A Conspiracy of Fate

Nature is a Mother

Weather. This time of year in the great north, weather is a terrible tease with days like last Saturday, sunny and 81; and days like next Saturday's rain snow mix with a high of 34. The worst weather always happens on the weekends, at least so it seems, making it impossible for me to get my yard in order, unless I skip work one day and do it. That would be unethical.

Really what I'm pissed about is this. I offered to help a guy from the Corvette forum to which I belong go look at a couple cars on Saturday. He is a self-described "newbie", or as the kids call it, "NOOB". I hate to see NOOBs spend too much money because they are overwhelmed by the beauty of their conquest.

A Corvette, unlike a lot of old cars, hides its flaws pretty well. At least it does if you are objectifying it. And most people do. The plastic bodies don't rust, and so people who are looking don't think about the metal underneath. The panel fit on all these cars was middling at best, especially in the mid 1970's, long thought the nadir of quality in American cars. But is the panel fit on this car normal bad, or "I've been in an accident", bad?

Not to go too far into this, because I can see your eyes glazing over as you read, I was hoping to be able to drive my Corvette to do this. Any little excuse, right? Nope. Not to be if the weather is to be believed. When it comes to predicting rain and cold on a Saturday in middle April, it almost always is.
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When it Rains...

...It pours. Things have suddenly gotten very busy and I am seeing some fruits of my recent labors. It almost is enough to restore some of my lost faith in humanity.
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Daddy Needs a New Pair of Shoes

We walk so much that my walking shoes are walked out. I need a new pair. We are going shopping tonight. Hopefully I can find some good shoes made by people who aren't forced to live in abject poverty in deplorable conditions for less than my life savings.
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Signs Signs, Everywhere a Sign

People have been protesting a lot lately about a lot of things. Some people want equality, some people want institutionalized racism, some people are up in arms about losing collective bargaining while still others just want a job.

Many of these protesters employ signs to put their points across. They range from cutesy to sorta homicidal looking. I saw one today that I can really get behind. It said everything I had been thinking. It was clear, concise and bereft of anything that would muddy its message.



About says it all, don't you think?

Men are From Brooklyn, Women are from Queens

I haven't been blogging for a bit because I find myself to be in a bit of a mood. My mother always told me if I wasn't able to say anything nice, I should refrain from saying anything at all.

I have been very quiet this week.

I am not a patient man. I recognize this. I also do not like it when I feel as though there are demands put upon me that represent a certain amount of inequity. I can carry 36 grocery bags in the house at once while talking on the phone. I can use my chin to open the door. My dear wife, however cannot be bothered to reach for the door and pull it open with one bag in each hand. She also cannot be bothered to communicate this fact with me; leaving me in a position to not know she needs help, and therefore not help when she needs help. I should have known.

There are many differences between men and women. Most of them are praiseworthy and absolutely necessary to the growth and continuation of the species. But there are some small things that really bug us about each other. Like women smell good and men don't. Even if I were to slather myself in the same body washes and lotions my wife does, I would smell like a man. A fruity, desperate man. Our different sensibilities often define us; and often lead to problems like the pea under the princess' mattress, or the thorn in the tiger's paw. They loom large in our lives.

Men tend to be more self-dependent than women, asking for help only when they have exhausted all other options. This is what leads us to not ask for directions, or to lift an object that is clearly too big or too heavy for us. Often, when we have to ask for help, we wrap it up into a social context in an effort to mask the fact we are asking for help. For instance, it is not uncommon for a guy to say- "Hey, come on over and we'll watch the game and drink some beers and remodel my kitchen... It'll be like a party!"

Women often ask for help, not because they need help in the classical sense, but because they want help. I suspect, that to my wife, help represents the fortitude of our relationship. It is a bulwark if you will, a glaring example of our fortress marriage. Men don't get this. A least I certainly don't. My bulwark, is independence itself. My wife takes pride in "look what we did together!" Where I want to boast what I did all by myself.

I learned this (again) yesterday when Emily was saying how "we" fixed the brakes on the Corvette and had even thought about driving it to Indiana (for about a minute until reality took hold). Emily did indeed help there at the end. She followed my instructions to the letter and helped me complete the job.

My male need to show alpha sensibility out competed my need to get along with my mate and I took exception to the use of the word "we" insofar as it demonstrated relative equality with respect to the amount of work and expertise needed to complete the job. Fact is, the job could not have been completed without Em's help, but it never would have started without me.

