Tired of winter

[altivo]

Could we please have some warmer temperatures? I'm not even asking for sunlight, mind, just not having to shiver would be nice.

Dog class was tonight, after being cancelled last week due to bad weather. Red is doing quite well at his basics. They introduced figure eights tonight (easy) and the boardwalk (harder.) He had some difficulty with walking the plank, which is only about ten inches wide. His normal stride has a wider wheelbase than that. By the third time, though, he almost made it through without stepping off the edge. The board is only two inches above the floor, so there is little risk of injury, though some smaller dogs seemed terrified by it.

Interesting note for those who continue to insist that "the founding fathers never would have approved of socialized medicine or forcing citizens to buy health insurance." A law passed by Congress and signed by John Adams in 1798 did just that for sailors employed by private ship owners. Details are here. Since John Adams was one of those founding fathers, and many more of them were in fact members of Congress at the time, I'd agree that this particular argument against health care reform is as bogus as, well, a three dollar bill.

Comments

[schnee]

Very interesting article, thanks for the link! And good to hear Red's doing well there in his class. *s*

[altivo]

We knew Red would do well at this from when we first met him. But you're right, it's good to see it actually work out. He seems to enjoy it too.

[shadow_stallion]

Could we please have some warmer temperatures?

I probably shouldn't mention that it is going to be sunny and almost 70F here this weekend.

[altivo]

Add in the drawbacks of Texas, and the weather you have come July, and that doesn't bother me a bit. ;p

[shadow_stallion]

*grins*

I know you and several others have little to no love for my state of residence but it's been good for me. I doubt there are many other places in the country that could provide me with no state income tax, low housing cost, a thriving economy and an almost never ending stream of roads to build.

I think I've developed a bit of a love/hate relationship with the weather here. While I hate some of the weather we get in the summer there is something oddly satisfying about striping down to next to nothing and getting out in the yard to work.

[altivo]

And those low taxes represent an abysmal attitude toward education, social services, etc.

We are hammered constantly here with requests that we lend our library materials to TX libraries "who have no resources to purchase books" apparently. None of them will lend materials to us, by the way, but they keep asking us to send ours, at our expense. It has now reached the point where libraries there are telling their users "We couldn't get the stuff you wanted because the Harvard Public Library refused to send it to us." And then their users call us long distance to complain, but they don't want to pay any taxes so that their own libraries could buy things. Why Harvard? I can only guess that the larger libraries in Illinois have already cut them off and they've quit trying those.

The fact is, we don't send current popular best sellers and movies to anyone outside our own consortium. They are in demand HERE, and having them disappear to Texas or California for six weeks at a time is poor management.

[shadow_stallion]

*smirks* The last time I had a tax conversation with a now ex-friend it ended with lots of name calling from the other side so I hope you don't mind me abstaining from commenting too much on that bit.

Mr. Perry and his crew do seem pretty down on funding social services and education. I never really understood that logic at least as far as the schools go. Those are some of the last things that funding should be cut for.

I don't think it is so much that people here don't want to pay taxes to fund the libraries it's that they get hit with property tax increases to help fun the city governments and people are often only willing to pay so much or accept so many increases. However, there have actually been a few local campaigns to keep some libraries open that the administration had chosen to close for budget reasons. So we're not all anti social services and education around here though from a big picture standpoint it probably seems that way.