96 thoughts on “No Blog Today”

      1. Sigh. I topped out at five-eleven and three-quarters and adamantly refused to round up. Shrinkage has reduced me to gnomehood, probably about four foot eight.

          1. And please: do use a decent unscented fabric softener and anti-static dryer sheet. NOBODY wants to be around a wallaby with static cling.

              2. Really? Remind me to have a camera ready when you walk by with a wallaby stuck to your…leg.

                1. It’s the tail, you see. Big honking thing waving about behind us where we cannot see what it’s up to, just attracting god knows what. Get a little tired and leave it dragging on the carpet in dry weather and *oy* such a spark it can generate!

                  The ears are pretty bad, too. Especially first thing in the morning when “bed ears” is a problem. Sometimes they cling together, sometimes they repel each other, and you never know which it is gonna be nor when it will suddenly switch, nor just drop and droop. There are times, mind you, when a quick ironing and a light spray of starch has its appeal.

        2. I peaked at 6′-2″, but the last measurement came out at 6′-0.25″. I think the height mutated into girth.

          1. Gravitational force is known to draw mass toward the center. Congratulations, you are a proto-planet.

  3. Oooh, oooh, let me advise! When I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I used to answer, “extremely happy!” The questioner would then invariably ask, “No, I mean what do you want to do as a career?” I’d reply, “I don’t care, as long as I’m happy!” So my advice is, do whatever you like, as long as it makes you happy. If you’re happy, we’re happy for you!

  6. I had a friend whose sig read “We never really grow up, we just learn how to behave in public.” I think I’m still working on the second half of that.

    2. “Critics who treat ‘adult’ as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

      ~CS Lewis

      I think it applies. 😉

    3. Wow. You’ve just summed up what’s the problem with socialists.
      They never grow up.

      1. Being adult is to be in the state of accepting responsibility for yourself. Being a socialist means always being in the grip of vast, impersonal forces beyond anyone’s control. Being Red means never needing to say, “Oops! my bad.”

  10. I can remember wanting to be indicted for crimes against humanity.

    I guess I could set up a law crimes tribunal, and start throwing around indictments myself.

    1. Get a herd of cows. Occasional Cortex and her buddies will be on you on you like flies on garbage if you don’t filter their flatulence.

  11. My daughter has gotten into the “what will you be when you grow up?” question.

    Her answers are pretty standard–doctor, builder. But then she asks you… and is never satisfied with your answer.

    I’ll say I want to be a mommy. She’ll say “Noooo…” and, most recently, insisted I’d be Georgie Pig.

    My husband, meanwhile, will be a monster.

    …

    Fair enough, I guess! I wonder if he’ll at least get to breathe fire; at this point, monsters seem to mostly put hampers on their heads and say “ROAR!”

      1. You are a government-limiting, liberty-defending, free-enterprise-loving conservative right-wing extremist: of course you already are a monster.


        The real question is: are you a good monster or a bad monster, are you Grover or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?

  12. You gave to get older, but you don’t *have* to grow up.

    When I was a kid I thought all adults were sad and disappointed. Later I learned that only most of them are…

    1. You don’t *have* to get older, either, but not staying alive kind of limits your options…

  15. I wanted to be an astronaut, but I was afraid of heights; and calculus, and thermodynamics, and differential equations. And I’m nearsighted.

        1. A number of pilots are scared of heights. I did aerobatics and loved it. Can’t stand roller-coasters. It is often a matter of control and knowledge. The physics of flight is pretty easy and obvious. The physics of why that balcony doesn’t fall off the building… not so obvious.

          1. I think you sort of cover balconies in statics (if it doesn’t bend) and solid mechanics (if it does), but that approaches the limit of my learning.

          2. I have no problems looking down from High Places.

            However, I had problems working on the roof of my parents one-story house.

