Life without labor is guilt, labor without art is brutality - Ruskin

Tho he sometimes manages to drive me mad, my son is a most admirable young man. He's a genuine "good person". That needed saying.

Have you ever noticed that the people who tell you how to live your life never pay your bills? Those people telling you where you should be living, what you should be doing, how you should do things; they never come up with the scratch to cover the costs. They never have any praise for you when you are slogging along, managing to make ends meet by putting up with unpleasant situations. Must be nice to be an irresponsible godlike being like they are. Meanwhile, I just continue to continue - and ignore their cunning plans and brilliant suggestions. When I see one scrawled on a cashier's check, I'll take the advice. Next, please.

The Empire State Building. Grand old lady of skyscrapers. Great place to work. The tourists are a never ending circus sideshow for those who work there. This weekend, I stopped by the office on Saturday to finish some work. Pouring rain! I mean gotterdamerung for rain and fog. Seriously pea soup. So, the scene is, 3 tourist ladies approach a guard and ask, "What's the visibility?", Guard says, "Zero". They think about this a few moments and then inquire, "So how far is that?". Exasperated guard who has probably been asked the same question all day says, "Zero means you can't see a damn thing, ladies, it's all fogged up!". 'Oh, so which buildings can we see up there?" I walked away at this point. A damn circus.

One of the nice things about living in Manhattan is laundries. In almost any neighborhood you can drop your laundry off on the way to work and get it back on your way home...all clean and fresh smelling and beautifully folded so it's about 1/4 the size of the massiev bag you lugged in that morning. And it's not significantly more costly than doing it yourself with the misery of waiting around bored for hours.

Poland announced it has sent troops to the Gulf to help. Mexico has no idea what to do with them.