Weekend company

Maria's son Austin rolled in at 6:40 a.m. in his $200 Chrysler beater for a holiday weekend visit.
He left his Crawfordsville (Ind.) home around midnight local time after trying unsuccessfully to get some sleep when he got home from work. But he made the trip successfully, fortified with massive quantities of caffeine-packed power drinks.
Maria gave him a tour of the house (this is his first visit to us in Arkansas), fed him breakfast and sent him off to bed in the guest bedroom.
Then she went back to bed to catch up on a couple of hours of sleep lost when we woke up at 2:30 a.m. to the sound of Ruthie the Wonder Dog's stomach gurgling and wheezing. We expected violent projectile vomiting or crapping, but neither occurred.
No idea what caused the problem and it didn't seem to distress Ruthie.

Remember the sacrifices

This is the mother of Army Spc. Joey Strong at her son's funeral in Thorntown, Ind., about 18 months ago.

Spc. Strong was killed in Iraq.

Say a prayer this Independence Day holiday weekend for all of our men and women in uniform who are laying their lives on the line to protect us from those who hate us and who hate our freedom.

Ripped off!

We buy a lot of stuff through Amazon.com, much of it from sellers who list their new and used wares on Amazon.

So when I went looking for a "Sleeping Beauty" DVD for granddaughter Lisa's May 30 birthday, that's where I went.

An outfit called Entertainment Yearly had the best price for a new, in-the-shrinkwrap, copy so I ordered it and also paid extra for expedited shipping so Lisa would get it in time for her birthday.

It never showed up. My emails to Entertainment Yearly went unanswered, as did my complaints to Amazon.com.

I decided to take another run at the problem this morning and went to EY's seller profile on Amazon.com. It looks like they ripped off a bunch of people.

They have a 76% negative feedback rating and five non-fulfillment comments (including mine - Indyguy50):

"My item never arrived and I am in the process of filing a claim to try and get my money back. Seller refuses to respond to me."
Date: 7/1/2008     Rated by Buyer: William B.

"I never got my movie or a response from the company. I think Amazon should quit having them as a vendor and that we all should boycot them."
Date: 6/30/2008     Rated by Buyer: Suzanna H.

"Item never arrived. Sent three emails never got a single response. I'm completely outraged by their poor service. All other sellers I contacted were prompt in their responses to a single email."
Date: 6/27/2008     Rated by Buyer: black_wren

"Item was a birthday gift for my granddaughter. It never arrived, despite my paying extra for expedited shipping. I contacted the seller by email two weeks ago and have not received a reply. I strongly recommend against doing business with this seller and request a review by Amazon.com."
Date: 6/26/2008     Rated by Buyer: indyguy50

"Horrible service. I never received the product. I requested expedited shipping and no product was delivered. I contacted the seller on numerous occasions and no response. I contacted Amazon to file a claim and no response."
Date: 6/25/2008     Rated by Buyer: Brian H.

I still have confidence in Amazon.com, but I'm more than a little angry about being ripped off. I filed a claim with Amazon.com and hope to see a refund within the next two weeks, as per their "A-to-Z Guarantee" policy.

The fun never stops

Got a cheery letter from National City Mortgage Co. today. That's the lender for our house in Thorntown.

They want us to know that since our property taxes nearly doubled (WTF?), our house payment will increase by about $150 a month, effective next month.

Oh, and the insurance cost went up too.

This comes at a time when we're exploring a lease-to-buy marketing option for the property. Our Realtor says it's a good way to get some cash flow going and maybe actually end up selling the house to someone who can't get the credit approval to buy it outright.

Today's news has the effect of upping the ante for any prospective lessor/buyer by $150 a month, which I suspect is a deal-breaker for the family who had expressed an interest in that kind of deal a couple of weeks ago.

Ruthie and Pete get a clean bill of health

Pete, Ruthie and I just returned from our first visit to their new vet and my wallet is $323 lighter.

But they're in good health and, thanks to the shots they got and the flea-tick-mosquito-heart worm meds I brought home, they should stay that way.

The doc says there is a zone that extends about 150 miles on either side of the Mississippi River in which there is a particularly drug-resistant strain of heart worms. The good news is that if we keep good records to prove we kept up their Heartguard medication, Heartguard will cover the cost of additional treatment.

Too bad our medical insurance doesn't cover dogs.

Bluegrass & peanut butter pie

We're at a bluegrass concert at the public library. And peanut butter pie is being sold.
I came for the pie.
And I never got any.

Lunch

Lunch at Firehouse Subs with Maria and the local library assistant director.
I'm holding table space while they place the food orders.

Who knew?

My first father-in-law, dead now some 20 years, collected picture postcards during his travels in the Army in the 1940s. He left behind a big box of them, mostly from the American West and from Europe during and after World War II.

I've been auctioning some of them in an effort to eliminate some of the clutter from our lives and among my offerings on Ebay at present is this pair of early 1940s photo postcards from both sides of the California-Mexico border at Tijuana.

