They visited Jason today.
It was just a few days ago that Barb was asking, “Where’s Bob Hope and Bing Crosby?” A subtle slap at current celebrities that are not visiting the troops.
Here is one way if you want to show your appreciation. I already have a couple of their albums. I just put on Greatest Hits. I’ll be listening it to them as I go to sleep tonight.
State drama competition is in the state of Southern Idaho and that’s where Xenia is going to be for a couple days. It snowed last night (see her pictures of it here) and that made the roads very slick. Barb and I are somewhat worried about all the road travel but it’s really important to her and it’s not very often that kids on a school trip are injured–the drivers know they have an extra responsibility and have commericial drivers licenses.
I talked to her a little bit ago. “Good luck!”, I said. Then I remember that was wrong and followed up with, “And break a leg!”
The pass over the Cascades on my way home to Idaho had a rock slide a few weeks ago and travel is restricted to just one lane in each direction. Even when the pass is wide open significant (one or more hours) delays occur during the holiday travel season. With only two lanes and a speed limit of 35 MPH on the temporary road around the slide zone they are asking people to not cross the Cascades over the holidays. I’m going home anyway. They are saying worst case delays could be up to 16 hours and 40 mile backups. That means my normal five hour drive could become 21 hours. Ouch.
I might not blog much in the next few days with all that is going on.
Preparations for my trip eastward include:
Details on the slide and projected delays: RockSlide.pdf (110.51 KB)
We knew from the teacher’s reports, Xenia’s enthusiastic descriptions, and the effort she was putting into it that her entries in the District competition were going to be good. Both of her entries won first place in District Drama. It’s on to STATE!
This afternoon was much more productive than my wallowing in self-pity this morning. I accomplished a bunch of stuff and still have other things in the queue:
Barb and her sister Nancy made it back from D.C. 20 minutes early last night and we went out to dinner at Outback (in part because of this). Despite being tired from the travel and time difference they were very upbeat and talk about how wonderful the hospital (except for the food), volunteers, doctors, and therapists were. They told me stories of Jason and others in the hospital how nearly everyone was so upbeat even though many of them had lost a great deal–arms, legs, eyes, brain injuries. The helicopter pilot that lost her arm and both legs “tooling around in a wheelchair wearing a t-shirt that said, “It’s a good thing my husband is a butt man.” Barb and Nancy were sorry for the losses but said they were being well taken care of and they all seemed proud of what they had contributed. Barb said I really needed to go visit Jason and meet these heroes. I want to but even as they were telling me of all our soldiers and how well they were doing the tears welled up. It made me very sad. I’m not sure I could do anything but cry if I went to visit. I think we are doing the right thing in Iraq, but the losses make me very uncomfortable. Although I sometimes say, “Too much sand, not enough glass” I don’t mean it. I know that of the available options to us we are almost for certain going down the correct path.
Barb, Nancy, and I went to the Uncle Bonsai concert last night and enjoyed it. I wanted to hear more of their old songs but they had new material and I hadn’t really heard all of the stuff that has been out for a while. I never listened to anything but a little bit of their “Doug” album. After hearing a couple of the songs last night I listened to the entire album this morning. Some of the songs were sad and it probably affected me more than usual because of the stories from Walter Reed.
When we got back from the concert I did a very quick check of my email and I found out Bob Coval died yesterday. We knew it was coming (low bandwidth version here) but still a great sadness swept over me. Since I’ve been over here this last week I had been thinking about Bob frequently. I should visit him or at least find out when he died. I didn’t really want to know though. Now I know.
This morning Nancy announced it was 6:00 AM and they needed to leave right away. One short night is all I got with Barb before she headed home again. They need to leave early because I-90 is one lane in both directions in parts of Snoqualmie pass because of rock slide. The state transportation department is saying there could be long delays over this holiday week. Five hours was mentioned but that could be for next Sunday night when the really heavy traffic occurs. I’m hoping to go home on Wednesday night. I didn’t even try to get an airplane ticket because they sell out a couple months in advance over Thanksgiving. That means I need to try and get over the pass at a high traffic time. And over course coming back Sunday night will be hell. It might be that the return trip will be best done via Portland. It’s normally a nine hour drive but that will be better than 10 or 12 hour drive over the traffic clogged pass (which is normally a five hour drive).
I was at my first IDPA match Saturday until just before I went to the airport to pick up Barb and Nancy. The match went pretty well. Lots of rules to process on a continuous basis after the buzzer goes off. It’s not like IPSC where you often get to “shoot them as you see them.” Gaming is still present just less obvious. Thanks to Wendell for arranging a group of us to attend together. Robin, Sean, and I had dinner at his place with Hobbit Friday night. Robin and I were in pain from laughing at the S&W (Sean and Wendell, not Smith and Wesson) rendition of Whale.avi (S&W were far better than the real thing). Then we all were in the same squad for the match on Saturday. It was most pleasant company for both Friday evening and Saturday.
