hate us.
On SlashDot recently there was a post concerning Google’s announced support for repealing or overturning Proposition 8. Google placed its opposition to discriminating against same-sex couples in marriage in the context of being able to entice the best workers to its California workplace, but immediately the commenters on SlashDot began to bellyache at the hypocrisy of being concerned about recruiting good workers at the same time they’re laying people off. As if the two things are mutually exclusive. I guess most SlashDot visitors are very young and haven’t been through many recessions.
But reliably came the calls from ersatz libertarians to get government out of the business of marriage. Civil Unions they say, are a workable compromise. People are just getting hung up over a word they say. Never mind that making all civil marriages civil unions just isn’t going to happen politically. Our enemies don’t want us to have even civil unions. This isn’t a fight over a word or none of these anti same-sex marriage amendments would forbid civil unions too and nearly all of them do. That wasn’t accidental. The word people are getting hung up over in this fight isn’t ‘marriage’, it’s ‘homosexuals’.
From the Salt Lake Tribune comes this little article, ostensibly to show that Utahns (read: Mormons) aren’t so bigoted after all…
While Utahns aren’t ready to let gay and lesbian couples exchange wedding vows or enter civil unions, most are willing to give them broader legal rights to inherit property, visit a partner in the hospital and ward off employment discrimination…However, the poll shows overwhelming opposition (70 percent) to any changes to the Utah Constitution that would allow same-sex partners to enter civil unions…
Well isn’t that lovely. You want hypocrisy? It’s not in Google taking a stand for human decency, even as it has to lay off workers. It’s here, right here, in all those righteous people who think that respecting the love and devotion of same-sex couples in sickness makes it okay to rip their lives apart in health. If you believe that homosexuality is a sickness, a perversion, an abomination to God that will lead to the destruction of the family and western civilization, then what sense does it make to give same sex couple’s any rights? All that says, is they know goddamned well that same sex couples love each other every bit as much as opposite sex couples do. All this says, is that they don’t want to be thought of as the gutter crawling butchers of other people’s hopes and dreams that they are.
This is their way of saving face, nothing more, nothing less. It’s the equivocation of bigots trying to look at themselves in a mirror and deny the blood on their hands was something they did willingly, deliberately, knowingly. We don’t hate them…look…we’re willing to let them visit their sex partners in the hospital… How does that make sense when homosexuals are destroying the family and western civilization? It doesn’t. It’s an admission of guilt. It exposes the bedrock of animus toward gay people that motivates them more then simply denying gay people all legal status does. Ignorance sees only monsters when it looks at gay people. It takes shame to know that kicking them in the face isn’t something you want to be seen doing.
And even those moral runts only constitute a bare majority of the whole in Utah. After the critical roll the Mormon church played in passing Proposition 8 became known, Mormon church leaders averred they had no objection to granting same sex couples some small rights, and the democratic opposition in the state promptly took them at their word, proposing legislation to grant them just that. They call their work, without any apparent sense of irony, the "common ground" bills.
While Senate President Michael Waddoups, R-Taylorsville, doubts Utahns would change the state constitution to permit civil unions, he said he would entertain bills on more-expansive legal rights for gays.
"The fact that anybody wants [wider rights] isgrounds to pursue it and investigate it," said Waddoups, adding that he would ensure the Common Ground bills get a fair debate if they make it to committee or the Senate floor.
But opposition certainly will follow from Utahns such as poll respondent Maureen Johnson.
"I don’t believe they should have any rights at all," said the South Jordan resident. "The Lord says the man is made for the woman and the woman is made for the man."
Well thank you Senator Waddoups, R-Taylorsville for entertaining the idea that gay people ought to have rights. The compromise between right and wrong is indifference to either right or wrong. The compromise between living in freedom and living in a police state is I agree to put the handcuffs on myself and pretend I had a choice in the matter. The compromise between love and hate is to put the knife into your own heart and spare hate the trouble. The word that describes the "common ground" between free people and tyrants is Battleground, not Peace. Just ask the shades that walk at Shiloh.
Common ground is that we are all equal in the eyes of the law. Once upon a time that was the American compromise. We all had different faiths, came from different lands, were raised in different cultures. But as far as the law was concerned, we were all Americans. The religious and fascist right have waged a decades long scorched earth war to shred the American ideal of equality, so that they might rise above the rest of us and rule over all. Because they are the favored of God. Because to rule over the heathens is their God-given right. No…duty.
