"Remember, we're all in this alone." - Lily Tomlin

Saw this on a friend's Facebook page and immediately thought of 99% of the faculty 

meetings I attended. 

It's become obvious that the only way I'm going to post a blog entry is to start it in the morning, add to it during the day, and hit "publish" at night. When I wait until after dinner the fatigue wins out every time.

The end of last week I had the truck door soooo close that I planned to hit one small spot with a grinder and be done. Yesterday I discovered that over the weekend things "settled" such that it won't open. It's as bad as it was before I took everything apart. I spent over two hours trying various adjustments and got nowhere except deep into discouragement. Roger stopped by yesterday afternoon - he lives in the neighborhood and has a sweet Studebaker Hawk - and we talked. He faced the same problem with a '55 Chevy he was restoring years ago (it burned up in a barn fire just before he finished it) and solved his problem by reusing the old hinges. Alas, I'm using the original hinges.
He's going to come over tomorrow morning so we can loosen, tug, pull, and manipulate together. After that I may look for a barn on fire.

We had a thunderstorm move through at lunch and it cooled things down just enough (low-triple digits) that I worked in the garage on the bed all afternoon. I got the two boxes done - the sections on either side of the bed that hold the drawers. Next up, make the drawers. Except there's a bit of a problem. Somehow my boxes came out 1/4" too shallow, so first thing this morning I stopped by the metal shop on my way to Starbucks to grind that amount off each of the slides so they'll fit. Now I start on the drawers. The *first one will be a test to check dimensions and construction method, and then crank out a dozen of them.

Embrace the insomnia.
I started working on the Costa Rica curriculum about 1:30 a.m. yesterday and by 5 a.m. had the last three of the presentations off to Alonso. By dinner he sent me an email that all six were translated into Spanish.
I'm looking forward to meeting him in person.
Aside from the handout I have yet to make, this means that first seminar prep is all done. Today I'll start on the second weekend's seminar, which will be about dogmatic theology.

I'm a news junkie and election season is almost like BACON. The problem is finding a reasonably objective source. Online I'm enjoying Politico. On TV...
If you've read the announcements you know that MSNBC is getting a thorough makeover courtesy of the new NBC News chief. Their ratings were tanking under the programming aimed at the Roger Moore end of the spectrum, evidence that the anti-FOX track wasn't working. They're currently about 90% of the way through the restructuring and so far I'm impressed. It feels like the old CNN, back when it was news, not a visual People Magazine. I appreciate that they aren't pulling in people from opposite extremes of the spectrum to argue with each other, but getting a variety of qualified people from the range in the middle. Very early morning and the evening are still liberal programming, but by 5 a.m. and for the next 12-14 hours it seems to be good stuff, and much more in depth than what I'm seeing elsewhere.

The AZ Diamondbacks are at .500. I don't watch baseball, just check the standings, and I was pleasantly surprised to see the hometown team has finally reached this level. For weeks and weeks they've come oh so close just to fall back into the 400's. And I'm confident they'll be there once again, probably by tomorrow morning.

Back to politics for a moment.
A month ago I would have said Hillary was a foregone conclusion and it was Jeb Bush's to lose, something I was fine with. Hillary is caught in a mess of her own making and Bernie's hot on her heels. Now Larry Lessig is considering getting into the fray. If you don't know who he is that's OK; almost no one else does, either. But he could make the Democratic side real interesting.
Meanwhile, over on the GOP side, Donald is on borrowed time, Bush looks like he's not up to the task, while Carly and Dr. Carson are impressing.
What do all these things have in common? Outsiders.
Hillary and Bush are both la familia, as are several of the other GOP players. Forget Trump, the clown at the party, Fiorina, Carson, and Lessig are outsiders who can legitimately claim those advantages. Perhaps chief among them is their separation from the party machine and the money/influence that comes along with it.
Yeah, this is a good one, and I'm open to some of the conservative options emerging. I'd love to see a GOP convention pitting Fiorina, Carson, maybe Rubio and/or Walker against each other. That would result in some really worthwhile conversation.

I'm off to the gym, then a shower, followed by our Thursday dinner out, which happens on a Wednesday when Pam's scheduled to work Thursday. Which she is this week. But probably won't because she's getting called off more than she's actually working.
And it will be 113 here tomorrow.
83 in Elmira.

*That part was written early in the day. After lunch I made that mockup and ... wait for it ... it worked!!