            IE I didn’t like the footing on the slope of the roof. [Nervous Grin]

            1. My mind is now convinced I need a safety harness when up on the roof. Once I get it on, and latched to the rope, I can walk out and hang over the edge with no concern, even if I am not tight on the rope.
              Without it, I can’t get within 3 feet of the roof edge of my flatter roof, and forget getting on the 9 in 12 portions
              Once, as a 14 year old, I helped Mom’s cousin roof his parent’s roof . . . a similar slope, two full stories with nothing but ground for fall catching and made them nervous because I was walking out to the eaves to trim off the shingles.

              brain won’t allow that anymore

              1. So a long long time ago, when I wore lots of blue and lived on a ship, one of my jobs was cleaning the bridge windows on the ship. For ‘safety’ reasons I was required to wear a harness while I was standing on the 5″ ledge that went around the bridge. The major problem with said harness and rope was that usually the only thing I could hook onto was the plastic pvc pipe that ran around the top of the bridge…For some reason, neither the harness nor the rope actually made me feel safer. It was actually kind of fun, I got to be out in the sun and look inside at the people standing bridge watch like it was my own personal people terrarium.

                1. My harness came with me from Texas.
                  I too was “required” to wear it when working over 4 feet above the ground. I had a mezzanine about 9 feet high but I didn’t even have a pvc pipe to hook to, so I didn’t need to wear it until “We figure something out.” It has only ever been used at work once when I helped dump 2500 pounds of sugar into a firefighting foam batch (that Mezz had places to hook a tether), and it only just started getting use doing the roof last year, and will again this year when I finish that up.

                  1. Gotta love the absurdity of some of the safety rules we are forced to comply with! If I remember correctly the bridge was about 25 or so feet about the flight deck. Rather glad those days are done, I’ve got a bit more. . .err, mass, than I did back in those days!

              2. The hardest roof I did was on the pumphouse. 8 x 12′ roof; it just didn’t have enough room to get comfortable on the upper courses. Only a 5 in12 pitch, but it seemed a lot harder than the 10 x 12′ 6 in 12 pitch I did earlier. OTOH, there was a dozen years between those two jobs.

                The easiest was the 3 in 12 house roof. Lots of work, since I had to pull the old roof. That one took a month to complete–the cosmic rule of roofing says it’s going to be 95F unless thunderstorms are predicted.

                1. one sure way to ensure rain is to pull the sheeting off the roof and have the attic open to sky.
                  That’s how I ended up with two sheets of 10’x20′ rubber roofing. I got the ply cut to replace the rot, and tossed it up, got the rolls anchored as the rain started.
                  10% my arse

                2. oh, and all my house roof but the porch add-on it 9 in 12 rise, so around 35 to 38 degrees depending on how settled it was. All is now back to the 37 or so 9 in 12 is supposed to be. House is 49 feet long, takes a 13′ 6″ sheet of roofing on the full sides. My issue was keeping the tether short enough to do some good. One anchor point is still hiding under the crown pieces.

          3. All that roller-coasters do for me is give me some motion sickness if I don’t make sure i am watching the direction we are going. Though the last time i was on one (Kraken? at Sea World Orlando) Mom was my entertainment. She puts her head down and closes her eyes, and hangs on for dear life. Sadly, to watch her wince and whatnot, meant not watching the direction of travel, so I was a bit queasy, though laughed out.

    2. Similarly I wanted to be an astronaut when I was 5 (and emulate the Mercury/Gemini astronauts). At about age 5-6 I went with my dad to a rally for Senator Ribicoff (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Ribicoff). He was working the crowd saw me (with a patched eye) and asked me what I wanted to be and I told him. Of course I was wearing VERY thick eyeglasses with the left one patched for Lazy Eye. He did not say “Man that’s stupid I’ve seen bats with better eyesight”. He said (roughly this is 50+ years ago) ” Young man the best way to do that is to go into one of the military academies to be a pilot. You will need the support of a member of the house or senate for that. Please contact me when you are ready “. That is Noblesse Oblige, and shows the difference between a liberal politician of the old school (albeit Republican) and our modern breed. He darn well knew I had essentially 0 chance of being an astronaut but he did NOT stamp on that dream.

