Whoa, super head cold. I’m out of commission for the day. All my commitments were filled but I headed right back here for a big pot of tea and take it easy. I’m breathing vapor and have a log on the fire. (Figure of speech, it means to turn the A/C to heat instead of cool.) By noon I cancelled all my appointments. I had planned on doing some Xmas shopping. Now I’ll settle for chicken soup.Allaine celled, the reason for no call this year was no party. Instead, they went out to a restaurant, no party this year. It just hits me as odd, they own a restaurant, so that’s akin to me paying admission at a blues bar. I’ll see the family at Xmas dinner although nobody has got the call yet. Probably the 24th.
My Xmas gig got bumped. The gal with the Xmas party is also chums with a Karaoke show and it is her birthday. So I’m out the door. That’s show biz. Maybe for once I’ll go out for Xmas just because I never really do. During the 15 years I worked for the corporation, I took that shift so the married guys could go home. I fell out of the habit and eventually didn’t miss all the hard sell. Those were juicy paychecks, let me admit. Double time and a half.
Did I mention Wallace solved the mystery of the guy down the block with the fancy car? It turns out he is a limo driver and I would not have known that because the car is not a limo. Nor is that a common occupation in this area. It makes sense now that Wallace points out the details. The real cold spell came after he flew north. The theory is that his jet blast pushed the Michigan weather all the way here.
That’s it. Not even any trivia. I was too tuckered to read. Check back in tomorrow. I’ll be home all day.
And all night. It is now midnight and this is my worst cold in years, at least since that one I brought home from Venezuela for all my coworkers. I doubt it is influenza because the symptoms are so uncomplicated that nothing helps. Just me and Pudding-Tat, who is relishing in the bonanza of attention since I’ve can’t do much but give her belly-rubs and read. I’ve read everything in the house at least three times.
So I took up and read a book on rocket science. It is a 1950-ish treatise by von Braun concerning a space station. He predicted it would cost $4 billion or a quarter of the defense budget for a single year. Think of it, we could have been on Mars by 1970 and by now letting somebody else worry about walls and suicide bombers. I was more interested in the design of the lift rockets, however.
Not many people realize most of the rocket trip to orbit is powered by momentum, not by the rocket motor. What is complicated is the theory as to why different stages are best for the job. Note that the builders don’t refer to them as stages, but as “sections”, where the first stage booster is the tail section, the second rocket is the mid section and the third stage is the nose section. Then, as now, all the technology is in place but we are too busy fighting over oil and inflating non-existent profits.
What’s this, the president is going to put America back to work? Not with thirty million of them making more on welfare than minimum wage, he’s not. The guy is dreaming. Welfare, for its merits, is also something that allows the unmotivated to snub any job offer (much less working on the road gang, always a favorite for depression-era politicians, ask Hitler). I believe Obama’s saying everyone who wants a job will have one. That conveniently leaves out those who don’t want a job because they’re already getting free money. Rewording the proposal, would you rather a $3,000 per month job where you have to get up every morning, or will you take $1,000 to lay around all day long? Silence is an answer.
