Our Tax Dollars at Work

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Please! Can't we just play baseball? Tomorrow is Catchers and

Pitchers Day or Pitchers and Catchers Day or whatever it is,

the beginning of the 2008 baseball season.

Today I watched the Congressional hearings on steroids

in baseball when they were questioning Roger Clemens and his

former trainer, Brian McNamee. I came away with several strong feelings as I am sure anyone did who had the opportunity and the stomach to watch them.

#1. What the hell is my tax money being spent on this for? It is pretty outrageous to think of all the money that the government has put into this issue and I am not sure why. It is a government oversight committee and its purpose is to oversee government finance and management. How, by any stretch of the imagination, is this appropriate? They did have the

good sense to all agree that this committee would not meet again on this issue and a few of the members individually voiced their strong opposition to sitting for this session.

#2. Our House of Representatives is a somewhat scary group of people. I know that we are led to believe that the Senate is the "higher" house and this is more the common house but it is still scary. It was very obvious that most of the speakers today came in with a very clear bias one way or another when questioning these two individuals. Carolyn Maloney (I am not sure this is spelled correctly but isn't this the woman from Long Island who became a representative after her husband was shot and killed on the LIRR?) Some of them seem too old, not sharp enough to be in Congress. They mumbled, could not hear, and were clearly star struck at times. Shouldn't I expect more than this? It is scary to know that these are the people who making some pretty important decisions about our country.

#3. Brian McNamee and Roger Clemens and his wife are the lowest on the food chain. Brian is there because of his nasty history but actually gets to stand one rung about Mr. Clemens and spouse because he freely admits that he has been lying frequently to cover his butt. Mr. Clemens remains arrogant and defiant and I, for one, will never believe anything different about him no matter how this all turns out.

Please, gentlemen and ladies, back to baseball and back to you being my government.

Congratulations to Uno! He was the best. No human or canine was more excited about winning than he was last night. It is always fun to watch Westminster and see all the perfect dogs, all poofed and puffed. But it is easy to see through it all and see what is indeed man's best friend under all the fluff.

Speaking of which, after looking and reading and looking and reading some more, it is pretty clear that Ms. Sylvia is a mix between a whippett and a black lab. I am not why sure why it makes me so happy to know what she is but it does. Everything about her matches all of the identifying characteristics of a whippett.

The knitting is coming along. Still haven't sewn the last seam on the last sweater for the twins but I am going to surprise myself one of these days and just do it. I have been working on my "life" sweater. The collar is done and I have started to make the panel that runs from the collar down to the wrist on the top of the sleeve. It all sounds very confusing but is pretty simple once you catch on. The cables don't look symmetrical but I think they maybe aren't supposed to but I will do another repeat before I decide that. I looked at the pattern about ten times and that is how the pattern calls for it.

If you really look at it you can see the collar folds in, the facing being the inside part. Some of those stitches look stretched or crooked but in real life they aren't.

A belated happy birthday to Mike and also to Sylvia who was four on Monday.