Computing in the fog...er cloud

I had a post almost complete yesterday when blogger belched and it evaporated into the computing cloud that Microsoft is so proud of touting on its television commercials. I haven't a clue as to what key combination I hit that made the post disappear. God only knows where or when it will turn up.

I was going on about how silly it seems to refer to Web based computing as the cloud as if it was some new invention to use software that wasn't housed on your PC or laptop. Before personal computers and the Internet, people used remote terminals hardwired or connected via a modem to a mainframe computer. So it isn't like it is a new concept. Just instead of tapping into a mainframe, we're tapping into a network of servers.

I used to consider myself fairly tech savvy. I worked as weekend computer operator on an IBM mainframe computer for the Idaho State Department of Transportation when I was in college. It was kind of a pain in the ass job because you had to work two rotating 12-hour shifts. One week you'd work from 11 p.m. to 11 a.m. The next weekend you'd work from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. You'd get every third weekend off. It wouldn't have been so bad if it was the only job I had, but at the time I was also working full time at the local public library and carrying a full load at college. So for almost two years I was working 64-hours a week and going to college. There we some weekends where I'd work all night at the computer job and then go work at the library, get off and go back to the computer job.

I drank a lot of coffee back then.

The computer I worked on took up a room the size of a small gymnasium. The CPU sat in the center of the room and rows of large magnetic tape drives surrounded it. And being a computer operator back then involved essentially being the machine's bitch. There was a monitor and keyboard console at the front of the room along with a card reader. You'd feed a stack of punch cards containing computer code -- usually COBALT or something like that -- into the card reader. That would be processed by the CPU and then, depending upon the program, the monitor would beep at you to go retrieve a numbered tape from an adjacent tape storage room and load it on one of the tape drives.

Sometimes you'd load a tape and the computer would access one small bit of data and then ask for a different tape. I used to curse at the programmers who ran jobs that asked for 40 or 50 tapes. If I wasn't loading and unloading tapes, I was loading paper on a large chain printer the size of a coffin that sat in the back of the room. And if I wasn't loading paper on the printer, I was carting stacks of three-part carbon forms to a room behind the computer room that housed a machine known as a burster. You'd load the three part paper stack into it and it would burst the three copies apart into three separate stacks and spit out the ribbon of carbon paper between the copies.

Although it was mind numbing work at times, I got so I preferred the days and nights when lots of jobs had been submitted because the alternative was 12 hours of sitting there with nothing to do but pace around the
CPU and check in on the monitor every 30 minutes to make sure the thing was running. In addition to housing the data for the department of transportation, the computer also housed all of the state's driving and driver's license records. So it had to be up 24-hours a day because cops would call in to their control center when they made a traffic stop to check some one's license. The control center would in turn would tap into the computer records via remote terminals.

Because the computer housed driver's license and driving records, the computer room was under 24-hour surveillance by Idaho State Police via closed circuit cameras. The cops were housed in another part of the building so I never met them, but I got to know them via telephone. The were quick to call me saying the "com" was down even when they saw me on the computer frantically trying to reboot to solve a problem.

The only way to escape the fishbowl of the computer room was to slink off into an adjacent data processing room filled with card punch machines manned during the day by a small army of data processing clerks. It was my sanctuary. After a few weeks I started to figure out ways to take naps during the lulls in changing tapes and printer paper. I discovered a custodian storeroom behind the card punch room. In it were stacks of quilted pads used for moving office equipment. I converted them into a makeshift mattress and blankets

We weren't technically supposed to sleep because you were required to check the machine every 30 minutes to make sure everything was running. But I managed to program my body to take 30 minute naps and wake up automatically to stumble into the computer room and check the machine. I wasn't fully awake, so I suppose you could say I was originator of the concept of computing in a cloud or for as the case may be.

Looking back, it all sees so archaic. I probably have more computing power now in my desktop computer than that mainframe had back in 1980. And long gone are the days of programming via punch cards and computer tape. I don't imagine anyone uses the phrase "data processing" anymore. We now surf and float in the clouds, tweeting and interfacing on social network sites.

Even though the technology has evolved and become an inseparable from our lives, the basic concept of computing comes down to a series of 0's and 1's combined in various patterns at an ever increasing speed. But boiling down the complexity of computing to binary code doesn't sound as sexy to marketers trying to keep Microsoft hawking its system snake oil to the ignorant masses.

That's okay. I have always liked the fog and my head in the clouds.

Bad medicine

I don't think all television sucks, just the plethora of programs that have been cloned by the creators of Grey's Anatomy, especially that new one called Off the Map about doctor's working in a remote and undisclosed location in South America that is actually filmed in Hawaii. That show sucks major loads of swamp water.

I watched the first episode on On Demand during a desperate search for something I hadn't seen before. The actor who used to play Lenny on Laverne and Shirley (Michael McKean) guest stars as a tourist who is injured after running into a tree while repelling through the rain forest. His internal injuries are so severe they need to operate on him at the jungle clinic. They discover in the middle of the surgery that they don't have enough plasma on hand so the doctors leave Lenny on the operating table while they go retrieve coconuts. They then hook Lenny up to a coconut IV since everyone knows coconut milk is an excellent substitute for plasma.

