The Pros and Cons of livin in the stix

About 2 months ago, the drain in our bathtub started to drain slowly. We didn't think much of it at the time because this sort of thing happens to people with hair. Gradually, it just kept getting worse until it came to a head this weekend when it stopped draining all together: "it stopped draining," they all said.

We had tried "Drain-Oh" earlier, but it didn't work and so I thought that is was just some massive clog that needed a roto-rooter. So we bought one, its called snake and really all it is is a flexible but strong metal cable. We got 15 feet of it down the drain without hitting the clog.

Some clog, eh!

So as a last ditch effort, we bought some heavy duty sulfuric acid-based (pardon the pun) drain cleaner.

Foul smelling, scary bubbling, visible vapors, and it was brown.

Megan just happen to be outside with the dogs when she saw a brown bubblin' brew and an impending environmental disaster.


This is the crack in the drain pipe where the water had been draining into our yard. I went online and read how to clean up the mess safely and went about shoveling up the contaminated mud, all whilst it hissed at me. Have you ever had mud hiss at you?!

So I called our neighbor and told him that I believe there was a crack in the drain pipe and he concurred and fixed it today. Today?! That would never ever happen in the city. In Austin, we'd have to call Stern Lecture plumbing or some such place and actually pay for someone to fix it.

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We got a snow day 2 weeks ago. Enjoy!

Are they holding hands out of mutual love, or fear?

A collage of the snow day.

Felix REALLY likes that guy from MythBusters.

One down one to go*

For the many of you who didn't know that the midterm elections weren't/aren't yet over, there was a runoff last night in TX-23 Congressional District. TX-23 which was gerrymandering in 2002 was found to violate the Voting Rights Act by diluting the Hispanic vote. Last night Democrat Ciro Rodriguez beat 7 term incumbent Republican Henry Bonilla. Bonilla was the only hispanic Republican in Congress and I was glad to return purity to the Great White Party, not to be confused with the Great White Party


*FL-13 is still up in the air after voting machine error or ballot layout error resulted in a loss of 18,000 votes in a race that was decided by less than 400 votes. And no, of course there is no paper trail for these machines.

I got nuthin'...or some ramblings*

Hello readers!

Its almost Christmas time and perhaps I will fill all of you out there in on what is in store for this household come the New Year.

A certain D of DM recently applied for a job in Austin, and for the first time in perhaps my entire life, I am really (perhaps stupidly) optimistic about this job prospect. I applied mid-november and will likely know for sure (post interview) around late-january, early february. It means all kinds a complicated shit if I do get what comes the closest to my "dream job." Complicated, but exciting. Complicated for instance in that we would need to find a house with a yard on a UT bus route. Since the content of the job would not likely excite anyone reading, the context is that I would work in the same building that M attends class. How badass would that be?

M should find out about grad school in late-february. She sent off her application materials last friday and is finally done with the application process.

*If this post feels somewhat halting and broken in its prose, that is because of a failed/sucessful experiment using V8 as the base for a bloody mary. Yes, Mom, I know its Monday.

Keeping the above in mind, I don't (necessarily) want to alienate our reader base (whatever that may be), but the dogs are grown and M doesn't want to dress them so I'm finding it harder to justify posts dedicated to them.

I told T of HN recently that I wanted to have less politics at the site, but stuff like this just can't be ignored, so I think that the blog will probably become less about the dogs over time and more about whatever kinda crap me or M want to post.

But not so fast....

This photo, courtesy of M is like a Gerry photo if he covered dog shows (which may happen if he doesn't watch his mouth).