So… I’m alone here in front of my computer thinking about Bob, Jason and our other heroes that have lost so much, Barb leaving after spending just a few hours, and I will have some long drives to visit home over Thanksgiving. I think it will be best if I get out and do my National Ammo Day purchases. I wanted to do it yesterday but the IDPA match and spending time with Barb were higher priorities. Anything to get out and moving will be better than here.
I’ll be back with something more upbeat later.
I had the most vivid dream this morning. It was the most detailed dream I can ever recall having. The conversation with my dad as we walked alone the fence was detailed and I could “hear” the tone in my fathers voice and the heavier breathing as we walked through the deep snow. The trail in the snow had footprints that were both fresh and old. The sounds of our feet on the cold, dry snow was accurate. The dog we found caught in the barbed wire gate that had fallen down was whimpering and scared. It did a realistic “happy dance” running in circles and licking me after I freed it. Then I noticed the reason the gate had fallen down. The ground had bulged up and hot water was pouring out of the cracks in the earth. The bulge had tipped the gate post over enough the gate fell to the ground. A river of hot steaming water washed across the road north of the old blacksmith shop and down through woods toward the old well. The little meadow in the woods that always had less snow that other areas now was green with growing grass even though it was the middle of winter and other areas had five to six feet of snow. The smell was like that of the hot springs Barb and I visited at Yellowstone National Park this summer. We had a geothermal vent a couple hundred feet from my brother’s back door.
I woke up as I realized the impact this could have on the farm. Best case was my brothers and parents had a source of cheap heat for the shop and their homes. But if this was a precursor to a Mt. St. Helen’s scale eruption the entire farm would be gone. Orofino could be at the bottom of a lake formed by the backed up river just two miles from the farm. Lewiston and Clarkston, 35 miles down river, could be scoured clean from the valley floor as the ash and earthen formed natural dam gave way and a wall of water rushed down the narrow valley.
I’ll be visiting my parents for Thanksgiving. I’ll need to walk down through the pasture to dispel the images from my mind.
Steve at random thoughts is from England and has some questions about why we have such an intense interest on being able to carry concealed. In one link (I don’t have time for this until tonight) this is my answer.
Be gentle. He is a friend of mine.
Update: Steve and I had lunch together today. After chatting about “old times” and catching each other up on the people we both knew, the beauty of Montana, traveling with kids, how he met his wife, and a few other odds and ends he asked what I thought of his post. “No”, I told him, “You didn’t sound a like a liberal gun hater. You were thoughtful and asked a good question.” Then I went about trying to answer his questions. I explained that with all the studies that have been done they are unable to show any benefit from gun control. There are between 1.5 and 3 million defensive uses of guns each year with only about 10 thousand crimes committed with guns. Criminals, who violate the laws against murder, rape, and assault, will be less affected by any gun control efforts than the “good guys” that will be deprived of the tools to defend themselves. And putting the onus on the gun controller I ask them my One Question.
Steve listened careful, understood what I was saying, but didn’t commit himself one way or the other. That’s fine with me. I enjoyed the time with him and that’s what was important.
Now that Analog Kid has posted the results I’ll explain how I was going to “game” the October postal rifle match Analog Kid called “The Black Death”. Because you can shoot the target as many times as you want what I was going to do was put up ten targets at 200 yards. Then:
So…with 25 shots I have an 85% chance of creating a clean target at 200 yards. With 50 shots I have a 98% chance of doing it.
Unfortunately I procrastinated too much and didn’t make time to get out to the range until it was raining and almost dark.
Lots of little things went wrong but it went fairly well overall.
I got through big stack of paperwork in orientation without a hitch and arrived at the work-site one minute early. The guy that walked in the door just ahead of me used to run the Tuesday night handgun league at one of the shooting ranges. We probably haven’t seen each other in five years or so. I chatted a bit with him as he picked up a temporary badge and I checked in with the receptionist.
The guy I was supposed to report to didn’t answer the phone and the receptionist sent him an email. About 20 minutes later another guy I used to work with at Chromium Communications and one of my firearms students showed up to have a meeting with people at my new employer. We chatted for about five minutes and the receptionist made attempts to find someone else to come out and greet me. The guy I was supposed to meet finally showed up about 30 minutes late with the excuse that his phone was turned off or something. Whatever… it doesn’t matter. Just lead me to my office and computer. Oh, the computer that has been on order for me for two weeks still isn’t here. We had to scrounge for one.
I had a domain account and password but when I tried to set up my email the Outlook Exchange server said the account didn’t exist. Checking with other people revealed some servers recognized me and others didn’t. It probably will just take some time for the email alias to propagate to all the servers. It still hadn’t made it to my server by 17:30 when I left for the day.
