Having defeated Mouse, then discovered he has allies, I have turned my attention to Rat.

Or perhaps Possum. I'm not sure. He's big, though.

He starts gallivanting in the attic around 10 p.m., right when I feel least like getting up and climbing the stairs with a flashlight to drive him off. I cannot imagine where he's getting in. I fenced off the louvers with welded wire mesh several months ago, after terminating a rat who'd found the invitation to free shelter irresistible. I'll troubleshoot for other gaps this weekend.

Meantime, this rodent/marsupial is keeping me up at night, but that's not the worst of it. A while back, I had shoveled all the rotten 50-year-old insulation out of the attic and rolled out fresh batts of fluffy R-19, eaves-to-eaves. It's beautiful up there, with cumulus mounds of silent pink fluff rolling as far as the eye can see.

Now peppered with rat droppings.

They crap everywhere, the bastards. All over the insulation and the half-sheets of plywood I laid up there so I could crawl around safely. Now I can't go anywhere without mashing their excrement into the knees of my jeans. And supposedly you can't vacuum it up without spreading hantavirus all over the county.

I scouted around up there tonight but couldn't get anything to show its face. Seeing where it'd apparently set up housekeeping under a layer of insulation, I grew furious enough to fetch the spray bottle of fox urine.

Yes, I said fox urine. Recommended by our contractor, it is normally used by hunters in ways that would probably prevent me from ever going hunting. I bought a bottle when we had squirrels up there, way back in 2001. They never returned. Obviously a good vintage, eh? Check the label: meat-fed & strong. We'll have none of that vegan fox urine, which wouldn't scare anything.

And boy, does this stuff stink. The contractor warned me not to get it on heat ducts, light bulbs, or any surface that might later wind up in our living space. Once, for grins, I sprayed some on the trunk of a tree. Wolf Dog compulsively marked the spot for days.

I hosed down the infested area, then set a minefield of rat and mouse traps surrounded by glue boards. I am still not sure what keeps cleaning me out of bait and leaving the traps unsprung. But I will welcome any sleep interruption that begins with a thwack and ends with thrashing. I want my attic back.

Tight as it is, I like the place, mainly for the solitude. Same reason that, once I get down below the house into the crawlspace with my coveralls, tools, headlamp, and—of course—cell phone, I end up wanting to stay a while. It's quiet, cool, and isolated; I can get my work done at my own pace with no interruptions. And although the attic has a rather crude way of enforcing its height limit—nails driven through by roofers 50 years ago—I like working in a controlled space where I know where everything is. If I set a hammer down right there, it will be in that same spot when I need it later. Kind of like writing, when I put stray sentences at the bottom for later incorporation.

Which this isn't, but it's as good a place as any to stop while I wait for a thwack.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 08:08 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 568 words, total size 4 kb.

Because most bloggers didn't have the benefit of a media-law class before taking up publishing:

• If more than two people see it;
• If it contains false information about someone;
• If that false information is defamatory, i.e., it hurts someone's reputation or standing;

... then it's libel.

In the U.S., libel is a civil offense, not a criminal infraction. That means damages awarded to the successful plaintiff, not jail time for the offender.

The original publisher of the libel is liable for damages. Anyone who forwards the libel or republishes it can also be liable for damages.

Damages can be diminished, but not eliminated, by a prompt and public retraction of the libel.

The perfect defense for libel is truth. If you can prove that what you published is true, you are off the hook. That doesn't mean you can't be sued by someone who thinks you've libeled him and can afford a lawyer to go after you; it just means you will win in the courtroom, provided your own attorney is even modestly talented.

Libel can be words, pictures, cartoons, etc.; anything printed or electronically transmitted.

The preceding is not legal advice, etc., etc.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 08:02 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 199 words, total size 1 kb.

In April 2005, PowerLine observed that bonobo chimps are liberals' favorite primates. I'd had the same epiphany, listening to John Forsythe lovingly narrate the bonobo segment of a TV nature show. He dwelled on the bonobos' sharing of mates; consensual sex between adults and adolescents; communal (rather than competitive) distribution of food; and widespread homosexual behavior.

It reminded me of what Rep. David Obey was talking about when, in the midst of a campaign season back in the '80s, he told a meeting of Democrat Party hard-core activists to "shut up so we can win. You'll get what you want after the election."

I thought of bonobos again just yesterday when I came across this (NSFW) photographer's site. At first glance it's sort of cute and daring, a series of shots of bare-chested females all around New York City, but the introductory text gave away his political agenda:

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 07:01 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 1361 words, total size 9 kb.

For All Hallows' Eve, the neighbors conducted a kind of take-back-the-streets night out on the lawns, though our "drive by" problem consists mostly of motorists passing through at <25 mph. Around here, our crime-fighting measures add up to a lot of yard signs: rittenhouse estates patrol. slow children. no soliciting. That last one seems to have eliminated prostitution, but not magazine salesmen.

To anyone's memory, this was the first time Daylight Savings Time concluded after Halloween, making those fade-into-the-dark costumes less effective. Me, I've always thought DST worked the wrong way. Days are naturally longer in the summer, so why drag them out artificially? It's the winters when you need more light after dark.

I usually write in the mornings, so I like the sun to rise later. I feel as if I've gotten a jump on the day, with all the neighbors' lights out. The cooler air has an odd effect on my atmosphere, however: I can hear traffic rumbling from farther away. It's a low, dull roar, and it still mystifies me because the nearest major artery is two miles away. Must be a lot of commuters with tougher hours than I have.

on that note, 'tis the season of dead batteries at the office. Follow the sequence:

1. Leave the house for work.
2. Notice how dark it's gotten at this time of the morning.
3. Turn on headlamps.
4. Park at the office.
5. Work 9 hours.
6. Return to find battery dead from failure to follow through on Step #3.

This happens less frequently now that even the cheap cars come with lights-on alarms. Nonetheless, Rittenhouse owns a pair of 4-gauge cables, and they get a workout between the vernal equinox and December.

I bought these shortly after I adopted Scooter, the mid-60s convertible with a tractor battery in the rear. He didn't have a lights-on alarm, either, though at times he'd mysteriously drain himself of all available voltage without explanation.

you can make a lot of friends with jumper cables. Or not. One night Squeeky and I were a mile or so from home when we came across a young couple stalled in the middle of a six-lane avenue. I helped him push the car into a parking lot, where we figured he needed a jump. I clamped the high-tension lines in place and his motor roared back to life. My appraisal: bad alternator, and it would run down again promptly if he drove anywhere with the headlights on; might go a few miles otherwise.

I looked him over. He was dressed too warmly, needed a haircut weeks ago, and his car bore out-of-state plates. What really disturbed me was the look in his eyes. It's the same barely controlled menace you see on official mugshots: criminal. He convinced me of that with his response.

"It burns oil. I might need some oil in it. I might need some money to buy oil."

Never mind the non sequitur. His awkward transition to hitting me up for money felt vaguely threatening. And I might whack you on the head if you turn your back on me.

I quickly checked his companion's location. She was still in his car, looking apprehensive but not distressed. Neither of them knew how they were going to get out of this situation, stuck in a strange town in a car that wouldn't take them anywhere and, likely, low on funds.

At another time I might have had more resources to suggest or offer. But fear was overtaking my thoughts, and no way was I going to put myself or Squeeky or our home into play in this foreign and possibly desperate situation. I repeated my assessment, unhooked the cables, wished him well, and left.