Lenny survives the surgery and the coconut milk, but resists being airlifted to a real hospital until he has the opportunity to dump his late wife's ashes in a local lagoon famous for its glow in the dark algae. Apparently this was the real reason for Lenny coming to the undisclosed South American location. No one bothers to ask him why scattering his wife's ashes to get closure wasn't the first thing on his To Do list before taking the canopy ride on a harness through the rain forest. They simply throw his stretcher into a canoe and paddle to the lagoon. Lenny then proceeds to pollute the pristine ecosystem of the lagoon with his dead wife's remains and looks quite relieved. Perhaps this is really because he will have less luggage on his return trip home.

I won't go into any of the other inane and implausible subplots going on in the program but suffice it to say they involved cheesy stereotypes of third world patients gratefully paying the young, beautiful white doctors in chickens to thank them for saving their lives.

I want to go out on a limb here and state bluntly that the biggest lie shows like Grey's Anatomy and Off the Map perpetuate is that people who work in hospitals are attractive and majorly buff. Maybe I'm not going to the right hospitals, but no one in a hospital even looks remotely like anyone from Grey's Anatomy. No one in any hospital I've been in even remotely looks like they have ever seen the inside of  a gym or passed by a box of jelly doughnuts.

These doctor shows also falsely suggest that when you enter a hospital, you are immediately surrounded by surgeons anxiously waiting to remove your spleen regardless of whether there is anything wrong with it. My experience with hospitals is that you can languish for hours in the waiting room filling out paperwork before you get to spend an average of three minutes with someone you assume is a doctor. They generally look at your paperwork, look at their watch and then rush out the door presumably to act busy and distracted with the next patient. None of the doctors I have encountered seem overly enthusiastic about trying any new breakthrough surgery on any parts of my body, either.

But I suppose no one would watch television shows that depicted what doctors and hospitals are really like. Nor would they want to watch television programs about doctors who chose less glamorous specialties than brain surgery and plastic surgery. Dr. McDreamy wouldn't be as dreamy if he was a podiatrist or proctologist now would he? And what makes a person decide to concentrate on such things when they go to medical school anyway. Do they wake up one morning and say, "You know, I think staring at assholes all day is the direction I should take with my medical career."

Of course, I think staring at assholes all day is the direction many people's careers take them.

Butt, I digress...get it?

Anyway, I'll be glad when we get off from the doctor themed doctor drama's and move on to the next theme in the cycle. But please don't let it be more crime drama's or remakes.

I think the new Hawaii 50 sucks, too, BTW.

Snow how, snow way

As predicted, it did indeed dump a great deal of snow here on Tuesday night. By morning we had five inches of snow. But a heavy rain was falling when I backed my car out of the driveway into the now slush filled streets to drive to the train station.

My wife rushed our kids to a local park to make slush angels and lopsided snowmen in the rain. By the time I returned home in the evening, the snow had been reduced to what looked like skid row versions of Frosty the snowman lying in the gutters.

Temperatures are now in the 50s so the bogeyman has retreated into the closet until the next slow news day.

I'm sure other parts of the nation would like to dope slap Seattle for its whining about snow. We are definitely a city of weather wimps. Perhaps it comes from all the rain. It creates a mental mold that is hard to shake off. Even when the sun shines here and the temperatures rise above 60 degrees, people bitch about the heat.

Ironically, I moved here years ago to go to college because I liked the idea of being near water. You would have thought that would lead me to look for colleges in California or Florida, but no, I chose the Pacific Northwest. Forget the fact that when sitcom and screenplay writers want to pick someplace at the edge of the known world, they pick Seattle. When Frasier Crane ran away from Cheers and his ex-wife Lilith, he ended up in Seattle because it is as far as you can get from Boston without going to Alaska. And I'm sure the writers ruled out Alaska because it would be too much of a ripoff of Northern Exposure.

I am used to living in places which are considered on the fringe of civilization and culture. Idaho is also used by screenwriters as a place still waiting to be discovered by Lewis and Clark. I am surprised Kelsy Grammer, star of Frasier, didn't end up in Boise instead of Virginia in the plot of his failed sitcom Hank a few years ago.

I can tell you though, after growing up in Idaho, Seattle is pretty darned urban hip in comparison. But the rain thing is a bummer. And don't get me started again about what happens when it snows here. Also, living here makes you digress a lot.

Is the bogeyman made out of snow?

"A bogeyman (also spelt bogieman, boogeyman or boogieman) is a monstrous imaginary figure used in threatening children. This legendary monster has no specific appearance, and conceptions of the monster can vary drastically even from household to household within the same community; in many cases, he simply has no set appearance in the mind of a child, but is just an amorphous embodiment of terror. Bogeymancan be used metaphorically to denote a person or thing of which someone has an irrational fear. Parents often say that if their child is naughty, the bogeyman will get them, in an effort to make them behave. The bogeyman legend may originate from Scotland, where such creatures are sometimes called bogles, boggarts, boggers, bugaboos or bugbears."