As various programs were installing I started reading up on C# and wrote my first “Hello world!” program in it. That will be the dominate language in this new job. It’s past time I learned it and it’s great they are paying me to do so.
Probably the most amazing thing to me is that just a few months ago both Ry and I were living in Moscow 300 miles from where we now work and now we are working so close to each other that we can easily walk to lunch together. And there was no “intervention” by him to get me my job or vice versus.
[For my kids in school.]
10. You can usually find someone to do it with.
9. If you get tired, you can stop, save your place, and pick up where you left off.
8. You can finish early without feelings of guilt or shame.
7. When you open a book, you don’t have to worry about who else has opened it.
6. A little coffee and you can do it all night.
5. If you don’t finish a chapter, you won’t gain a reputation as a “book teaser”.
4. You can do it, eat and watch TV all at the same time.
3. You don’t get embarassed if your parents interrupt you in the middle.
2. You don’t have to put your beer down to do it.
and the number one reason is …..
1. If you aren’t sure what you’re doing, you can always ask your roommate for help!
This was surprisingly tough. The area of the targets is proportional to the square of the diameter. Those small dots are tough to hit. Click on the picture for the hires version. If you put an overlay on the bullets near the 40 point dots on the upper right and the lower right the bullet did intersect the spot.
Mostly cats with one porn shot.
Almost two months ago Ben tagged me with this post and said:
5) I’m passing this meme on to:
Kirk at Limpidity, as he hasn’t posted or emailed in awhile;
AnalogKid at RandomNuclearStrikes, as he is one of my favorites nowadays;
and Joe Huffman. I just can’t see him having a big Styx collection that he rocks out to on Saturday nights.
No Styx at all. But at this minute on this Saturday night I’m listening to Ten Years After, A Space in Time. A few minutes ago it was Uncle Bonsai, The Inessential Uncle Bonsai.
I didn’t really mean to wait this long before responding. I had to think about it some. Since we had our first kid, 21 years and nearly five months ago we pretty much stopped listening to music. When the kid(s) were awake music would have just added to the din. When they were quiet (asleep) we were so grateful for the quiet we just enjoyed the silence. When driving alone I usually have some talk radio station on. Music? Hmmm… maybe when I’m cleaning house or something.
I’m in my new digs in the Seattle area now and feeling a little sad and alone. I bought some decent speakers for my computer for the first time and after listening to some Boomershoot sounds put on some music to test them out. It sounds good. It helps bring the mood up a bit. On the drive over I played music in the most geeky way I could think: I played Elvis, The Ventures, and Uncle Bonsai on the laptop computer running off the inverter, the laptop sound output went into a small FM transmitter which I either played into the FM receiver in my new cell-phone and headphones or through the car radio. The laptop also had Microsoft Streets and Trips with the GPS unit running to track my speed, altitude, and of the course exact position. Then there was the walkie-talkie on my arm to communicate chat with Barb and her sister in the Jeep. They came over to catch a cheap flight to the D.C. area to visit Jason.
So… anyway on to the music meme (and Van Halen on the computer):
1) How much music do I have?
Probably 100 albums total. About an even split between CD’s, cassette tapes (I used to see lots of eight tracks but never had one myself), and vinyl albums. I haven’t listened to vinyl since Kim (or was it Xenia?) broke the needle on the turntable when she was just a toddler. James broke it too and we replaced it only to have it destroyed again by one of his sisters.
2) What was the last CD I bought?
Probably the complete collection of Uncle Bonsai a few months ago. I’m not sure. I had a couple of their albums on a pirated cassette and really wanted it legit and in good quality.
3) What am I listening to right now?
You Really Got Me, Van Halen.
4) Five songs I listen to that mean a lot to me?
N/A is probably the best answer. Music doesn’t doesn’t really have “meaning” for me. It’s a pleasant distraction from boredom. If pressed for something more than that I would say That’s What You Get for Loving Me, by Gordon Lightfoot. I don’t listen to it very often, maybe once every couple of years. But over 30 years ago Barb and I were listening to Gordon Lightfoot in the car while parked overlooking Orofino and the Clearwater valley. I decided I would kiss her for the first time when the next song came on. That was the song. Then there was Having My Baby (You’re) that played on the radio immediately after another milestone in our relationship. I can’t remember the last time I listened to that.
5) I’m passing this meme on to:
Whoever wants it.
Kevin, over at The Smallest Minority reports on a book, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America. He has this to say about the book:
The Scots-Irish culture is a highly individualistic one, but one willing to follow a strong leader. It has a hatred of aristocracy, but a respect for accomplishment. It’s also an embracing culture – adopt its ways, no matter your background – and you’re an accepted member.
