And Now, Back To Your Regularly Scheduled Life....

Well, campers, color war is finally over and yes, the blue team won. The winners will go to their new or renewed offices and the losers will go wherever they want..except 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and that's just fine with me. 

From the "Things I Just Don't Quite Get file:  

1: Power companies from non-Sandy areas sent trucks and crew to Long Island to help repair the power grid. LIPA (that thing we used to call LILCO) initially sent them away. Turns out, the unions didn't want strangers helping. Huh? Are these people challenged in a new and unusual way? No wonder people are rising up all over the island.

2: The Minnesota Republican party didn't quite grok the idea that since most everybody in the state knew they were bankrupt and facing eviction from their offices for non-payment of rent, this might be viewed as a fiscal credibility issue.3: Most of the Romney campaigns aids found their campaign issued credit cards turned off at the moment the man conceded defeat, leaving some of them stranded.  Draw your own conclusions,  but that was not a nice thing to do to people, a lot of them kids, who worked their asses off for that man.  But, as my mother would say, "Class will out."

While we’re on the subject of a complete lack of class, I would turn you attention to a little teapot with a tempest called Mendota Heights.

My little city is just that, a little teapot of town: quaint, charming, idiosyncratic, fiscally conservative, …did I mention little? It has a lovely little city hall, a lovely little city council, a lovely little planning commission, and some lovely little parks. The town pretty much runs itself because we have professional city manager and  city council that pretty much works and plays well with others. Two years ago, Sandra Krebsbach was elected mayor by a sweeping margin of 36 votes. She, of course, ran again this year.  Her opponent was an affable gent named Ultan Duggan who has a penchant for writing his committee reports in verse. And unlike the mayor, he seems to actually listen to all sorts of people in our town ... not just the ones in his own claque. 

Mayor Krebsbach's qualifications, or rather the lack thereof, are not in question here; her understanding of the democratic process is.

Madam Mayor, when asked for election night feedback by that august media outlet, The Mendota Heights Patch, said:

I think it’s a campaign that didn’t need to happen. Normally the mayor is not challenged, the city’s been doing well. And Mr. Duggan was in a safe spot, he’s in the middle of a four-year term [on the city council], and I think he just wanted it.

Excuse me?  

Opposition happens to be part of the process. I don’t know about all you voters out there, but this voter found Madame Mayor’s statement to be particularly offensive. Kinda goes with her performance as mayor, which is more noblesse oblige than actually working toward the common good. I would encourage my readers from around the world to take a moment to write to Mayor Krebsbach about how the democratic process works....even in America. Please; feel free to send her an explanation on how one runs for and gets elected to office. Seems she thinks she's exempt from opposition. 

Meanwhile, back at the homestead, winter is a'coming. Now that the election is over, there were things to get around to doing... like hauling in the ladder to change top hat  flood bulbs in the kitchen. Spartacus also replaced the flaming heating element in the oven all by herself. This required advanced use of email to secure a new element, picking it up at the appliance part store, as well as advance use of hex-head screwdriver. There were no electrocutions and the oven works fine, thank you very much. I have also mastered how to remove goo from the rear end of a ceramic towel bar holder that separated from the wall. Clean and now drying, it will be re-installed on the morrow with the appropriate amount of new goo carefully smeared with a putty knife I already owned and didn't have to buy.. And yes, the snow blower is ready to go. 

The real highlight of the week was the trip over to Eclipse Music in West Saint Paul to see Misha's new Ibanez AFJ85 hollow body with a vintage sunburst finish before it was shipped to Milwaukee. When Grandpa Sieg heard he was trying to put together enough for a new guitar, he decided this was something he wanted do. And so he did. And this is it: 

It's good to hang out in a music store when you're a kid. When you go back to order a real working musician's guitar, the guy that humored you back then is all smiles when he hears the kid turned pro. It was a cool moment. 

GRANDPA SIEG'S TIP O' THE WEEK

 "If you're going to be carpenter, you need a good hammer."