I always start the bidding on these postcard combos at 99 cents and even the biggest groups rarely bring more than $8.

This pair has apparently struck a chord with someone because the bidding jumped to $23.27 this morning and there are 5 days and 2 hours left in the seven-day auction.

I am, once again, reminded that Ebay auctions are full of surprises and very often the stuff you think will bring big bucks falls on its face and the weird little items like this that most people would throw away take off like a rocket.

It can never be easy

  

I was rummaging around in the smallish glove compartment of my 1994 Honda del Sol the other day when I found the warranty for the window tint job that Ziebart did when I bought the car 14 years ago.

Since the film on the windows is badly bubbled and looks pretty crappy, I read the warranty terms and was pleased to discover the work was guaranteed for the life of the car as long as it remains in the hands of the original owner. Well, well.

So I went to Ziebart.com to locate my nearest Ziebart shop. I plugged in the Jonesboro, Ark., zip code and set the search parameters to the maximum range of 150 miles. No results.

Ditto for Memphis.

I finally determined the nearest Ziebart shop is 253 miles/4 hours 18 minutes away in Columbia, Ill.

So I'm faced with the choice of just putting up with the deteriorating tinting film or driving 8½ hours and spending about $70 on gas to have a new window tint job.

The plan

I think I finally have a plan for my July motorcycle travels.

Our Indiana friends Lauri and Jim had earlier planned to visit the week of July 20-26, which meant I would have to hustle back to Arkansas right after the July 17-20 BMW Motorcycle Owners of America International Rally in Gillette, Wyo. (See logo.)

Jim's work schedule made visiting that week a bad idea, so we hit upon a new plan: Lauri and their two kids will come down Friday night 7/25 or Saturday 7/26 and Jim will follow a day or two later on his Harley-Davidson. That way, the girls can do girl stuff and he and I can go off to explore the region's more interesting roads.

Since their visit has been pushed out a week from the original plan, I can now enjoy most of the Indianapolis BMW Club's Colorado Chalet Week at the home of Tim and Linda Balough near Alma, Colo.

Tim and Linda plan to be at the BMW MOA rally, so I will ride back to Alma with them and whoever else is staying with them and I can spend a few days riding the high country before heading home.

I expect I'll celebrate my birthday here on Monday, July 14, then roll out of here early the next morning, spending Tuesday night somewhere on the road and arriving at the rally site Wednesday evening.

Young composer

This photo was in the latest RSS feed from my son Steve and shows an oh-so-brief musical score apparently composed by his daughter Lisa.

Looks like it was photographed with his iPhone on the refrigerator door.

Whatever musical abilities Lisa has, she comes by them honestly. Her dad is a professional musician and her Uncle Sean is a musician/recording engineer/producer.

They were raised in a house where there was always music playing. I was in every instrumental and vocal ensemble my high school had and considered a music major in college before veering off into journalism.

My dad's musical expression was limited to singing in the church choir but his father was a multi-talented musician who was recruited for John Phillips Sousa's band, but had to decline because his parents were Amish and didn't approve of such things.

Anyhow, nobody will be surprised if Lisa turns out to be very musical.

Personal archaeology

Maria mentioned the other day that she was searching for some dress patterns and had exhausted all of the place in the house where unpacked stuff was put.

So I did a little poking around amongst the boxes still stored in the garage. I didn't find the patterns she wanted, but I did find some rather old stuff that had belonged to my mother, including this pre-World War II (printed in 1941) McCall's apron pattern.

It appears that my mother used the pattern to make at least one apron, but all of the components are still in the envelope.

My mother would have been 26 when she plunked down 25 cents at a store in Delphi or Lafayette, Ind., for this pattern. She'd been married for four years and I, her first and only child, was still another four years in the future. I bet she looked pretty spiffy in her necktie-pattern apron, bustling around the kitchen in her new home at 609 E. Franklin Street, Delphi, and listening to big band music on her blonde bakelite Philco table radio.

Burgers for dinner

Grillin' and chillin' on a Saturday afternoon.

Bald paynuts

This may seem like a quaint observation to my Southern friends, but this opened can of boiled peanuts on a bench outside the Hays supermarket is a bizarre sight to Yankee eyes.
But then so are dead armadillos along the highway, a sky full of crop dusters dumping tons of agrichemicals willy-nilly over the landscape, and every third man, woman or child wearing cammo.

Full cup this time

The semi-conscious drones at this McDonald's gave me a 2/3 full cup of coffee the last time I dropped in for breakfast.
This time they got it right - all the way up to the fill line.
I rode Maria's bike this morning and watched the odometer roll over 9,000 miles as I passed the city limits. Pretty low mileage for a 14-year-old BMW, but Maria hasn't done much riding the past few years. So it falls to me to keep the battery up and make sure everything's road-ready.
I've put about 830 miles on it so far this year since it's so much fun to ride and gets the best gas mileage (45 mpg on the Memphis trip) of our fleet of bikes and cars.
If it had a luggage rack, I'd consider riding it to Wyoming next month.

