{"id":17718,"date":"2015-10-30T10:58:32","date_gmt":"2015-10-30T17:58:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=17718"},"modified":"2015-10-30T10:58:32","modified_gmt":"2015-10-30T17:58:32","slug":"squeezing-ambergris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=17718","title":{"rendered":"Squeezing Ambergris"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_1954\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The new trailer’s home, parked behind the new fence we had built to screen it from view.\u00a0I’m fighting the urge to hook it to the new truck and drive around for no reason. There’ll be plenty of occasions\u00a0to use it, and soon.<\/p>\n

Donna says I’ve had\u00a0my birthday and Christmas,\u00a0not just this year but all the ones to come. I’m like the guy\u00a0who wins the lottery and says screw this monthly stipend\u00a0noise, I want the money now, all of it.<\/p>\n

When I was going to college in Sacramento\u00a0I worked at a gas station. The business next door rented travel trailers; they’d bring them to us\u00a0to have the wheel bearings greased.\u00a0We were always greasing trailers, and I got the impression it’s something you have to do often if you own one. So I asked about it when I picked up the new trailer. Every six months, they said. Back in the day that meant jacking\u00a0up the trailer, removing the wheels, using a special tool to pull the bearings, swishing them\u00a0around in a bucket of gasoline to wash off the crud, then repacking them by hand with thick axle grease\u2014a dirty, time-consuming job (but one that always made me think of Ishmael squeezing ambergris in Moby Dick). Oh, boy, I thought. Then they showed me how it’s done these days: you put a grease gun to a\u00a0fitting in the middle of the hub and squeeze a little in.\u00a0No jack, no lug wrench, no bucket of gasoline, no dirty hands.\u00a0O brave new world, that has such convenience in it!<\/p>\n

Donna leaves Monday for Las Vegas. She’ll be there\u00a0from the first to the tenth of November, watching over our grandson while our son and daughter-in-law\u00a0vacation in Hawaii. I’ll be home with Polly, who starts a new job at the local school district today. She’ll be working in the cafeteria at a high school less than a mile from our house, which’ll be great for the time she’s still in our house, but the goal is for her to find her own place as soon as possible\u2014she’s been with us four months now, after all, and we’re all ready for her to be on her own again. I don’t imagine she’ll find anything affordable in this neck of the woods, but who knows? A lot of people have casitas, small “mother-in-law” houses, on their property, and surely some\u00a0owners rent them out. Friends of ours who live just down the street have one. It’s not for rent, but they’ve allowed us to use it a few times when our son and his family come to visit.<\/p>\n

On November 12th, two days after Donna returns, I’m taking off on a four-day motorcycle ride to Death Valley, via Calexico, Lone Pine, and Lake Havasu. Thank goodness it’s cooled down.<\/p>\n

Speaking of which, we had to close our\u00a0windows and sliding patio doors yesterday because it was too<\/em> cool. It’s also been raining like hell, and we’re hearing snow forecasts for the mountains (in fact it already has snowed in Flagstaff). It’s going to be a hard winter. Hard on people, I mean, but good on the land and water tables. I hope. Don’t want to jinx it before it happens, so just forget I said anything about it, okay?<\/p>\n

I didn’t watch the Republican debate on CNBC this week, but I caught\u00a0parts of it later on other news channels. From what I saw, this debate\u00a0didn’t seem all that\u00a0different from\u00a0previous ones. The moderators probably were nasty and over-focused on the horse race, not the candidates’ ideas and policy positions, but they did ask some intelligent\u00a0economic policy questions\u00a0(which the candidates “answered” by attacking the media). Afterwards there was much moaning and groaning, not just from the candidates but from the Republican Party, about the hostility of the questions and the fact-checking by the moderators (who were live-Googling candidates’ statements and claims as fast as they could type on their iPads and smart phones). Huh. If you espouse hostile policies and make patently fraudulent claims, you should expect hostile questions and call-outs, am I right?<\/p>\n

I’m sure the GOP candidates would rather be in the Fox News bubble, answering softball\u00a0questions from sympathetic moderators, free to lie without being\u00a0challenged or\u00a0called out.\u00a0I think we’ll soon see them, starting with Trump and Carson, demanding that kind of kid-glove treatment. If they’re not demanding it already.<\/p>\n

We usually avoid parties, but we’re going to a Halloween party tonight, and in costume to boot. Donna’s going to be Tippi Hedren, with felt crows in her hair and on her clothes, and I’m going be be an identity thief. I’ll have to let you know how that works out!<\/p>\n

My birthday’s tomorrow. I’ll be 69. I’ve already celebrated (truck\/fence\/trailer, remember?), so I have no plans\u00a0beyond making\u00a0a nice dinner and handing out candy to the few children who typically ring our bell\u00a0every year. Sunday morning we’re\u00a0taking our bicycles downtown for Cyclovia<\/a>. Next week I hope to get Polly’s Ducati running again and put it up for sale on Craigslist.<\/p>\n

It’s a nice time of year. I’m always happy when fall rolls around. And I love sharing my birthday with Halloween, which really should be a national holiday, don’t you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The new trailer’s home, parked behind the new fence we had built to screen it from view.\u00a0I’m fighting the urge to hook it to the new truck and drive around for no reason. There’ll be plenty of occasions\u00a0to use it, and soon. Donna says I’ve had\u00a0my birthday and Christmas,\u00a0not just this year but all the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,18,15,10,5,2,8],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-17718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bicycling","category-consumerism","category-cooking","category-current-events","category-motorcycling","category-personal","category-politics","tag-halloween"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17718"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17729,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17718\/revisions\/17729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}