…
If you want to understand the portion of the populace that decides elections these days, I recommend you read Born Fighting. If you’re of Scots-Irish descent, you’ll find yourself nodding and agreeing. If you’re not, you’ll be shaking your head. But trust me on this: James Webb knows whereof he writes.
It turns out those attitudes and personalities are still very visible in the descendants of those people today.
Barbara Scott, my wife, is of Scot-Irish descent (with a last name like that you never would have guessed?). Reading up on genealogy she found some interesting information on how the Scot-Irish immigrants and the German farmers (IIRC Huffman, a German name, means worker on a small farm. I grew up on a farm.) who immigrated at the same time into Virginia interacted. Also of interest is that Barb and I are cousins–about 5 or so generations back one of her relatives married one of mine in Virginia. We didn’t know this until a couple of years ago. Anyway the interactions and attitudes of those immigrants is not that much different from Barb and I. Not hostile but not always cooperative either. Our communication style is very different and we approach conflict MUCH differently.
Our children’s personalities reflect those differences too. James is the German. Kim is the hot-tempered Scot-Irish. Xenia is mostly German in personality but loves the Scot-Irish culture.
Ry and I have had some all night discussions on the topic of genetics and personality and the results were far more disconcerting that we cared to believe. Think about it some.
One of the feature of my blog software is the ability to track the number of click throughs on the links in my posts. The link to Xenia’s Live Journal post about lesbian porn was very popular. It was was over eight times as popular as a typical link. And the link to the lyrics of Penis Envy was over twice as popular as the typical link.
And all this time I thought it was guns and explosives that were what you guys had on your mind when you came here. I should have known better. The Gun Guy and Random Nuclear Strikes are gun bloggers and have far, far more popular sites than my blog. Now I can’t attribute it to just the better writing and having been around longer. They have their (near) weekly display of female flesh too.
I’m tempted to make one post a day with some moderately high, but probably still work-safe, sexual content. However I’d need to be careful not to betray the confidences of certain people that have confided in me. Something like these quotes:
Concerning coeds: If all those sweet young things were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.
Dorothy Parker
Whoever named it ‘necking’ was a poor judge of anatomy.
Groucho Marx
I believe that sex . . . is one of the most beautiful, wholesome, wonderful things that money can buy.
Steve Martin
Or perhaps as daring as these:
Q: Do aggressive women like “sensitive new age guys?”
Lydia: Yes. For breakfast, with sliced strawberries and chopped pecans on top.
December 4, 1997
In the email forum for Society for Human Sexuality
Which was followed by:
And now I’m *hungry*…
CatherineDocs are largely unprepared for people like us. New ones generally ask me what I’m doing for birth control. So I tell them: My girlfriend doesn’t come inside me, my boyfriend shoots blanks, and I don’t have a uterus. Next question???
Lydia
5/31/2001
From the Highteq email listSaturday is my 51st birthday. I’m going to the club and going to have sex with 25 guys, twice, then have sex with my husband for number 51.
XXXX at YYYY
September, 1997
Any thoughts on the idea of a new topic?
In finding the link for the Uncle Bonsai lyrics in my last post I discovered Uncle Bonsai is having a concert a short distance from where I’m staying in the Seattle area on a night when Barb will be there with me. I bought tickets! What hoot! Uncle Bonsai is one of my favorite groups and since the group disbanded in 1989 this is a very rare opportunity. I’m thrilled.
Last night Barb, Xenia, and I went to a meeting about Xenia’s drivers education class. All the students and their parents were there. One of the things the teacher talked about was a police officer that talked to the class the day before. The students wrote questions on a pieces of paper and the questions were asked in a way such that the students who asked the questions couldn’t be identified. The teacher said the most popular theme of the questions was about drinking and driving, open containers, passengers who had been drinking, etc.–then they got distracted by the question, “Is it legal to drive naked?”
The room burst into laughter and a lot of the kids were pointing fingers at each other and whispering to each other accusing each other of submitted that question. But Xenia just looked straight ahead with a straight face. Barb and I both looked at Xenia. “Xenia, that was you. Wasn’t it?” She gave us her Innocent Look. “Xenia?” She nodded her head and the Innocent Look broke into a tiny smirk.
Sometime I’ll have to get her to write down the story of when she sang Uncle Bonsai’s song Penis Envy on the bus to State for Drama and The Scotsman about kilts and ribbons to the people in the office at the Jr. High. This kid lives in a different world than Barb and I did when we were that age.
Xenia and I were at the store today and well… read it for yourself (lesbian porn).
It’s back to the Seattle area to bring money east to Idaho. I show up to do paperwork at the contract agency at 8:00, employer at 10:00. Advantages and disadvantages abound.
