Wow. I spent all day yesterday shoveling snow. Yes, that’s 8+ hours of digging out my car, digging a new parking spot across from the cabin, moving the car to that new spot, and then digging a path from the street to the gate, down the steps and then clearing the front deck.

All during this time the snow was relentless. Then the worst of all possible circumstances occurred: it turned into the dreaded Sierra Cement. Shoveling Sierra Cement is just as it sounds: shoveling load after load of cement — the snow has such a high water content that lifting each shovel-full is agony. It took me a full 6 hours just to clear the side deck under the metal roof. At this time each year, I could kill the asshat who decided to build my deck directly underneath the severe pitch of my roof which, naturally, sloughs off snow remarkably well. I turned the corner to find six feet of heavy snow covering the deck.

With me and my trusty Grain Hog (best snow shovel of them all), I created another 6′ pile of snow on the lower property, having to move each shovel load over the railing and onto the sloping terrain below. The night came and the mercury fell. The Cement turned into blocks of ice that I had to hack away, bit by bit.

This was the worst time I have ever had clearing the deck; I’ve never seen the snow so heavy and agonizing to lift. I came into the house around 7 pm and every Goretex item was soaked. my feet were soaked, coat, socks, hat, everything. I tried to get warm in the bed but found myself shaking and teeth chattering. I hadn’t realized how cold I’d gotten outside, as the snow had stopped and then turned to heavy, very wet sleet. I stood in a hot shower for a good half hour.

No politics today; today is recovery day: an Ibuprofen day, reading day and watching movies day. The DirecTV system is out due to the snow. I checked the weather and I’m supposed to have some varied snow flurries and rain. Good: no heavy snow.

Today I’m on a deck-shoveling moratorium.

BZ

I can’t believe it’s over; I can recall that said of getting older: time simply rushes by in a fashion heretofore unexperienced. It is true of my honeymoon as well.

It seems like yesterday that we headed for Lake Tahoe in Fornicalia. And the past three days I spent fighting a snowstorm that lasted from Ashland, Oregon, south over the Siskiyou Pass into Fornicalia, into Mt. Shasta City, Dunsmuir, and then an attempt to slice off some time back home by traversing Highway 70 through the Feather River Canyon and into Portola, then to Truckee, then back down to my cabin on I-80. But chain controls got in the way as I had been driving a front wheel drive rental car with no chains in my possession. I had to retrace all my steps in order to avoid chain controls and added 7 hours to my trip home.

And when I got home, I had to sink up to my hips in snow to the front door, then dig my way back out to the car to unload.

So where did we go and what did we do?

First, my honey was kind enough to accept my proposal on Saturday, June 3rd, 2006, on the rocks of Mendocino whilst the ocean spat salt spume and rime all about us.

We were then married on Wednesday, February 14th of this year, at 3 PM at a secretive location near Lake Tahoe; we believed if it was good enough for my mother and father in 1942, it was good enough for us. From there we traveled to Petaluma for an overnight stay, and then on to the Timber Cove Lodge north of Jenner. But that’s another story. Suffice to say we were massively underwhelmed with the quality of this place, but massive shocked with the bite it took out of our wallets — i.e., $300 a night for two nights.

From there we navigated up I-5, past the glorious Mt. Shasta near Mt. Shasta City (which we visited on the way back — two excellent book stores there!) and on into Oregon where our final destination was the city of Astoria, perched on the mouth of the Columbia River and the dividing line between Oregon and Washington states.

We visited the wondrous Astoria Column, watched as massive ships of all types navigated up the Columbia River through the carefully delineated channels under the Astoria-Megler Bridge.

In all, it was a glorious two weeks that I shall treasure every waking day.

______________________________

Any serious and necessary advice for a newlywed couple? What have you found works for you and/or does not work for you?

The British press (if nothing less than by The Economist) has bought, wholesale, into the entire Global Warming issue.

Or have they?

Myself and stalwart Canadian AB Freedom have done our best to show that there are two sides to the so-called Global Warming issue despite what the American or Canuck MainStreamMedia (MSM) would have you believe. One has but to look at a number of prior posts billeted by AB Freedom and myself regarding the issue.

