This Journal is for fish only!

We decided to move from the old house about a week before we found out that it was being repoed from our landlord who is in chapter, (we would have found out Monday that we would have to be out by the 15th.) When we agreed to take the new place I told the couple that the carpets reeked of pet urine and would have to be cleaned/replaced they agreed. I also advised them that in ten years of doing remodeling work I've never seen carpets this smelly and dirty cleaned with any sucess so they would be better off replacing them rather than cleaning them only to have to replace them anyway. They being extremly penny wise and pound foolish choose to have them cleaned. Guess who was right? The carpets still stink, and now that I could see the carpets through the dirt I realized that there was extensive water damage in the room that ajoins the bath. Knowing what I would find and dreading it I pulled that corner of the carpet and found mold growing in great profusion. Then I found out that the jacklegs who they hired to fix the water damage had done a piss poor job (see comment about being penny wise and pound foolish) and there was mold in the bath wall, mold under the sink in the ajoinjng wall, mold everywhere.

So I get back with them, and make what I think is an amazingly fair and generous offer. If they will replace the carpet, I will repair the mold damage (this involves removing the kitchen cabinets, opening the drywall, replacing any rotten wood ect spraying for mold, re drywalling, and doing the same in the bath and the bedroom, something that I would (and have) charged around $4,000 for.) and in lieu of compensation they could lower our rent payment by $100 dollars for the remainder of our lease.

They acted like I was trying to rip them off. "But we just had the carpets cleaned and now you want us to replace them?!" "$1100 dollars! We could have the mold fixed for less than that we can't afford to rebuild the whole house for you" "The house was this way when, you walked through".

Then they pulled the "We have other people who will move into that place tomorrow as is" aparently not expecting me to respond immeaditly with, "Good, we are already packed and will move."

Suddenly it's all friendly again, "But we don't want you to go! What is the deal breaker, the carpets? Maybe we can contribute a three hundred if you want to have them replaced yourself, and we'll pay for the materials so you can repair the mold. (the materials for that job would be less than $100, it's all labor.) At this point in the conversation they could have offered to replace the carpet and cut our rent in half and I still would have walked. Thanks but I'd rather not pay you for the privalage of fixing your house so that the inhabitants won't die of flesh eating bacteria when the step out of the shower.

I might add that this place has a whopping total of 420 sq feet of carpet.

I also add they myraid cosmetic repairs that I had planned to do free gratis and for nothing just for our own pleasure. And many not so cosmetic either like remodeling the kitchen to make it functional, finishing the garage, repairing the storeroom roof outside.

Foolish people. Dumb dumb dumb. If this house sits empty for one month they will loose more outright than all this would have cost them, These "people who are ready to move in tomorrow" don't exist.

Bah.

It sucks for us. I liked living in this neighborhood, and I could have made this place pretty nice too. And now we have to try and find something else, not an easy prospect since I really need space to work.

Hmbug on the whole nonsense.

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Moving: End of round four- Dang Dang Dang! I had to work at a clients for a good part of the day so not nearly as much pack and move. : ( But I have made quite a pile of boxes in the new garage. I also spent quite a bit of time washing out old rubbermaid tubs. Most were just dusty (put them in a trash bag next time you store them in the attic, duh.) though some had gotten pretty grimey.

I'm almost to my goal of moving the whole house in rubbermaid tubs. Each time we move I increase my collection, and this time there will only be ten or so cardboard boxes. They are durable, easy to carry since the have handles near the top, and importantly they are waterproof and mouse resistant. Concrete floors are often less dry than they appear as I have learned from hard knocks. Set a cardboard box full of books on a poorly sealed floor and it will slowly and steadily soak up water and ruin whatever is inside. Mice also seem to love to bed down in cardboard boxes but not rubbermaid, at least in my attic. A couple ruined boxes of books or mouse chewed winter clothes and rubbermaid seems like quite a bargin.

Tomorrow will be a long one, then a bit of a break on turkey day, then pretty furious activity till the move is done.

-Justus

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To the gym is much harder than from the gym. From the gym feels great, to the gym is "Dear lord I just wanna go lie down"

Had another back spasm last night, worse than last time. But since I simply cannot lie in bed for days I just put my head down and kept working. So far as long as I keep moving I'm ok but when I sit still it really starts to tighten up. I'm dreading tomorrow morning but maybe if I get up and get working I'll be OK again.

Our bad neighbors are gone. Not without having four more huge all night parties, and five more police visits. The last time I called the boys in blue two dudes ran out the back of the house and hid in the shed. So I called the dispatch desk again and told him what was going on, he sent three more cars as back up. They pull the guys out of the shed and search them, but THEY DONT SEARCH THE SHED. Hello? Are you serious? So after they release the two dudes they both go back to the shed and then take off down the street while all four police officers are in the house. Way to go boys. I hand them to you on a platter and you blow it.

Do I have to do everything myself?

