While I totally don’t condone this, some days, I can completely understand the impulse!! Today, is one of them, people! Do not pass me on the shoulder!!
@mikibell, your day was a bit sucky yesterday. Whose turn is it for today? Mine? Hope not mine, but if it is my turn, I will submit to fate, so long as I can bitch, whine, and moan nonstop for purposes of generating comedy, pity, pathos, and/or contempt.
Well, I was “glamping” in the fifth wheel without my husband. After three days of listening to my 16 year old son having ridiculous fights with his girlfriend, I then discovered that the black tank dump valve was broken. Umm, we now have a trailer sized empty spot in the yard, and a trailer with a full tank is at the repair shop. That is gonna be a fun job for the tech, cause he has to remove the stuck piece by hand.
I did throw an extra blue pod or two down the toilet for him.
@Pamtha Think you need to blame the goat, @cranky1950, for that… too gross though. That is why when I had a little '88 Nissan sunrader camper I never used the toilet in it. Did not want to deal with a blackwater tank.
@Pamtha if I were that tech, I’d seriously be figuring out how to tip the entire 5th wheel trailer on its side to keep the black tank contents down hill!
@Kidsandliz My blackwater valve was stopped up when I got it. I managed to get it unstopped bymyownsef though. Wally’s had a valve that backflushes into the tank for such situations.
@redoak@cranky1950 Unfortunately, the valve BROKE inside of the tank. This is something more dire – as even the gray tank would not empty. We were spending a week at camp, so happy me thought “this is a GREAT time to do a thorough cleaning & backwash of both the gray & black tanks”. I closed the gray, ran it full of hot water with a cup of Dawn and let it sit for a couple of hours. Went to open the black tank first (cause you use the gray to “flush” the hose after dumping black) and NOTHING happened. Hmm, that’s bad. Let’s dump the gray and then think about the black some more… wait… NOTHING there?
/giphy Houston we have a problem
So yeah, I wish it was a simple backflush/cleaning poo pyramid. In brighter news, the rear black & gray tanks (we have a second half bath in the rear) are spotless, cause the plan worked there.
@Pamtha been considering an older RV/trailer for our off grid property instead of tent camping until we build a small bunkhouse and shower house.(Property tax, not a cottage loopholes.)
The casual observation so far - didn’t realize the tanks themselves had valves. Thought they dumped into a pipe that had a valve at the end and a Y-connected grey valve just before that valve to “flush” the crap at the final valve and in the temporary hose with grey water before closing and disconnecting.
Today I discovered that the city has decided to charge everyone, even volunteers, $6./day on weekends to park in the completely vacant parking garage which is owned by the city. (Free parking used to be the only perk.) This, combined with the 35 mile round trip commute, and my time, makes volunteering too expensive. Ten years- well, it’s been fun.
@OldCatLady
Wow, genius at work in your city policy-making.
Here, our local billionaires are our rather energetic and benevolent Sun Kings. They rebuilt downtown according to their tastes and their hopes: as a place of civilized, safe conviviality and “niceness” (serious art, low art, assorted dining, some music, films, street life, theater, outdoor entertainment) appropriate to this rather safe and rather conventional town.
There is little “cultural edge” here, but downtown is vibrant, welcoming, and pleasant. No one here wants FW to become NYC or LA or Chicago or Seattle, or even Dallas. So it’s good to be FW, I suppose, if possibly a little bland and predictable. And pleasant and safe and prosperous.
And so our billionaire Sun Kings set the example that all parking 6pm-6pm and on weekends would be free. All the other public parking lots and garages i know of followed the tradition. So downtown is full and busy and happy all weekend. Clean, pleasant, crime almost unheard-of. A wonderful place to walk around and decide where to go or who to meet up with next. And, of course, this greatly enhances the odds for food and entertainment startups, and greatly upped the value of all that lovely commercial real estate our billionaire Sun Kings just happen to own downtown. Our reigning imperial clan members are not clueless.
Was this the library volunteering you spoke of elsewhere? If that’s it, I suppose you will miss the library, and your friends there, terribly.
I can’t imagine that you are short of thoughts of how to spend your time; but how much of an emotional hole will this leave in the loss of relationships and commitments you would have preferred to keep active?
