“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you had a birthday. Big whup.
There better be a grand-do and foofaraw when my birthday
rolls around in August, is what.”
Miss Mia Sopaipilla wants to know if all this birthday bushwa is over and done with.
The only birthday that counts as far as she is concerned is her own, which falls sometime in August. Miss Mia joined us in late October 2007, almost immediately after the passing of Chairman Meow, and Herself recollects that she was 10 to 12 weeks old at the time.
Miss Mia, not Herself. Herself is younger than me, but not that much younger.
Meanwhile, now that spring break is over — sorry, kids! — it seems we’re in for some tasty weather, with highs in the 60s and 70s over the next 10 days. Thus cycling of the outdoor variety is strongly indicated. I may even collect a few long-overdue tan lines. We’ve been short on shorts weather in the high desert so far this year.
All in all, it seems a fine time to be childless, with education completely out of sight in the old rear-view mirror. Albuquerque Public Schools will reopen on April 5, for a full five days per week, but students have the option of continuing with remote learning until the school year ends on May 25.
This must be a fun choice for the parents. If you choose school learning, you’ll probably have to transport the kiddos to and fro yourself, because APS expects to be short of bus drivers. If you choose remote learning, you get to continue being an unpaid teacher’s assistant.
Unless your boss calls you back to work. And what if you’re not one of the lucky people who can work from home? How does a teacher handle a class that’s have actual, half virtual? Many questions, few answers.
It’s going to be educational, in more ways than one.
Tags: Albuquerque Public Schools, Chairman Meow, cycling, Education, Miss Mia Sopaipilla, spring
Mad Blog Media 
March 28, 2021 at 12:00 pm |
She looks at you like you owe her money. Or, worse, like you are a potential meal. Spooky shit that I could not deal with. Feeling pretty puny today after second jab yesterday. It will pass.
March 28, 2021 at 12:21 pm |
You can see why our ancestors rolled the rock over to block the cave entrance come nightfall. Sumbitches are sneaky.
If we leave the bedroom door open at night one of us will be awakened by a cat sitting on him/her. She is no doubt recalling the glory days of the species. “Schweet, I got dinners for days and days here.”
Everybody says round two is the worstest. You’ll be swell in a day or two. I hate the idea of deliberately setting out to make myself feel like hammered shit (though this was rarely a concern Back in the Day®, when I whiled away the hours whistling into empty whisky bottles). But in this case it seems wise to take one punch now instead of a full-blown ass-whuppin’ later.
March 28, 2021 at 12:26 pm |
Sandy and three of our four friends had no trouble after the second jab. Four out of six did fine. So, I think you will be fine. You got a 75 chance of no side effects. You can’t get those odds in lost wages.
March 28, 2021 at 12:30 pm |
Plus we want to make sure we can get our “vaccine passport,” credential, or whatever they’re calling it. Don’t wanna be told at the dock that we can’t take that luxury cruise down the Suez Canal. I hear they need strong backs to unload a boat down to there.
March 28, 2021 at 4:02 pm |
Pat, I hope you get to feeling well soon. Fortunately as you infer, it is much easier to deal with knowing that it is only side effects. Did you and the folks you mention all get the Mod jab? Do the people who had reactions also get more noticeable spring allergies? Oops! POG I hope my Mod reaction -to- normal allergy reactions may not be applicable in your case.
Yeah, that Suez ditch thing is a problem. Apparently they’ve discovered hard rock under the bow section. Wouldn’t it be interesting to be a fly on the wall in the Lloyd’s boardroom on Monday. Well perhaps a cockroach. A fly might not survive the impact of splattering manure that hits the boardroom fan.
March 28, 2021 at 5:40 pm |
Thanks Shawn. It was the Moderna vaccine, and I do have allergies.
I sent the Suez Canal Authority a suggestion. I suggested they inject compressed air into the mud and sand under the bow. That should liquify the sand and mud allow the ship to move with the tug boats pulling. Brute force isn’t working so why not? Whaddaya think Khal?