    3. I’m only afraid of heights when there’s not enough supporting and enclosing superstructure to make my brain happy. Flying as a passenger doesn’t bother me at all, and I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t bother me as pilot, either.

  17. What? You’ve given up on Beautiful but Evil Space Princess? Oh, lousy pay? Well, have you considered Tyrant Queen of the Orion Arm? Rumor has it the position is open to anyone who can get to tau Ceti and claim it.

  18. I am a decade ahead of you and still am waiting to discover my calling. In the meantime I have found that life has kept me occupied — whether I liked it or not.

  21. I yam very disappointed in all of you.

    Repeat after me:
    I won’t grow up,
    (I won’t grow up)
    I don’t want to go to school.
    (I don’t want to go to school)
    Just to learn to be a parrot,
    (Just to learn to be a parrot)
    And recite a silly rule.
    (And recite a silly rule)
    If growing up means
    It would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree,
    I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up
    Not me!
    Not I,
    Not me!
    Not me!

      1. Mo1? Piffle. I’m no trouble.

        I can provide sworn affidavits testifying to that effect.

        1. The first rule of deniability is ‘no witnesses’. Keep that in mind and nobody can prove anything. . .(Well, no sober witnesses, I forgot that rule in college and I’m still hearing about some of my tequila-fueled antics).

        2. Jimmy Hoffa, Amelia Earhart, Judge Joseph Crater, and who else?

          I heard D.B. Cooper declined to sign.

          1. I’ve also got them from Sasquatch and Nessie. D.B. Cooper signed – it was Santa Claus who declined, saying something about professional ethics forbid him from publicly identifying who’s naughty or nice.

  25. I want to be some of the characters that I write when I grow up.

    Namely the ones that have a starship.

    Namely the ones that have the starship that annoys the Powers That Be.

    And, have the letters of marquis. All of them.

    And the company of Marines in powered battle armor and support gear.

    (I actually have four of these.)

    1. I think you meant “letters of marque”(authorized to attack and capture ships of other nations), not letters of marquis (which, IIRC, is a lesser nobility).

  30. I’ve recently decided that I want to grow back. I’ve realized the past couple months that in the process of becoming a ‘grown-up’ that I’ve lost something that was far more precious. In most ways I’m in a better position than I’ve ever been in my entire life, but, while I’m mostly happy, I seem to have lost the drive I formerly had to be constantly ‘making myself better’. That energy that I used to have to drive my butt to the gym at 5:00 am, to sit down with something mentally challenging after work to help keep my mind sharp. . .the desire is there, but not the will to act.

    I’ll figure it out or I won’t 🙂

    1. Yes, you are absolutely right.
      Instead of being some spoiled rich kid who thinks he’s an anarchist (so original, so important.) I decided to be that cliche: the Portuguese girl from a small village/town who comes to the US and writes science fiction professionally for twenty years.
      So overdone. So seen. What was I thinking?

      PS – you don’t have to worry about what to do when you grow up.

      PS – S – FLAGS CAUSE WAR? For the love of heaven, is your mind utterly virgin of history, psychology, anthropology or, dare I say it, humanity?

      PS-S-S Clean your room.

    2. And yes, guys this is our old friend Clamps. His new website just shows the span of his so called “mind”.
      I only approved it because frankly I’m in awe someone who lacks two brain cells to rub together can POSSIBLY type in comments. No, seriously. Flags Cause War.
      Dear Lord.
      I hope he was born educable mentally retarded. Because if he has normal IQ he’s an indictment of our school system.

      1. In fairness, the Mexican flag is totally the cause of all the cartel killings, which may or may not be a de facto state of war.

        If the current mess gives Trump every right Lincoln had to treat it as a civil war, we would absolutely have grounds to sue Six Flags for causing it. Them Texans and their historical displays, causing all of America’s problems.

        If Obama had killed himself pissing on an electric fence, fifty years later there would still be leftists trying to carry water for him.

        1. Some people work really hard, some people have an innate talent, but some people diligently apply themselves to develop and refine their natural gift.

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