Cascokid’s youtube identity is cascokideo.

• social media doesn’t exist just for its own sake but as a means to an end
• that end being the reinforcement of the polis through the establishment of trust agencies
• you can’t spell  ‘trust’ without IRL(*)
• you gotta eat

BE IT RESOLVED

that Cascokid (omnivore) and Mrs. Kid (accomplished chef,  confidante of America’s foremost culinary historian, daring foodie herself, and designer of chef-friendly Kitchen Beautiful in which she concocts a most delectable array of morsels, both sweet and savory) will endeavor to break bread and otherwise engage in culinary adventures with an appreciable fraction of Casco’s more resonant tweeps in 2010.

(*) OK, OK. Trust doesn’t begin or end with IRL, but it is an important syllable in the middle there. “Follow, follow-back, mention, retweet, dm, IRL, break bread…”

Do you see/hear that one much in your social media circles?  It’s clear, concise, and pathetic. It’s shorter than 140 characters, so it is ubitwitous (Twitter ubiquitous).  And yet, it is usually not directed at anyone. Just a statement of fact. Indisputable, or at least I won’t try to dispute it. And as exit lines go, it’s a good one.  See ya!

[And to immunize you against possible contamination from this missive, I'll add that I'm fully engaged at this moment. All cylinders firing. You too? A late afternoon @bardcoffee latte is still coursing through my veins. And life is good . ]

But back to boredom.  Didn’t we go to college — as every dean of students at every college  puts it at least once in four years — “to make sure our minds are an interesting place to be”?  And even if we didn’t go to college, hasn’t life’s experiences evolved the patterns of our lives into fertile endeavors, one way or another?

So instead of noting the absence of anything in your mind, maybe its time to daydream a little? Design a woodworking project? Or a menu? Think up a murder mystery? Fantasize about a radical career move? Or even to allow your mind to wander down the primrose path of dalliance and “go blue” — as Ann Arborites are apt to say, though not necessarily in this context.

I’m bored has a passive-aggressive cousin,  I hope I’m not boring you? Whether or not your conversation is engaging, you just did manage to bore me by asking. So the answer is yes, but I won’t admit it.

Rather, since no emotion is as insidiously infectious as boredom, I will fight it with every synapse of my mental strength. I’ll  spin up all of what I know about, well, the wall, the floor, the table, the cement sidewalk, the asphalt street — anything. I’ll grind the existential ‘now’ into a buckshot load of questions. Then I’ll pepper you with them. In the ensuing confusion, I’ll hoist myself out of the boring hole and — with or without finesse — I’ll keep on going out of your company.

So for gosh and gollies sakes, don’t tell me you’re bored since it only means one thing to me: you’re boring!

*    *    *

The ‘S’ in Cascokid is for sanctimonious. ;-P

The ‘kid’ in Cascokid is for kidding.

And while I have achieved a substantial reduction in oil consumption, I have not reduced my oil furnace TCO  one iota. (TCO=total cost of ownership, as the wonks might advise you.) Every year while I’ve been penny-wise, my oil furnace and hot water baseboards have  found a way to make me pound-foolish.

It started with baseboard freeze ups, caused first by my stingy thermostat settings. Then, with the thermostat set higher, the freeze ups were cause by the wood heat skewing the temperature of the the centrally located thermostat with respect to the peripheral location of the baseboards.

So I physically cut out the most exposed areas of the heating zones and grudgingly went with electric space heat. That allowed me to heat the house with wood from April to November. So I starting shutting off the furnace during that time. (The furnace burns a gallon a day just to stay lit, so I saved 200 gallons, or about $500.)

And it got me again.

And just this week, my furnace started billowing black smoke. The furnace guy shook his head. The furnace combustion chamber has corroded from disuse. He advise me, “You have burn 24/7/365 (!) in order to keep the fuel lines from sludging up.”

It seems that clogged arteries change the pressure in the burner, which changes the spray velocity and ends up coating the combustion chamber with oil. The sprayed oil burns inefficiently and erodes the integrity of the chamber.

The total bill to replace the chamber: $250. So I’m ahead by about $250,  right?

“There’s more,” he said. Stationary water in the iron piping has corroded the pipes from the inside. Most valves also need replacing. “Could be another $500 in plumbers charges,” he said.

Of course.

I’ll pay the $250 now and watch the plumbing for leaks. After the heating season, I’ll do what most Mainers do at least once a week all summer long: think about how to heat my house next winter.