If you are talking about the Sarasota Ringling Museum/mansion/theater/grounds/whatever else they’ve got there now, the grounds are incredible.
The banyan trees alone are worth the price of admission and worth all the time you wish to spend feeling peaceable in their company.
And there is some kinda genuine Italian Renaissance theater on the grounds, isn’t there? That the Ringlings purchased in Italy and moved intact to Florida? Tiny and exquisitely beautiful?
And some incredible tiny but astounding art museum, showing off the Ringling collections, heavy on the Rubens, but well worth the time?
And don’t they also run a formal Clown College? Do they still run a formal circus school? There is obviously still a great market for artistic acrobatic circus showcases.
This banyan tree is on the Ringling property. One of many. Sitting under one of them always took me away from the mundane world.
@f00l Yes, the main library. It’s the daytime shelter for most homeless, and it fronts a city park where crime, drugs and antisocial behavior are popular. Today when I went out for lunch, a man was shouting on the street corner about how all (specific racial designation) must rise up against oppression and take back the… 20 minutes later he was still shouting loudly and never once did I see police. Inside, a friend of mine on the main desk had to call security twice in fifteen minutes to evict people who were behaving unacceptably. A normal day.
Recently re-restored to international architectural preservation standards. This means that anything added in contemporary times must be obviously modern and visually distinct from the original design. Any portion of the original design repaired or re-built must be, as far as possible, done using completely authentic aesthetics, design, and materials.
Quite a pretty small theater. Not renaissance itself; A Venetian high noblewoman, Catherine Cornaro became Queen of Cyprus by marriage. Shortly after marriage, her husband died; later, her son died and she became the monarch, under Venetian influence. THe Venetian s forced her abdication in 1489 and after that, ruled Cyprus directly as a colony. In compensation, Catharine was given the rank of Sovereign Lady of Asolo, and given the Italian town of Asolo to rule. Here she built a lovely and gracious small court, a bit of an artist’s colony.
The theatre was added to the court in 1798 and remodeled in the mid-1800’s. The Ringlings bought the theatre after World War II.
@f00l Not there, but took a tour during a stagecraft class. Unless they’ve added on a stage since I’ve been there. Ringling wandered around Europe collecting things. The art museum is a European art history course by itself and it’s all stuff he brought home from his wanderings. He even snagged a couple of carved stations of the cross that were disfigured during the reformation.
@cranky1950
The Ringlings took their big bucks to Europe and played a little of the “Citizen Kane robber baron” in shopping terms.
I suspect that most of the great European art now here in the US, at least thru the Impressionist period, crossed the Atlantic by way of robber baron and monopolist millionaire money from the GIlded Age.
I suppose all our Rubens and Rembrandts and a very long list of other classic works were purchased that way.
And so now we have here the contents of the Metropolitan Museum and the art museums on the National Mall. And the contents of the Gardner and the Kimball and so many other museums.
@f00l And your point is? Most of anything done in 19th early 20th century is the result of robber baron bucks. Hell the Fields were able to steal the state circus museum because the circus never gave the volunteers title to the trash equipment that they saved from going to the landfill, robber barons are still alive and well. Most of the good private colleges are the result of robber baron bucks, starting with Brown University through Dook.
@cranky1950
I dunno. I was just musing to myself o guess.
I guess, if you managed to be super rich and you happened to need a cleaned up reputation, a fabulous art collection and museum, or a college or hospital might do it.
Of course, the fabulous art collections of Europe often came about through similar means; or through the older European methods of gaining and preserving wealth and power: to use the resources of the church, royalty, and the aristocracy.
@f00l Carnegie funded a bunch of public libraries. Those are the good ol days that conservatives long for. It was better then. most in the south didn’t have shit but it was better.
@cranky1950
Oh, I remember growing up in what felt like a very narrow world where one encountered many rather narrow minds, each absolutely so sure of itself and the local chorus of agreement.
I felt a bit like some alien changeling, put there so as to be a not very significant version of a stranger in a strange land.
