Short one tonight. I just spent a grueling two hours with a bathroom upgrades salesman.

One of the lessons I’ll have to learn as a homeowner is never to say yes when a salesperson comes around and says, “Hey, we’ll just send a guy around to give you a quick estimate; tell you about our sale prices. No pressure.”

It ends up as 120 minutes of close interaction (with visual aids) in which a poor working stiff brings out all his hyperbole and powers of persuasion, talking in the “when” mode while I’m keeping to the “if” mode.

In the end I told him I never make such decisions on the same day, as a matter of policy. He then called his boss and asked him if they could offer me the job at parts plus labor only, just because they want to list an address where they’ve done a job in this area on an advertising card. I still said no, and the estimate price jumped back up a couple thousand.

I think it would have been great to do, and I’m convinced the product is well worth the cost. But I don’t have the money, and I ended feeling guilty I’d wasted his time.

He went off disappointed.

But I guess he’d be more disappointed if I ordered the work and couldn’t pay for it.

With Google Earth, you can zoom very close to the masterpieces in the Prado Museum in Madrid. (via Very Short List)

Cold and snow (actually snow and cold, reading left to right) returned today. But although the temperature never topped 25°, most of the snow disappeared anyway. Go Sun!

Yesterday was a weird day. I missed not one but two appointments—my mind was obviously poorly seated in its housing. And my post on foods I don’t like—which was, frankly, a desperation post, composed because I couldn’t think of a good idea—garnered a fair number of comments and got linked both by Hunter Baker and the Thinklings.

Which shows that you just never know. And you may quote me on that.

So, on the principle that if something works you should beat it to death, I shall follow up with a post on Things I Don’t Like At All, But That Are Extremely Popular.

1. Sports. I don’t wonder why other people like sports. I have one semi-sport (live steel) that I enjoy myself, so I can comprehend the fact that other people find sports engaging and life-enhancing. I just can’t share the experience. Sports, for me, have always been merely a way to exhibit my inferiority in a good, strong, public light. Continue reading 10 more anathemas →

Libraries Get Some Relief From Stimulus Package. Several billion dollars appears to be available for state education programs, and potentially state libraries, in the new economic stimulus law. I don’t suppose money for schools and libraries is unacceptable in a law targeting the general economy, but the headline struck me the wrong way. Liberals seem to believe all government programs righteous and should not be restricted, even by natural limitations like not enough money to go around. The Chattanooga libraries, for example, are struggling, and I’d like to see them get the resources and leadership they need, but I don’t want the Feds to overtax the successful people in our country to funnel money into my city. The libraries should be supported by the community and the state.

He says we’re in hard times, but he’s hopeful for us “because I believe the coming years are going to reveal some pernicious weeds in our culture for what they are.”

Andrew Klavan talks about reality finding its way out in the liberal film on Richard Nixson. Of course, he says, “This is still a Hollywood film, after all. Nixon gets no credit for helping to expose Communist infiltration in American government, or for stopping the spread of Communism in Asia through his hard line war policies. The left takes no responsibility for the millions of murders brought about by the coming of ‘peace.’ And, of course, we hear that the slaughter-happy Khmer Rouge was a creation of American policy: that comforting old leftist nursery story that no evil exists except when we make it—so if we’re very, very good, the bad men won’t hurt us.”

But there aren’t any bad men. Don’t we all know that? There are only misunderstood men. Like the Buffalo, New York, man who worked to improve the perception of Muslims in America. He is accused of beheading his wife. I’m sure there’s a misunderstanding.

I need to stop reading the news.

Even on a day like today, when our country took a possibly irretrievable step down the road to destruction, the most disturbing thing I’ve read is this post over at Big Hollywood, from former Federal Agent Bob Hamer.



My mood is still dark (that Big Hollywood post didn’t help), and it occurs to me that I might do A List. A negative List. A list that shines a good, harsh light on my own alienations and inadequacies.

Herewith, 10 Foods I Hate That Everybody Else Loves.

1. Cheese. Except on pizza (through which cheese has somehow managed to insinuate itself into even my life, obviously with my destruction in mind), I don’t like any kind of cheese, prepared any kind of way. Macaroni and cheese? Doesn’t even taste like food to me. Toasted cheese sandwich? Useful for inducing vomiting. I honestly think that on the day in my infancy when (I’m told) I fell over backward in a high chair and bit my tongue through, I must have severed some important taste nerve. There’s something good out there, that the rest of you can experience, that’s lost to me forever. Continue reading Children will starve in Africa because I won’t eat these foods →

Thanks to Lynn Vincent for this quote from former president Thomas Jefferson:

“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

I guess we can’t.

Speaking of taking care of us, the Tax-the-Future bill to be signed into law today has a curious health care provision. Cal Thomas writes:

[Betsy] McCaughey discovered buried in the bill a new bureaucracy called the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology. Among other things, it means that a Washington official will “monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective.” The idea comes straight from former HHS nominee Tom Daschle’s 2008 book “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis” in which he says that doctors are going to have to give up their autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.” Inevitably, this means the government will decide who gets life-saving treatment and who doesn’t.

This is immoral. The whole bill and the way it was rushed through Congress are all immoral. I honestly don’t know what to do, besides blog about it. I do know that my worries are unfounded, in that my hope is in the Lord. With others overreacting to their real and perceived struggles, Christians can hope in the Lord no matter what. Whatever we will face, the Lord will see us through. Paint the darkest imaginable picture; it will only resemble the valley of the shadow of death through which the Lord has promised to remain with us. We are more valuable than birds and field lilies. We are eternal children of God. (Matthew 6:25-26)

I did my big presentation, “The Two Olafs,” at a retreat in Wisconsin this past weekend. Not a religious retreat. It’s a gathering of academics with Scandinavian specialties, some of their students, and a few other people who are just interested in Scandinavian culture. Once a year they get together at a nature preserve in Wisconsin.

The experience was both good and bad. I think I did as good a job with the PowerPoint talk as I’ve ever done, and the audience was attentive and appreciative, from all I could tell. I sold a few copies of my books, and got the nicest speaker’s fee I’ve ever pulled down.

The second day wasn’t great for me, however. I felt I’d been keeping to myself too much, which (as you know) is one of my besetting sins. So I determined to join the organizers for breakfast, and try to be part of the conversation.

I heard a number of things I disagreed with, but kept quiet and listened, attempting to understand and evaluate the things that were being said. But when it descended into plain Republican-bashing, I left the table with the words, “He never said that. He said he didn’t like broccoli,” and went back to my quiet area with my book. Then, when everyone else went off to see a movie, the final event of the retreat, I packed up Mrs. Hermanson and drove home without saying goodbye to anyone.

This is one of those frustrating things. On the rare occasions when I make a determined effort to move outside my comfort zone, I so often end up sorry I even tried. You know the old saying, “Better to keep silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt”? My own best motto seems to be, “Better to keep to myself and be thought a jerk, than to talk to people and remove all doubt.”

There’s a popular idea that all a shy person has to do is take the risk of talking to people, and he’ll soon discover that his fears are groundless.

I have very little evidence of that in my own experience.

Older women (over 31 as far as I can figure) are among the most committed players of EverQuest 2, a massive online role-playing game, but they don’t readily admit how much time they spend in the game. According to researchers, these female gamers under report the amount of time they spending playing by three hours a week.