Sometimes none of the choices at hand seem viable, except to flee.

now i learn that dst itself is proven fatal. Wouldn't that be loverly, to get run over trying to jump-start someone's car? 

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 06:29 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 656 words, total size 5 kb.

I have declared War on Mouse.

I thought I'd taken care of him way back when, but he seems to have willed my attic to his progeny. Hence, "Mouse," the collective singular, representing all things furry, small, and unwelcome at Rittenhouse.

He returned a couple of weeks ago. I heard scratching at midnight, then I forgot by morning to set out traps. My reward, upon entering a closet and pulling the light cord: a shower of mouse pellets in my hair.

Yes. He had nested above a light fixture and made the electrical box his sewer.

I burned rubber to Big Box Home Improvement (Orange) to find only those new beige plastic traps that look safe enough to double as toys. Bah. I wanted the wood-and-wire internal-decapitation machines, the kind that always backfire on cartoon characters. None in stock. I bought the cheesy ones anyway, then discovered a twin-pack of knucklebreakers in the garage.

Two days later, Mouse had made off with all my bait (bits of jerky-style dog treats, FYI) and left the traps unsprung. I baited him again. He cleaned me out once more. Back to Big Box for glue boards, which I've never used, mainly because they don't satisfy my need for a quick kill. Hence, the minefield above.

At first, I succeeded only in bagging Squeeky, who upon venturing into the attic set off three of the traps and stuck her shoe in the glue.

Finally, this morning, I found Mouse.

He looked sad, with a trap stuck to his nose and his hindquarters mired in stickum. He'd apparently set off the device, then thrashed around until he hit the glue. A pile of poo suggested he'd been there for hours, or at least panicked. I almost felt sorry for him, then remembered how he'd kept me awake in the wee hours.

Wait a minute. Last night's scratchfest had taken place between 4 and 5 a.m. This commotion must have occurred long before.

Mouse has a family.

I reset all the traps (except the one that went to his grave with him) and put out fresh goo. There's a chance Mouse's offspring will seek revenge.

If this doesn't work, I break out the fox urine.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 07:50 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 372 words, total size 3 kb.

Squinx kept herself (and the rest of us) awake for several days with a cough that ramped up at bedtime, so Squeeky finally bound her off to the doctor's. Diagnosis: bronchitis bordering on "walking pneumonia."

We picked up a five-day antibiotic at the pharmacy. Comes with a tidy little syringe so you can dose it right down to the millileter.

And about six pages of fine print.

So what did I do? I read the pharmacy's label, because that's where the instructions are. Then I washed the syringe in case there's some residual melamine or influenza on it from the Croatian plastics factory. Seconds before I drew the initial dose (4 ml), I noticed this on the bottle.

Please. Have a look at all the other text that accompanies this medication.

Every lawyer and regulator thinks he's entitled to at least a paragraph, and none of them think they're to blame for overcommunication.

Yet, the net effect is, one of the most important and primary pieces of information gets the smallest and least prominent space. I'm grateful I spotted this before I gave Squinx the first dose. But I shouldn't have to be lucky to get it right.

For the record, although the bottle refers to "dry powder," the contents were not dry before I added the water. So I could have easily gotten the dosage wrong. I don't know that you can overdose on antibiotics of this type, but I do know you can get nauseous that way and have to start all over again.

remember ultraman from the '60s? I thought of him after this little episode and wondered if today we could summon him to deal with lawyers and bureaucrats. He shows up next time you've been sent to the third government office in a row with the wrong papers, or when your insurance agent points out the sentence in your policy that nullifies the only claim you've ever filed.

I bet he'd show up with his own stack of waivers.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 07:17 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 336 words, total size 3 kb.

I got a short, kid-free work opportunity at home this evening, about an hour, which was plenty to replace the bathroom-floor timer.

Yes, it's heated. No, I'm not pretentious. Just blessed with a lot of concessions from the seller, one of which was money to replace the bathroom. Its floor had rotted completely through in places, so we rebuilt the whole thing. In the process, I splurged on my dream: an electrically heated tile floor.

The timer has a backup battery, so when it stopped working I changed that out. Twice. Then switched brands. No fixy. If the battery doesn't bring it back on line, the troubleshooting guide says, just replace the whole timer. It is six years old.

Imagine writing a guide for a product you manufacture, and one of the diagnostic steps you supply to owners is, "just replace it."

Sounds like the fashion industry to me: "You know everything we sold you last year? It's now crap. Donate it. Better yet, burn it so no one else gets seen in it. And buy all new stuff before your friends do.

"We'll be back with the same instructions next year."

anyway, having stepped out of the shower each day last week feeling as if I'd gone figure skating in bare feet, I stopped by Big Box Home Improvement Center (Orange) to find they no longer carry this particular timer, which fits neatly into a standard electrical box. If I couldn't find an exact replacement I would have to saw a bigger hole in the wall. *le sigh*

Fortunately, Big Box (Blue) had a successor, which isn't rated for as much power but it shouldn't matter. The floor itself (a Warm Tiles product) required its own breaker. The timer just kicks on the thermostat, which carries all the voltage.

Here's what remained of the old timer after I started disassembling it—needlessly, but I wanted to see what was inside. I've seen these models in mostly commercial settings. They require the concentration of a C++ programmer to set up, but once they're on, you don't have to mess with them even if the power goes out.

Upon opening the timer, I was sorely disappointed to find gears and a mechanical switch inside. I wanted it to be all printed circuits and magnetotronic lasers. No wonder it failed after only six years.

I had installed the wires very tight with the thermostat for some reason, so I just clipped and spliced them onto the new wires.

The new timer claims to automatically change when Daylight Savings Time kicks in and out. I wonder if this one was made before or after Congress made its latest tweaks.

Let's cap it off with a blurry shot of the final installation.

Oh yeah: I flipped the breaker before doing all this. Even got myself one of those tweety voltage sensors to make sure everything's dead before I start grabbing copper wires. It's only 110 volts, but you can never be too sure.

With all the building going on around here, an all-too-real possibility is that the next owner of this house will put a bulldozer through it. My only condition is that he allow me to slice out the bathroom, Borg-style, and take it with me. We have a relationship, that heated floor and I.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 07:29 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 554 words, total size 5 kb.

In college, one of my odd jobs was chauffeuring for a limousine-rental service.

There is an ever-present sleaze factor in the limousine business. About half my clients embarrassed me; another third I'd guess did not really have the money to rent a limo but were willing to incur the debt. Here's an example of the former.

I collected two lushes at their lakeside condo on Halloween. A couple of moderately successful guys in their late 20s, they were already half in the bag and wanted to go clubbing. (It was too late to advise them it's a poor investment, renting a limousine to pick up girls. First off, they can't see your vehicle from inside the bar, and when you tell them about it, they think you're lying or cheesy. Second, any girls likely to go somewhere with you because you rented a limo, you don't want.) As usual in these cases, most of the hourly fee that night went for me to park outside.

At the first nightclub, they told some drunk woman about the car, and she came out by herself to see. When I stopped her from using the $1/minute car phone inside, she berated me. One of the guys finally showed up and told her to get lost.

Three dance clubs later, after they'd drunk themselves stupid and failed to attract mates, they defaulted to every wasted passenger's destination: the McDonald's drive-through. I had hoped this might end well until I heard one of them demanding chicken nuggets.

That is the one food product guaranteed not to stay down in a drunk. Another poor investment.

