maven&meddler

What a busy week it’s been. Yesterday was Mr. Maven’s 78th birthday and the poor guy spent it getting another (3rd ) antibiotic injection into his inner ear in an attempt to cure the problems with vertigo he’s been having. If that doesn’t ‘bite’ for a birthday, I don’t know what does. I can tell you this much, it hurts.

The day pretty busy at work, too. Huffman & Carpenter, Inc. - who employs me to nurture the new website and blog - was honored with the Lake Tahoe Award of Distinction by the US Army Corps of Engineers for their many outstanding projects in the Lake Tahoe Basin. This is important work, which contributes to the goal of restoring the amazing clarity of one of the worlds’ most famous lakes. It’s a jewel that must be preserved and protected.

LTC Kiger with Lori Carpenter

LTC Kiger of the Corps of Engineers with Susanne Heim

Another nice bit: Reno City Councilman, Dave Aiazzi, swung by to give both H&C, and Susanne Heim a proclamation from Mayor Cashell declaring it Huffman&Carpenter Day, and Susanne Heim Day. Also attending was Matt Tuma from Senator Harry Reids office.

Very cool.

Reno City Councilman Dave Aiazzi with Lori Carpenter

As Dave Aiazzi was doing stand-in duty for hizzoner, Mayor Cashell was busy slapping down the Reno-Sparks Convention and Visitors Authority. You see, the RSCVA had pulled an apparent all nighter to come up with their new proposed slogan for the area: A little West of Center. Where is Center? What is Center?

I agree that this is pretty lame stuff and about what you’d image a committee would come up with, but why the Mayor found it so patently ‘embarrassing’ mystifies me. For all the rightwingers in this area, you might call it More than a little Right of Center. I send the RSCVA all my best wishes that someday they’ll figure out what this place really is and settle on it once and for all.

You might figure that we all have bigger fish to fry these days.

As far as the economy goes, here’s a bit of bright news: Nevada Senator Harry Reid today announced that Nevada auto-dealers have been repaid more than $13.8 million dollars in the highly successful “Cash for Clunkers” program which means that 97% of payments are complete.

That said, it looks like TARP funds may never be paid back, and the banks that were too big to fail … well, they’ve gotten even bigger on the taxpayer funded cash infusion. It’s a year later: Where are all the regulations that were proposed?

Finally, I’ve got ripe nectarines that are really worth eating this year. Both trees are loaded. So are the tomatoes, which are starting to irritate me since they seem to be stuck on ‘unripe’, as are the apricots.

What’s the deal? Does anybody else around here have this problem? Let me know what the answer is.

maven