Yesterday was a bad merge day. Both directions on two 25+ mile trips had multiple intersections that open up to 2 lanes coming toward the light, then merge back to one lane after. Every single time assholes in the merging lane refused to do one and one merges, tailgated each=other, practically forced folks in the continuing lane to swerve or brake hard to let them in.
In early web days there used to be a website where you could post pics of stupid bad drivers like this to embarrass them. I’d seriously like to post pics showing car/license, ideally a thru window pic of the driver, and a warning about them.
@duodec I used Facebook and “Mom-shamed” someone driving recklessly in the middle school pickup car loop thing, in the hopes that there was a “6 degrees of Kevin Bacon” going on. Alas, no one recognized the car and it didn’t go viral.
People have a really hard time staying in their lane in roundabouts. (or “traffic circles” as we Yanks call 'em) I have to honk at people 50% of the time because they drift into my lane. A lot of the time, they’ll honk back like I did something wrong… They suck at driving and they get all embarrassed and mad when I call them out on it. It’s like, “Nobody honks at me!” <honk>
I have my meh-bought dashcam mirror thing. I should do a compilation video of all the piss-poor roundabout drivers.
Considerably better than those two gormless plonkers, innit.
@ruouttaurmind and my friend said I need to learn more British phrases… thank you!
@mikibell LOL. Oi! Yer mate seems to know their onions, innit. I’ve been heard to slip some odds n sods, but weren’t nuttin but tosh.
@ruouttaurmind
meh forums…is there anything you can’t do?
What. in. the. fuck?
@narfcake That it happened or that I understand??? or is that how your day is going?
@mikibell Both.
My day has been pretty good otherwise. At least no one was driving like those two! I do blame @cranky1950 that meh was down earlier, though.
Some days minorly suck.
@mikibell, your day was a bit sucky yesterday. Whose turn is it for today? Mine? Hope not mine, but if it is my turn, I will submit to fate, so long as I can bitch, whine, and moan nonstop for purposes of generating comedy, pity, pathos, and/or contempt.
/giphy "internet contempt"
@f00l
@f00l I like the little game you can play with that dino…
Well, I was “glamping” in the fifth wheel without my husband. After three days of listening to my 16 year old son having ridiculous fights with his girlfriend, I then discovered that the black tank dump valve was broken. Umm, we now have a trailer sized empty spot in the yard, and a trailer with a full tank is at the repair shop. That is gonna be a fun job for the tech, cause he has to remove the stuck piece by hand.
I did throw an extra blue pod or two down the toilet for him.
@Pamtha Think you need to blame the goat, @cranky1950, for that… too gross though. That is why when I had a little '88 Nissan sunrader camper I never used the toilet in it. Did not want to deal with a blackwater tank.
@Pamtha if I were that tech, I’d seriously be figuring out how to tip the entire 5th wheel trailer on its side to keep the black tank contents down hill!
@RedOak
Always inspirational, you are.
/giphy inspired
@Kidsandliz My blackwater valve was stopped up when I got it. I managed to get it unstopped bymyownsef though. Wally’s had a valve that backflushes into the tank for such situations.
@Pamtha I can’t believe the following didn’t plop to mind - did you try the do-all WD-40?
@f00l is that gif a representation of the gag reflex by the tech as the valve breaks loose?
@RedOak
Yeah, they edited the HP films too heavily and left out all the RV sequences.
@redoak @cranky1950 Unfortunately, the valve BROKE inside of the tank. This is something more dire – as even the gray tank would not empty. We were spending a week at camp, so happy me thought “this is a GREAT time to do a thorough cleaning & backwash of both the gray & black tanks”. I closed the gray, ran it full of hot water with a cup of Dawn and let it sit for a couple of hours. Went to open the black tank first (cause you use the gray to “flush” the hose after dumping black) and NOTHING happened. Hmm, that’s bad. Let’s dump the gray and then think about the black some more… wait… NOTHING there?
/giphy Houston we have a problem
So yeah, I wish it was a simple backflush/cleaning poo pyramid. In brighter news, the rear black & gray tanks (we have a second half bath in the rear) are spotless, cause the plan worked there.
/giphy Poo pyramid
Best. Giphy. Ever.
