It's amazing how fast time can pass you by. It's been over a month since my last blog post and a few interesting things have been happening here at Zatt's Place.

I turned 42 in the middle of July. So, I got to eat pizza and ice cream in massive amounts, and I'm good with that. Of course, that led me to a crappy eating binge for a couple of weeks thereafter. Now, I'm in a frantic process of working that off. Luckily, it's only about five pounds of flab that I carelessly added. That takes me about a week to remove, provided that I become a diet and exercise Nazi. No problem.

I'm glad that the United States Congress had the sense to finally pull their heads part way out of their collective asses, and raised the debt ceiling. Now, they need to pull it all of the way out and start working together, instead of pointing fingers at each other before they go on recess to do it all over again. I still believe that the dialectic process is good on important issues as a means to get to the truth, or at least the bottom of a subject. That said, the end point of a dialectic is to learn, grow and to get shit done! If congress need a list of things that they need to handle, I have one for them. But, they're going to have to knock off their petty differences and start actually listening to and considering options brought up by everyone present. Disagreement is fine, but these idiots simply discount anything that comes out of the mouths of anyone that isn't from their political party. My twelve year old does a better job of discussing things than many of these morons.

Next topic: Our basement was flooded during a heavy storm. Granted, it was only about four inches of water, which doesn't seem like much until you realize that standing water is soaked into almost everything that is touching it. About another six to twelve inches up. Then the mold starts to grow. That said, the last week has been tearing out carpet, drywall, furniture, and all kinds of miscellaneous items. The best part is, aside from the furniture and the house itself, the damage was minimal. We were going to sell most of the things we had to throw out, and redo the basement anyway. This just forced us to get on it.

The high point of my month was that I got back in touch with a life-long friend. We've known each other since preschool, so the term "life-long" is being used literally. The most interesting part about it is that both of us did almost all of the same things as we grew up, got jobs and raised families, and we did them at relatively the same time. Our interests are so close that it was like there had never been long (years at a time) pauses in our relationship. It's great to know that there are friends like that who can, despite long distances and not actually having seen you in decades, still be called "friend" in every sense. There are only a couple of people that I can say that about and Chris is one of them. HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHRIS! Enjoy the day!