I am not capable of letting something like this pass and had to straighten out the record for everyone. Which probably made me look like a jerk.

And then I, when on the (probably rare) occasion I help Em, or do something without being asked, expect a parade, or fireworks. Perhaps both should the situation warrant. If you were to cared enough to ask me, it usually does.

Similarly, I suffer a larger than normal indignity when my efforts go unnoticed or unappreciated, or worse, become the source of critique. I hate, simply hate hate hate, doing something kind only to have it said that I could have (should have, indeed, how could I not have) done it another way.

This is something in my experience my wife cannot stop doing. Her mother does it, and her mother's mother does it. They can't help it anymore than a bird can help singing, or a blade of grass can help growing. And I cannot help that I hate, hate hate hate, this trait.

I made breakfast this morning and even did the dishes. I put the dishes in the dishwasher rack to dry. We went to church. When we cam home, Em's mom said, "Oh, we don't put clean dishes in there, it's gross... we put them in the other dishwasher." They have two. One derelict (which I foolishly used), the other portable.

Em, who had earlier not only seen me putting them in the other dishwasher and later even commented I could leave them to dry while we were in church, now suddenly became an expert on where to put the damn dishes, agreeing with her mother and going so far as to say "yeah, they put them in the other dishwasher".

Now I am staring down two women, critiquing my performance when I wanted a parade. And fireworks.

There were fireworks alright. I am after all, not a patient man.

Now you know the rest of the story. I'll get over it and the dishes were duly rewashed in accordance with laws of cleanliness and tradition that would make a mohel throw his hands up in the air with an exasperated Oy Vey! Life will carry on and there will, God willing, be many more opportunities for flared tempers and grandiose ruminations on the differences between men and women, me and you, her and him.

Badd Spalling and Other Maladies of the System

I spend a lot of time on the internet. A lot. Too much. I am one of those who gets a little itchy if I haven't checked up on things for a little bit (30 seconds). I have developed this habit over the years. Some things change, some things do not change.

People's ability, or lack thereof, to spell and punctuate has only changed for the worse. The slow dissolution of our requirements to be correct is starting to jump offline and into the real world. For instance, I passed a building today that where the sign read: CPA's.

It is entirely possible that the person who owns that sign has the initials, C.P.A., making the sign somewhat less egregious, but it is very, very doubtful (see below where I decide to continue on this rant- for the sake of flow, I removed it down to the bottom). My own company's website is fraught with grammatical missteps and errors of this sort. I am too new to tell anyone. I feel embarrassed to point it out. That no one else has caught it, pointed it out or gone about correcting it is somewhat more worrisome, but apparently the fact that we fix flood's and fire's is okay by the leadership.

I was the only one who noted that a van we had just gotten back from the graphics shop spelled refrigeration as refridgeration. I am a terrible speller... I went into why at length in a blentry quite some time ago. In case you don't remember, that particular faculty was fried by some 110 AC current and an intrepid stab of metal into a light socket while taking part in a spelling bee. But refridgeration jumped off the van like a tigress ready to strike.

How come they didn't notice this at the graphics shop? Are you telling me the person who laid out the graphics was not capable of spelling? Or at least looking a word up? Is the graphic shop we use competitively priced because they do without things like spell checker?

It is 6 months after I noticed that gaffe, and that van is now in service on the other side of the state with a different arm of the company, and refridgeration is still proudly emblazoned on the side of the van. My question is, if we can't spell it, how the hell can we service it?

I am also a poor typist, another shortcoming I freely admit. On this very blog there are many an entry that have misused, misspelled words. I typically do not go back and spend a lot of time reading my own blogs. If I did, I would deem them worthless and they would never get published. I assure you, however, that when I am creating or editing business correspondence, I am Johnny on the Spot with the grammar and spelling.

How is it we are allowing this to slip? Why isn't proper language usage both verbal and written an absolute necessity in all we do? We don't even need schools to teach it, if we all did it right, that is how we would all learn, naturally, over time.

Em and I had a talk on one of our walks and she said something that triggered an idea in my head. How about we relent and give all kids cell phones? They can have the newest and best with free unlimited texting and talking. The caveat? They cannot send a text unless it is grammatically correct and spelled properly. There will be a tutorial on how to fix what was typed and therefore it will be a lot like learning! We can call it text-bot.