On the highway, my ears felt the pressure drop as a window went down. In the side mirror I saw a human head emerge into the slipstream, followed by chicken nugget fragments surfing a wave of cheap liquor. I silently thanked the clown for sparing my upholstery.

We arrived at the condo with one guy asleep and the other barely functioning. I asked him to pay me; he nodded and staggered inside. Ten minutes later I found him face-down on his bed. He directed me to write a check for him, then signed it. I steered his buddy to a couch and took the check straight to the bank.

I took solace in the fact that they'd spent a lot of money on my service, and not on fines and attorneys, had they been driving themselves that night.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 05:30 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 410 words, total size 2 kb.

Just after I begin painting, I always remember that I don't know how to paint.

Painting looks so simple it ought to be instinctive. Dip brush in paint, let excess run off, apply brush to surface and sweep back and forth. I even bought a couple of high-end, angle-cut brushes, one for oil-base and one for latex, the kind that are so expensive their package bears an RFID tag.

Still, as I paint, I get lines in the finish, drips where there's too much, and streaks where there's too little. I go back to fix them and just make it worse. This is even after learning hard lessons about primer, which I finally started using even when it didn't seem necessary. Still no good. Even the primer goes on wrong.

Someone will probably lecture me about holding the brush at the proper angle, or that I put too much paint on it, or not enough. Fine. You try getting it just right in a 2" channel between a window and shutter frame.

Painting shouldn't be so difficult. I remember seeing a can with directions for using a roller. It said to roll a big W on the wall, then roll across it left-right. Why not an M? Or a Z? Something about that W told me they were making things too complicated.

Of course, I could look up an expert on the Web. But that's not an option after I've opened the can, stirred the paint, selected a brush, and begun the disaster. That's when I remember I don't know what I'm doing, but I feel compelled to finish anyway.

Some people do this with relationships, so I count myself lucky.

i slept seven hours straight last night. A parenthood record! Only because no kids were in the house. Awakened by the sound of a flushing toilet. Or a dump truck several blocks away, not sure which. Also bereft of pronouns.

Yesterday Mom called from her assisted living to ask if I planned to grocery shop. I said I was headed for Big Box Supercenter that night, and what did she need?

"Can I go?"

The true motive disclosed. No matter how hard the staff works to keep the place interesting, it bores. She just wanted to get out for a little while. So did I, with the house so empty. So we did.

Big Box gave me the usual Brady Law treatment over my allergy pills, with a twist: Now when you pay with a credit card, the touch-screen invites you to spy on the employees. "was the cashier friendly? yes/no." "did your cashier greet you? yes/no."

I wonder how many clerks have noticed the way customers' eyes dart up at them since this little program began. I couldn't tell; to me, they seemed as indifferent as always. Always!

Anyhow, I didn't answer. That's some lame-ass supervision. Get out and see what your employees are doing, managers.

over the weekend, i caulked the new windows; mowed the front lawn; fixed the gutter guards; cleaned the lawnmower; sold the futon; repaired the ladder; and fixed the shoe bins.

And for all the tools I've invested in, for two of these jobs I defaulted to the simian's most effective discovery: the stick.

It cleans the space behind the gutter guard.  It digs out clumpy wet grass from crevices in the mower. And it's disposable!

I have another tip for you knuckleheads who try this stuff at home: Clean uncured epoxy from your fingers with acetone first, then wipe it off. Do not soap-and-water. Water accelerates the setting of epoxy. DAMHIK.

step 1 for the day was to fix the folding ladder. I got a 7-footer free at a garage sale because nobody wants a busted ladder. (I know; "free ladder" sounds like "free sushi." Where's your sense of adventure?) It was actually in pretty good shape, as long as you didn't mind the second and third rungs rocking under you. (They rest on a steel support rod, so they won't actually snap; they just feel funny, and ladders are only funny when a cartoon character walks under them.)

Why not just go get a new ladder? Price. I'm guessing lawsuits have driven liability sky-high for manufacturers, so ladders cost way more than the materials and workmanship that go into them. I can't bear to spend that much on something I use so infrequently.

So I got out the buzz saw and replaced the two steps thusly.

It's not hard. You just cut a 1x4 the same size as the broken step and wedge it into place. The metal rod under it provides the safety net.

My friend Matthews had just told me a story about a neighbor who climbed up a huge extension ladder to work on his second-story guttering, then fell to his concrete walkway. Years later, he's still in some sort of care facility. *shudder* I'm undeterred from climbing my restored seven-footer, but doubly cautious about where I place it. I almost think a helmet would make sense, too.

the point of climbing it this weekend was to clean the gutters and reposition the screens so I wouldn't have to clean them so often. That side of the house is dwarfed by an elm that dumps several different kinds of debris all year long. Currently, it's twigs, early-autumn leaves, and what appears to be dirt. I'm serious. I don't know where the dirt is coming from, but it lines the gutters as if the shingles were shedding mud.

The screens are useless against the dirt, but I thought I might keep other junk out by wedging them under the shingles instead of between the outside gutter lip and inside backing board. My camera's acting up so all you'll get is this black-and-white.

Now the screens have a dome to them. Looks pretty industrial, but it doesn't show in the front, so we'll live with it.

The shoe bins have become an ongoing reclamation project. These are flip-down cabinets I placed in Wolf Dog's room so we could wear slippers in the house and switch to shoes upon exit. They're well-engineered and flip easily open or closed, but the hinges were made of plastic about 15 percent too weak. So the they break in a different place each time I fix them.

We're way past warranty, so I've devised ways to make them last. Here's an aluminum rod I cut and positioned to keep the hinges from collapsing inward.

This last rupture occurred when Wolf Dog got excited over an impending walk, reared on his hind legs like a horse, then came down on an open bin. snap. My fault; I knew he'd do that, and should've kept the bin closed. Broken-out fasteners, three of them.

Lots of epoxy and washers fixed that. For preventive maintenance, I added a support rod to Squeeky's bin.

Someday these fixes will be noted as how American ingenuity overcomes Chinese shoddiness.

by the end of the day, Wolf Dog was giving me his you-owe-me look, and I had to acknowledge how few predators I'd had to fend off on his watch. I loaded him into the Explorer and we went off to the Plano dog park, which isn't as grubby as the one at White Rock Lake though it's a big drive. We used to go that far to roam the Connemara Conservancy; it's been closed more than a year while they try to figure out what to do with all the dog crap. (They say the closure is to study how the meadow is holding up under "use," but they mean dog crap. Pile after pile of corn roughage and fish guts. That's what most dog crap is, anyway, because that's what's in dog food.) So we all have to wait while they decide how they're going to to ban dogs. I know it's coming; they're just waiting until everyone gets used to doing something else with their dog.

I used to carry the leash around with me, but other dogs kept running up to me and wagging their tails under the impression I was about to take them for a walk. Snacks, too; I quit bringing them because the inevitable bloodhound would single me out and follow me, nose-to-pocket, until I closed the gate between us.

Wolf Dog duly rewarded, I came home to a blue norther that dropped temperatures about 20 degrees overnight. That means falling asleep to the consoling roar of the gas furnace. Nothing puts me out so quickly as that, knowing that my temperature will be looked after by a little blob of mercury rocking back and forth in a tube wired to a thermometer. That, and lots of gaseous CFMs coursing through the hall closet. Autumnnnnnn.

I welcome autumn (which sounds more poetic than "fall"), as it means more darkness before dawn, when I do most of my writing. But the cool means that soon, the Feds will resume their annual regulation of bedtime, and I'll be tapping in daylight. Still, the solitude is what matters.