-Justus

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If you want the freedom to marry whomever you choose (which I support) you cannot deny someone else the freedom to choose not to marry you. (which I also support) it seems we are all to happy to take away someone elses freedom whenever we disagree with them. Freedom of expression is great until someone calls you a bad name, then we want laws limiting what people can say to us.

Understand, I don't approve of our good old boy's actions. He is not someone who I would choose to associate with, and I think his justification was nonsense, and a poor attempt to disguise his real feelings. If he really refused to marry them because he thought it would not last and that would be bad for the children then he should refuse to marry half of the same race couples he marries as well. But he's not racist, he even allows colored folk to use his toilet!

It's racisim, pure and simple. I believe racism is ugly, and I believe people should not be discriminated against because of their race. But as I've said before, you cannot force people to beleive the way you do. All the legislation in the world will not change this guys mind.
Should he be a justice of the peace? Probably not. If he had been a clergyman this would not be national news because the clergy do not have to marry anyone, and have no obligation as civil servants.

Would the couple be happier if this guy had married them, all the while hating what they were doing and secretly sure that they would divorce? If were me I'd rather the guy just say "I don't marry mixed race couples" I'd walk out the door and find someone who wasn't living in the 19th century, happy that I was not married by such a man.

Jill and I were married by someone we respect and trust, not some low level goverment functionary with a rubber stamp and a very poor grasp of human equality.

I do not defend the choice he made, but I do defend his right to make that choice. Enforced civility is no civility at all. I prefer his refusal to marry that couple to a law that would force him to marry them.

-Justus

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If you want to get my attention shoot me in the collar bone with a crossbow bolt. Ouch. ; )

Arrows usually don't hurt, in fact I often don't feel them if I'm getting jostled in the front line of a melée, but now and then they tag you somewhere where you don't have a lot of meat and make quite an impression. But it's not pain that's the problem, getting hit with a stick is what we're all about after all.

I think limiting arrow effectiveness to face shots only might make them less objectional. But maybe not. It's just bloody frustrating to be engaged on a line and have an arrow come whipping in from 25 feet off to your left from someone you can't see let alone engage.

On a less whiny note I learned that the fort battle was underway when I got shot in the leg by an arrow. I had been standing there shooting the breeze with Duke Martin when someone decided to add a couple speed holes to me. ; ) fortunatly I had been standing in front of a "wall" so the shot was moot but there were several others already in bound as we "advanced to the rear" to gain some cover

WoW is becoming a good sized little war, not too big yet but big enough to have some good sized engagements. Keeping a large scale event like this moving is not easy and it's something we need some more practice in. More whack, less yack! Part of the problem is that you cannot move at the pace of the slowest common denominator, in other words you can't wait for everyone to be rested and ready to move on to the next thing. Keep things running and let people sit out if they need a break.

My fighting was sorry. My knee felt strong, that was not the problem though I still don't trust it. I just can't walk back onto the field and pick up where I left off after so much time, and learning at this level is painful to both body and spirit. I need to make it to at least one practice a week and I need to fight people that are better than I am if I'm going to get back in the game.

At least it's not too hard to find folks who are better than me right now. ; )

-Justus

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Update on the Dust Deputy: Wow.

Seriously, it is a fantastic little piece of plastic. Five stars. Don't bother with the delux kit, it only takes a couple minutes to cut a hole in the lid of a five gallon bucket and you can come up with your own way of keeping it from falling over. (A piece of bungee is working for me right now)

I've got some ideas for a more permanent rig. Pics to follow soon.

-Justus

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The end of a long long day. Found out this morning that the house inspection they stood me up on months ago was rescheduled for tomorrow, (well now today.) Since I had to work all day today the house cleaning had to wait till tonight, and that after a very late running worship team meeting. House clean, I'm exhausted, and I have to meet the miserable brutes in four hours.

At least the house was in tolerable good order since I cleaned it before we left for vacation and we haven't been back long enough to truly wreck it. Still I've been working steadily since 11:30. Blagh.

-Justus

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2000 years is a very long time, I can't even begin to imagine what the world would look like that far in the future, just as I'm sure the Roman who was buried in this could never imagine that I can communicate this instantly to almost anywhere in the world with the single click of a button. If we manage to make it another 2000 years, and I imagine we will, what will change? What will stay the same? That sarcophagus bears some of the answers: War, Art, Science and Sport. They will be unimaginable to us, but they will also be as familiar as they were to the Romans. That carved marble box might very well be there too. The museum it is in may not last that long but it will. Preserved from accident or disaster it will be all but unchanged in another two or even ten thousand years. A thousand years from now someone will look at those carved faces and think about the impermanence of everything around them too.
 

Why? because I don't think corporations have a conscience. If they are pulling their adds from Glenn Beck it is not because someone at Clorox suddenly decided that he is a tool and that Clorox shouldn't be associated with him it's because they are concerned about market share pure and simple. If they thought they could make more money with overtly racist ads you better believe that they would. So it's pretty meaningless to me that they suddenly found it in their little black farinaceous heart to pull their advertising from Glenn Beck. Enforced civility is no civility at all.
 