Similarly, phone conversations could be monitored by a talk-bot. if there is an egregious misuse of a word, or the use of a made-up word, (dethaw and irregardless pop to mind) talk-bot will interrupt you and correct you. You could even customize your talk-bot to have a celebrity voice. Imagine, Lady Ga Ga teaching the children proper grammar usage!

No longer will we hear "me and Sam are going to the store, or Sam and me are going to the store, or suffer through commonly overlooked errors like making a lot one word to read, alot. Who didn't learn this stuff?

My mother and father were so picky with me growing up and I hated every minute of it. They constantly corrected my speaking. If I asked about a word, how to spell it or how to use it, I was told to look it up and come back with the answer. It was brilliant parenting. It just seems as if may parents, or at least parents of their generation were amongst the last who knew the good they were doing by being such pains in the ass.

Without further ado, let's explore some of my most pet of peeves.

Irregardless- Did you know as I type this, it does not say it is misspelled? Which means this unholy mash up of the two words irrespective and regardless has made it into the common vernacular.

Dethaw- This would mean to freeze, yes? Would you say unthaw? How about defreeze or unfreeze? No? Right, because it is an abortion of grammar. So stop saying dethaw.

Deprivised (deprivized?)- As used by a boss I had once. Please don't make fun of the way I talk, I'm a little sleep deprovised.

Incorrect use of possessives- It is not "the lake's mall", it is "the lakes mall." The lake does not own the mall. It is certainly not CPA's, which would have to be read CPA-is. This makes no sense at all. And if it was C.P.A.'s, meaning a person with the initials C.P.A. owned it, then the sign is still wrong. Why the need to add an apostrophe to everything these days? not every word that is plural is possessive. Its/It's is a great example. It's means It is. Say it out loud with me. It Is My Cup, not its my cup. Its is assumed to be possessive already. It's (It is) in its very nature.

Incorrect placement of the plural- It is Mothers-in-Law not Mother-in-laws. Please, make the article/noun/pronoun, (mother) not the modifier (in-law) plural.

You're/Yore/Your- A contraction is the melding of two words, denoted by the use of an apostrophe. You're is therefore a contraction of you/are. The 'a' is dropped and replaced by the apostrophe. so 'you're' and 'you are' are both 6 characters. Some shortcut. Whomever came up with contractions is singularly responsible for all the bad things in the world since that day, ever. I long for the days of YORE when we did not write with contractions, ever. And Your is possessive... if I ever see your's, I am going to cut your fingers off and feed them to you.

Who/whose/who's/whom- when I figure this one out, I'll let you know. See also, Lye, Lie, Lay, Lain.

And many, many more... but lunch is over so I have to go.

Piece my Friend's. Please, make sure your fixing you're spelling and grammer errors before the world ends bad.

HorrorScopes

I don't believe in the veracity or efficacy of horoscopes. I do read mine every day, though, because it's funny. I actually not only read my horoscope, but many days read all the astrological sign horoscopes. Then I pick the one I like the best.

Today, I am an Aries. This particular horoscope that comes across on my Google home page has me as a Taurus. But, I have always chosen freely between the two, since my birthday, April 20th, is on the cusp. Depending on who you listen to, if indeed you do consult astrology as a guiding principal, I can be either.

Today, as I said, I am an Aries. Here it is in its entirety:

The super-active Aries energy is over the top today and exuberant
Jupiter's conjunction with the Sun in your sign gives you something
to celebrate. Although it's the middle of the workweek, you
might not be able to concentrate on your job responsibilities.
You would rather spend your time lost in creative
self-expression than finishing up what should have been done
yesterday. As usual, your key to happiness depends on finding a
middle ground between feeling free and meeting your obligations.

The middle ground I am choosing to pursue at this point is avoiding work. I am leaving on the road for the day in a short while and figured since I am having a working lunch and a full day of appointments, I can lose the morning a little and indulge in my creative self-expression.

Trouble is, I am not feeling terribly creative. It's a rainy day. On top of that, instead of easing into it, we took our walk first thing this morning because that's what suited our schedule. Instead of drinking coffee in my robe, checking up on the news, (okay, checking up on Facebook), I was walking briskly in the rain.

