I scheduled my whole day–meals, workout, etc.–around our planned meal at Texas Roadhouse this evening, only to discover they were closed. The rolls have been, and still are, sorely missed.
As for the Super Bowl, I had no real stake in it, so no disappointment there.
The greatest gift you can give to the person you love? Not telling the staff at Texas Roadhouse that it’s that person’s birthday.
You’re welcome, sweetie!
Tipping is not a science. There are, however, some rules. Normally, at the sorts of restaurants I go to, 15%-20% is a good rule of thumb. However, there are occasions when under-tipping is acceptable. These include especially poor service (are you listening, Deb?), buffets, etc. Of course, regularly tipping 10% or less, especially at a restaurant you frequent, isn’t acceptable. We have a regular waitress at Olive Garden back home, and the fact that we tip her relatively well has led her to learn what we like, how, and when. But neither is automatically tipping a set amount (high or low) a good idea.
When I go shopping I like to buy in bulk: big boxes of cereal, big bags of noodles, etc. But recently, while shopping at Hy-Vee, I noticed something that annoyed me. I could get:
So frustrating! Sometimes they do the same thing with cereal: cheaper to get two small boxes than one big box. Come on, Hy-Vee, quit interfering with economies of scale!
I have a few resolutions for the new year. Time will tell how many I can keep.
Deb’s sister gave us her old Pioneer TiVos with built-in DVD burner, but one of them had a major problem: the RF in jack had come loose, spinning freely whenever I tried to attach coax cable and failing to provide signal to the tuner.
Opening up the case, I saw the problem: the connection from the jack to the tuner had broken. So I headed off to Lowe’s for a soldering kit. Faced with several choices, I went for the kit that, for the same price, also functioned as a mini-torch.
I failed, however, to notice the print on the underside of the box that informed me that the kit did not include butane. The kit was not only “refillable”–filling was mandatory.
So I headed out again, this time to Wal-Mart for some butane. Got it home, filled the soldering iron, and made the repair. Or so I thought. But after hooking it up, the TiVo still couldn’t tune any channels. So I disconnected it.
Then, while reconnecting the other TiVo, I noticed that it couldn’t find a signal either. That’s when I realized: in my efforts to prevent the RF jack from breaking again, I had switched cables to one that I could connect easier, but I had plugged that cable into the wrong wall jack.
So my repair probably worked. Sadly, while disconnecting the TiVo I was less than careful, turning the jack hard enough to break the connection again and leave the jack spinning freely. Meaning I get to repeat the whole process all over again.
Apparently today was the shortest day of the year. So, theoretically the sun coming up earlier each morning should make it warmer, right? Please?
Even though the days had been getting shorter to this point, I was able to get quite a few chapters of the dissertation done this semester. By the start of next semester I should have one, maybe two chapters left to draft and an introduction and conclusion. Then revisions. Many, many revisions.
Deb and I took the dogs to a nearby state park for the first time. I ran while she walked. It was nice, especially the weather.
With one official marathon behind me, one just around the corner, and a couple unofficial ones under my belt, I’ve started to think about my options for the future. More marathons, of course, but what else? Then I remembered reading about 50 mile races. Sounds crazy, right? Yeah, until I remembered that there was a time when a marathon sounded crazy, back when running 10 miles on a regular basis was tough. Now I’m doing twice that, so a race that’s a bit less than twice that doesn’t seem too impossible anymore. Really really difficult, yeah, but not impossible.
Or there’s the possibility of running an Iron Man someday. To do that, of course, I’d have to start with triathlons. Olympic triathlons are about 1 mile swimming, 25 miles biking, and a tad over 6 miles running. Only problem would be the swimming at this point. Going from that to a full Iron Man (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile ride, and a marathon run) sounds crazy at first, but again, so did a marathon… Plus, swimming indoors would keep me out of the cold weather. Just saying. We’ll see.
Useless: the word “frenemy” because, let’s face it, that person probably isn’t really a friend at all, they’re an acquaintance.
Useful: a water heater that doesn’t leak water all over your basement floor for who knows how many days while you’re out of town. Yeah.
1896. Plessy v. Ferguson. The US Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of racial segregation 7-1. Not until 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education would that ruling be overturned. In the intervening years those seven justices’ interpretation made possible countless injustices that a reversal nearly 60 years later and even additional legislation such as the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act could only begin to redress.
Worse, however, than the suffering that results from interpretation of the law and the constitution is that which occurs when the law or the constitution explicitly and intentionally discriminates. The passage of California Proposition 8 is not so much a Plessy v. Ferguson moment in history–that would be bad enough–as a reprise of the 3/5 compromise; both represent the codification of discrimination in documents that should define and limit the functioning of the state and protect the rights of citizens. Worse still, while the 3/5 compromise merely protected the status quo, Prop. 8 takes away rights.
Saddest of all is the fact that the 3/5 compromise and Plessy v. Ferguson were decisions made by small groups. The passage of Prop. 8, by contrast, is the work of over 5 million Californians.