Michael McDaniel’s Dawning Awareness

I was listening to Bob Edwards’ new show and he had Daniel Schorr on as a guest. Schorr has been a “news analyst” on NPR for as long as I have been listening to NPR. I even met his daughter once during my time in Latin America.

Anyway, I learned from the podcast, that this guy I’ve been hearing on the radio for 25 years is 91 years old now, was hired by CBS after the New York Times declined to hire another jew, and that the guy who hire him at CBS was: Edward R. Murrow. He’s the last of Murrow’s guys still active in journalism.

My favorite tidbit: Schorr was reporting on the Nixon enemies list on live TV, got a copy of the list while on the air and started reading down it only to find his own name there.

Really interesting interview.

We got kicked out of our house again this past weekend, as the guy who did our hardwood floors came back to re-sand and re-finish the floors in our great room. The finish is quite toxic so we were in a hotel. It’s also quite flammable, so they shut off the gas to keep all of the electric ignition systems from blowing up the house.

When we returned, I turned the gas back on, and the hot water heater and our fireplaces came back to life, but the main heat for the house did not. As a result, we got to spend the night in a very cold house. We ran the fireplace overnight, but the temperature continued to fall until it was just 58 in the house (and that’s pretty good for sub-freezing temperatures outside).

It’s fixed now, but is a good reminder of how fortunate we are to be able to afford to stay warm in the winter.

The Bugle (with John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman) is literally laugh-out-loud funny at times. Highly recommended.

Well, we are in the new house, though we’re not alone: With the exception of Christmas week, we’ve had workmen in the house every day since we moved in. We’re all wishing we’d just stayed in the rental a while longer, though I’m told by many that this is par for the course.

This is probably the worst week since we moved in, with painters here re-spraying lots of surfaces that weren’t done all that well the first time. And tomorrow, the hardwood floor finishing guy comes back to fix some parts of the hardwood floors. That’ll be so stinky that he recommends we not spend the night at home, so we’ll have to find somewhere else to crash for the night.

Oddly, this is one of the most stressful times of the whole building experience, and it’s AFTER we’ve reached the “officially done” stage. Reminds me of the Mission Accomplished banner.