When I got home, I sat down with some coffee, but somehow it wasn't the same. I didn't get that preternatural feeling of calm and comfort upon that first slurpy hot pull. I missed that first immediate rush of the day. I missed it a lot when I quit smoking, too. The things we associate with pleasure are very dangerous... or can be.

So instead of enjoying my coffee and its effects on my body and soul, I was engaged in wonder of what I would choose if I had to choose between coffee and other certain things in life that I find enjoyable. That is a topic for another day. It turns out, philosophical self-inventory is not the best way to spend a morning. I needed a diversion.

Checking on the news, (Facebook, whatever!), I see that one friend's sister is still going through chemo (she's 4 years my junior), and another lost a pet quite unexpectedly. Having had close family and friends suffer through cancer, and having lost a beloved pet quite unexpectedly, I was suddenly down. There is a lot of pain in the world.

My mind wanders back to yesterday. I took the time to send another letter to my friend who is in prison, awaiting trial for a crime committed a long time ago. I sent him a letter a month ago as a pick-me-up. I was a little surprised, but very happy to get one back. It is clear the letters help, so even though I don't have a lot to say, I am trying hard to write regularly. I remember how I liked getting letters at summer camp... and from what my friend tells me, jail isn't summer camp.

It is hard to write a letter to someone who is incarcerated. I want to believe that he had nothing to do with the crime... and his story is certainly plausible. But I also, maybe innocently, believe that people don't typically get arrested and held without a certain amount of evidence. I may be naive. I don't know how many people are wrongfully arrested or convicted. I don't have time to research it.

But, whatever the truth and the outcome, it is still nice to get a letter or two. Maybe for that five minutes, the worry melts away.

All these things, and the rain and the late spring have got me sorta spent. I would love to be able to, as my horoscope says, indulge my inner creativity. Instead, I think I am just avoiding work. And even the time for that has expired.

Taking a Pass on Passwords

This morning was a lesson in utter frustration. I renewed a prescription over the phone, which is easy enough and went to go begin my work day. It was 9:03 am. Sorry, boss, I was three minutes late.

But that's not the issue. Em says to me, "I'm going shopping... do you want me to pick that up, or should I give you, 'the card'?"

The card in this case accesses the funds in our Health Savings Account, or HSA. For those of you who are poor, like we are, an HSA is a way for your company to wriggle out of paying premiums for decent insurance by foisting upon you a savings account that they put money, (your money), into each month on your behalf. Or in my case, they put money in when they can. It has proven sporadic and I'm pretty sure not totally legal, but I am gonna leave well-enough alone.

Em just hit the card pretty hard for a three month prescription, so I said I didn't think we had much of an available balance. "I'll look it up," I said as though it should have been the easiest thing in the world to do. And it should have been. But if it were, this post would be about something else, now, wouldn't it?

I forgot the password. I checked each of my myriad e-mails in whichI store important things in hopes no one could ever access enough of my important information to steal my identity and therefore my tens of hundreds of dollars. In fact, I spread important information around like Voldemort stores Horcruxes, or for those of you who actually have a life and don't understand that reference, like a squirrel hides nuts.

No dice. It was not in my Yahoo, other Yahoo, other other Yahoo, Gmail, old work, new work or any other e-mail I remember having. It donned on my that I may have stored the information on my Blackberry, in the handy feature called "Password Keeper". Its icon is a safe, which makes me feel like it is good and secure. Like a safe.

I couldn't find the app at first, because it wasn't on my desktop. It was in a sub folder. I finally found it and typed in my password. Yes, a password to access my passwords.

Wrong password, it informs me. 1 of 10 attempts used.

10 attempts? How safe is that? I think most of the people in my life, were they to really do a little homework could figure out the passwords I use in 10 attempts!

Except of course, me. I began rolling through my various iterations and permutations of my standard passwords until I burned up 7 of 10 tries. I was sweating.

Then I remembered I told Em the password with the preface that "if God forbid, something should happen to me, all my important passwords and accounts are on this, here. And this is the password to get the password."

I knew she would write it down as soon as I walked away. And I know where she keeps these things written down, so I went there. The first password I put in was the right password. I must have mistyped it. Damn, I hate when that happens.

The HSA account password was not in there. It is now 9:20 am. I have spent 17 minutes and considerable perspiration, all to see if I have $18.00 in this stupid account. That's almost a dollar a minute if my math is right.