Take up the Godly Man’s burden…
Ye dare not stoop to less…
And now we, who believe in the American dream, are in a pitched fight to retake what was once our sacred common ground: liberty and justice for all. Equality is the common ground. What’s equal to marriage, is marriage.
If you’ve ever played Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and felt down that you don’t possess Nathan Drake’s rugged good looks–don’t get down–you’re not alone.
According to research by a Kansas State University Psychology professor, gamers that view extremely muscular men or very thin women are more likely to feel self-conscious about their own physique.
Richard Harris, (author of the research) said that his research shows that simply viewing the attractive game character for 15 minutes can negatively impact the player’s image of their own looks and body.
“It was kind of sobering that it did have such a short-term effect,” Harris said.
Harris divided a group of university students up, having the males play a wrestling video game while the females played a beach volleyball game. Before they played, the students completed a survey about their body image. After they played the game for fifteen minutes, they were surveyed again. The new survey showed that the participants, as a whole, viewed their bodies more negatively.
You know what else can leave you with a negative body image? Friends. The kind that just drop chances for you to meet people on the floor because you’re not good looking enough to be boyfriend material.
The Catholic church’s list of sins and their ranking is made public for the first time. Ever wonder why the church has a hard time fessing up to its role in the Holocaust? They’re not being obtuse. Genocide isn’t that big a deal compared with, say spitting out the Eucharist…
The Apostolic Penitentiary, or "tribunal of conscience", has been shrouded in secrecy ever since it was established by Pope Alexander III in 1179 and until now has never provided details of the cases it scrutinizes.
They are considered so heinous by the Catholic Church that only the Pope can grant absolution to those who perpetrate them.
Blah…blah…blah…
While priests and bishops can deal with confessions of sins as grave as murder or even genocide, the tribunal is reserved for crimes which are viewed by the Church as even more serious.
They include attempting to assassinate the Pope, a priest abusing the confidentiality of the confessional by revealing the nature of the sin and the person who admitted to it, or a priest who has sex with someone and then offers forgiveness for the act.
…
Defiling the Eucharist, which Catholics believe is the body and blood of Christ, is also considered a sin of extreme gravity and one which is on the increase, the high-ranking members of the tribunal said.
Cardinal Stafford said there had been a rise in incidents in which people would receive Communion and then spit it out or otherwise desecrate it, sometimes in Satanic rituals.
…
Such sins, which can only be dealt with by the Pope, acting through the tribunal, bring automatic excommunication from the Church. If the Pope decides to grant absolution, the excommunication is lifted.
See…it’s all a matter of proportion. The punishment has to fit the crime. Forgiveness isn’t lightly meted out when the sin is grievous. Himmler could have been dealt with by the local parish priest. But only the Pope can forgive you for spitting out the Eucharist. And remember, there is no morality without religion.
So I’m at Home Depot carrying out two sheets of 2×8 sheet foam insulation to the car. There is no way I can transport 2×8 sheets inside Traveler, but I don’t plan on it. By the car, I take out a utility knife and cut the sheets in half. Then I open the trunk. At the top of the trunk are two levers I can pull which unlatch the back seats. When I bought Traveler, one of the options I made sure to get were the fold-down back seats.
When I owned the Prism, whenever I wanted to transport large items I had to literally unbolt the back seat and take it out. The Accord had fold-down rear seats but they were awkward. The latches were clumsy and the seat belts were always getting in the way. Plus, the opening you got by folding down the rear seatbacks was surprisingly narrow for a car as wide as the Accord.
Why I have been a Mercedes fanboy ever since I was a teenager: every little thing on a Mercedes is engineered with some careful thought and attention to quality and purpose. It is not just a sumptuous luxury car. And especially the ‘C’ class. Think of the ‘C’ not only as the baby Benz, but as a really nice, working person’s sedan. It’s not nearly as sumptuous as the ‘S’ class, or even the ‘E’, but Mercedes-like, it’s deliberately targeted to a particular driving niche, with no compromises. It’s not a luxury car in the same sense as the ‘E’ or ‘S’. It’s a really nice four door sedan built as well as possible, for its niche, which are working class folk like me. We don’t just drive our cars to work or to the beach. We need to be able to transport things in them. The car has to be a working member of the family. Let me put it this way: the ‘C’ class has cup holders in it and you can get it in vinyl upholstery as well as leather. I don’t think the ‘S’ even has cup holders. A wine cooler in the back maybe, but not cup holders. You’re not supposed to snack in your ‘S’ class, you’re supposed to stop at a five star restaurant and let the valet park your car while you sit down to a hundred dollar dinner. And I strongly doubt you can get the ‘S’ in anything but leather upholstery. Most ‘C’ class owners actually prefer the vinyl, known as MBTex, as it is just as nice looking and feeling as the leather, but lasts longer and is easier to take care of.
