Sunday, August 21, 2011

Hi,

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the start of the Vietnam Conflict (1945, just after the Japanese surrender, the French came into their ex-colony to rid a coup by Ho Chi Minh), it is the birth anniversary of Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908, possibly the most respected 20th century photographer) and it is Claude Debussy’s birth anniversary (1862).

My good friend Myra and her son Alex visited last Tuesday and Wednesday.  Myra’s the one that recently opened The Stone Manse Inn outside Harrisburg.  One of the buildings on her property, The Summer House, is the oldest occupied structure in York County (1737).  Anyway, she’s just opening (think she has four of her rooms ready) and was complaining about the lack of reservations (opening an Inn is extremely hard getting known, I know I’ve done it twice).  So we were talking two weeks ago and she took some time off to visit and we went over different ideas to spur business and how I run my Inn.  One of the things I suggested was she needed to get listed on bedandbreakfast.com.  They are the biggest on line Inn directory with great advertising campaigns.  So she joined last week and got her first reservation through them today.  You go Myra, congrats!

Is it me or is Michele Bachmann sounding more and more like Sarah Palin?  🙂  And I’m not talking about the nasal twang, the rhetoric is really sounding like Palin.  Which I happen to be reading Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin by Frank Bailey, her ex-chief of staff.  He obviously has an axe to grind, or is just blindly looking for $.  Even if just a quarter of what he says is true, she’s more of a nut than I thought (which says a lot).  🙂

While I’m ranting on politics, did you hear last week they promoted four of the agents responsible for the Fast and Furious debacle?  Two of the promotions were for senior level agents.  In case you’ve been under a rock lately, Fast and Furious was an operation where they were trying to trace the movement of weapons into Mexico for the drug cartels.  #1 why would you supply guns and ammunition to criminals?  There is no #2, #1 says it all.  I can almost see the logic for this operation to a limited amount, but there was thousands of guns and other deadly supplies in the various deals.  OK, just for talk, lets say we sell well organized criminal gangs weapons, thousands?  AND they screw up and loose track of the weapons.  Months later four get promoted?  OMG, that they did it in the first place drives me nuts AND then to loose track of them?  The weapons ended up on both sides of the border in criminal hands.  What amazes me is there’s so little being said about the promotions.  The director said the agents were promoted because of their skills and experience.  I’m not even going there.  When I worked the hotels, I frequently had staffs of over a hundred hourly and management below me.  When I was Assistant Director of Food & Beverage at the casino Resorts in Atlantic City, I would have almost 1,000 indirectly report to me (their bosses did).  I’ve been in large corporations and am aware of individuals that upper management were grooming for higher positions and the individual did a major faux paux.  I could give examples, but I don’t want this rambling to go on too long.  Sure their skill level and abilities weren’t diminished by this faux paux, but I would question their judgement and though I would not rule out a future promotion, but generally I would wait for awhile before promoting them.  Depending on the degree of the faux paux would be how long before I would again consider them for promotion.  Four months, thousand of weapons????????

The old Duquesne beer brand is back, and apparently doing well.  They started with just bottles, added cans this year and is planning on adding kegs (for bars & restaurants) this year.  Adding bars and restaurants will be huge for name recognition. They produced 14,000 barrels their first year (they opened last August).  Mark Dudash, and attorney that own the label with his wife Maria likes to point out the Samuel Adams only brewed 500 barrels their first year.  I’ve tried it and it’s not bad.  I don’t drink a lot of beer and when I do like beer with a more hoppy taste like from North Versailles Full Pint offerings like Rumpel Pilsner and All In.

I’m not sleeping with a snow blower anymore!  🙂  No, we didn’t break up, the contractors that have been working here built the shed I bought almost two months ago (and I was sleeping with the shed stacked up along one wall, the lawn mower and at one point fifty banquet chairs).  Everything fits  so nicely in the shed.  Although the picture makes it look fairly imposing, it’s fairly discrete behind the gecko swing and everything fits in it (and more).  It was a minor inconvenience going to the basement for shovels and rakes, it was a pretty big inconvenience lugging the lawn mower up and down, it was impossible for me to move the snow blower up and down those stairs.

The contractors will be done with Bromeliad this week (and the various other odds and and ends I have them doing.  Here’s the latest on the Fireplace I got at Comfort Living Systems:

I have to get the tile for the hearth tomorrow for them, they have a few details to work out on it and hang the TV over it.  But they have done such a great job and have been really responsive to how I want things done I can’t say enough good things about Chuck, the general contractor at Metro Classic Builders and his staff.

How about that rain Friday?  A nine foot wall of water rushing down Washington Blvd in Highland Park?  That sounds like somewhere in the mid west a few months ago, or a third world country.  This doesn’t seem to be getting the kind of attention I think it should. The two tragedies are getting all the attention.  That poor mother and two young daughters caught in their SUV and possibly even more appalling was that elderly woman that seems to have been sucked down a drain in to the Allegheny River are just mind boggling.  My question is how could our drainage system fail so miserably?  And more than that, why is no one asking questions?  A nine foot wall of water in Pittsburgh deserves a better explanation than “it was a freak storm”.   Yes it was a lot of water descending in a short period of time, but a nine foot wall of water? Personally, I think there was more than just a lot water, I think there were system failures and unless someone calls PSWA to task, they will be happy to sweep any failures under the rug.  I’m speaking out my butt, I have no educated reason for saying this, it just doesn’t make sense to me that we could experience such a tragedy on just an extremely heavy rain fall.

OK, I’ve ranted twice today.  I feel so relieved, for those of you faithful to listen to it all, tanx, jeeps and airplains.  🙂

ed