Random Notes from a Crank

What you see above is the little project we finally got around to. After I painted our bedroom on Sunday morning, in the afternoon Mrs. Nasty went to Ace to get hardware for this project, and then I got to use my powerful drill. What you see is the back corner area of our house right where the back door is located. When we bought the house, It had lattice there, but a big wind came and blew that cheap crap down months ago. Because we had gotten new shutters earlier this summer, Mrs. Nasty had the smart idea of doing something different. We had contemplated buying some different lattice and installing it. Instead we reused the old shutters, she spray painted 'em, and then we finally installed them once the weather got cooler and after I had painted the trim this summer. The shutter configuration provides some privacy and color. Cheers to "repurposing" (as the home improvement shows say) and to Mrs. Nasty for her excellent idea.

For a couple of years now, the house across the street from us -- a three-bedroom, one and a half bath ranch --- has been where some college students (a couple) have lived because when the owner couldn't the sell the house for what he wanted (presumably). He rented it to his relatives (the college students) to apparently skirt around the zoning ordinance for our street being only single family dwellings. We got a little excited once the college kids, who were decent neighbors, graduated and the house went back on the market. The house sold pretty quickly because the owner priced it right (finally), and the new owners had scores of workers doing all kinds of work on the house. But we kept wondering when they were going to move in. Then last night the couple were over there, and the guy was pounding a post into the front yard. The sign on the post says, "For Rent. Call xxx-xxxx." @#$%. Here we go again. I wish they'd just try to sell the damn thing.

I'm looking forward to Ryan Bingham's new album, which will be released on his own label in September.

Jay Heinrichs has sound analysis of Ann Coulter's embrace of Paul Ryan on Figures of Speech Served Fresh.

We're no longer close to a Costco, but this article about the company explains some of the reasons why I'd still be a member if we lived in St. Louis.

One of the leading stories in college football this week was Tyrann "Honey Badger" Mathieu getting kicked off the LSU for what appears to be substance abuse issues. One of my friends asked me what I thought of this, and here's what I wrote: "Mathieu will hurt LSU initially on special teams and run support, but their redshirt freshman and true freshman corners behind him on the depth chart are probably better in coverage than Mathieu (he is overrated as a CB as Kevin Norwood and others exposed in the National Championship game). Short term it'll hurt LSU, but they should be fine by the time they go to Auburn in late September. Their game vs. the U of Washington could be interesting, but they're playing them in Baton Rouge, so I wouldn't pick that as an upset unless their highly touted QB isn't as good as everyone says. They also got a QB who transferred from Penn State, but that's not a big steal as far as I saw when we played the Lions the last two years." That's me quoting me! Overall, LSU is still loaded.