--Definition of bogeyman from Wikipedia

Ironically, the definition of bogeyman could easily be applied to the threat of snow in the Pacific Northwest:

"Snow (also known as blizzard, slush or freezing rain) is a monstrous imaginary figure used in threatening commuters. This legendary weather has no specific appearance, and conceptions of the weather can vary drastically even from household to household within the same community; in many cases, it simply has no set appearance in the mind of a commuter, but is just an amorphous embodiment of terror. Snow storm can be used metaphorically to denote a an excuse employees use to avoid coming to work."

I shouldn't be surprised that people in the Seattle area react so viscerally to the concept of snow. These are the same people who don shorts, tank tops and sandals if the sun peeks through the every present cloud cover. If a snow flake is spotted within a 40-mile radius, people here sack the local grocery stores for supplies and run home to cower under their beds waiting for the Apocalypse.

Oh, I exaggerate slightly. It does snow heavily once or twice here every five years or so. And since much of region seems perched either on the top or the bottom of a hill, most drivers voluntarily drive their cars into a tree or other parked car to get it over with.

I try to avoid being one of those annoying people who drone on about people here not knowing how to drive in snow. Unless you are in the Ididarod driving a dog sled, no one really knows how to drive in snow. I grew up in Idaho where it snowed a lot. And yes, we drove around regardless of how much snow there was, but I lived in a relatively flat place that wasn't quite as populated as Seattle. You could slip and slide and chances are you wouldn't hit anything except an unfortunate squirrel trying to protect its nuts. So it isn't really fair to say people in Idaho were better driving in the snow. They just had more experience and less things to run into.

Still, I get irritated that the media here talks about the possibility of snow as if it were the threat of alien invasion. And nine times out of ten we get a dusting of snowflakes and it stops. Then the media points the finger accusingly at Al Gore and starts ragging on the economy until some new more promising clouds form.

I kind of miss the joy I felt as a kid when it snowed. Snow translated to snowmen, snow forts, snowball fights and hockey games in the streets. Later it meant great skiing at the local ski resort. Unfortunately when I was a kid in Idaho, snow never translated to school closures or delays.

But I do think the bogeyman lived in the coal bin in my grandmother's basement.

Fee, FIOS, Fo Fum...

I pay Frontier FIOS for umpteen hundred channels including most of the premium channels. But the only thing I ever watch anymore are the on demand shows that you can't get unless you pay for the premium channels. The irony is that I never watch the real time premium channels, just the on demand shows. So why do they bother having anything but their on demand shows?

Its not like they make any more money by having the regular premium channels. I don't see the point. If everything is available in the on demand what is the purpose of having scheduled programming that you have to tune into or DVR? It isn't like the commercial channels that need you to watch commercials to pay for them. I'd even be willing to watch on demand programs with commercials you can't fast forward through if someone would simply give me the option of only on demand television.

I have this dream that some innovative cable company will create an option of just paying one fee a month to simply get unlimited on demand television. I don't want to skim through guides trying to figure out what is on. I don't want to have to use the DVR anymore. I just want to watch what I want to watch when I want to watch it.

 Is this too much to ask out of life?

Elvis turns 76 (or turns over in his grave at 76)

Elvis was born on January 8, 1937 in Tupelo, Mississippi. He would have been 76 years old if he hadn't died on the toilet in August 1977 at aged 42. And I would be remiss if I, who once inexplicably (even to me) called himself Tim-Elvis and started a blog called Disgraceland that eventually became Dizgraceland after a upstart record label stole the domain name, didn't wish the king a happy birthday and say a few words about what Elvis means to me.

I'd have to say that Blue Moon is one of my favorite Elvis songs, though Mystery Train and Heartbreak Hotel are up there, too.

I once made a pilgrimage to Las Vegas strictly to visit some of the sacred Elvis sites, like the statue of Elvis at the Las Vegas Hilton. I also visited Landmark Drug Store where Elvis had his prescriptions filled. And I swear that I ran into Colonel Tom Parker coming out of a casino nearby. But I could have been having hallucinations.

I was Santa-Elvis at a work holiday party many years ago.

I used to have a Elvis shrine at my desk at work years ago. I even won a local newspaper's best toys in the office contest.

And I own an original Howard Finster Toddler Elvis artwork.

But I'm not really an Elvis fan.

Really.

Happy Birthday Elvis!

Year of the Rat

Before anyone corrects me and points out that we are approaching the Year of the Rabbit and not the Year of the Rat, this post has nothing to do with the Chinese Zodiac (although my son was born in the Year of the Rat).

I took a vacation day yesterday to wrap up some errands and appointments. And since it is a new year and all of the holiday crap is 50 to 75 percent off at most stores, I decided to take my family on a road trip to a Walmart to check out the artificial trees.

I realize that checking out the artificial trees on sale at Walmart after Christmas is a major white trash thing to do, but when I took the Elvis tree down and packed it up over the weekend, I noticed it was getting a bit ragged and shedding more needles than a real tree that's been up for a month. And since I bought the white artificial tree that would be transformed into the Elvis tree at a K-Mart back in 2001 or so, I figured Walmart would be a suitable place to look for its replacement in 2011.