A moment’s worth of history: Canadian Maurice Strong essentially instigated the Western Civilization/economics-killing Kyoto Protocol so lovingly espoused by countries with nothing to lose and everything to gain by seeing the demise of the United States, Australia and other predominantly Caucasoid or First World nations.

Ever wonder about Strong, this Canadian asshat? Read all you want about his Socialist ways and demands here. There’s much more to the story than simple “facts.”

Further, even the British are beginning to question the science behind the recent turn of events displayed by the Global Warming Pimps. GWPs? Oh yes — those persons whose agenda disregards facts and whose motivations lie, fundamentally now, in the MONEY to be found in espousing this philosophy. Grants? Loans? Funding? Oh yes, gimme the CASH.

From the United Kingdom Times Online:

When politicians and journalists declare that the science of global warming is settled, they show a regrettable ignorance about how science works. We were treated to another dose of it recently when the experts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued the Summary for Policymakers that puts the political spin on an unfinished scientific dossier on climate change due for publication in a few months’ time. They declared that most of the rise in temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to man-made greenhouse gases.

The small print explains “very likely” as meaning that the experts who made the judgment felt 90% sure about it. Older readers may recall a press conference at Harwell in 1958 when Sir John Cockcroft, Britain’s top nuclear physicist, said he was 90% certain that his lads had achieved controlled nuclear fusion. It turned out that he was wrong. More positively, a 10% uncertainty in any theory is a wide open breach for any latterday Galileo or Einstein to storm through with a better idea. That is how science really works.

But wait; there’s more:

Enthusiasm for the global-warming scare also ensures that heatwaves make headlines, while contrary symptoms, such as this winter’s billion-dollar loss of Californian crops to unusual frost, are relegated to the business pages. The early arrival of migrant birds in spring provides colourful evidence for a recent warming of the northern lands. But did anyone tell you that in east Antarctica the Adélie penguins and Cape petrels are turning up at their spring nesting sites around nine days later than they did 50 years ago? While sea-ice has diminished in the Arctic since 1978, it has grown by 8% in the Southern Ocean.

Wow. That Global Warming stuff sure is simple, isn’t it?

Sundays occasionally render me in a contemplative recognition; such is no different at this moment, for I am wont to consider what I call the “nature of evil” which, for me, begs four master questions:

I would care for your thoughts. This has a great deal to do with our current world and worldview philosophies, on many fronts and many levels, national and political.

I myself wholly believe in the existence and prosperance of Evil. I have viewed it, seen its wastes, smelled its stench in the night, known people who canonized its name, seen its carrion-strewn carcasses, looked it directly in the eye and understood when it wished to kill me.

A smattering of the innumerable cases I handled:

– A mother smothered her child by putting her head in a Ziploc bag; she left the child in her crib, called to schedule a nail appointment. The child, sick, kept her from a bowling appointment and a prior nail appointment. We found her stirring soup on a stove with a dead baby in the other room.

– A high schooler, angry at having been fired from a pizza job, returned with a gun and robbed the store, shooting his once-best friend because “he should have quit after I was fired, if he was my friend.” In the interview, he was not to blame because “the doctors should have done a better job saving him.”

– A couple had decided to split up; in the process of determining who received what, an argument ensued over who owned the batteries in the TV remote. One spouse shot the other in the neck and then removed the batteries from her dead hand. The pulsing arterial spray hit the white apartment wall from a distance of 5 feet away.

– As he had lost face and was losing control of the relationship because his wife was suddenly making more money than he, a former star collegiate football player from an incredibly successful and heavily-monied family (and an obsessive-compulsive neat/control freak) peaked one night when his son would not be quiet. He struck his 5-year-old on the head, caving in his skull and killing him. His pregnant wife walked in seconds later and observed the scene. She too was killed as was the fetus. To obviate his guilt he doused all the bodies with gasoline and lighted them all on fire, blaming an unknown and unseen assailant.

I ask you again:

— Is there true Evil?

— Can a person actually be Evil?

— Can one, then, attempt to reason with Evil?

— Can Evil even recognize reason?

Your thoughts?