We've spent the last two weeks in Montana and Chicago. If there's anything you think I'll find important in that period, you may wish to reinform me. I skim *really* quickly when I have this much e-mail.

(p.s. Do we still have a state government?)

Yesterday, I read Shadow of the Giant, the current-last book in Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game series.

As I've mentioned before, I harbor a general dislike for Harry Potter, stemming from when I worked in a used bookstore with an excellent science fiction / fantasy selection, but found that parents couldn't think of buying anything but HP for their adolescent kids, neglecting a huge corpus of darn good books. Whenever such shoppers could be bothered to listen for two minutes, rather than turning and walking out the door as soon as they found that we didn't have a hundred copies of Rawlings' latest, I tried to make sure they ended up with a copy of Ender's Game.

Perhaps the most frequent and bitter of debates I see between historic preservationists and the average resident of an older home is window replacement. From the preservationist's standpoint, original windows are among the most important of defining characteristics of historic residential architecture. The typical rejoinder from the homeowner, convinced that replacing old drafty windows is key to home energy savings, is, "Okay, but are you going to pay my heating bills?"

The preservationist, in turn, will assert variously that significant energy savings can be achieved by properly restoring and weatherstripping the existing windows; that the return on investment from replacement windows vs. repair and weatherstripping is too low for replacement to be financially worthwhile; and, showing some savvy when dealing with purely environmentalist criticisms, that the embedded energy that goes into a replacement window is far greater than the lifetime savings of the replacement, and that the R-value of even a high-end energy efficient window is still very low.

Southeast Michigan is blessed with a political powerhouse in Congressman John Dingell (D-15th), the longest serving member of the House, and the Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Dingell's therefore pretty well placed to Make A Difference when it comes to addressing climate change.

However, as the Congressman from Southeast Michigan, Dingell is also strongly wedded to the auto industry (literally - his wife Debbie is President of the General Motors Foundation). With the Big 3, and their unions - Dingell's largest funders and voter bloc - digging in their heels every step of the way on anything that smells like a fuel efficiency mandate, Dingell is notably hesitant to embrace positive energy legislation. In response to calls for increased CAFE standards, he put forth what was at first a stunt - a proposal for an intentionally unrealistic plan meant to kill debate on the issue by being too sweeping. While the political chessgame aspect of this has received its share of criticism, I think Dingell has also been surprised to see people taking it seriously, and he's now starting to get behind the proposal as a serious attempt to address climate change.

And that's where we come in. Whether you're a Dingell constituent or not, you can show him that you support strong action on climate change. A group of Ypsilanti residents have set up a petition to urge Dingell on, and state their support for action. I've signed the petition, and you can too.

The major project of year one in Houseone has been keeping out the water. Between soggy roofing and rivulets of water running across the basement floor during every rain, water was a significant issue when we moved in. However, this month gave us about two weeks of daily rain, much of it quite heavy, with the net effect of small amounts of dampness detectable at the basement wall-floor intersection. I'd say we've got the water problem pretty well solved.

The next major issue, looking at my spreadsheet of utility costs, is clearly heating. Our baseline cooking + hot water cost is about $1/day, but that spikes to $5-$6/day in January and February. Some of the window caulking we've done should help, and the new front door en route will do wonders. But some of the water repairs pushed us backwards on heating.

The DetNews today rails against suggestions for a graduated State income tax, saying,

Under one scenario, that highest bracket would kick in once household income hits $150,000. . .Democrats will try to sell this to voters by convincing them it hurts the evil rich and not good, wholesome working families. But look at the chart -- you don't have to make all that much money before your taxes go up substantially. Like every other tax hike, this one will rob the middle class, because that's where most of the money is.

Robbing the middle class at $150,000 and up, eh? Let's check some facts. (This is where it's especially nice that the Census Bureau's website is called "American Factfinder".)

Recently, the local police decided to start enforcing the ordinance against bicycle riding on the sidewalks in business districts. As a daily pedestrian in said districts, I'm pretty happy with this - the sidewalks are too narrow and cluttered to allow cyclists to zip down them without threatening pedestrians. Those of us on foot have frequent near misses with cyclists as we step out of doors, come around corners, or are crossing the street and have bicycles go for the curb ramp with no regard for how close it takes them to other people.

I also bike to said business districts on a regular basis, and have to say that biking on the street just isn't that bad. No, not even on Michigan Avenue - traffic is well-behaved enough downtown, especially with the lights breaking up flow, that I'm fairly comfortable in traffic, and I'm far from a hardcore, spandex-and-scary-calves, veteran cyclist.

Cara recently acquired Arcade Fire's Funeral, and, after three or four listens, I discovered, to my great surprise, that I liked it. A lot.

But I thought I didn't like Arcade Fire. At all. Interesting.

I commented to Cara on enjoying the very driving feel of a few songs, and found myself stuck in a teachable moment. You see, boys and girls, it seems the bits that I really like in "Neighborhoods 1 - Tunnels" and "Rebellion (Lies)" is called a Mannheim roller, "an extended crescendo passage typically having a rising melodic line over an ostinato [repeated] bass line". Yes, yes, I'm a bombastic sap. Now, excuse me, I've got some Shostakovich to listen to.

Anyways, it later struck me just why I thought I didn't like Arcade Fire. It seems I was mistaking them for someone else. Um. Sorry, guys.

It's blueberry season, apparently until the end of August. We like Dexter Blueberry Farm - not organic, but local and close. (Plus, it's where my mom took us several times a summer when I was little, so it's tradition.) I picked about 9 pounds.

Blueberries are $1.35 / lb at the farm. I weighed some out; they're about 3 cups / lb, making a dry pint about $0.90. Blueberries at the store are about $4/pint. Wow.

Now, were you to think like an economist, and figure out how much time I spend picking said blueberries, and driving to the farm and back, and declare that my picking time costs me the same hourly rate as my working time, then this pint costs about $5.75, before per mile costs are calculated. Which is why I avoid thinking like an economist - and also why we take friends along. With Kelli & Michael in tow, the mileage costs are cut in half from what we pay alone, and the time expenditure has entertainment value, meaning the cost of my time is priced at the opportunity cost of the fun I could be having elsewhere, and, ehhhh, let's just say it all equals out, my time cost is zero, meaning the cost of the blueberries is equal to the price of the blueberries plus mileage costs / pickers. I don't care for economist pedantry anyways, so this method is fine by me.

It's been dry. Dry dry dry. (I type this while it is raining, but still - this may be the first good, prolonged, soaking rain, rather than flash downpour, we've had in months. Here's hoping.)

The Ann Arbor News says that area farmers are calling this the driest summer in living memory - ouch. "In southeast Michigan - where sweet and feed corn, soybeans, wheat and hay are common field crops - precipitation totals for June and July aren't much different than normal. But because the rain has come in short, heavy bursts followed by long, dry periods, it's done little good for growers anxiously checking their plants and weather reports."