@Pamtha been considering an older RV/trailer for our off grid property instead of tent camping until we build a small bunkhouse and shower house.(Property tax, not a cottage loopholes.)
The casual observation so far - didn’t realize the tanks themselves had valves. Thought they dumped into a pipe that had a valve at the end and a Y-connected grey valve just before that valve to “flush” the crap at the final valve and in the temporary hose with grey water before closing and disconnecting.
Today I discovered that the city has decided to charge everyone, even volunteers, $6./day on weekends to park in the completely vacant parking garage which is owned by the city. (Free parking used to be the only perk.) This, combined with the 35 mile round trip commute, and my time, makes volunteering too expensive. Ten years- well, it’s been fun.
@OldCatLady See now you’ve got time to go to the Ringling Mvsevm make sure you tour the house and grounds.
@OldCatLady
Wow, genius at work in your city policy-making.
Here, our local billionaires are our rather energetic and benevolent Sun Kings. They rebuilt downtown according to their tastes and their hopes: as a place of civilized, safe conviviality and “niceness” (serious art, low art, assorted dining, some music, films, street life, theater, outdoor entertainment) appropriate to this rather safe and rather conventional town.
There is little “cultural edge” here, but downtown is vibrant, welcoming, and pleasant. No one here wants FW to become NYC or LA or Chicago or Seattle, or even Dallas. So it’s good to be FW, I suppose, if possibly a little bland and predictable. And pleasant and safe and prosperous.
And so our billionaire Sun Kings set the example that all parking 6pm-6pm and on weekends would be free. All the other public parking lots and garages i know of followed the tradition. So downtown is full and busy and happy all weekend. Clean, pleasant, crime almost unheard-of. A wonderful place to walk around and decide where to go or who to meet up with next. And, of course, this greatly enhances the odds for food and entertainment startups, and greatly upped the value of all that lovely commercial real estate our billionaire Sun Kings just happen to own downtown. Our reigning imperial clan members are not clueless.
Was this the library volunteering you spoke of elsewhere? If that’s it, I suppose you will miss the library, and your friends there, terribly.
I can’t imagine that you are short of thoughts of how to spend your time; but how much of an emotional hole will this leave in the loss of relationships and commitments you would have preferred to keep active?
I’m truly worry to hear.
@cranky1950
@OldCatLady
If you are talking about the Sarasota Ringling Museum/mansion/theater/grounds/whatever else they’ve got there now, the grounds are incredible.
The banyan trees alone are worth the price of admission and worth all the time you wish to spend feeling peaceable in their company.
And there is some kinda genuine Italian Renaissance theater on the grounds, isn’t there? That the Ringlings purchased in Italy and moved intact to Florida? Tiny and exquisitely beautiful?
And some incredible tiny but astounding art museum, showing off the Ringling collections, heavy on the Rubens, but well worth the time?
And don’t they also run a formal Clown College? Do they still run a formal circus school? There is obviously still a great market for artistic acrobatic circus showcases.
This banyan tree is on the Ringling property. One of many. Sitting under one of them always took me away from the mundane world.
@f00l Yes, the main library. It’s the daytime shelter for most homeless, and it fronts a city park where crime, drugs and antisocial behavior are popular. Today when I went out for lunch, a man was shouting on the street corner about how all (specific racial designation) must rise up against oppression and take back the… 20 minutes later he was still shouting loudly and never once did I see police. Inside, a friend of mine on the main desk had to call security twice in fifteen minutes to evict people who were behaving unacceptably. A normal day.
@cranky1950 Only tourists go there in summer.
@f00l That’s pre-renaissance theatre. It’s a raked stage theatre mostly suitable for staging servant of two masters or cycle shows.
@OldCatLady Fine debbie downer be that way. besides it’s airconditioned
@cranky1950
Here it is.
Recently re-restored to international architectural preservation standards. This means that anything added in contemporary times must be obviously modern and visually distinct from the original design. Any portion of the original design repaired or re-built must be, as far as possible, done using completely authentic aesthetics, design, and materials.