Wife and kids are home again now. And life resumes.
 

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 08:54 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 1524 words, total size 11 kb.

This afternoon I stepped out of a cigar shop to face Valley View Mall. For the first time, it looked old.

When I arrived in Dallas to work the 1984 GOP Convention, Valley View was the big deal. So was Dallas, to this Houston native. Dallas seemed to have scooped the cream of Texas—the dazzling blondes, boots, and big-everything—and left all the nasty stuff in places like Pasadena. In the early '80s, Dallas had limousine service and its own TV show. Houston bragged of pickup trucks and a redneck rip-off of Saturday Night Fever. Houston sucked.

I saw Dallas as this new world of elite opportunity. My elder sister had already arrived and found it to be just that. She referred me to a contact in the Reagan-Bush '84 campaign, and within days I was writing down my driver's license and Social Security numbers and height onto a piece of paper for vetting by the U.S. Secret Service. A week after that, all the volunteers 5'10" and taller reported for duty to one room; all those under, to another. The giraffes would be assigned to Nancy Reagan's motor pool. Reason? If we happened to be photographed on the job, our size would ensure that the First Lady always appeared petite.

The other guys would keep Vice President George Bush looking his full 6'2".

our op center was the new loews anatole hotel, a sparkling red-granite-and-glass complex a couple of miles from Dallas' convention center. We would have charge of a half-dozen luxury cars serving the First Lady's and Vice President's staffs.

One thing I had in common with my charges was, I did not know how to get around Dallas. I'd borrowed my father's Mapsco, a spiral-bound book that mapped the county in excruciating detail. When summoned to pick someone up at the hotel, I scurried out to the parking lot (walled off by concrete barriers and watched by perspiring but tireless Secret Service agents), leapt into a Lincoln, maxed the AC, and raced over to a big green awning. Before I got out to open the doors, I popped the trunk, and as my people stepped into the car I got the destination, nodded, then said something was loose in the back and we'd be leaving momentarily.

Then I bent over the Mapsco I'd stashed in the trunk and searched furiously for the address. With our course mind-mapped, I slammed the lid and prayed they wouldn't ask me any distracting questions.

No one ever figured out I was driving blind, though I wonder what the Secret Service thought of this guy who opened his trunk every time he picked somebody up, even when they had no luggage. Security was everywhere, even under a canopy on the Anatole's rooftop, with binoculars. I saw my first non-Hispanic mowing crew just across from the hotel, grooming the same esplanade for 16 hours. One night, after we delivered a whole motorcade of somebodys to the convention center, we found ourselves parked by the freight entrance amid a small fleet of black Suburbans with agents snacking on the tailgates. They were the most heavily armed non-soldiers I had ever seen, their broad shoulders hung with weaponry straight out of Men in Black.

"Is that an Uzi?" I asked, sounding and feeling like the little football fan who offered Mean Joe Greene his Coke.

"Uh-huh," the agent grinned, and continued wolfing his sandwich. Someone had brought a whole grocery bag full of Schlotzky's out to them, and they ate as if they'd been on post in Nome for a week.

Inside, Reagan and Bush stood arm-in-arm with Ray Charles, who'd just finished "America, the Beautiful" in his inimical style, and the house came down. For Republicans, it would not be this good again for 10 years. For me, it was another light of hope and promise in this glittering new city where everyone prospered and looked forward to more, more, and better, long into the future.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 08:55 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 682 words, total size 4 kb.

It's been obvious for years that the Nobel prizes have gone political. I can't illustrate the obviousness of that any more clearly than The Wall Street Journal did today.

Probably the most devastating and concise moral clarity I've seen in years.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 07:11 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 43 words, total size 1 kb.

If you have to wheel out your BBQ grill every time you use it, it won't get used. That was the lesson we learned just after moving into this house, when I stored our brand-new natural-gas grill out in the (detached) garage next to Squeeky's car.

First, I'd have to move the car. Then tug the grill out and roll it on its hard, plastic wheels up the driveway, through the gate, and across the patio to the house, where the gas-line fitting was.

That lasted about six dinners.

Then I just started leaving it next to the house, where it got in the way of everything, especially rain. Not eager to see $400 rust out onto the patio, I poked around the Web for an extension of the rubber gas line, so I could move the unit to a protected spot under the eaves. Such hoses start about $100 for 12 feet, including adapters. Nuts.

So I studied the gas-line tee I'd installed just after move-in for some way of extending it into the ground, then a couple of feet south, 10 feet west, then up a foot. This would take all the spatial thinking Rittenhouse could muster, plus about $40 in pipe and fittings.

Housketeers will already know I am fearless when it comes to gas and electricity. Noobs, take note: Try this at home and you'll probably get killed.

the quirky thing about running gas pipe is, you have to start at the source (in this case, the L where the line rose from the ground to the house), then work your way out to the appliance. You can't start the other way, and you can't start at both ends and meet in the middle. The simple reason is, the fittings only tighten clockwise. If you build toward the main line, you'll end up undoing all you've done because the last right-hand turn unscrews the previous one. Then you have to start all over.

Also, pipes only bend 90 degrees. There are 45-degree couplings, but I don't swing that way.
Perhaps this is better illustrated than written about.

The first consideration, as always, is safety. I stationed Wolf Dog behind me to keep predators at bay.

Here's the gray plastic gas line coming out of the ground at a crazy angle I can't change. The rusty thing is a tee. The main branch enters the house at the yellow foam blob next to the garden hoses. The shiny silver hex-nut-looking thing in the foreground is a step-down adapter. I would have to get creative with adapters and angles to go from about a 1-inch to a ½-inch line heading the opposite direction.

Here's how that worked out (right). I switched to black iron pipe entering the soil because somebody told me that was better than regular zinc.

I wanted to use Teflon tape on all the connections, because—inexplicably—I have about 26 rolls of it, but couldn't find a recommendation. The white stuff here is pipe goop.

I pickaxed a trench through ground that some previous owner had bricked over. At right, here's where the black pipe angles west 90 degrees (orange cap where an L would later go), then upward to a zinc fitting for another 90-degree bend. We're almost to the homestretch.

Looking north again, up there's the zinc pipe where it takes over from the black pipe, continuing west behind the concrete steps leading to the back door. This part would remain exposed; there was no way around that without a jackhammer and two more Saturdays.

The tricky part was driving the pipe through the narrow gap between stoop and foundation without damaging its threads. The protective plastic cover barely made it through in one piece. (Note green kneeling pad for knees that have lost their ability to recover from abuse.)

The pipe emerges safely, awaiting final adaptor, at left.

At right, the quick-connect fitting is from the Marshall Company in Detroit. During its first winter here, I had been taking the rubber cap on and off so frequently that it cracked. I called their office and was greeted by a friendly secretary, who promptly mailed me a replacement cap free, no questions asked. I liked them so much I forgot to ask if they knew Marshall Mathers.

Here's the final, blurry shot of the bricking after I restored its original lustre. Pipe buried and extended, permit not sought, inspection not bothered with, and—surprise—no leaks!

Don't let anyone scare you that gas lines are something complicated. If you can think geometrically and own two pipe wrenches, you can build stuff with pipe. Just don't tell anyone you learned how from some communications major on the Internets.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 07:35 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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two years before i met my wife, I had a momentary encounter with a beautiful woman a couple of years my junior. When I say momentary, I mean exactly that.