I will be very upfront here. I do not like Walmart. I feel a strong need to shower just driving by one, let alone walking inside.Let's face it, the stores appeal to the shallow end of the gene pool. But standards or not, I wanted to replace the Elvis tree without spending a great deal of money. And disgusting as Walmart and its corporate policies are, I'm not above trying to save some cash.

The nearest Walmart to us is only about six miles away, but it seemed like we were driving to the Arctic Circle to get there. It has been pretty cold lately and there was still snow on the ground from a brief storm that passed through parts of the Puget Sound region a week or so ago. One thing I noted was that the parking stalls nearest the store entrance were dry and ice free (although packed with cars), but the fringes of the parking lot were icy and relatively vacant. This was due in a large part to the reluctance on the part of most Walmart customers to park anywhere that will require them to walk more than 10 feet to get to the store entrance. There was a line of cars in the parking lot idling their engines waiting for spaces to come open that would minimize their need to walk.

I parked our car in one of the icy stalls on the fringes of the lot and we gingerly made our way to the Walmart entrance. Inside we steered our kids past the McDonald's and dodged walkers and motorized scooters to make our way to a large sign marked "Holiday Clearance."

I left my wife and kids rummaging through bargain ornament bins and rounded a corner to an aisle where boxed trees were arranged haphazardly on large warehouse shelves. I had a glimmer of hope when I saw a white artificial tree on display. As I got closer, my hope was crushed. The tree had a Charlie Brown quality that made my old Elvis tree seem upscale in comparison. Plus, it came prelit with white lights. The Elvis tree can only have blue lights. I am pretty easygoing about most things, but not the Elvis tree.

As I shook my head in disgust at the poor quality of the artificial white tree I caught sight of what I first thought was some one's pet Chihuahua scooting across the aisle floor. Then I realized in horror that it was a rat scuttling out from underneath some pallets supporting cartons of artificial trees.

I went back around the corner and told my wife about the rat and suggested we move the kids towards the other end of the store. Unfortunately this sent them through the toy section. After a half hour or so of saying no to toys my kids had to have and glancing nervously about the floor for more vermin, we eventually herded them towards the checkstands with one cheap toy apiece and then out the door to our car. We passed several people jumpstarting dead engines while other cars waited patiently for their parking spaces.

As we strapped the kids into their car seats, I vowed never to go into a Walmart again.

Well, unless they have some sale that is just to good to pass up.

Talking about a resolution, well you know, I don't want to change a thing

I generally always resolve not to resolve a thing every new year. I've been a health club member for enough years to know that health clubs make most of their money off from New Year's resolutions. Every January clubs are packed with people resolved to get in shape. And every February the clubs are back to their regulars just sweating away and bitching about the dirty locker rooms.

Human nature being what it is, making a New Year's resolution is like drawing a line in the sand with your subconscious. And nine times out of ten, your subconscious is going to whoop your ass.

Don't get me wrong. I think people can and should change things about themselves that they think need to be changed. However, New Year's isn't the time to do it. Change is hard enough without putting the pressure of a New Year's resolution on top of it.

I looked at my blog post from last year around this time and I wrote about resisting to resolve to write in my blog everyday because it would probably have the opposite effect. I was right. I wrote more in 2010 than in 2009 because I only wrote when I wanted to and not because I had to.

I wish that resolving to do things would give you the resolve to actually do them. But resolutions are kind of like wishes in that if they were horses, beggars would ride.

I will say that I did manage to maintain the weight loss I began in 2009 through 2010. But it had nothing to do with resolutions, just diet and exercise. Because accomplishing anything simple comes down to doing it and not thinking to much about it.

I obviously have not resolved to be more profound in 2011.

Turning the page

I am baffled that we celebrate so many holidays that mark the passage of time. New Year's and birthdays are prime examples. Each signifies that another year has gone by. Glass half full advocates will view such things as a new beginning. Glass half empty types would say we are simply celebrating another day closer to death.

The turning of a calendar page is such a contrived thing anyway. Where did time actually begin and when does it actually end? What possessed whoever the primitive person was who began marking time? Was it one of the earliest manifestations of morbid fascination for figuring out how much time we have squandered and how much time is left to be squandered?

I am no one to talk. I am obsessed with time. I have an awesome collection of wristwatches, all ticking away the seconds of my mortality (well almost all...I need to get some new batteries for a few of them). Perhaps it is natural to become obsessed with time the older you get. Because when you are young, time drags because you think you have an endless supply of it. When you reach middle age, it slips quickly through your hands because you become painfully aware that supplies are limited.

But time is like the weather, everybody bitches about it, but no one can doing anything about it. Poets wax poetic about it. Songwriters write songs about it (Jim Croce wrote about keeping time in a bottle and then ironically died young in a plane crash). Science fiction writers create endless plots about how to cheat time and achieve mortality.

But time outlasts them all. None of us understand it. Shoot by the time you think you have figured it out by living long enough, your time is up. Father Time is essentially a practical joker shaking your hand with a joy buzzer.

