scary shit (it's halloween after all)

My son decided to be Kellyanne Conway for Halloween this year.  While there might be more scary folks out there, she has got to be in everyone's top 10.  (yes that is the outfit she wore for the Inaugural).

My daughter is also scary.  She is an avocado.  The prices on those when NAFTA blows up and we build a wall will be crushing.  Unless you are in avocado farmer in CA in which case it's happy days.

Other scary things:

1.  A 5th grader dressing as harley quinn

2.  A 6th grader (girl) showing off her thong and complaining about it being uncomfortable in the bathroom.

Which of course brings us to the AMS dress code and Harvey Weinstein.  Harvey has also got to be on everyone's top 10 list for scary, but he has also reinvigorated the conversation about sexism.  Why does it seem like the Aspen Middle school dress code is targeted strictly at girls--i.e. laten sexism?  

The dress code states that in general dress should be modest.  Specifically prohibited are halter-tops, backless clothing, immodestly short dresses or shorts, spaghetti straps, bare midriffs and exposed undergarments.  

How many guys you think get hit with dress code violations?  Should girls be empowered to wear whatever they want, modest or not?  Is it healthy to have a code where girls are learning how to game the system ?(there are strategies to getting away with the exposed midriff and I have personally seen it successfully pulled off).  Where the hell do yoga pants fit in this discussion?  Are they immodest when a kid wears them but not mom?  If so how old is a kid?  Why is a too short skirt ok when it's part of the cheerleader uniform?  Obviously this quickly becomes a rabbit hole in which you lose your sanity.

Being a guy who leads towards the extreme I will offer the following suggestion --either no dress code or uniforms.  And I must admit I find it scary that there are 6th grade kids who want to wear a thong, and whose parents actually buy them one.  Thank God mine wanted to be an avocado.

Warning ....Trump has taken over my blog and issued some tweets

Gotta Get some SNOW tires. Gonna get big ones cause everything about Trump is so BIG (ask my wives they know).

Went to BIG-O tire (cause its big) and told em I wanted the BIG FOOT cause I need BIG FEET because I got BIG HANDS.  No one can have bigger tires than Donald.

Need BIG snow tires because of kids sports.  Seems I always have to drive over a pass in snow to get kids to swimming, or skiiiiiing,  or hockey.  WHY?

There is a rule that says I can't fly my kids in my TRUMP jets.  OMG what a looser rule.  Winners fly and loooooosers drive.  General Kelly please change that rule.

Keith at BIG-o tire is the best.  He told one customer not to get new tires, because her all weather tires are good enough.  She didn't have kids to drive over passes to sports (loser mom with loser kids).  Keith can't work for Trump if he don't sell the biggest tires to everyone.

Changed mind on Keith.  Probably a loooooser dem.  SAD.  But wait.

Keither at BIG-OOOOOOO doesn't speak Mexican and doesn't hire guys to work in shop who speak MExican.  Yea Keither.  MAGA

When paying bill, service rep did speak Mexican. His hands torn up from fight with American.  Build wall, get fighting Mexican's out.  MAGA

no dogs no.....you can't sniff that butt

Believe it or not both Chicago and Aspen have their share of coyotes.  There were at least a handful of mornings that I saw coyotes in OZ park in Chicago, and the occasional time where the dogs tried to chase them down.

Chicago coyotes tended to keep a lot of distance from my dogs, and be small, mangey pittful looking things.  Which is kinda supprising because you would think they would be near the top of the food chain in Chiago and they would be feasting on tons of rats.  But for whatever reason they always looked to be on the edge of starvation.

Not so much this one I found at the end of my street in Aspen.  It didn't really want to give me or my dogs any space (they were losing their minds).  And there are a number of predators higher up the food chain out here but this coyote looked quite healthy.

So, no Wiggins and Clemmens you can't (shouldn't) try to smell that 'dog's' butt.

ever want to be your kids --and things your wife says that makes you say whaaaaaat?

I am jealous of my kids.  I want to be able to skate like my daughter and play guitar like my son.

I want to be able to go skiing on weekends.  And mountain biking.  And road biking.  And hiking and climbing, and fishing and rafting and hanging out around town with beautiful people.

My son got slapped around by some of his old Chicago friends last year when he complained about having to go skiing.

Son "I can't believe my dad made me go skiing today"
Friend "OMG I am hanging up on you now--you're complaining about going skiing in Aspen you ass"

some clips from the sound check for 50 fest 

and things you didn't think you would hear your wife say

make sure your son tries on his dress tonight, I might need to make some adjustments (KellyAnn costume for halloween)

And the infamous 

Didn't mom tell you my (not quite yet) girlfriend was sleeping over?  Mom and her parents said it was ok.

