I wrote a letter to the governor tonight, and copied it to the letters to the editor of our local paper. Here it is: Governor Graves:
You have the unique opportunity to save the taxpayers $750,000!
You see, you don't have to reinforce the Capitol Dome at all. The original statue can be placed at ground level, somewhere on the grounds or inside the rotunda. Whatever is sitting on the top of the dome doesn't have to weigh a ton, it only has to look good. The fact that it's a coupla hundred feet away from most viewers is an advantage... it can be made of much lighter material, like Styrofoam covered with aluminum or something similar. All it will have to do is survive the winds and rain and ice and snow up there, the taxpayers won't be putting their hands on it.
And we can spend that three-quarters of a million dollars on something that might make a difference. The problem is, the Kansas Capitol doesn't have anything significant on the top of it. Just a 500-watt bulb, which burns out regularly. So we contracted with some artist to do a statue of an Native American (Indian) with a bent bow, ready to loose an arrow into the heavens. It's really a pretty cool statue. But... it's ten feet tall, and solid bronze or whatever. 3,000 pounds or so. So, the plan is to spend .750K to reinforce the dome so that it'll hold the statue. Which is a waste of money, cause the statue would look really great close-up, and statues are made to be touched. 250 feet in the air? Hard to touch, hard to enjoy... not really three-dimensional. Like all states this year, Kansas is hard-up for money, hell, we might have to raise taxes on cigarettes and whisky! That's always the first thing that they think of. Then sales taxes, the most unfair and repressive taxes that exist. Anyhoo. Enough of that. Busy at work again, but tomorrow will be much worse. There will just be two of us in the afternoon, and Fridays are usually hellacious. But we'll burn that bridge when we get too it, I don't want to borrow trouble from tomorrow, when it's so plentiful today, right? I came home after work, hoping that the line would have cleared. Nope. So I make a mental list, and Karen and I go off to Lowes. Karen is moral support. I buy everything that I think that I need to do the job, and we come home and I get started. I realize that it ain't a-gonna work after I make a coupla cuts on the 4-inch pipe. The rubber thingies that I bought to connect the old pipe and the new pipe will not slip easily over either pipe, so there's no way that I can fit the piece in the middle of two immovable pieces of pipe. Luckily, I realized this before I really got into it. So I went downstairs and fiddled with the plugged-up pipe and I had an *Eureka* thingie, an epiphany. I had bought a ten-foot section of 2-inch pipe... I could just lay that pipe along the floor to the floor drain and hook it up to the original pipe from the kitchen! So I did that... and it worked. Of course, it's only temporary, but I needed to buy some time, since I'm on call all weekend. I have the idea that this will be a whole weekend project once I can figger out what I need to do. Actually, I'm on call until Tuesday. And I found out that the third shift isn't covered with CT-capable people Friday, Saturday or Sunday... so it'll be fun, fun, *fun* all weekend long! There will be second shift coverage, but not first... so I'll have to do my sleeping between 17:00 and 23:00... if then. I just checked the basement, the floor drain seems to be working just fine. That was my concurrent worry... the floor drain has been iffy in the past, I could just picture having that one plug up too....