I had to admit to the website that I had forgotten the secret handshake. This triggered the waterfall five security questions, which have to be answered within a specific time and cannot be mistyped. The questions are easy so this should have been an easy task.

Again, if that were true, this would be a different blentry. Because the five questions are things that everyone knows the answers to, (or could find out easily), I answer them wrong, with answers only I would know. Who's dumb now?

Still Me. Because I couldn't remember my wrong answers. I thought it out, though, and got in. I had forgotten this password required letters (at least one uppercase), numbers AND a special character. I was only just now getting used to mixing letters and numbers.

It is now 9:23 am, and I figured out the answer to the question I asked of myself a full 20 minutes before. Yes, there is at least $18.00 available in the HSA.

Ironically, the med I am refilling has something to do with anxiety suppression, or at least that's one thing it supposedly does for me. Perhaps every new password should come with a prescription.

Sharing Nachos

Being the social anthropologist I am, I find small ways to make big observation about people when I am out among them. First, it is important to stay in disguise at all times - meaning, your subjects must never know you are watching them. If they suspect you are, their behavior will be altered and you may be asked to leave, depending on the type of establishment you are patronizing.

There are certain places that are excellent for watching humans in their native habitats. The shopping mall is one, and TGI Fridays is another. I pick on Fridays because it caters to the 85 percentile person. You will find a range in age on any given night. You will find people there to watch sports, to drink, to hook up, to have a girls night out, or any other myriad activity.

And they have nachos.

What do nachos have to do with anything? Oh, you are so good at asking the right questions. You can tell a lot about people from how they share nachos. For instance, a couple in the infancy of their relationship, within the first few dates, are almost always focused on each other and not the nachos. They deconstruct the nachos slowly, from edge working in to center. The nachos are a safety mechanism, a shared project and a possible source of conversation if it is getting a little dull. The girl will pick around for a nacho not too loaded, not too big and eat it in small bites, followed by a demure dab of the corner of her lips with her napkin. Neither party ever licks their fingers, for they are not far enough into their relationship for licked finger double dipping. This couple actually uses the small appetizer plates that the server handed them at the beginning of the meal. This is apparently the purpose for which they are intended. They often ask for, and use, extra napkins.

At the next table, we see a married couple over the same nachos. Sharing here is a relative term at most. They immediately dive in, going from center to edge grabbing for all the toppings that each chip will bear. There is little talking and what talking there is is usually about the nachos and their relative goodness, or a passive-aggressive comment about not eating them all. All talking is accompanied by small ejecta from the mouth area which is ignored, unless said ejecta is deemed large enough to warrant attention, in which case it is picked up from where it lay and reintroduced into the mouth. This is done with one hand, without looking while the eyes continue to scan the remaining nachos formulating the other hand's next move. the strategy employed is like a chess game, fluid and changing in response to the opponent's last move. The appetizer plates are shoved aside as they are merely getting in the way of the straight path to the nachos. They remain so clean the restaurant could use them for another table. The married couple's napkins stay firmly on their laps as they use the traditional lick and suck methods of cleaning themselves while eating. the tongue is employed to clean large foodstuffs from the immediate area around the mouth, while the mouth itself is used to clean the fingers.

In fact, the only time the napkin is used is when one member of the couple is signifying they are done; they are, in effect throwing in the towel. This is the signal that allows the other party to "have at it" and finish the plate. No eye contact shall be made during this picking clean process as it would only call attention to the graphic nature of what has just transpired.

Now, as we go back to the table of the couple who are dating, we see there is still a considerable amount of nachos left on the plate, even though the married couple is paying the check and grabbing for their coats. As the nacho supply dwindles, each person slows their eating, not wanting to appear too aggressive. The nachos almost never get finished. There are several different motivations for this.

The woman does not want to appear to be a "big eater" and the man, anticipating (nae, hoping for) some sort of physical congress in the not too distant future (perhaps even in the parking lot) tries not to fill up too much. There is also a tacit acknowledgment that there exists enough prosperity between the two that they can afford to throw perfectly good food away; which as we all know is very important in America.

In next week's lesson, we will discuss dessert sharing and how it relates to relationship stamina.