It’s a working person’s car. But built as well as you can build one. And yes, with some very nice touches to it to pamper you. But not at the expense of functionality and purpose. Mercedes never does anything at the expense of functionality and purpose. So I unlatch the rear seat backs and they just come undone with no problem and the seat backs pivot down smoothly and easily. I don’t have to tug on anything or fuss with the latches like I did on the Accord. I don’t have to mess with the seat belts. The people designing this thing took the seat belts into account. They are just not in the way. And when the seats pivot down they come to rest with their backs Exactly Level with the floor of the trunk. I put my foam sheets in, close the trunk lid, and drive home and I don’t get the feeling driving down the road that my car is any less solid with the passenger compartment open to the trunk then when it’s closed up (although the stereo does sound a little…odd). I get home, I unload Traveler, I fold back up the rear seats and once more I don’t have to tug and fuss with anything including the seat belts. The seat backs just pivot back into the upright position smoothly and latch firmly and solidly back in place. Done.
Everything in the car is like that. This is why you pay the extra bucks.
What’s significant about this is that Hanks is seen as the same sort of American Everyman character actor that Jimmy Stewart once was.
“The truth is this takes place in Utah, the truth is these people are some bizarre offshoot of the Mormon Church, and the truth is a lot of Mormons gave a lot of money to the church to make Prop-8 happen,” he told Tarts. “There are a lot of people who feel that is un-American and I am one of them. I do not like to see any discrimination codified on any piece of paper, any of the 50 states in America, but here’s what happens now. A little bit of light can be shed and people can see who’s responsible and that can motivate the next go around of our self correcting constitution and hopefully we can move forward instead of backwards. So lets have faith in not only the American, but Californian constitutional process.”
This, I can see from the other Google news headlines, has the kook pews up in arms.
Actor Tom Hanks went after The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for their support of California’s Proposition 8 while talking to Fox News. Today, the Church responded.
…
Church spokesman Scott Trotter issued a one-sentence statement today in response to Hanks’ comments. It reads: "Expressing an opinion in a free and democratic society is as American as it gets."
So cutting off your neighbor’s ring finger amounts to expressing an opinion. See how easy it is to live without a conscience? You don’t have to give a shit about anything or anyone. You can rip apart your neighbor’s marriage. You can brutalize children for profit. The lives of other people don’t matter. Only your quest for Godhood matters. Who cares how many lives you destroy, when at the end of it all you get to be a God?
It’s 14 degrees outside as I write this, and I can see a lot more clearly how the house is loosing heat now. The problem spots aren’t all what I thought they were. The exterior walls are worse then I thought, while the attic insulation is doing much better then I’d thought it did.
The house is maintaining temperature but the exterior walls are so cold it’s making the floors cold. Basically, air against the exterior walls is getting chilled and then sinking down to the floor and spreading out. So my feet are cold as ice as I walk around the house but my upper body, and everything a couple feet above floor level here at Casa del Garrett, is staying nice and warm.
The walls are, I kid you not, much, Much colder then the windows and the window frames. The windows here, which are new double pane windows installed by the previous owner, are really showing their insulating ability now. They’re staying warm to the touch nicely. The walls themselves are showing their 1950s housing code genetics. They are brutally cold to the touch. And being all masonry and plaster, they’ll retain their chill even as the outside air starts climbing back out of the single digits. Any inside air that hangs against them is being chilled to refrigerator temperatures. Then it slides off and spreads across the floor.
Meanwhile the second floor ceiling is warm to the touch. That old shredded paper insulation in the attic crawl space is better at keeping the heat in then I’d thought. And with the air leak in the bathroom skylight sealed up now, the second floor is staying much warmer now then it ever did in the winter. The chill here is all below knee level. It’s really weird.
So I’m going out to the hardware store in a bit to buy some of that blue foam sheet insulation and do a wee experiment. I’m going to put it up against the exterior bedroom wall with double sided tape and see what that does. For various reasons that’s an easy interior wall to do an insulation experiment on, and a good test case because facing the back of the house, which is the north face, that wall doesn’t even get any warmth from the sun hitting it. I’ll just cut some foam pieces with a utility knife and one of my big metal straight-edges so they fit snugly. Then I’ll tack them in place with some double-sided tape and see what effect it has. It doesn’t have to look good, just be a proof-of-concept. If it works well enough then I’ll start making plans to build out that wall, and the other exterior walls here at Casa del Garrett.