I want to be my kids.

the best time to launch an attack is........wait first

between 3-4 am.

Did you know that?  Human's cognitive processing is at its lowest at that time.

Did you know one of the most effective forms of torture is to wake someone up right after they fall asleep?  Over and over again.

And my tale of woe is NOTHING compared to those in northern Cali fleeing wildfires, PR with no electricity or water or food, of folks in Houston or Florida who got walloped by a hurricane.  Nope my little tale is not even a pimple on the ass of those communities.

But did I tell you about last night?

Sunday 3 am our alarm system goes off.  Why (do we all get false alarms at 3 am)?  Because the temperature in the wine cellar has risen above a critical threshold.  I've got no wine in the wine cellar and normally wouldn't be running the AC in October to cool an empty room but the wine room AC also cools the 'smart' technology that runs the HVAC and AV systems.  And if the racks of equipment which are in a small enclosed space overheat it gets expensive in a hurry ergo I am paying to run the AC in the wine room and technology racks.  After a couple of attempts and phone calls with two different teams of security personnel and the property manager, I manage to bypass the alarm.  Back to bed at 6 am.  Did I mention that Saturday night was my 50 b day party involving a bit of drink and a late night?  Did I mention that Will Phalen (check him out and buy his music  will phalen  ) was staying at our house post show with his 1 year old daughter.

Fast forward to Sunday early evening.  My daughter tells me she is in so much pain she wants to die.  She has a searing pain in her head.  It feels like an ice pick is sticking in her eye.  And she is having trouble seeing out of her right eye.  A quick chat with a couple of doctors sends us the the ER.  Five hours later (around midnight) we return home with drugged up daughter (IV painkillers are the best).  Best guess is she had her first migraine.  While a bleed is still possible given how she went through the neurological test it seems unlikely.  Breath sigh of relief.  Go to sleep with one ear on daughter sleeping one floor below us.

Wake up at 3 am.  What the fuck was that noise?  With my adrenaline spiking my first thought is my daughter.  But my daughter wouldn't make a noise like that.  Second thought is that it has to be the alarm (having had it go off just the night before at 3am).  I turn the alarm off--but wait its already off and on funky bypass due to the unfixed issue from the day before.  However, trying to turn it off almost sets it off again (yes 3 am cognitive function is crap).  I manage to override alarm just before it starts full on blaring.

But what the fuck is that noise?  It's coming from the basement and sounds like this.

No that is not video from last years boiler blow-up.  That was this morning's boiler failure.  I immediately shut the boiler down.  But that doesn't help.  Every 5 minutes the boiler makes this god awful racket for 1.5 minutes, and then pauses for 5 minutes and then restarts again.  No response from property manager.  No alarms or calls from security company.  Just a daughter with a migraine sleeping 30 feet from the boiler.  Oh yea and remember the little tidbit about torture.  Take an exhausted person at 3:30 in the morning and wake em up for a minute and then let them fall back to sleep and then repeat 5 minutes later.  You get the picture.  And is the boiler gonna blow up?


So should I be paying rent for this home or should I be getting paid as a caretaker for this property.  We had 3 different trades in to begin service on issues last week, and given the current issues I expect at least 3 different trades this week.  What do you think?

I am soooooooo not a local

I was driving over to a friends house who lives in old snowmass, when I found myself pulling a total gaper.  Coming over Watson's Divide I just had to pull over and take in the view.  The fall colors were unreal.  It was like mother nature acid.  And the day before I hiked up to the top of Aspen and again was struck dumb by the beauty.  I think locals are supposed to be too cool and inured to stop everything and just look, and that ain't me.  I'm the guy with the local address and the kids in the local school who is just dumbstruck by the view.  Please don't run me down while I gape.

I was also gaping at my neighbor's little electric car.  Well not the car, but the snowtires.  Yes they are putting snowtires on their electric wheels.  Wow, who knew.

Pennywise almost got my dog

For those of you not in the know Pennywise is the name of evil incarnate in Stephen King's book IT, who primarily inhabits the sewer's of Dury taking many innocent lives.