Quite a pretty small theater. Not renaissance itself; A Venetian high noblewoman, Catherine Cornaro became Queen of Cyprus by marriage. Shortly after marriage, her husband died; later, her son died and she became the monarch, under Venetian influence. THe Venetian s forced her abdication in 1489 and after that, ruled Cyprus directly as a colony. In compensation, Catharine was given the rank of Sovereign Lady of Asolo, and given the Italian town of Asolo to rule. Here she built a lovely and gracious small court, a bit of an artist’s colony.
The theatre was added to the court in 1798 and remodeled in the mid-1800’s. The Ringlings bought the theatre after World War II.
@f00l still is a pretty auditorium with a crappy stage by todays standards. essentially an indoor cycle wagon.
@f00l Here’s our downtown park. See the pretty statue.Hemming Park looking toward library
@cranky1950
I’ve never seen anything from the stage or backstage. Just toured it.
Did you ever work on s production there?
@f00l Not there, but took a tour during a stagecraft class. Unless they’ve added on a stage since I’ve been there. Ringling wandered around Europe collecting things. The art museum is a European art history course by itself and it’s all stuff he brought home from his wanderings. He even snagged a couple of carved stations of the cross that were disfigured during the reformation.
@cranky1950
The Ringlings took their big bucks to Europe and played a little of the “Citizen Kane robber baron” in shopping terms.
I suspect that most of the great European art now here in the US, at least thru the Impressionist period, crossed the Atlantic by way of robber baron and monopolist millionaire money from the GIlded Age.
I suppose all our Rubens and Rembrandts and a very long list of other classic works were purchased that way.
And so now we have here the contents of the Metropolitan Museum and the art museums on the National Mall. And the contents of the Gardner and the Kimball and so many other museums.
@f00l And your point is? Most of anything done in 19th early 20th century is the result of robber baron bucks. Hell the Fields were able to steal the state circus museum because the circus never gave the volunteers title to the trash equipment that they saved from going to the landfill, robber barons are still alive and well. Most of the good private colleges are the result of robber baron bucks, starting with Brown University through Dook.
@cranky1950
I dunno. I was just musing to myself o guess.
I guess, if you managed to be super rich and you happened to need a cleaned up reputation, a fabulous art collection and museum, or a college or hospital might do it.
Of course, the fabulous art collections of Europe often came about through similar means; or through the older European methods of gaining and preserving wealth and power: to use the resources of the church, royalty, and the aristocracy.
@f00l Carnegie funded a bunch of public libraries. Those are the good ol days that conservatives long for. It was better then. most in the south didn’t have shit but it was better.
@cranky1950
Oh, I remember growing up in what felt like a very narrow world where one encountered many rather narrow minds, each absolutely so sure of itself and the local chorus of agreement.
I felt a bit like some alien changeling, put there so as to be a not very significant version of a stranger in a strange land.
And we’re not free of that yet.
I usta love the circus museum before the Field’s stole all the exhibits to make their attraction.
lol i live near there
Yesterday was a bad merge day. Both directions on two 25+ mile trips had multiple intersections that open up to 2 lanes coming toward the light, then merge back to one lane after. Every single time assholes in the merging lane refused to do one and one merges, tailgated each=other, practically forced folks in the continuing lane to swerve or brake hard to let them in.
In early web days there used to be a website where you could post pics of stupid bad drivers like this to embarrass them. I’d seriously like to post pics showing car/license, ideally a thru window pic of the driver, and a warning about them.
@duodec I used Facebook and “Mom-shamed” someone driving recklessly in the middle school pickup car loop thing, in the hopes that there was a “6 degrees of Kevin Bacon” going on. Alas, no one recognized the car and it didn’t go viral.
People have a really hard time staying in their lane in roundabouts. (or “traffic circles” as we Yanks call 'em) I have to honk at people 50% of the time because they drift into my lane. A lot of the time, they’ll honk back like I did something wrong… They suck at driving and they get all embarrassed and mad when I call them out on it. It’s like, “Nobody honks at me!” <honk>
I have my meh-bought dashcam mirror thing. I should do a compilation video of all the piss-poor roundabout drivers.
@medz and they don’t realize people in the roundabout have right of way… “oh I am here, let me get in everyone’s way!!!” grrrr
@mikibell or the people who think stopping is mandatory. “Nobody is coming! Friggin’ go, you hoser!”