We'd been in the same business meeting for several hours, during which I'd become irretrievably smitten. She had the face of a classic movie star, and although I had plenty to contribute to the business at hand, my focus returned to her time after time.

After dinner I invited her to accompany me down to the piers where a spectacle of nature was occurring, a migration of sea life that everyone in town was stopping by to see. Of course, at night, we would likely be alone. We went, the two of us, and enjoyed the show, and when the moment was perfect I turned and kissed her. She returned my affection, and for a few minutes I believed all was right with the world. It was also late, and we'd be missed, so we returned to our respective hotels with the promise to get together again as soon as possible.

She did not return my calls after that, so I stopped calling. Years passed, we had polite professional contact from time to time, I married, life goes on. Yet, despite her striking appearance (remarked on by every male who met her), she never attracted a mate, though there was occasional talk of a boyfriend somewhere. She is now in her late 30s, still single, still stunning.

It is no mystery that a woman like that would have nothing to do with me. But I did puzzle over why she did in the first place, and why no one else has—to my knowledge—ever acted as I did and then followed through.

Yesterday I had occasion to see her family photos, which were on public display. I scanned them and picked out her mother, at least one sister or two, no brothers, and ... no father.

Then it all made sense.

i don't know the story of why he is, literally, not in the picture. But his absence confirmed what I have observed over many years, which is that a girl who grows up without a father—which is to say, a positive, loving, constant, masculine presence—will in all likelihood find herself unable to form a healthy relationship with a man. She may become an unwed mother, eternal spinster, serial divorceé, prostitute, or lesbian. But what is certain is that there will be a serious dysfunction in her relations with men. This occurs even when a father exists but doesn't live up to the four adjectives preceding "presence" above—positive, loving, constant, masculine.

The 1970s taught us that divorce is better for the children than a "loveless" marriage. Some of us have always known that was counterintuitive, but in that era we didn't get our turn at the mic. Perhaps, also, that knowledge wasn't as easy to articulate as the rhetoric of liberation. It didn't fit the narrative of the times.

Before divorce (and its related illness, children born out of wedlock) became routine, there was always the possibility of a child growing up fatherless for any number of reasons beyond parental control—premature death and warfare, primarily—but a child could apprehend those in time. And I'm not a romantic for believing there are men who would be honored to step in where life had dealt a mother a cruel blow. What we can't keep up with is the volume of broken marriages, and the damage done to the innocent.

Children can come to accept the death of a parent. What their conscience cannot reconcile is that they were created by an act of love, then deliberately abandoned.

This is why marriage exists, is revered, and continues to form the foundation of every healthy human being.

I hope, for my daughter's sake, that I can practice all this as well as I can identify it.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 07:35 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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My weekend began with the dawn sighting of a neighbor's car propped up on blocks, minus wheels.

There are acceptable methods for the home mechanic to rotate his own tires, but supporting the vehicle on landscape bricks isn't one of them. And you usually keep the wheels in sight.

Within a day, Rittenhouse Estates volunteers were out soliciting funds for the 2008 neighborhood patrol, wherein a real, actual cop drives around our houses all night doing what cops are supposed to do anyway but at our direction. I have mixed feelings about that. Yes, it's good that the locals are getting together to fight crime. But, as Jim Schutze has observed, you should not have to pay a gratuity to the same policemen who are already (supposed to be) patrolling your streets at your (taxpayer) expense.

How is the neighborhood patrol different from tucking a $50 bill into a cop's pocket with the admonition that he "take care" of your street? Duty hours; that's about it.

It's an officially sanctioned protection racket. Poor people, of course, can't afford to participate.

Last time the neighbors came around asking for money, they did their best to make me feel guilty for enjoying the benefit of nightly patrols without chipping in. Well, it was their idea, not mine.

Enough gritching. I had work to do.

we drove out to my parents' vacant house, having been summonsed by the local magistrate to either fix the fence or remove the last of it.

Dad had built a picket fence around his property about 10 years ago, and the city almost immediately took issue with the style. I don't know what eventually came of their dispute, because they left the fence standing—an unlikely outcome if there actually were a code violation. It remained until the pine lumber began to rot about a year ago, and sections started falling off. After he died, I knocked down all but seven of the most firmly planted four-by-four posts, which he'd anchored in concrete. IMO they weren't much of a distraction to the neighbors; six months passed before someone complained.

So this afternoon I spent about two hours soaking the earth around the posts, kicking them side-to-side to loosen them, then shoehorning them out with a pickax.

Extracting fence posts is second only to pulling stumps in degree of difficulty, which is why nobody likes to do it, including this fellow at right, whose laziness announces itself to me every morning along my commute. Though in better focus.

There is no way around the hard work. You use every muscle in your body to pit irresistible forces against immovable objects. That I haven't seen the inside of a gym in 16 months became apparent very quickly.

Eventually, two of the seven posts broke off, and the rest I was able to extract by getting under their concrete anchors with the pick, or, when the mud formed an impenetrable vacuum, hooking the pick directly into the post and prying against the ground. I thanked God for the fiberglass ax handle, without which I could never have dared to leverage my whole weight.

I also paused to thank God I do not have to work outdoors every day in the heat because, as usual, I got a headache. This seems to happen no matter how much water I drink, even if I start downing it beforehand, as my doctor suggested.

Little Roo was with me on the job for a little over an hour while Squeeky and Squinx went shopping. As with most one-year-olds, he took about five minutes to find the most dangerous/filthiest spot, in this case stepping right into a muddy hole I'd created with the pickax. Sigh. I cleaned him up in the kitchen sink and we worked indoors until his mama returned.

to wrap up the project, i had to drag the concrete-laden posts the full width of the property to a corner of the driveway where, I hoped, the city would pick them up. I swear, Dad must've used a whole bag of concrete for each of these, as the only way to budge them was to tie a rope around one end and pull them like a plow horse.

The rope was a Wal-Mart close-out special last year. They were selling off summer seasonal items; this was a tow rope for dragging an inner tube behind a boat, or something. It added up to a good 50 or more feet of weather-proof nylon lanyard, which has so far been used to hang a backyard swing with enough left over to dangle a teeter-totter from another tree out front. The length you see here was stored in the Explorer for whatever reason you might need 25 feet of rope in an SUV. In this case, it kept Rittenhouse from a bad case of raw hands after dragging half a dozen 90 lb. weights across the yard.

Dad's neighbor has been keeping an eye on the place these past 10 months while the probate court thinks about actually doing some probate work. He came out just as I'd dragged the last post to the corner. He's such a friendly, helpful man that I wish I could import him to be my own neighbor. I'm going to miss him when the place is sold.

Being the laid-back sort, he asked why I didn't just saw the posts off at the base. I had to think about that.

"I'm the kind of guy who, when he insulates his attic, he first removes all the old insulation."

He cringed.

Someday they'll make a pill for me, when fastidiousness becomes as unfashionable as depression. In any case, I am comforted by the fact that someone else saw the posts and complained to the city, while I actually did something about them.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 12:52 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The name Tina will always bring to my mind honey-colored skin, soft-blond hair, and perfect teeth. Those were the most distinctive and attractive qualities of Tina, but by no means were they her only notable features.

Tina was among the pretty girls who worked with my post-college housemates, and I always saw her on the Washington weekend-party circuit. She was usually flirting with one or another of the guys, rarely seen alone or in a group of just girls. Inevitably, at one of these parties, someone would cue up the Big Chill soundtrack, and she'd be the first one on the dance floor, shaking as only a white girl can until the CD ran out.