Why am a writing about the futility of time and celebrating its passage? Well, I wanted to squeeze out one more blog post before the year ends and I didn't think I'd have time to write one tomorrow night. I'll be too busy celebrating the arrival of a new year.

Ironic isn't it?

Seeing the light (and pulling the plug)

I have always liked Christmas lights. I don't really understand how they became associated with the holiday, but I enjoy them. In the past, I would enjoy them on other people's homes, but I never got inspired to put them on my own house until this year.

As with most things these days, my motivation for putting up Christmas lights on my house was for my children. I kept reminding myself of that while I was standing on top of a step ladder clinging to my gutter forcing the little light clips on at one-foot intervals. I also reminded myself of that fact when I lost all feeling in my hands and realized that, although I'd spent nearly $100 on lights,  I'd only bought enough to stretch half way across the front. And I reminded myself it was for the kids when I hopped in the car and drove to the store to buy more lights.

Every night, I'd plug the lights in wondering if I was going to get electrocuted in the rain and every night after the kids went to bed, I'd slip into the rainy, cold night and unplug the lights.

Ironically, I don't think my kids noticed the lights. What they did notice were the other houses we drove by that had elaborate light shows with dancing reindeer, sparkling snow globes and inflatable Frosty the Snowmen. Feelings of inadequacy began to seep in when I compared these mega displays with my meager strip of white icicle lights. To add insult to injury, one small two-foot section of my modest lights went out in the center of one string for no apparent reason. It all reminded me of why I had never put up lights on my house before.

It is, however, one of those things you are supposed to do.

But now Christmas is over and the lights need to come down. I wish I could get away with just leaving them up like a friend of mine does each year. When I told him I'd spent a couple of hours hanging lights he said he just went out and plugged his in. Said they were a bit faded from being out all year, but they still worked. Now granted his are the old fashioned big-bulb type. I think they are less noticeable in the daylight than the icicle variety I have that hang down. With my luck, I'd leave them out and they wouldn't work next Christmas so I'd have to replace them anyway.

Although I like Christmas lights, I will be relieved when I've tucked them into boxes with the rest of the decorations and stow them in the garage. Something happens to the magic of Christmas lights and decorations when the clock strikes midnight on December 25. They become as dismal as the piles of discarded wrapping paper from too many presents littering the floor around the Christmas tree.

On that note, my two-year old son came marching through the living room when I came home last night demanding to know where Christmas was. I told him it was over and he said that it wasn't. It was Christmas Eve and he wanted his presents back.

I feel that way about Christmas in general. I always long for the feeling of Christmas coming and dread the emptiness of it being over. Oh well, the stores have already begun swapping out Christmas crap and replacing it with Valentines crap. So I have that to look forward to.

In the meantime, it's time to get out the step ladder and pull the plug on Christmas 2010.

Things you are supposed to do

I have never been particularly good at doing things I'm supposed to do because you are supposed to do them. It is not that I am philosophically opposed to doing things I am supposed to do. I just don't always know that I am supposed to do things that I am supposed to do. I also do not always understand the origins of some things that I am supposed to do and why.

Oh, I understand and accept common courtesies such as writing thank you notes and acting like you want some gift when someone gives you something you don't want or really like. It is other things I don't understand. For example, years ago my first girlfriend's mother used to wrap boxes of chocolates and keep them under the tree without a name tag in case someone dropped by unexpectedly and gave them a gift. She would then slip away, write their name on a gift tag and covertly stick it on one of the unmarked gifts under the tree as if she was going to give them a gift in the first place regardless of whether they gave her one. When I questioned the sincerity of such a gesture I was told it was what you were supposed to do.

Personally, I would rather give a person a gift with no expectations of anything in return. And I'd rather get an unexpected gift without feeling obligated to reciprocate. But this view, although paid lip service by many, is usually superseded by the unwritten rules of "things you are supposed to do."

I wonder if there is someplace where all of these things you are supposed to do are written down. That would have to assume that there are universal things you are supposed to do rather than things that you are supposed to do that were cited by your parents simply because their parents beat it into their heads that they were things you were supposed to do. And they believed this because their parents in turn impressed upon them that they were things you were supposed to do.

I am willing to bet most things you are supposed to do evolve that way instead out of some universal law dictated by the natural order of things. Most people don't question things we are supposed to do because questioning them is something we are not supposed to do.  Besides, the only answer you ever get when you question doing something you are supposed to do is that that is what people do. There is a paradox here somewhere.

I am greatly pleased that wearing live cats as hats is not one of those things you are supposed to do.

Total lunar eclipse over my hammies

Last night I saw my first lunar eclipse. It was the first total lunar eclipse in almost three years. And it was the first total lunar eclipse to take place on the Winter Solstice since 1638.

It was the first lunar eclipse I have ever seen because a) I am normally totally unaware of such things b) if I am aware of them, I fall asleep anyway and c) I live in the Seattle area and most things in the sky are obscured by clouds most nights. I managed to see this one because, a) I read about it on the Internet, b) since having children, I seldom go to sleep before midnight and c) by some miracle the clouds lifted last night and I could actually see the moon.