How did a fictional clown almost get my dog?  Finishing a hike down sunnyside my dogs took a slight detour to a fast flowing creek.  The wife and I kept on walking.  One dog took a drink, gave a yelp and ran to us.  Dog two didn't reappear.  We kept walking, dog two is known to roam but being a retriever always returns.  Except not this time.  20 minutes later we backtracked to the stream, and looked down the long drainage pipe the water fed into and gave a shout.  No response.  We walked a couple 100 yards to the first manhole cover, levered it off.  No dog.  We walked to the next manhole cover--gave another shout and still no response.  We kept walking and found the water drained into an uncovered steep decent and clinging to the side for dear life was dog two.  Our dog wasn't going to float with Pennywise in the sewer system today.  And she was not a fan of the 1/4 mile covered water park ride either.

Following up on the last post--there has been some questions about the alternative facts.  Due to popular demand I will give a couple of hints.  There is only one alternative fact, my son is planning on going as Kellyann for Halloween (maybe scarier than Pennywise) and I did work for Bill Colby 'consulting' in DC.

No more clues.

you can't make this shit up

Yesterday while walking the dogs I promised myself my next post would be super duper positive......forget that a college nickname of mine was Gummer.  I was gonna go Hallmark sappy.

And then at about 3:15AM I found myself wishing I had a gun.  Not an AR-15 or a sidearm but a side by side shotgun.  Because I really wanted to disarm-silence our alarm system, which was screaming to high heaven that we had some kinda gas leak.  Or maybe not.  You see when you get a heavy snowfall in early October, and lots of leaves are still on the trees and then those tree branches break and hit power lines which results in power surges, your smart house becomes so dumb it's enough to make me reach for my Winchester under the bed and unload two rounds into the dang alarm system. 

Reaching for the shotgun is never a good first option in home maintenance.  But it had already been a long night.  First all of the lights (and I mean every light in the house) went on and off at about midnight.  This freaked my daughter out who then tried to sleep in bed with us.  I relocated her to her room and fell asleep in her room until the lights did their on-off thing again (with a quick alarm chirp to add to the fun) at about 1 am.  Luckily she slept through round two of the poltergeist lights.  I went back to my bed, only to be woken up AGAIN by the lights at 3AM.  Then at 3:15 the home security alarm went apeshit warning us of a gas leak and carbon monoxide poisoning.  Of course since I am renting the home, and have never even thought of using the alarm I possessed neither the alarm company's phone number (they called the owner in sacramento to alert her--she said no worries i'ts all good) nor the code to disable the system.  Ergo looking to use some lead to render the system dead.  Luckily after about 10 minutes I was able to get the system shut off.  At which point I have both kids, dogs, and wife all looking at me wondering if we are dying from carbon monoxide.  Given that the hamster was doing fine I figured we were too.  But wait, the fire department had to come by around 4 am to confirm no carbon monoxide leak (there wasn't).  We had another round of poltergeist lights at 5AM, and then the blowers in the master bath tub (don't ask) went off at 5:15, 5:30 and 5:45.  Being awake was good because I was able to let in the gas company rep who wanted to confirm there wasn't a gas leak (there wasn't).

Which you realize isn't really a bad night at all when you check the news at 3:30 while waiting for the fire department and see the news out of Vegas. 

A bit of background about me.  I won a ton of NRA sharpshoot patches as a kid.  I grew up with rifles and shotguns in my house (no gun locks just sitting in my closet).  However, I didn't know anyone who wasn't a cop who owned a handgun or an automatic gun (autoloader shotgun, automatic rifle etc).  After school I served in delta force and then did a little bit of wet work for a 'consulting' group based near DC.  The consulting job didn't pan out because my language skills suck and I am about as persuasive as a bulldozer but I could pull a trigger pretty good.  And I've got a bit of extra gray hair from some hairy situations.

While I am no expert, I can tell you that the incident in Vegas is only possible because the shooter was able to get hold of and or modify weapons to near military grade.  If he only had the single shot rifles of my youth the number of dead would have been cut dramatically.  Load, sight, shoot, eject, reload---and repeat 100s of times.  He would have collapsed of exhaustion.  His fingers would be so number he wouldn't be able to load a round.  We also have to thank our lucky stars that lots of the NRA's good guys didn't go to the show packing sidearms.  Had 30 concert goers pulled out handguns,  and started to look return fire to defend themselves there would have been many more dead, and the first responders job would have been infinitely harder.  Let's also not forget that until this incident the GOP leaders were going to vote for the SHARE act which would have legalized silencers. 

