My sister started doing some preliminary genealogy, but didn't get very far. It doesn't help that my family are of the sacrifice the truth for the sake of a good story school. What I know is that I am primarily French and Irish (The first Ozon came to St. Pierre in 1799.) and quite newly admitted, a little Mi'kmaq. There are rumors that my French side were once Jewish, but I file that under good story.

I have an irrational dislike of the word 'moist.'

It's not irrational. The word moist is starling onomatopoeic.

I like the soft inside, crunchy outside cookies myself.

Yeah, Nixon. Heh. After I posted I wondered if anyone would get that. More than you wanted to know:

A group of local businessmen, who made a lot of money quickly in oil, wanted a congressman from Whittier who would protect their oil depletion allowance, a 15 percent tax write-off for the value their wells lost every year because the owners had taken the oil out, sold it, and could not replace it.

Nixon was the choice, and he got elected in 1946. John F. Kennedy won his first term the same year. Unlike JFK, Nixon did not have any money to cover the extra expenses congressmen face: two homes, the need to go places and have your wife look a certain way, some entertaining of your own, travel to the home district. He was in his 30s with two small children. In those days, Congressmen had many legal ways to make extra money. They could put their wives on the government payroll, maintain partnerships in law, real estate, or insurance firms, accept lecture fees, and keep a hand in a business,

Nixon did none of that. He just voted for the depletion allowance, with all the congressmen from oil states, and the Whittier oilmen put together a fund to help with his expenses. In his eyes, it was no different from Michigan congressmen supporting the auto industry, or Iowa congressmen supporting farm subsides. They were all serving the folks back home....

....It was during the 1952 presidential campaign that news of Nixon’s fund became a national scandal. Republican leaders and Eisenhower advisors talked openly about dropping him from the ticket. He had to go on national TV, explain everything, and prove that he was clean...

...Nixon disclosed everything they owned and everything they owed. He did not put his wife on the government payroll but his opponent did – not that there’s anything wrong with that. They have a house with a mortgage they bought with a down payment he borrowed from his father. He drives an old Oldsmobile. Many political wives wear fur coats, “but Pat here wears a good Republican cloth coat, and I think she looks great in it.” Finally, there was one gift he had no intention of returning. It was a cocker spaniel that the girls love, and call “Checkers.” And so the speech became “the Checkers speech” to everyone except the Nixons – who called it “the fund speech.” It saved his career.

Teppy didn't evangelize, she just honestly and articulately shared. I thought that was very cool.

Wait. Are we talking my kink, or my shady past as a member of a Freak-Ass Church (for which I *did,* in fact, evangelize, I'm ashamed to say)?

Oh and my dad's generation were a little too young for WWII, but my grandfather, after being rejected as too young for the French Military ran away and joined the Canadian Army in Montreal. He was gassed twice and hit with shrapnel and ended up in England recovering.

aurelia, are you/they sure it's not just the engine computer notifying you of scheduled maintenance for the timing chain?

That's not how it was presented to me, but I don't really know. The owners manual doesn't mention the timing in it's fairly detailed maintenance schedule. I guess I just need to take it to a dealership. Feh. And I'd planned to visit family this weekend.

aurelia, my boss (who knows an awful lot about cars) says, "if it's time to change the timing chain, it's time to change the timing chain" and that if you're gonna keep the car it's something that's gonna need to be done.

He also searched online and finally found that the Monte Carlo switched to a timing chain for '98. (He found that at the NAPA site.)

Did anyone else read Infinite Jest? I've always thought about that long footnote where they talk about how some people can turn even not-using-things-as-crutches into a crutch, or something like that. Only probably with more "and so but then"s.

his wife, Pat, didn't wear a mink, but a good Republican cloth coat.

Aha. Because I was sitting here thinking, cloth coat as opposed to... a coat made out of newspapers?? A coat of doughnuts woven together on chain link??

Sometimes, my imagination is problematic that way. Mink did not even enter into the equation.

Tep--your kink.