The photo above is supposedly how it looked from Seattle. I found the image on Wikipedia (thank you Yatharth Gupta whoever you are). I tried taking my own photo, but I haven't yet mastered all of the technical mysteries of my Canon Rebel (translated I haven't read the manual and basically still point, shoot and hope for the best). All I ended up photographing was a big, black square (which is basically what the eclipse looked like at about 11:30 p.m.). But then again, the whole thing could have just been obscured by a cloud. You never know in the great Pacific Northwest.

I am surprised that no one tried to super glue some significance to the fact that th eclipse was taking place on the Winter Solstice. It didn't seem to have any affect on me.

I did have a strange urge to go into a Denny's during the eclipse and order a Total Lunar Eclipse Over My Hammies just to see how the server would react. Given that it would be a Denny's during a full moon, eclipse  or not, I imagine the server would simply ask me if I wanted fries with that.

Note to Denny's: this would have been a great marketing opportunity. A Full Lunar Eclipse Over My Hammies could have been a ham sandwich with two fried eggs with the yolks removed. The next total eclipse will take place on June 15, 2011, so you have time to flesh this one out if you want. Just give me some of the credit, okay?

But I digress. I'm looking forward to the June 15 eclipse. But if I miss that, there is supposed to be another one on December 10th next year, too. Maybe I'll read the manual for my camera by then. But then again, it will probably be cloudy anyway.

Watching football

Of all sports, I enjoy watching football the most. I do not claim to understand all of the nuances of it, but I like the spirit of it. What drives me crazy, however, are the endless string of commentators who babble on during the games. I find their inane diatribes mind numbing at best.

What kind of insight does, "they need to come up with some big plays" provide? And don't get me started on sports casters ability to turn nouns into verbs (as in, "credit him with the pass defensed").

Although I like to watch football, I am also appalled at watching the other people who like to watch football. On the rare occasion I actually go to a game, I watch in horror at the out of shape blobs squeezed into football jerseys that should only be stretched as tight as they are if they are being pulled over shoulder pads and body armor. These jerseys are stretched to capacity by bellies that put Santa Claus to shame.

And the spectacle of it all. The wigs, masks and face paint rivals Mardi Gra in its garishness. But the thing that always blows my mind is the level at which these rabid fans believe that they actually have anything to do with whether the team wins or loses.  Now granted, noise becomes a factor in a game, but the actual physical act of playing the game lies strictly with the men playing the game, not with the mohawked fan wearing the kilt pounding his head against a pole in the end zone stands.

I understand the need for individuals to identify with people, real or fictional, who can live out realities they can't. But it is sad that many of the people I see at football games can't seem to accept that wearing a football jersey doesn't make you a football player any more than wearing a cape makes you Superman.

It is also easy to fall into the trap of second guessing everything that happens on the field. I catch myself swearing at a missed tackle, a dropped pass or a fumbled ball. Then I remind myself that I have never played football out of the confines of a backyard and that I was a drum major in the marching band during high school.

Perspective is everything, especially while watching football.

I broke the wing off an angel

It wasn't a real angel. It was a little plastic glow in the dark angel that someone taped onto my office door. It fell on the floor and I accidentally stepped on it and broke the wing. But I felt bad and glued the wing back on with a glue gun. It's not that I'm superstitious, but I don't need the bad karma breaking a wing off an angel implies.

Technically, it was probably more of a glow in the dark Cherub anyway. Or since this is the holiday season, it may have been a baby Jesus with wings. Funny thing is, the next day five more of the things showed up at random spots in my office. I rooted them out and they are all sitting on top of a commuter coffee mug next to my computer monitor with their little glow in the dark arms reaching up toward heaven (or the sky if you don't believe in such things).

I am not sure why angels have wings anyway. You'd think heavenly creatures could simply levitate without resorting to flapping their wings. But while we are on the subject, why do demons and hellish imps have wings, too? You would think they'd need them since they are supposed to be spending their time slinking around on their bellies in the fire, brimstone and icky ooze of hell.

But I digress.

It can't be good to break a wing off an angel around the holidays even if it was an accident. Now granted, technically the angel had wings so it shouldn't have fallen on the ground anyway unless it was indeed a fallen angel (or cherub). So that would mean breaking its wing off wouldn't be a bad thing because it was headed to hell anyway.

Come to think of it, that is why demons and imps have wings. They are supposed to be fallen angels. It kind of makes sense now. But I am just winging it. Ha, ha...

Now I am really going to hell.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Elvis tree is still in the building

I honestly couldn't tell you any more when the Elvis tree began. I can tell you that I bought the white, artificial tree from K-Mart (which seems pretty appropriate). And many of the ornaments came from uncontrolled buying binges on eBay. But I can't pinpoint when the tree took root.

I suppose it began as a rebellion against mainstream conventions associated with decorating for Christmas. And it was fed by the convenient aspect of combining my unexplained obsession with collecting Elvis crap with decorating a tree.

