Well old Bill is headed off to the Cresent City, and keeping any eye on old Jeanne , while thinking, I might rather be sitting on the couch.

So this is what I really want. A Dyson Animal, a machine made for dog hair.

So the Hoover starting smoking and smelling heavily of burning rubber about three weeks ago. I turned it over and found the belt was about burnt up cause the bearing on one end of the roller brush was going out. So the thing was running in a bind. I ordered up the new belt and roller, along with a new HEPA filter. 55 bucks, then waited two and a half weeks for the parts to show up. In the mean time the dog hair is getting pretty deep. Well Thursday the parts show up. I install the new roller and belt, and fire that mother up. All seems fine. I can't hardly wait to get started on Saturday.

On Saturday I vacuum the bedroom and hallway, and am working on the dining room when POW, the sucker blows up in a cloud of dust. Came apart so hard it knocked the machine over and blew the secondary filter out the side. The dog came running in from outside to see what had happened. I turned it over, and the belt and new roller were fine.....looked just like new. But I discovered the case that holds the motor was cracked open, and the motor shaft was locked tight. I took the whole thing apart to discover that the blades on the main fan had broken apart, a catostrophic failure. Near as I could tell, it had nothing to do with the belt and roller, but was some kind of fatigue failure of the fan impeller material. Shit. I had just spent 55 bucks and now I need a new vacuum.

Snow !


It's been raining and sleeting today. First time we've had rain for months, except the ocassional thunder and dust storms that have blown though here, usually in a matter of minutes. I have a hunch the mountians are going to look like this photo when we get up tomorrow.

I've been closely watching the news the last couple of nights, and I'm more convinced than ever that "corporate" interests and the global moneychangers are picking our pockets, and effectively using our own government to do it.

The failure of the your government to renew the ban on assault weapons is the perfect example. The international trade in highly deadly small arms is much too large, certainly too powerful to be denied a lucrative market in the U.S. It's amazing to me that serious sporting shooters have allowed themselves to be used by the gun lobby to promote a point of view that cannot be justified. They are working for their own enemies, and don't even know it.

Most of the people I know, who are undying supporters of the NRA, believe that someday they may have to form a militia to protect us all from some unseen threat, or that we may have to take back our government from tyrants. I have a news flash for them, if it comes to war in the streets in America, the folks in power have weapons available to deal with it. Weapons that will make those small arms useless, weapons we have paid for, and the money is going to the same folks that are pushing the assault weapons into our streets, folks with many friends in high places.

We have also learned that their threshold for justifying the use of those powerful weapons is not all that low.

All we are left to do is shoot each other, in the streets with assault weapons.

The Republican Party really wants you to think of government, in nearly all its forms, as the enemy, or at least as your adversary. If you really need govenment, its best run by people, just like you, that don't really trust the folks in Washington. My friends, I think it is OUR GOVERNMENT, not theirs. The only voice we have in the way our county and our world operates is through our government.

I know the promise of America is something much greater than we are getting. I say throw the rascals out!

Willy at the Martin



Inspired by his children, Bungalow Bill trys his hand at posting a photo.

wWw.gopconvention.com: "Now, while young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrat's manic obsession to bring down our Commander-in-Chief. "