God could not be everywhere and therefore he made mothers.  - Jewish Proverb

Happy Mother's Day!

The old US Capitol Columns seem to support the April sky at the National Arboretum in Washington, DC. This picture was taken with a Nikon D70 and Nikkor 28-200mm f3.5-5.6 AF hand held.  I used a sepia action in Photoshop to create this effect.

I love words that really get the point across and squadoosh does just that.  Squadoosh is used to describe something that is missing, absent, or forgotten; zero, nil or nothing.  Some sources credit sportswriter, ESPN poker commentator and all around curmudgeon (speaking of words that convey a feeling) Norman Chad with popularizing the word.  Squadoosh, or the alternate spelling, Squadouche seems to be slang of Italian-American derivation.  It may be an embelished form of the slang use of squat (diddlysquat) but there is really no definitive information about the orgin of the word squadoosh.  When I looked up squadoosh in the dictionary, I found squadoosh.   It also really lends itself well to double entendres. 

C'mon kids! the Terps beat Duke more often than most.  How about acting like you've been there before?  Those were my initial thoughts this morning when I heard about the post game commotion in College Park.  After reading this article from the Diamondback...  I think this is a University of Maryland right of passage, or as the article quotes “People are just doing this because they’re expected to.”.  Gary Williams likes his teams to feel like the underdog and so... I guess the student body is reacting that way too.  I do realize that the Terps NCAA Championship in 2002 occurred when most of the current freshman were only 10.   Seems like yesterday to me, Ouch!  That said, I still believe:  When in doubt, act like you've been there before.

http://www.diamondbackonline.com/news/police-use-pepper-spray-horses-in-clash-with-students-on-route-1-1.1222184

¡Tema La Tortuga!

Relieved but smelling of heating oil, I put away my tools.  I have to crow to my wife about my conquest over the oil furnace.  Unfortunately she is not answering her phone.  What to do?  Ah ha!  I will email a post to my new fully integrated blog at www.posterous.com.  Now I can grandstand instead of just simply bragging about how much of a handyman I am.

Here we go…  Our heating oil tank just ran dry and despite this morning’s oil delivery the furnace was not igniting.  Unlike my wife, the Queen of Outsourcing, it pains me to wait for and then pay someone to fix something I may be able to fix myself.  I admit this has caused problems in the past.  Like the time I removed the toilet to fish out the travel-sized shampoo bottles a toddler had flushed.  I learned from my mistake and now I read instructions all the way to the end where they usually say something important like:  “Be sure not to over-tighten as the porcelain might crack”.    Anyway, my plus/minus stats are good, not that I am keeping score.

I was pretty sure the furnace had continued to run after the tank was dry, so I was thinking that the line was either air-locked or clogged.  How do I fix that?  Thank you Al Gore!  …betcha didn’t think that your Internet would one day enable some Libertarian to return his furnace to working order thus burning more fossil fuel…  I digress.  After searching the internet in hopes of finding some simple solution I found a site that addressed my exact situation.  …even had my oil burner motor as the reference.  http://wetheadmedia.com/how-to-re-start-an-oil-burner-after-running-out-of-oil

I followed the directions to bleed the fuel line.  Only spilled a few drops of oil in the process, which it turns out is enough to probably make me smell like diesel for the next few days.  Now for the moment of truth…  bleed valve closed, power on, thermostat on… hit the reset button and… its pumping, ignition, the furnace is roaring to life, I feel heat, the fan kicks on, heat is blowing through the vents and I am relieved but smelling of heating oil.  Moral of the story:  Blame Xylia for not answering the phone when I needed to prate.