Now that I have a family, I have bowed to conventional decorations on one level of our house, but I have held onto the tradition of constructing and decorating the Elvis tree. My toddler children so far find it fascinating and spend a great deal of time pushing the buttons on the musical Elvis ornaments for abbreviated versions of Blue Christmas, Here comes Santa Claus and I'll be home for Christmas. I have forgone my tradition of placing a model of Graceland under the tree until my kids are old enough to resist the urge to touch it.

Some things are just sacred and Graceland is one of them.

But I do sense my four year old daughter beginning to wonder what the whole Elvis tree is all about. A few nights ago, she was playing in the room where it shone it all its blue splendor. An Elvis Christmas CD was playing on the DVD player. Suddenly my daughter got this very thoughtful, serious look on her beautiful little face. Then she turned to me and asked, "Papa, why do you have all of this Elvis stuff."

I got the same feeling I imagine the Grinch had when Cindy Lou Who confronted him and asked why he was shoving the Christmas tree up the chimney. I stammered something about just collecting Elvis stuff over the years. She nodded her head and replied, "I like Elvis music. He sings handsome." Then she resumed playing.

So I dodged that bullet, but I don't imagine there will be too many more Christmases left that I can put up the Elvis tree in peace without explaining to my kids why.

The problem is, I don't have an answer. I've always kind of looked at the tree as a lark. It's like this perpetual art project that represents everything good and bad about our culture. And regardless of any deep philosophical or psychological reason for it, I just think it's pretty.

But I suppose I'd better start working on a better answer.

Cave paintings

I wonder at times if blogging has become as archaic as cave paintings. Compared to the digital fast food social sites like Facebook and Twitter, blogging has just lost its newness and appeal to most people. For one, it takes too long of an attention span to read a blog post versus a Twitter or Facebook update about what you are having for lunch.

I was so enthusiastic when I started blogging. I felt so cutting edge and progressive. Blogging was my opportunity to share all of these fascinating stories I'd stored up for years. I was pretty damned prolific in the beginning, posting on an almost daily basis. I covered my cave walls with enough stick figures to entertain thousands. Trouble is, my cave seems to be a bit hard to find. And, I seem to be running out of paint and wall space. On more than one occasion, I've even painted the same pictographs over and over.

Kind of like this post. I think it is at least the hundredth time I've whined about blogging. Yet I still bundle up in my fur robes and trudge on back to the cave.

At times I ponder about what will happen to my cave paintings when I'm gone. It is hard to imagine a time when Google will close up shop and scatter all of its various digital properties to the winds. But even the dinosaurs eventually trudged off slowly into the sunset to become petroleum products. Have I built a digital house of cards by storing all of my cave paintings in one blog?

I've toyed with converting my blog posts into a primitive hard copy book. There are several self publishing options out there. But having one copy of a book of my rambling digressions seems a bit sad at times. They don't call the paper book covers dust jackets for nothing.

Once again I've become maudlin and cliche about leaving a legacy when I've gone.

Maybe that is my legacy.

Ug...need more paint.

I've got a turkey, wanna neck?

Actually the clever pick-up line is, "I've got a chicken, wanna neck?" And actually it isn't that clever and never worked for me anyway on the few times I'd holler it out the car window when my friends and I would pretend to cruise Main Street when I was a teenager growing up in Boise. Unfortunately, it also dates me since no one uses the term "neck" to describe making out anymore.

But I digress right from the beginning.

It is time for my annual post about my Thanksgiving journey to Boise. Though technically, I didn't post anything last year about our trip to Boise. Something about having two toddlers skews my sense of time, place and posting.

Anyone who religiously follows my blog knows by now that every year I make a pilgrimage back to my birthplace in Boise, Idaho for the ritual sacrifice of the turkey for Thanksgiving (I'm willing to bet the turkey doesn't see that much to be thankful for in the holiday). The primary reason I go to Boise now is to allow my children to spend as much time as possible with my mother. She is 85 years old and I want my kids to have some sense of her while she is still with us.

There aren't a great deal of options for getting to Boise. Either you drive and risk encounters with winter storms going over a couple of passes, turning a nine hour drive into a marathon affair (not something you want to chance with two toddlers in the car) or you fly and risk encounters with winter storms that turn an hour and twenty minute flight into a marathon affair or cancelled flights and lost luggage.

We opted for the latter. I should have known better when all of the planets were aligning against the trip. We were leaving Monday afternoon at 12:45 p.m. They began predicting snow a few days earlier. When we woke up Monday morning, my daughter had a fever. We looked outside and it was snowing fairly heavily. One of our three cats puked all over the stairs as we were leaving. It took 40 minutes just to get to the freeway from our house.

Still we made it to the parking garage and the airport in ample time to make it through security, have some lunch and make it to our gate. After mediating a debate with my son and daughter over whether to have pizza or hot dogs for lunch, I got the first e-mail alert on my Blackberry that our flight was delayed. Snow was coming down fairly heavily by now, so I assumed it was just the standard weather delay. We made our way to an airport play area to kill time until the new flight time. That's when the second (and third and fourth) flight delay notice came in.