The days when you could just burn gas heat like it didn’t cost anything are long, long gone…
One of the things that woke me up about an hour ago was a small, brief, but very sharp stabbing pain in my right lower abdomen. About where the right kidney is…I think. I had one about an hour or so before bedtime and just shrugged it off. Now I’m on alert. I am not looking forward to my first kidney stone. Not one bit.
Ages ago when I was working as an architectural modelmaker, one of the architects I was working with on a project told me about his first kidney stone attack. He said it happened to him as he and his wife were walking to their car after eating out somewhere. He said his first thought was that he’d just been shot.
I’m dealing with the return of my insomnia again…but it gives me a chance to walk downstairs and see just how cold it’s getting.
The high-tech furnace I put in several years ago works as a complete computer controlled system with the outside air conditioner compressor also acting as an outdoor temperature sensor. The furnace box inside (which is tiny compared to the one it replaced) has an onboard computer that monitors indoor and outdoor temperature and tries to maintain indoor conditions as efficiently as possible. The burners can work at full blast or several stages below that. The blower fan is variable speed. So instead of the old system, where an indoor thermostat tripped at the temperature you set it to, turning on a furnace that only knew how to burn gas and blow out hot air at full blast until the thermostat tripped back off, this one will respond to temperature changes both inside and outside the house, and gently try to maintain the indoor set point with as little effort as possible. This is the first time since I’ve had it, that the temperatures have gone into single digits here in Baltimore.
The thermostat looks like an oversized iPod Classic, but without the wheel. It sits on a wall in the living room and among other things, tells me both the indoor and outdoor temperatures. I get the outdoor reading now far more accurately then the old porch thermometer I once had and I don’t have to look out the back window. Right now the thermostat is telling me it’s 6 degrees outside. I’m pretty sure that’s Fahrenheit and not Kelvin because the nitrogen in the atmosphere isn’t condensing on the ground. At least…I think that frost I’m seeing outside is water ice and not nitrogen…
For the first time since I bought Casa del Garrett the second floor is warmer then the first at night. That’s what you’d expect since heat rises but it’s never been like that in the winter and now I know that darn bathroom skylite has been letting all my heat out all these years. I honestly didn’t think it was that bad, but the change has been dramatic. Especially with the temperature down in the single digits out there. I’m going to leave that plastic sheet I put under it up for the rest of the season and when it gets warm enough that I can set up my table saw I’m going to buy some sheet acrylic and cut some panels to put up there permanently.
Wow… I just now checked NOAA and they’re saying it’s 4 degrees at BWI right now. My thermostat is still reading 6, but I’ll bet it’s still dropping out there. Two more hours until morning…
…and the sun only just went down an hour or so ago. They’re calling for 7 degrees tonight. So why am I drinking a frozen Margaretta now? Oh…I know… Because I was busting it at work for the past two weeks getting out a software release among other things and I need to unwind and it’s too cold to go outside and go anywhere.
This is the kind of weather when I start getting cabin fever: when it’s too cold outside to even go for a walk because your face freezes. I might just try in a little while though.
My energy bill this month is going to be painful to look at. But at least I can afford to pay it. So I count my blessings…
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We’d like to have you speak at our inaugural event…
We’d like to put your face up on the screen
Look around you; all you see are Democratic eyes.
Stroll around the Mall until it’s time to speak
And here’s to you, Bishop Robinson,
CNN—your speech they wouldn’t show
Wo wo wo
Bless us with tears, Bishop Robinson,
Heaven knows it can’t be cos you’re gay
Hey hey hey, hey hey hey….
Use another camera while the Bishop says his prayer.
Put it on a crowd scene for the broadcast
Keep him in the closet, Bishop Robinson’s not there
Most of all, we’ve got to hide him from the kids
Shoo, shoo, to you, Bishop Robinson,
CNN—your speech they wouldn’t show
Wo wo wo
Bless us with tears, Bishop Robinson,
Heaven knows it can’t be cos you’re gay
Hey hey hey, hey hey hey….
Standing on the marble steps, with Lincoln looking down
Going through the motions for TV
Laugh about it, Shout about it, Try to spread the word
Anyway, the Bishop wasn’t heard
Where have you gone, Marian Anderson?
The GMC is singing just like you
Ooo ooo ooo
What’s that you say, Bishop Robinson?
CNN sure kept you locked away
Hey hey hey… hey hey hey…
Posted by: Cuttlefish | January 18, 2009 10:38 PM