March 28, 2021 at 11:25 pm |
The injection of air in the sand would likely only make the water less dense causing the bow to sink further as long as the air was being injected. But the idea may be moot anyway, because from what I’ve read, there is rock located in the area under the bow.
Here’s an idea, one of which is probably being considered: Hire as many heavy lift sky crane helicopters and begin lifting containers off of the ship in the bow area. The choppers would transport and drop (set down quickly) the containers in an area nearby the ship. Fast rigging would be used so that crews wouldn’t need to spend time removing the cable rigging from each container. I suspect that each chopper could have a container offloaded every 10 minutes, resulting in an optimistic 60 containers in a 12 hour day for each chopper. The other 12 hours would be planned for chopper maintenance. Based on an average weight of 40k pounds for each container, that would be about 2.4 million pounds (1200 tons) for each chopper. If you’ve got 6 choppers, that is 7200 tons or approximately 3% of the total ships gross tonnage in one day. Estimating figures based on the density of water and the hull size of the ship, in one day of chopper lifts the ship could reduce it’s draft by slightly less than a foot – An amount that might (probably would) allow the ship to be pulled off the “beach”.
But! As I have written this, I read that the Ever Given is no longer ever beached.
March 29, 2021 at 7:46 am |
All hail the Worm Moon. It got the boat off the rocks and blew me right out of a sound sleep.
The moon glaring through our bedroom window at stupid-thirty reminded me of the time a Tucson police chopper hovering just above street level in a hunt for evildoers aimed its searchlight through the living-room window and onto the couch where I was crashing after a long day of house-hunting for my new gig at The Arizona Daily Star. Whocketa whocketa whocketa, etc. No “Ride of the Valkyries,” happily.
The allergies are fierce this spring in the Duke City. I lose a couple pounds every morning just blowing my nose.
March 29, 2021 at 8:36 am |
Our bubble is 6 people, three couples. Sandy and I were the only ones to have have bad side effects: chills muscle aches, and fatigue. Popped an Aleve and Benadryl at 6PM last night and went to bed. Got up at 7AM feeling OK. Worth it? Hell yeah. Your odds are still good not to have anything more than a sore arm for a day or two.
March 28, 2021 at 7:23 pm |
One jab down, one to go.
May we each get through number two with out feeling like poo. Or even Pooh.
Nice and warm here in the L.A. Foothills. First bare-foot day of 2021, so things can’t be that bad.
March 29, 2021 at 7:56 am |
Barefoot. Oooh. I gotta get me some of that. It may happen today — we’re supposed to hit the 70s.
And yes, please, let’s all get through No. 2 without becoming mired in it.
March 29, 2021 at 6:12 am |
After a pretty mild start to spring we got kicked in the grapes yesterday by a little winter action here in the Mitten State. A fine day for the second shot! Can’t say I feel particularly perky this morning as tossing and wrestling with various voter suppression villains in last nights dreams didn’t help. I wisely (rare occurrence) cleared the schedule for today so I can recover if necessary from the Moderna booster. I once crashed badly on my bike on a Saturday, cracked some ribs and then next day flew to Interbike (Long Beach days POG!) figuring if I was gonna feel crappy- why not in a place that was warm in October. Found out being on the convention floor trying to shill bike products was as close to living hell as I ever want to get.
March 29, 2021 at 8:00 am |
Good man y’self. A little cushion never hurts.
I don’t think I ever did Interbike on the DL. But I once had to work the copy desk at The New Mexican with a variety of injuries, including a broken collarbone. That was likewise great fun. When I broke the second c-bone I was a freelancer without health insurance, and that was even more entertaining.
Flying with cracked ribs must’ve been amusing. “Miss, please bring me a powerful in-flight beverage every 15 minutes until I pass out, and every half hour thereafter.”