At one of these parties, in a cramped basement apartment, Tina and I found ourselves sitting next to one another on the floor. (As usual, young hosts run out of furniture 10 minutes after the first guest shows up.) I introduced myself and asked how her week had been. She replied that she'd been on vacation in St. Kitts.

I'd never been there, so I reached for a common thread to keep the conversation going.

Me: "I once met the ambassador to St. Kitts."

Tina: "Oh, that's very impressive."

Then she turned away and started a conversation with someone else.

Re-read that quote of hers, if you will. Now add sarcasm to it. No, wait: Imagine it coming off the lips of the preppy-girl-snob character in a goofball movie from the '80s, like Revenge of the Nerds.

That's exactly how she said it. Just like that, almost cartoonish: "Oh, that's very impressive."

I sat stunned for a moment. I wasn't sure I could believe what had just happened. I groped my mind for an explanation. Was she being funny? No, then she wouldn't have turned away from me.

She had actually blown me off in the rudest possible way.

That had never happened to me before, and I didn't know what to do with it. Within a moment, though, my blood ran hot and I felt like yanking her ponytail over and demanding an apology. But that wouldn't have played well in this setting. Tina looked too innocent. I'd have been thrown out of the party, or worse, handed over to the police and charged with assault. You can't manhandle pretty women anymore. Clark Gable was the last to get away with that.

A week later, I was still mulling that scene as I went to the next party at the next apartment on the circuit. At the beer keg, I ran into a guy I'd met before, one of the few whom Tina would select to dance the Big Chill with her. After a moment I asked him about her.

He paused as he filled his cup, choosing his words carefully.

"She says things to people that not just anyone can say."

And that was it. She knew her place, and she knew mine, too. She up there, I down here, and never the twain shall meet.

i haven't met anyone like her since. I've met people who appeared uncomfortable talking to a middle-class guy like me—Pierre DuPont, for example, whom I won't call "Pete" no matter how folksy his consultants tell him that is—but most of them either smiled graciously and went about their business, or flattered me with a moment of small talk and found a genteel way to direct my attention elsewhere. No one else has ever been so rude as to make the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

Preachers tell us everything happens for a reason. I guess if my writing career goes the wrong way and I end up scribbling tits-and-ass comedies for Troma, Tina will have provided me with one helluva model for a stock character.

Even so, I'd still like to interview Tina's parents. I have a beautiful daughter, too, and I'd like to learn what they did to help their little girl grow up into such an insufferable person.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 04:50 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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the friends i made in washington that first year out of college had a curious refrain anytime we talked about musicians. The running debate concerned who among their favored bands and artists was a "sellout."

Pride prevented me from asking outright what "sellout" meant. I gathered, after a while, that it referred to a musician who had changed his original style in order to become popular. In my friends' eyes, this was a mortal sin.

I had not been exposed to this before. My friends and I didn't take our music so seriously, the sole exception being a critic I edited at The Daily Texan, a High Fidelity-type with an encyclopedic knowledge of music and no actual friends. As for the rest of us, we liked the Pet Shop Boys or we didn't, and that was it. To him, the world was cloven between the few who understood music, and the riff-raff who had no taste.

Even as a fairly undiscriminating consumer, from an early age I was able to see the difference between what I thought of as "found" talent and the manufactured stuff. Even as a kid listening to the radio, I sensed there was something phony about acts like Bobby Sherman. Too much promotion, not enough "there" there. Much later, on a press junket for the college paper, I met a writer from Carnegie Mellon who couldn't wait to ask me—being from Austin and all—what I knew about the Fabulous Thunderbirds. Ah, I said, you mean that party-bar band that had just recently been inflated to seem like a regional sensation about to take the country by storm? Guess they found a producer and some money. He gave me a hurt look and the conversation ended.

i guess i wasn't quite as easily impressed as some music fans in general. Still, unlike the critics, I didn't care enough to sort the whole world of performers into sellouts and non-sellouts. If I liked what they produced, I bought a copy. If not, I ignored them.

But the D.C. guys never tired of the debate. Was Springsteen genuine? If not, then which album marked the sell-out point? (Once you'd taken the money, you were forever tainted, and everything you produced thereafter was junk.) Nothing made them gag like Eric Clapton after that Michelob commercial. Thank God I wasn't around them when R.E.M. released Out of Time.

Today, every last one of those guys works in corporate. Even the Texan music critic doesn't show up on Google, which suggests that he, too, took the easy money.

Now that I know what a sellout is, I am not surprised by the fate of those who constantly talked about selling out. We hate what we fear the most, and we eventually become what we loathe. Sellouts, all of us, with our mortgages and retirement plans and good schools for the kids.

The mystery is, why we think artists shouldn't want those things, too.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 05:35 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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From a young age, I have been conditioned by TV to associate sights like this

with beer commercials.

Which is all the more confusing to me because nobody I vacationed with in the Grand Tetons likes beer.

I do not know if there are any Less Grand Tetons, or Average Tetons, or Tiny Tetons Which Are More Sensitive and Less Affected by Gravity. These particular Grand Tetons have towered above the Snake River for, oh, a few million years, and they show no signs of going anywhere soon. They're just there, and that's about all you can say about them without sounding like a textbook. They are too steep for anyone but an expert to climb. But it's what happens around them that makes Grand Teton National Park worth several days of paid vacation.

grand teton national park is a giant Christmas tree lot with a lake in the middle, and a 14,000-foot wall o' rocks looming over it all. On the ground, lodge-pole pines grow too thick to penetrate, except where they've been harvested to build ... lodges out of pine poles.

Our first stop on the way in was the Jackson Hole Airport. (Few who live there like to call it "Jackson Hole," whether out of Victorian prudery or for the same reason they wouldn't say "Jackson Dump," if that were the official name.) JAC feels like a cross between Burbank, Midland-Odessa, and any Third World airport, mainly because of its one-storey terminal and absence of jetways. You step off the plane onto a Bluth staircase with mountains as your panoramic backdrop. If I had a starlet on my arm, I'd expect flashbulbs to pop.

Avis cut me a whopper of a deal on a minivan, with my choice of a Toyota, Chrysler, Ford, or Chevy Uplander. Since we would be heading up toward the land of our destination, I chose the Chevrolet. Smooth vehicle it turned out to be, except for a rubber steering wheel that made my palms itch. Squinx liked the three rows of seats and, naturally, chose the farthest one from her chauffeur.

Within minutes of leaving the airport we spotted a coyote. He looked like most coyotes, which is to say, hungry. He trotted alongside us, oblivious, for a few seconds, then descended into the sagebrush on coyote-related business, maybe to retch up a meal for the young'uns. Squinx said nothing in reply to my suggestion how that would be useful next time Dad and Mom go out to dinner without her.

squeeky's parents had already parked and leveled their self-propelled emergency-escape house at Colter Bay, an upstart feature of GTNP, a mere 50 years old and owing exclusively to a dam on the Snake River. The in-laws graciously rented us a cabin just down the hill and supplied us with breakfast, lunch, and dinner. All we had to do was surrender the grandkids.

Almost immediately, I encountered Grand Teton mosquitoes, a breed unto themselves. Big enough to show up on Boise radar, they have no tact. Over the years I have swatted many and been stung by none. You can hear them coming, and they kamikaze straight into you, landing with all the subtlety of a student helicopter pilot. Then they cling and clamber like hungry puppies, groping for a capillary from which to suckle. I guess they hope you're so distracted by the Teton scenery that you don't notice their clumsiness. If so, they have some evolving to do.

