Welcome to cydewaze.org

Yes, I know... it's a ridiculous title for a blog entry, and the women are probably already rolling their eyes, but hold up for a sec. It's not what you think.

With the presidential primaries in full swing, and the headlines full of Sarah Palin, I've been thinking a lot about the conservative right's "abstinence only" position when it comes to sex. The point (I suppose) is that if you never have sex, you'll never have an unwanted pregnancy, and you'll never be at risk of contracting an STD. While this all makes perfect, logical sense, it seems to work better in theory than in practice, because of course you need to get people to comply, which is the problem.

Since voluntary compliance to a plan like the one above is so unlikely, it would make sense to have a Plan B, like maybe birth control (condoms? the pill?). But unfortunately, the conservative right isn't interested in a Plan B, because of course it would mean that people might still be having sex (which is what they actually want to prevent, rather than the consequence).

By now you're asking what this has to do with driving, so here we go.

People like sex. People also like to drive. Just as people have sex to make babies, they also have sex because they like sex. Likewise, just as people drive for basic transportation, they also drive for pleasure (and for the sake of this argument, we'll pretend that gas is not $4.50 a gallon). People with sports cars go off and find twisty roads to have fun on, and it has nothing to do with getting them to work, or to the store, or to their doctor's office.

But driving can be dangerous, as cars can be crashed into things like trees or other cars, or even people not in a car. There are countless things to be wary of when driving, such as deer darting out in front of you, or drunk people careening down the road. When people drive for pleasure, they're spending more time on the road, and they're exposing themselves to more chances to crash. So what's to be done?

The government has of course thought of this, and have responded by posting ridiculously low speed limits on all the roads. The next time you are putting along that road at 40mph, please consider the 25mph limit signs you're driving past. The idea is that if everyone crawled around at a snail's pace, fewer people would crash, because with cars going so slowly, you'd have hours to avoid the careening drunk, or the darting deer. Also, if you did still manage to crash, you'd be going so slowly that injury would be a lot less likely (and for this argument we will also ignore the fact that reducing speeds on roads has never been proven to decrease the accident rate, but that's another blog).

But, like the abstinence only thing, this works better in theory than in practice. People don't like to crawl around at a snail's pace, regardless of why they're driving. They gravitate to a speed they feel comfortable with, and just try to keep an eye out for that deer. The government knows that voluntary compliance is unlikely, so they have a Plan B, which is to equip cars with bumpers, seat belts, and air bags. They also require crash tests to make sure that if people do crash, they will have some sort of chance to survive.

Hopefully the point is starting to surface, and I haven't been typing for nothing.

Promoting abstinence only, with no consideration for a Plan B, is no different than putting up speed limit signs, then leaving all the safety features out of cars. It's just as irresponsible. If we care enough to put air bags in our cars, why can't we care enough to give condoms to our kids? I don't see why it has to be any more complicated than that. Sometimes you really do need a Plan B.

We sure are.



I think Jess and I do pretty well, but we'd need to do a whole hell of a lot better to see a bigger benefit from McCain's tax plan rather than Obama's.

Keep in mind, this cut for the rich is on top of the hueueueuge cuts they've already gotten under Bush.

So the next time you hear McCain say that Obama is going to raise taxes, you'll know who his intended audience is.

After a long wait, some bill haggling with one of our contractors, and a lot of patience, we finally have two remodeled and working bathrooms. They both look really nice, and I expect to have pictures very soon, once I finish up some baseboard molding work on the master bath.

The hallway bathroom looks phenomenal - almost like a bathroom in an upscale hotel penthouse. The master bath also looks pretty good, and although I was worried the dark slate tile would make it look to small, that doesn't seem to be the case.

The best part I think is not having shower curtains to get moldy, and no more puddles outside the shower stall. I still need to add a light over Jess's tub, but that's small potatoes. The lion's share of the work is FINISHED! Woohoo!

Ever since springtime, our house has been "under construction" in some manner or another. One of the major projects that's getting done is a bathroom remodel of both upstairs bathrooms. The tub in the hallway bathroom was way too shallow to have a good soak, so we decided to replace it, as well as re-tiling the floor and tub cove, and adding a bypass shower door. In the master bath needed a new floor, so we decided to tile the shower stall, and add a hinged shower door.

We got an estimate back in April, and told the contractors to go ahead. Work didn't start until June, and it was slow at that. By the time our vacation rolled around, the hallway bathroom was 95% done, and the master bath had not even been started. I figured that they would need one day to demo the old tile in there, one day to redo the plumbing, and two to three days to lay the tile. Toss in another day for installing the faucets and door, and you have six (6) days.

I told the contractors that they would have the house to themselves for the entire two weeks that Jess and I were on vacation up in Temagami, (15 days in all) and that the work absolutely MUST be done when we got back.

When returned home, we found the following:

- Hall bathroom is 99% done, but usable. Only some cosmetic finishing needs to be done.

- Master bath 20% done, and not usable.

- Part of that 20% is done wrong and needs to be done over.

- Electricity in powder room (downstairs) is out, for no apparent reason. It's possible that a wire could have been cut during the master bath work, which is directly above it.

- There was no hot water in the house. I hit the reset switch on the water heater, which restored the hot water, but so far I've had to reset it three times in the last three days. I suspect that the contractors left the water turned off for days on end, causing the upper element to burn out.

I've just about had it with this shoddy work. I think we're going to have to find ourselves some new contractors for future projects. If something's going to be done wrong, I might as well do it wrong myself, for free rather than paying to have our house screwed up.

We're both rather irked.

I really, REALLY need a better camera!



Jessica


Home Sweet Home


Bats!


Morning mist


Girl Hummingbird


Boy


Jessica


Reflection shots


Rain


Pyro-Niece


Mini pics