Wednesday, February 21st, 2007

Time	Event
10:31a	Another exciting week has passed Doesn't seem possible, and yet here it is a week after Valentine's Day! So I'll briefly sum up. For Valentine's Day, I got two new tires for Dreamcloud. That's because when I drove Caro and Mike to school, this happened: If the tire store people are correct, though, the two tires on the rear had been original equipment, which means they'd had 97K miles on them (and the tread was still decent--it was the sides that had cracks). And luckily the densely snow-packed street kept the rim from being damaged before I figured out something was wrong and pulled over. So all's well, and all that. Another nice thing was that Mike very sweetly got busy early and surprised us with red-dyed scrambled eggs for Valentine's Day. Awww. He's fifteen now, since yesterday. It does not seem even remotely possible that that much time has passed since we took him in as a temporary foster child placement. And yet, there he grows, tallest of all three of us, living proof! I haven't done anything else that was very interesting. The tax money came. We paid bills and stuff. We've had SEVERAL DAYS IN A ROW that were above freezing, so some of the snow is melting. The part finally came so that the repair guy can fix the dryer tomorrow. Yep, the fun just never stops around here! Current Mood: busy (11 Comments | Comment on this)
3:34p	Cuteness alert! ailsaek found this neat site! It's a 4-H webpage with a camera set to watch eggs in an incubator. As I post this there are 3 eggs and one damp chick to be seen! Click for chicks! It's been a long time since we had any chicks or chickens around the place. (And I was glad of that when we were having the blizzards!) But seeing the baby chicks reminded me of when the big kids were in 4-H. Sterling chose chickens for his project, and we picked some interesting breeds from a catalog. There was one kind where the adults would be solid black, a nice big bird good for both meat and eggs. The chicks turned out to be a black and yellow pattern. The day they came, I pulled a good joke on Damaris. When she got home from school I acted irritated and and complained that the company had made a mistake and sent me baby penguins. I said I'd had to take the heatlamp out and fill the pen with ice cubes instead. Damaris just stared at me, then asked, "Won't the hatchery take them back?" Current Mood: Remember-y (7 Comments | Comment on this)
8:37p	Truckloads of Trouble One of the problems with there being such BIG problems going on in our state and country is that others, just as bad on a smaller scale, don't get the coverage or attention they should. I just happened to read about this today in the email I get from TomPaine.com. Possibly it caught my attention because my son Sterling is a trucker. "The Federal Highway Administration, which oversees our nation's highway system, is about to issue a regulation allowing 97-foot-long multi-truck monstrosities to roar up and down our nation's streets. These vehicle combinations, called "saddlemount vehicle transporter combinations," or simply, "four-ways," consist of four trucks linked together, with only the first truck maintaining both its front and rear wheels on the ground. On the three other trucks, only the rear wheels touch the ground, the front resting on the truck preceding it. From the side, if one roars by you on the road, they look like elephants holding each others' tails with their trunks—only much, much larger and more dangerous. As one veteran truck driver with 40 years of driving experience put it, in testimony submitted to the FHA, The notion that a saddlemount load, 97 feet long and consisting of four semi tractors, is safe is absurd. All four-way configurations have the tendency to cause the fourth truck to whip and sway to a certain degree. It can quickly become a very dangerous situation. Another driver, who has been driving vehicle combinations for 20 years, testified, "While driving these setups, the rear truck is unstable and wanders excessively from side to side. This type of setup is a danger to the motoring public and to myself." " Full article here Short version is, even though Bush signed off on the law allowing these crazy Frankentrucks to be loose on the streets, the Federal Highway Administration has not. Yet. You can write to this guy to say you think it's a bad idea. "Comments on the proposed rule should be sent to Richard Capka, Administrator, Federal Highway Administration, at Rick.Capka@dot.gov." Current Mood: worried (3 Comments | Comment on this)

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