Their existence, however, puts the lie to an old Texas saw about how we need a cold winter to freeze off the previous summer's mosquito larvae. The Tetons get upwards of six feet of snow each winter. Once it melts, the mosquitoes just shake off the moisture and resume their hunt. They do not suffer from a freeze. Ergo, the summertime Texas mosquito crop must have nothing to do with the previous winter.

cabins at colter bay come in single-family or duplex variety. We stayed in one of the latter, and the Slam Family checked in next door about 11 p.m. I lay awake trying to imagine why it took eight trips to the minivan—battering cabin and car doors both ways—but came up short. Then, best I could tell from the clatter, the whole bunch raced into the closet to hurriedly assemble large fishing rods, each wearing someone else's eyeglasses.

The next night I got to meet them about 8:30, just as we were trying to get the kids to sleep, when the unmistakable sounds of a party penetrated the wall. As I approached the door I got a glimpse of the action through a window: About a dozen teens and young adults arranged in the uncomfortable way people sit and stand in a hotel room not designed for parties, where even sitting upright on a bed feels strange alongside a) someone you are not intimate with, or b) someone you are intimate with, but at the moment happen to be in a room with lots of other people. No drinks or smokes in evidence, though, so perhaps this was a young Christian group and I could appeal to their better nature.

My knocking prompted a loud "Nobody's home!" Ha, ha. Then the alpha male, about 18, opened the door and stood to one side. He had that slightly contemptuous expression common to the Gen Eleven products of institutional schools, and reminded me instantly of that pop tune refrain, "So why don't you kill me?"

I put on my best aw-shucks grin, let them all know I was on the other side of the thin wall behind them, and asked if they planned to wrap things up soon.

Gen Eleven: "No."

So I was not dealing with Christians.

I felt the back of my neck heat up as it does just before I say something sharp and regrettable, but I channelled it, salesman-style, into a rational reply.

"Okay. I'll talk to the management then," and I turned to leave. A female voice piped up from behind Eleven.

"We'll hold it down!" she pleaded, but I kept walking. I had hewn a division among them with the girls on the correct side, and even if it didn't shut them up, my next move would be to let the authorities take over.

Blessedly, they piped down immediately. I think I heard the sound of scattered retaliation about 11:30, but I was too far gone to care.

I do have one sleep-related suggestion for Colter Bay's management, and for motel operators all over the country: Please segregate your parking lot into People Who Can't Exit Their Car Without Settting Off Their Alarm, and People Who Can. Make the former park underground. Thank you.

the goal of every gtnp visitor seems to be to walk up to large, wild animals and feed them by hand. At least that's what I get from all the official messages to the contrary.

"Bear aware" is the trope these days, and signs everywher warn not to offer or leave food or garbage out anywhere in the park. I hear the same message every time I visit, but I guess there are always enough first-timers to make it worth repeating. Also, some among the visitors seem to believe that if they can see live animals, they should touch them, too. Such is the long-term impression left with us by petting zoos. So a couple of guests get mauled each year.

What might be more useful is a billboard at the entrance, like those "workplace accident" count-up signs, that reads, "_ bears euthanized due to visitor stupidity."

Why not? I've been talked-down-to worse at other government facilities.

previously unbeknownst to me, all summer long there is a steady stream of foreigners crossing the U.S. in rented RVs. They fly in to a U.S. coastal city and sign a weeks-long arrangement to return the vehicle on the opposite coast, stopping wherever they like along the way. The Tetons get their share, based on a quick survey of the RV parking area. (Private owners rarely stencil toll-free numbers on their motorhomes.)

Not many of the foreigners cook onboard, by my observation, which is understandable given the logistics of supplying a mobile kitchen. At the Colter Bay restaurant I'm always mildly amused watching them puzzle over the buffet breakfast. It's not that bacon is new to them; it's what we've made of it that seems to befuddle.

Culture shock works both ways, however. Waiting outside the visitor center, I watched a French family of four stop to stretch their legs and have a look around. One of the girls had the kind of cinematic face that took me back to college watching one of those interminable '80s Euro films where the actors seem to do little other than practice looking pensively away from each other. I gauged her about 13, but with a Brooke Shields face that unnerves males of any age. She sat on a bench, opened her purse, and lit a cigarette.

* * *

I continue to entertain the belief that I can pick out a non-American by dress and manner, without ever hearing him speak.

It's an especially challenging science because Americans come in the same ethnicities and colors as the rest of the world. But you don't have to wear lederhosen to stand out as a Bavarian; nor does a Japanese woman need hair sticks and a kimono to suggest she's been on U.S. soil less than a week.

One common trait among foreigners is their appearance of mild perplexity. I probably show it myself when traveling overseas. People maintain a cognitive half-step back from the strange world they're encountering every minute, where the colors, signs, and arrangements differ from what they've always known. They move at a slightly slower pace through the motions of paying a tab, using the washroom, even opening a door—especially where it's complicated by our ADA measures.

Also, the features of foreign nationals usually appear sharper to me. The Swedes definitely look Swedish: nowhere along the family tree did an Irishman's genes taint that blond hair. Past that level of analysis, however, I can't distinguish an Icelander from a Norwegian, nor do I care to. It's the challenge of discerning who's new to the landscape that entertains me.

Occasionally, when I meet someone working here who's obviously fresh off the boat, I offer a welcome. I like that we're a melting pot, and I want them to know that. I always get a bright smile in return. It must be constantly disorienting for them, getting used to a new country and people. The new person has a choice of courageously embracing the new, or retreating to the familiar. I want to encourage the embracing.

in my informal study of the overnight parking camp, I found that no two RVs are alike. The latest invention is the trailer that sidles up next to the utility hookups, then explodes in all directions, adding multiple new living spaces with walk-in closets, and probably a basement and drawing room. I wonder if the pressure changes in there while it's happening. Wildlife in nearby trees seems to have learned to get out of the way when one of these pulls into a parking spot.

Status plays a big part in such displays. The masculine gurgle of an F350 Power Stroke diesel turns everyone's head as a fifth-wheel-equipped crew-cab rumbles into camp and detaches from the living space behind it. Others go Greyhound, but way upscale. This chrome-plated monstrosity spend Wednesday night next to us

and they never hooked up their sewer pipe. I guess they just don't poo.

my in-laws have visited the tetons at least once a summer for nearly 30 years. They get around just fine on foot, but as everyone has learned, if you want to spot animals, the most creatures-per-hour ratio is found wandering the park's roadways in your own car.

Unfortunately they do this at 45 mph with me in the back seat straining to make out every passing brown spot. I suspect, however, they are not actually looking for animals, but for the traffic jams that form every time someone else spots one.

First, someone sees a moose or bear doing whatever it needs to be doing within eyeshot of the highway. The motorist stops, gets out, and starts taking pictures.

Next, others begin parking along both sides of the road. A crowd forms, and inevitably the front starts edging closer and closer to the animal who, for his part, begins to look as if he'd rather be somewhere else. Or eat somebody.

Then a park ranger shows up. Between trying to keep gawkers from offering Funyuns to the beast, and preventing others from leaping out of their vehicles into traffic screaming "A beah, a beah! Get my pitcha with the beah!" and still others from stopping their car dead on a blind curve, rangers have more stupidity to manage than the bouncers at a teen metal concert.