Talk about jumping the shark.  Silencers both reduce the sound of a gun being fired and also reduce muzzle flash.  This is really useful when you are hunting people and you want to avoid detection.  It's a bit scary if you are hiking through the woods and you can't hear hunters, and it's really problematic if you are a first responder trying to locate a madman with an armory of automatic weapons.  Oh and don't worry, silencers don't affect muzzle velocity and won't interfere with those armor piercing rounds the NRA has made sure you have access to.  The fact that the NRA was a huge supporter of SHARE, and that many legislators were prepared to vote for it tells you all you need to know about who has your well being in mind vs gun manufactures wellbeing.

Some very basic facts:

1. The more guns you bring to a gunfight the more people will die.  There is a lovely myth about the good guy who appears right next to the bad guy and takes him out.  I see it in movies all the time, in the real world not so much.  
2. The more automatic guns are around, the more people will die (shooting a single round straight when you are being shot at is really hard to do---all that dang adrenaline is great for a fist fight with a bear, but not so good at steadying your hands when you are trying to shoot someone 50 feet away little less 100s of feet away).  
3. Silencers will only make madmen more deadly and our heroes job much more difficult.

On a different note my son plans on being Kellyanne Conway for Halloween.  How scary will that be?  How many people will he trigger?

Full disclosure---this is my first (and hopefully) only post with some alternative facts.  How many did you spot?

I'm getting triggered

Apparently that is the new hip term for getting upset.

For sure I am upset about all the politically correct BS.  Sadly my very liberal friends I fear our PCness has helped give rise to Donald Trump--or at least the fire that drives some of his supporters.  Is supporting transgender bathrooms a fight worth having when the cost is Trump in the White House?

But PC triggering in little old idyllic Aspen...............

The most recent PC triggered person occurred today at the college fair which is held at the Aspen Middle School.  My son was volunteering to help with the avionics program presentation and was explaining to a friend that he didn't text her back last night because it was late and he was very tired after having dinner with a bunch of old Jews.  An adult volunteer overheard this statement, was triggered and asked for his name so she could report him.  My son gave her his name.  Lets see what happens.

A bit of context--my son's first name is that of an old testament prophet, and his last name is so Jewish it's often used as a punchlines in jokes.  He spent yesterday morning at temple, yesterday evening at temple and after temple had a break fast with the members of the congregation who went to the end of day service.  The average age at the break fast was probably 60 and that is skewed lower by my son and daughters presence (ages 14 and 11).  So yea he had a long day of temple and then dinner with a bunch of old Jews.  I guess now he is an anti semitic ageist Jewish kid who while doing volunteer work spoke to loudly to a friend about the religious and age composition of the population at the Yom Kippur break fast he attended the prior evening.

Next trigger warning.  My son's theater teacher sent us an email saying that in an improv section of class he pretended to be drunk.  She informed us that theater class was PG, and he was skating close to R.  This is 8th grade theater which ought to qualify for at least PG 13.  From this summer's movies that would include lots of drinking, sex and cussing (think Wonder Woman, Fast and Furious or Guardians of the Galaxy).  If the class has to stick with PG only we are looking at Smurfs, the LEGO movie or god forbid Captain Underpants.  Had he stripped down to his underwear and threatened to fly out the window (stone cold sober thank goodness) I am sure I would have gotten a call from the principal.  Tell me what seems wrong here---they have surprise Elk organ dissections in science class, discuss sex, drugs, and drink in wellness class, but gotta limit their acting to the Smurfs?  And we get a school wide email from the principal alerting us that the show 13 Reasons Why might make our kids commit suicide.  Are you kidding me?!?!?!?  I'm getting triggered.

But lets leave the small town of Aspen behind and move to the Big City of New York where PC has jumped the shark.  Lets consider SEX.  No not fun sweaty sex with another sober consenting adult in a safe and proper fashion (I plan on sending my son to college with a lawyer, a contract outlining consent, and a breathalyzer to make sure he doesn't have sex without getting consent from his partner with a sobriety check and multiple sober witnesses to said consent)--I am talking about referring to someone in either writing or conversation by their sex (i.e. by using male or female pronouns).

You know when my very gay intelligentsia friend (how gay???? he acted on Broadway in Cats for like a decade gay, and has degrees from two ivy league schools) says that he is getting blowback from referring to actors as her or him, he or she and not it, them or they and he is rolling his eyes with exasperation you have jumped the PC shark.

Did something in this manage to trigger you?  Are you getting angry?  Does it make you wanna go do something stupid like march with Klux Klutz Klan members or vote for Trump to show all those thin skinned PC police?

Don't be stupid---to quote my Rabbi (way out of context)  "this too shall pass".