That's the number one question I get from people after they watch a long public hearing or citizens time.  "How do you sit up there and listen to that?"  I reply, "well, it's my job".  After an hour or so it isn't a lot of fun as my back starts to hurt but it is part and parcel of this job so I get up and stretch.  That helps some but by the next day I am in a fair amount of pain.

Another question is "How do you listen to those people when they are obviously wrong/crazy/uniformed/whatever"?  The answer is easy:  almost everyone that speaks gets a least something or almost everything wrong.  Nothing wrong with that.  Their job is to tell me what they think.  My job is to use the time I've spent on these subjects, the city's staff and my life experience to figure out what, if anything, to do about it.  For instance, people at the recent public hearing regarding abortion clinics wondered why such a "common sense" approach to regulation wouldn't work?  I can tell you in all honesty that, based on my experience with "Definition of a Family", the federal courts aren't much interested in common sense.  The Federal system is an otherworld where common sense is not a primary concern where constitutional rights are at stake.  No indeed, my job is to discern what an individual speaker is trying to convey.  Some folks are passionate and tightly focused.  Some are angry.  Some wander all over the place.  Some, well, you're not really sure what they're talking about but I need to figure out – at the most fundamental level – what they are trying to get accross.  Most times you can sift something from the speakers words.

I will say that I have never understood why speakers feel compelled to threaten or insult the Mayor and Council members.  Delegate Bob Marshall the other night told the Council "we will be responsible for the mayhem and unrest in the city" (or something close to that) if we didn't approve the "Aveni Amendment".  What does that mean?  Is he going to lead the unrest and mayhem?  Another speaker indicated that the only reason the Council hadn't already approved the Aveni amendment was that we were being "paid by the abortion clinic".  Money/corruption is always a fan favorite.  It is with some regularity that we're accused of "lining our pockets", being ignorant, greedy, dumb, etc, etc.  I think it's fine to disagree and be passionate about it but bribes from the abortion clinic?  Really?

The one thing that I would change about citizens time: I would move non-resident speakers to the back of the line during citizens time.  The taxpayers of Manassas should be first in line to address their leadership and not blocked behind people from all over.  It is, after all, our money and our home town that is on the line.

I remember my first car.  It was a white Honda station wagon.  4 doors.  A real chick magnet.  It had survived for a long while as the main family car and the engine needed a rebuild.  I rebuilt the engine in that thing with nothing more than a Chilton's manual and a sense of assured success driven only by my cluelessness about what I was doing.  When I finished rebuilding the engine  I had a coffee tin of parts left over.  I remember thinking "that seems odd" but got into the car and started it anyway.  Car ran for several years and confirmed my intellectual superiority to the engineers who designed that car with too many bolts and screws….and one other odd looking part the function of which I never figured out.  But it worked.  Why would I pay someone else to do this?  My next car was a 1966 GTO.  Rebuilt the engine in that too.

It was with this sense of accomplishment and superiority that I watched my dad back the family truckster out of the driveway and take it for an oil change.  Ha! I thought smugly.  All you have to do is get the supplies, slide under the car – in the gravel driveway – and take out the drainplug (probably getting oil on yourself in the process) and then weave your way down through the engine compartment to get the filter off (and another oil bath).  Then reverse the process to get it all back together!  How hard can that be?!?  Pretty weak sauce old man!  You're only 45.

I'm 47.  I haven't done an oil change in 15 years.  In my defense, it is a right pain in the neck to do an oil change these days.  You have to be all "environmentally friendly" and take the oil to a collection center instead of dumping it.  But we all know the truth:  I ain't sliding under that car.  Not for love nor money.  My back hurts.  I don't want oil on me.  Forget it.

After the monster storm that never was came through this week I decided to go out and shovel the walk.  About halfway done, I stood up and took a break from shoveling.  As I surveyed the work yet to be done I noticed that my 2-doors-down neighbor had his snow blower out and was busy throwing snow all over the place.  I snorted, "I'm a healthy middle-aged man I don't need any damn machine shoveling me walk…." and the car story above came blazing back into my head.  It was 1982 all over again and I wasn't going to pay anyone to change my oil!

Guess I'll wait until it warms up and see if the Depot has a sale on snow blowers.  Maybe they'll take bitcoins…