Springing Forward Forward

Call Me Mister Tigger

Many years ago, before congress chose to ignore almost every important issue and instead exercised its power to screw with Daylight Saving Time. My wife bought me an Oregon Scientific clock that removed the burden of the user having to change the clock twice a year (and performed its real intent, my twice yearly rantings on the topic of time change).

What the clockmaker did not count on, nor provide contingency for was the unending idiocy of our elected officials manifest in changing the weeks that we spring forward and fall back. Even more at the core of why I write this at 6:00 am on a Sunday is the fact that we Americans are lazy and gadget hungry and too often are at the mercy of the devices meant to make our lives easy. I have railed against all this in previous blentries but I can't seem to find where. Oh well, if you read it once, you don't need to read it again and if you didn't read it then, you probably don't care to now.

My clock sprung forward last night, even though the rest of us sprung forward weeks ago. So, waking my groggy wife and my groggy cat in an unusually dark and cold room this morning, I did not posses the presence of mind to put the pieces together so that I might see the whole picture. It was 5:55 am, not 6:55 am.

I now have a clock, designed by a company that uses a form of the word 'science' in its title that doesn't actually work, strictly speaking, since 4 times per year it is unable to provide the service for which it was originally designed, requiring either my direct intervention or, failing that, causing some sort of exaggerated timeliness or tardiness.

The picture is, simply, I get an extra hour of time to do... something... with this morning. I think drinking coffee and bitching about it is a good use of time. Yep. Indeed.
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Old Timey Pursuits

It was too pretty last night not to take a drive in the Corvette. It was cold, yes, but pretty. The weather in these parts right now is nearly indiscernible from late fall. There are a few less leaves on the trees and the telltale road debris that is a signature remnant of winter's snow is prominent. However, those clues aside, a person would be hard pressed to say whether it is March or November. And here we are in April. Spring is going to be short this year.

I went through a car wash for the first time I think since I have known the car, which is 22 years this week. It was very, very dirty and it is just too cold to wash it in my driveway. With an old car, even a mere carwash qualifies as an adventure. You can play "where will the leak come from" or my favorite game, "name that part" - in which you have to correctly identify the formerly attached part as it is hurling by you in the vortex of air, water and various scrubbing apperati (apperatusses?). Both games are fun and usually give way to my favorite "will we get out of this alive?" the game where you literally face death in the form of those heated air dryers that seem to go on forever at the end.

After the near death carwash, we took her out to the back roads away from the city. I was comfortable with this since everything seemed to be in good working order. We had a fine drive down 92nd street and its roller coaster like hills. We took a turn back to town and I decided to make a trip through the old neighborhood.

Like an anthropologist, I take a trip through the old 'hood to measure and note its slow rate of decline. I was pleased to say that it looked better that it has in recent visits. Maybe things are looking up. We then took a quick diversion past Chandra and Jason's. One car was there but we didn't stop. Dropping by unannounced is an old timey pursuit. It just doesn't happen any more.

As we were turning for home, we spotted Jason heading back home. He spotted us and we waved. I decided to pursue him and we pulled into his drive mere moments after he did. And we visited for an hour and left.

Back when I was growing up, it was not unheard of (indeed, it was fairly frequent) for my parents' friends to drop by while out on a walk, or just pop in in general. I always thought it nice. Neighborly. Friendly. I hope we were not an imposition on our friends. We were just trying to be... friendly.
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Spring Fresh

Despite spring's late arrival, it was spring cleaning day in the Uebbing household, yesterday. After breakfast and coffee at West Coast Coffee, (owner and proprietor Doug is my friend from back in the day), we set to work, denuding the dark corners of the house. We moved the furniture, vacuumed the curtains, got all the little nooks free of crannies and generally worked our assess off.

The thing about spring cleaning is that you work hard for little apparent payoff. Had any of our friends decided to pop by they would have not noticed that the space underneath the couch upon which they were perched was sanitary enough to eat from, or that the wall behind our head board in our bedroom was now free of the accumulated cat hair and other various dust or that the area behind and beneath the refrigerator, and indeed the workings of refrigerator itself were both as clean as a whistle.

In the end, it must be done. And there are worse ways of spending an otherwise idle day than putting on some music (in this case a Bob Seger marathon) and bee-boppin' your way through the house with a rag in your hand.
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S*it Warmed Over

I admit, Em... I wanted seconds. Nice job considering what you had to work with!