WTH? Horned Moses? How did I not notice this before? So I started looking at other books and other period depictions of Moses, and almost all of them show him with horns of some type, often small horns, but sometimes with foot long curling rams horns. So my mind is whirring on this and I start to wonder if this is somehow connect with the old "Jews have horns" slander. Yep, it's not just connected, it's most likely the very cause of the myth. It's important to note that while medieval Christians persecuted their Jewish contemporaries, they held the Jewish patriarchs in very high regard.
 
Turns out it's all St. Jerome's fault, he mistranslated the Hebrew word "Qaran" which can in fact mean "to have horns", "or produce horns" In Psalm 69:31 the same word, with slightly different vowel makers, (written Hebrew has no vowels) does in fact mean "horns". But in Exodus 34:29 it means to emit rays, radiate, or shine. But there was never any doubt to the Hebrew speaking world that Qaran meant "radiant" in reference to Moses face, Paul understood it:
 
2 Corinthians 3:12
 

-Justus
 

I am Justus Koshiol, though some of you know that I am also Justus de Tyre, Bud-Bud, Bull, Kosh, and sometimes Darkness.

What’s in a name? I’ve gone by many. I was raised as Paul, I chose Justus when I joined the SCA and later decided that I would be Justus and abandon Paul. In the Military no one manages to retain their first name so I became Koshiol, quickly shortened to “Kosh” since no one manages to retain both syllables of their last name either.  For a time I was Bullfrog, in due course shorted to “Bull” (the only nickname I’ve ever actually been fond of) 

 I left “Kosh” and “Bull” behind when I left the military, and gained “Bud-Bud”. Neither Jill or I remember when or why she began to call me “Bud-Bud” only that it soon became her only moniker for me. While I have a multitude of pet names for Jill, most all of them sweet enough to require a warning for diabetics, Jill has Bud-Bud for me. Always two Buds, paired, and no you cannot call me Bud-Bud.

 Recently, and entirely by accident I started to become “Darkness” And Darkness has been spreading! Even to many folks who don’t have the foggiest clue why it’s funny. I learned in the Military that you should never try and fight a nickname lest it be etched in stone, so I embrace Darkness with the idea that since it is two syllables it will follow the Koshiol law and fade away. Though it might be more durable than I imagined since an old friend that had no prior knowledge of Darkness said to me: “Dude, when you get drunk you start to channel Rick James”

Justus is not my real name, but that is not actually true. Justus is the name I introduce myself as, it is the name my wife refers to me as when speaking to other people and it is the only name that most of my acquaintances know I posses. To me that makes it my real name. It fits me; it’s slightly unusual but only recently. A hundred years ago it was very common; my great-great grandfather was named Justus, something I did not know when I choose it. Justus is still very common in Germany, which is where that part of my family hails form. (Via a brief stay in the Volga river valley of Russia.) And for some reason it is a popular name for rabbits and dogs as a recent flickr search proved.

 But the government, telemarketers, and very old acquaintances know that once my name was Paul, Paul Martin to be more precise, since my kind of Germans prefer a two part first name.  I did hate that name growing up, vehemently, but I think I’ve grown out of that. It still has no joy for me, and I struggle mightily to remember any good associated with that name. In fact you can neatly divide my life in twain at the moment where I abandoned Paul and took up Justus.   

 I know it is strange for a lot of people that one person should be known by a multitude of names. In our culture you get one name, and if you are lucky or especially unlucky you may get a nickname to go with it. Many folks like their given name, some hate it and others never think about it at all. I think it would be a grand idea that when you turn 18 and register to vote you should automatically be given the option of keeping your name, or changing it to something more fitting. Why on earth should you be forever saddled with a name your parents gave you, perhaps without much thought. (as the many Richard Heads of this world can attest.) Would some people change their name to “Boitoy” or “F*ckyoudad” of course, they already do, and all the better I say. What better way to get an insight to someone’s inner mind than the name they’ve chosen for themselves.  I’ve often thought about having mine legally changed but to be honest I’m lazy and I don’t even know where to begin. Besides the fact that for 95% of the world you are who you say you are. What was the last time you carded someone to check their name?

Since almost all my friends have at least two names and often many make believe if meaningful titles, so I move in a very free and easy circle where names are concerned. Some of these names are very unusual indeed and I take it for granted that I cannot hope to spell even some of my close friend’s names. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Having one bland modern name seems pretty mundane to me. A name is a powerful thing, or at least it can be. It should say something about who you are, or at least how you see yourself.

 I should note here that I never think of Justus as Justice. Aside from the fact that they are pronounced differently, it’s like sea and see, be and bee, When you think of them you don’t confuse sight with ocean or verb with insect.

Justus says something simple and strong to me, a feeling like white oak, good and honest.
 

It’s the right name for me, and I’ve had it longer than the name I was born with.

So, Justus is my real name.