What were the blue things on his tie?

All during the "speech to the nation" tonight, I couldn't stop looking at George's blue tie and wondering what the symbols were. Could they be some symbol that only Republicans can understand - that everything is alright really - or some symbol that only terrorists can understand, some hidden message like "bring it on" in terrorist symbols. Or could they be symbols that only millionaires understand, one of the secret symbols of the millionaire club. I may never know.

The yellow plug

Today was the day and here is why. I got the yellow oil plug for my chainsaw and can return to the profane task of cutting wood - something I find incredibly important and substantial, something that gives me strong feelings of accomplishment, something that makes me feel worthy in a very fundamental way. The chain saw is pretty crude really when you look at it, something devised in the early days of motors and really not improved substantially in design. Perhaps this description of some events in the last few days will help in explanation...

During all the days spent away from the office cutting wood and working on the barn and piling sticks and talking with neighbors, insurance agents and so forth, I had really no problem that couldn't solved within minutes. Everything that was in front of me had alternatives and it was simply a matter of making up my mind, finding out if anyone else cared and moving forward. No documentation, no meetings, no emails, no waiting for approval or discussion and certainly no 'lets wait and see' stuff going on. We just did what needed to be done and moved on. Sometimes I wondered if anyone else cared what decisions we made about our shared property but most every time that happened, we
remembered that everyone else was relying on us to not only decide, but to make it happen. So it just moved forward and things got done.

Then one day, during my away from the office time, I had to sit in on a big meeting, set to decide how one state agency would work with another state agency on a fairly simple matter. For one hour, 10 people sat around a table and discussed what had been under discussion for months and lo and behold, no decision was reached. No one had any thing assigned to them, no one seemed to feel like they were wasting time cause they were representing a lot of interests and were very responsible for the tax payers dollars and wanted to make the right decision... so nothing was done.

What a difference for me to go through the week on my own, moving forward through problem after problem, some very difficult and some simple and then wasting this hour listening to people not decide anything. It was really difficult not to have strong emotions about it all.

Not surprising that self-employment would provide an easier place for decision making than state government - wouldn't have to have too much of an education to figure that one out.