The Mild Hogs ride to Alaska

My Jonesboro BMW friend Charlie Parsons (the guy on the right in the do-rag) and two of his BWM Riders Association of the Mid-South buddies are en route to Alaska.

They spent last night at the Big Horn Hotel on Watson's Lake in the Yukon Territory and filed some photos and a brief report.

Club newsletter editor Rose-Anne Cunningham is putting the stuff together as a blog so we can follow their progress at http://www.bmwrams.com/blogs/

It was Charlie and his wife Deb who graciously provided garage space for our two bikes during our protracted move from Indiana to Arkansas last year.

Mr. Fix-it strikes again

This is the Weiser adjustable springlatch.

The one that was part of our back door latch mechanism crapped out over the weekend. I found a replacement on the Home Depot website, but discovered to my chagrin, that they don't stock the Weiser brand at their stores. Ditto the Hated Lowe's.

So I ordered one online from Home Depot Sunday evening. The UPS guy delivered it this evening and I had it installed and working in 10 minutes. My kind of home repair project.

And shipping was free.

Melting my heart

Lisa looks pleased with her new dress. It's one of two that Maria made for her over the weekend. We put it into the mail Monday morning and her dad posted this photo yesterday.

Looks like the glamorous Las Vegas life is agreeing with her.

Supreme Court gets it right

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Americans have a right to own guns for self-defense in their homes, the justices' first major pronouncement on gun rights in U.S. history.

The court's 5-4 ruling struck down the District of Columbia's 32-year-old ban on handguns as incompatible with gun rights under the Second Amendment. The decision went further than even the Bush administration wanted, but probably leaves most firearms restrictions intact.

The court had not conclusively interpreted the Second Amendment since its ratification in 1791. The amendment reads: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

The basic issue for the justices was whether the amendment protects an individual's right to own guns no matter what, or whether that right is somehow tied to service in a state militia.

Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said that an individual right to bear arms is supported by "the historical narrative" both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted.

The Constitution does not permit "the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home," Scalia said. The court also struck down Washington's requirement that firearms be equipped with trigger locks or kept disassembled, but left intact the licensing of guns.

Scalia noted that the handgun is Americans' preferred weapon of self-defense in part because "it can be pointed at a burglar with one hand while the other hand dials the police."

In a dissent he summarized from the bench, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the majority "would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons."

He said such evidence "is nowhere to be found."

Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a separate dissent in which he said, "In my view, there simply is no untouchable constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to keep loaded handguns in the house in crime-ridden urban areas."

Joining Scalia were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas. The other dissenters were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter.

Gun rights supporters hailed the decision. "I consider this the opening salvo in a step-by-step process of providing relief for law-abiding Americans everywhere that have been deprived of this freedom," said Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association.

The NRA will file lawsuits in San Francisco, Chicago and several of its suburbs challenging handgun restrictions there based on Thursday's outcome.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a leading gun control advocate in Congress, criticized the ruling. "I believe the people of this great country will be less safe because of it," she said.

The capital's gun law was among the nation's strictest.

Dick Anthony Heller, 66, an armed security guard, sued the District after it rejected his application to keep a handgun at his home for protection in the same Capitol Hill neighborhood as the court.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in Heller's favor and struck down Washington's handgun ban, saying the Constitution guarantees Americans the right to own guns and that a total prohibition on handguns is not compatible with that right.

The issue caused a split within the Bush administration. Vice President Dick Cheney supported the appeals court ruling, but others in the administration feared it could lead to the undoing of other gun regulations, including a federal law restricting sales of machine guns. Other laws keep felons from buying guns and provide for an instant background check.

White House reaction was restrained. "We're pleased that the Supreme Court affirmed that the Second Amendment protects the right of Americans to keep and bear arms," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said.

Scalia said nothing in Thursday's ruling should "cast doubt on long-standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons or the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings."

In a concluding paragraph to the his 64-page opinion, Scalia said the justices in the majority "are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country" and believe the Constitution "leaves the District of Columbia a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns."

The law adopted by Washington's city council in 1976 bars residents from owning handguns unless they had one before the law took effect. Shotguns and rifles may be kept in homes, if they are registered, kept unloaded and either disassembled or equipped with trigger locks.

Opponents of the law have said it prevents residents from defending themselves. The Washington government says no one would be prosecuted for a gun law violation in cases of self-defense.

The last Supreme Court ruling on the topic came in 1939 in U.S. v. Miller, which involved a sawed-off shotgun. Constitutional scholars disagree over what that case means but agree it did not squarely answer the question of individual versus collective rights.

Forty-four state constitutions contain some form of gun rights, which are not affected by the court's consideration of Washington's restrictions.

The case is District of Columbia v. Heller, 07-290.

Home again, home again

Thanks to XM Satellite Radio with a George Carlin retrospective and several sci-fi episodes on the Old Time Radio channel, the ride home was easy.

As easy as 150 miles in steamy 95-degree heat can be.

But now I'm back in the AC and my bike has a new battery.