Okay, I take it back

No, not my Budweiser review, but my Raptor drone paintball scheme. Yesterday around 7PM my wife and I were driving back from where I pick her up at the bus stop in town. We were stopped at a traffic light maybe three blocks from the house, and when the light changed, there was a sharp sound like a metal hammer hitting one of the windows. I looked to my left, and I saw what looked at first like a large white bird dropping on the driver's side window. Was it a rock covered with snow? Wait a minute...

Pam: What was that?
Me: I think they shot at me.
Pam: They shot at you?!
I touched the window to see if the glass was broken and I thought I felt something odd at that spot. Then I tried to determine whether something had passed through my body without my noticing, the way you read about sometimes, but that didn't seem to be the case as far as I could tell.

When we got home we tried to figure out what this thing was, white and goopy and with unidentified dark things in it adding to the turd appearance. Unafraid as I was of such things, I dragged my finger through it (thus the smear) and found it to be white paint. The thing that I thought was a crack in the glass was the edge of the sticker you can see in the picture. We called the local police and let them know of the incident; an officer came to the house to take down the details and look at the paint, asking whether we would file a complaint if the perpetrator was stopped. We said "sure," as we didn't want paintball-wielding maniacs frightening motorists to the point of possibly causing heart attacks or leading to insurance claims.

Only long afterward did I make the connection with my rocket-propelled paintball scheme and wondered whether a blog reader might have gone one step further and sent an unmanned drone over town. Not too likely, that part, but still an odd piece of timing.

Column 4

Here in New Jersey we had our Presidential primary months ago (it seems like longer, really), but we still have some legislative contests yet to be determined at the party level. Some are statewide, some are according to Congressional district, some are countywide, and then there are the scores of those down at the weedtop level one step up from the grassroots organization. It is here that I find myself, somewhat unexpectedly.

A while back, maybe a year or so, I was appointed to some time ago to fill a vacancy as a local representative to the Democratic county organization. A few times a year we were expected to come down to a meeting and cast a vote for matters of local interest, in the evening when people are back from their real jobs. The problem was that the club for our town had a problem finding anyone else to fill the position, so I agreed put my name on a petition to continue my role for the upcoming term. Since I never stood election before, I somehow thought it was going to be another formality.

So I was surprised when we received our sample ballots this week to learn that my name and my wife's were listed. Down at the bottom, there.


As before, the duties are minimal, there is no pay, there is no prestige, and precious little thinking involved. We are not superdelegates and don't expect to be getting phone calls from Washington. But still! we want the votes this June 3rd, just because. Should any matters of great significance arise I promise to give them all the attention they deserve (and what does one have to give besides attention nowadays, when it comes right down to that).

Matthew La Porte

My sense of surprise at the events at Virginia Tech seemed to be on a one-way track upward. First at the news of a campus shooting, at a place where I had former collaborators back when I was a scientist. Then the news that there had been two shootings on the same day. Then at the news that one of the victims was from here in Bergen County a very long way from home. Then finally that that 20 year old victim was in fact from the very town in which I live.

I talked to my wife, who said that she recollected the family name from back in the time when she was running for local office six years ago. The chain of connection stopped there, though, for we did not actually know them personally.

There's a sign up at the local garden center in support of the family. I am hoping the borough puts together some kind of memorial service for the victims soon though.

Now I don't own any firearms myself (even though I once used to belong to a rod and gun club in upstate NY), so I was not aware of how easy it was to obtain high-capacity clips for a pistol these days. I expect there will help revivify the push to bring back the Federal assault weapon ban.

It's the humidity

The record-setting storm over this last weekend was seriously annoying, with the cold, the driving rain, the streets closed due to flooding, the fifteen-hour long power outage, the portable electric generator which seized up and died, and currently, the lack of Internet access. So, no pictures just now, as I post from The Gym.

My one take-away idea is to go live in a place that has disasters (since every place has disasters) which are just not as damp. I am ready for a dry earthquake or a stretch of drought or something, just to break up the monotony.

Update: Last night they took the power down for about ten minutes and apparently switched over to a new feed which provides a full 120VAC instead of the 110 volts that my DSL modem did not appreciate. So we are back in the 21st century, with pictures.

• 
  
  We got just an inch or two of water in the cellar, rather than the many feet in the next town, so I cannot rant about this too much.


• 
  I will, however, complain bitterly about the design of my little Shop-Vac® that I used to suck the 13 gallons of water up from the floor. It takes only about 30 seconds to fill it to capacity, requiring one to separate the top half from the bottom half
  
  
  … which is inconveniently right where the hose slips in. Or out, as you can see here. I think they should have put a little clip there so that the user would not have to keep sliding the thing back in every time the thing had to be emptied.


• 
  Sitting on the basement steps, I wet myself. (I did change before going out to work.)

A new record

I was down in the basement going through some old papers when I came across one which I came across one describing the original property tax assessment when we first moved here. It had the date of sale (our closing date) on it: 12-11-1996 - exactly ten years ago this last Monday! Today or tomorrow would be the anniversary of our actually moving in (it was a snowy day, as I recall). Perhaps there should be some kind of celebration when one reaches this kind of milestone, the sort of thing one has a round-number birthday or wedding anniversary?

I know I've got a picture of the place somewhere, maybe I'll post it here if I can locate it.

Ten years is the longest I've ever lived in one place, equaling the length of time I was in the house my parents still live in now. The place needs a fair amount of work - a new garage, back door, bathroom floors and tub enclosures, windows upstairs, some landscaping - all things we would like to do before selling out. Neither of us envisions staying here permanently, really, although circumstances currently do not suggest a good exit strategy.

Happy days are here again

Happy days are here again
Originally uploaded by milkfish.

More evidence of a photographic sort on the utility of plain old paper. Our friend John (former Dumont borough council member and also an usher at our church) is posting up the numbers on the wall of the Elks Club as they are gathered district by district by the local Democratic party's representative as the polls closed at 8pm last night. It was an overfull slate this year with four council seats in contention by the two parties.

The first returns were from the parts of town which are more Democratic-friendly, so when they came out solidly in the Democrats' favor the optimism was tempered. You can see the tension here. But by the time the more well-heeled, Republican-leaning part of town had its numbers tallied, also solidly in the same direction, everyone in the room knew that it was a sweep.

I presume the Republicans were having their election night event on the other side of town at the Knights of Columbus hall, though I did not see or hear of their representatives conceding the tally.

The great idea of this post is that local politics is still interesting to be involved with and that people are still working hard to try to run the detailed business of our communities. A fine party like this one (and the catered buffet was a fine one indeed) has got to beat an apathetic night at home watching the pundits on TV any time.