Here is what we saw amid the madness.

A solitary male moose wading.

And a herd of elk crossing a stream just before sunset.

I was the first to spot that group, staring out the back window of the van as we drove. Squinx clambered up into her grandfather's lap to see. I could've watched them all cross until dark.

if you really want the up-close-and-personal experience with wildlife, you must take a late evening or crack o' dawn hike. Unfortunately the grandparents don't rise early enough for us to ditch the minors, and bedtime demands we retire together by 8:30. Nonetheless, in my morning coffee runs down to the restaurant, I usually passed a deer. We'd nod at each other, then resume our foraging.

But daytime hikes are more popular. Little Roo is the right size for backpacking—literally. We believed that Squinx, at age five, could manage a light hike, and we were correct. She scaled a half-mile to Hidden Falls without protest, even venturing out onto a rock overhanging the fast-flowing water once I'd showed her it wasn't dangerous.

It's images like the one below that flash me forward to when she's a teen, and stop my heart.

Rittenhouse, meanwhile, was leery that this slope of rocks might give way at any moment.

we also had birthdays to celebrate: two, to be exact, Squinx and Little Roo.

Until I began unpackaging children's toys, I had no idea so many Chinese workers were left-handed. They twist the ties the wrong way. You've heard of the "unboxing" fetish videos? More like horror movies, or those nightmares where you're running from a monster through yards of oatmeal.

After freeing Barbie from her paperboard-and-cellophane prison, it was with some consternation that I realized she has graduated to hussy. Here's how she dresses to make food at her "diner."

Unless I'm mistaken, that's what they wear at those "gentlemen's clubs" that proffer a "free" lunch.

the day i chose to buy dinner, the bottom fell out. Because rain stops everyone from cooking outdoors, the campground's restaurant filled up early. A 30-minute wait and no bar.

It was among such crowds that I pioneered a technique for taking notes without a) scribbling in a notebook, or b) speaking into my MP3 recorder, which attracts uncomfortable stares and silent speculation as to whether the authorities should be summoned to deal with this weirdo talking into a matchbox.

Now I just hold the MP3 over the keypad of my clamshell phone. They're about the same size, and talking on a phone in public arouses absolutely no suspicion. In fact, if I were plotting some sort of criminal act, I could even do so in the lobby of a detectives' convention with a cell phone clamped to my face, and no one would recall what I looked like.

on attempting our return to dallas on standby, we were gratified when God aligned the stars and Brand X Airways gave us seats together on the day's only nonstop. (Alternative route: to Chicago O'Hare for a two-hour layover, redeemed only by the likelihood we'd fly the second leg on a ginormous 777.) While we killed an hour at JAC, Vice President Cheney's helicopter brigade entertained us, flying seemingly random patterns from a pad just off the runway over to the passenger terminal, then back again. Near the pad, a line of conspicuously inconspicuous Chrysler minivans with very dark windows fooled no one: secret service may as well have been painted on a billboard next to them, with a flashing arrow.

What the Marines were trying to accomplish with their aerial ballet, I was unable to guess. By the time our flight began boarding, however, they had departed with no sign of the Veep. Possibly he'd needed to run from his ranch down to the hardware store, or something, then found what he needed out in the garage.

Upon arrival, we felt that familiar freshness of mind that helps one overlook trivia like traffic jams, afternoon heat, and an unmowed lawn. I tried to keep some perspective, but I can't help thinking someday we've got to escape the suburbs and go live where there's some land and some water.

Until then, moments like this will just have to do.

Intentionally presented in Cinemascope closing-credits squeeze, because this is how the story ends.

How was your summer vacation?

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 07:24 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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In which Rittenhouse shows how web-savvy he is by posting links to online novelties before you see them somewhere else.

• I can't be sure these guys aren't joking, but here is how they brawl in Japanese baseball (video).

• Photos of Chinese making the best of their lot. Makes sense why some of them have no problem with lead-painted toys.

• Finally, a look back at a news video looking into the future of the Intertubes. I had almost forgotten what a dial-up modem sounded like.

Have a great Saturday!

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 07:28 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Last weekend I took daughter Squinx, wife Squeeky, son Little Roo, and Wolf Dog out to my sister's rural environs for her husband's birthday. Their acreage includes an oak grove, pool, and something that looks like an old gravel pit—a perfectly safe spot to introduce Squinx to firearms.

As it happens, dove season opened that morning, and distant shotguns began cracking promptly at 6 a.m. So our little .22 rifle didn't even register as an echo.

I set up a sawhorse and propped empty soda cans on it, just as we did when I was a boy. Only, things have changed since the early 1970s. Aluminum cans, for example. A gentle wind blows them off the sawhorse. I should have brought nails. But then they wouldn't give me that satisfying jump when they're hit.

Which they wouldn't do, anyway: .22 rounds go right through them and they don't even twitch. The only reaction we got was from a full can of water. It ripped open and sprayed a good six feet sideways, which was exactly what I was hoping for.

Squinx has heard about guns from someone, and I realized I needed to show her there's nothing terrifying about them when they're properly managed. If kids don't learn that from parents, they get their info from movies, TV, and other sources that glorify or demonize firearms. You have to fill the sponge with pure water first or you may never get all the sewage out.

The demo went fairly well and we had a little talk about what bullets do, and what kids should do if they ever find a gun. We also looked at my .45 pistol, which she didn't want me to demonstrate. Probably a good thing, as the noise would have scared the bezabbers out of her.

There is no way to be photographed with a weapon, even a .22 rifle, without looking like a blistering psychotic, but I'm going to be brave and post these for whatever they're worth.

Weirdly, I didn't miss a single shot even at this range.

On the way back to the house, we came across the most terrifying spider I have ever seen.

And then Squeeky turned her masterful eye to the camera and captured the photo of the day. It's too nice for this narrow a space. Click to open.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 07:51 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I took these off a neighbor's pecan tree tonight:

I feel somehow ... diminished.

Everything around here is greener and bigger than usual thanks to two months of daily rain. Only in August did we get a week of our usual 100º days. Now the grass is crawling out over the sidewalks and the fruit trees hang like willows. It hasn't been this nice a summer since I moved here 18 years ago.

In other news, the half-life of the new-improved Taco Bell I wrote about has passed. Today's experience included:

• A Moonie haranguing customers on their way in. The least management can do is chase such irritants off.
  
  
• A smelly hobo haranguing customers inside. (This never happens at Chipotle.)
  
  
• At least a five-minute wait for three tacos. These people don't even dispense beverages anymore, and they still can't keep up.
  
  
• My order in a plastic to-go bag, after I had stated "for here."
  
  
• The same hobo asking me for money in the parking lot. I had to warn him of a car approaching, but he took no notice until the driver blew his horn.

The customer maniacs are running the asylum. I only heard the bell clang once, which was kind of a relief.

Later in the day, I took Mom to the doctor for her bi-weekly appointment. In the lobby I wondered about the very special moment that led their receptionist to print and post this sign:

Sometimes humor is in what you don't see, rather than what you do.

And what, pray tell, led to this one, spotted in an industrial area:

I mean, you don't put a sign like that up as a precaution. It had to have happened at least once already.

I'm sorry. I know it must have been an expensive episode, but I still think it's funny, some clown prying the door up with a forklift. How exasperating that must have been for the shop foreman: "What were you thinkin'?"

With that, I wish you a good night.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 08:08 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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