Four hours later we were stumbling down an icy stairway carrying our children and two strollers,  making our way to a Horizon aircraft that is too small to use a civilized jet way. I was a bit relieved to actually be on board the plane and tried not to get annoyed when the pilot announced that they just had to deal with a few maintenance issues and get the plane de-iced before we could be cleared for take off. An hour later we were bumping along toward the runway. The pilot then announced that they had to go back to the gate to deal with some more maintenance issues.

After resolving the maintenance issues and getting de-iced and refueled, we noticed our luggage being taken off the airplane. After two hours we were told we had to get off the airplane because they were having issues now with their radios. We bundled up our kids and headed outside through the snow and back to the gate.

I want to go on record now that Horizon was not prepared for snow in Seattle. They seemed under staffed, under informed and unable to cope with anything going on at Sea-Tac on that fateful day. I got in a line at the gate counter and handed my boarding passes to a surly ticket agent who didn't say a word . She simply typed away on her computer and then handed me new boarding passes saying we were on standby for an 8 p.m. flight to Boise.

I watched the monitor above her head for the next hour or so and saw that we had been given seat assignments. I stood in line again and the surly gate agent told me that she wasn't ready to officially move our status from standby to confirmed and that I should wait around. I watched the 8 p.m. flight status change to 8:30 and then 9:15 p.m. Another ticket agent announced that the airplane we were waiting for was having maintenance issues. Then suddenly they changed the gate we were to leave from. A surge of passengers rushed off as we frantically packed our kids and scurried off to the new gate.

We finally boarded the plane at about 11 p.m. and sat there waiting for it to be de-iced. At close to 11:45 p.m. we finally took off in what appeared to be a total white out. We touched down in Boise around 1:30 a.m. their time. The car rental place was closed. It didn't really matter because although we'd made the flight to Boise, our luggage and car seats hadn't.

I waited in yet another line to file a missing luggage report. I was assured that the luggage would be on the first flight from Seattle the next morning. Then I gathered up my family and called the hotel for a shuttle. The shuttles had stopped running, so they sent a taxi instead. The taxi driver took pity on us and drove us around to several mini-marts trying to find diapers at 2:30 a.m. We couldn't find any so ended up at the hotel with one diaper and one pull up to last the night.

To make a long story short, our luggage didn't arrive on the first flight from Seattle the next morning. It came in at 2 p.m. I was able to get the hotel shuttle driver to take me to Albertsons to buy diapers in the morning and then to the airport to pick up a rental car. Almost two days of our Boise trip were spent waiting to fly or waiting for luggage.

I have written my semi-annual complaint to Horizon Air asking them to give me something, anything to make up for the nightmare. I'm assuming they will respond that they couldn't do anything about the weather and pony up 1000 frequent flyer miles in good faith.

I would prefer free flights to Mexico, because the next time I fly somewhere, it better be tropical and serve a decent Margarita.

Oh yeah, it snowed in Boise and the average temperature was below zero.

It was good though, that my kids got to see their grandmother.

Sigh....

My life as an onion

If I were to wager a strong guess, I'd bet that the forbidden fruit Eve partook of in the Garden of Eden was more of a forbidden vegetable. And that vegetable was probably an onion.  Because what symbolizes life and reality better than an onion (including the tears when you chop it up).

In a very layman and uneducated sense, I subscribe to the multiple worlds theory of physics in which there are multiple realities or universes existing simultaneously at any given moment. We navigate through these multiple universes by the actions (or inactions) we take in life. And as we move through these universes, we create layer upon layer of experience that is much like the layers of an onion. To understand your life, you can't just peel away layers, you have to view them as a whole. Because the onion, and your life are nothing without all of the layers.

I also think that, rather than viewing experience as linear, we need to step back and view it as layers of simultaneous reality happening independent of a beginning and an end. We are more aware of the layer we are  on because it is closer to the surface of our onion. But if you were a worm burrowing straight down through the onion, you'd find all of your experiences at that moment.

This is why, I think, as we age we have these odd flashes of what we believe to be vivid memories of the past (for want of a better term). Sometimes I'll be walking along and have this odd feeling that I am sharing space with younger versions of myself living out their layers of the onion.

For some reason we seem to be able to look down through the layers with more clarity than we can look up through the layers. Maybe this is where Quantum Physics comes into play. If indeed there are an infinite number of universes existing at the same time, we don't become aware of them until we actualize them by our actions. In other words, you can see all of the universes you've touched, but you can't distinguish the ones you are going to touch until you actually touch them and add them to your onion.

As I age, this theory is somehow comforting to me. I just haven't figured out what eventually happens to the onion when you die.

I just hope it doesn't end up on  hot dog or a bowl of chili.

Making a withdrawal from my daylights savings

I'm not a big fan of Daylight Savings Time. For one, it means I have to figure out how to change the time on 40 clocks and appliances scattered about my house. And I have to figure out how to change the clock in my car with one hand while driving because I never seem to notice the clock until I'm on the road and trying to get somewhere.

I also don't like the government arbitrarily messing with my body clock. Because just because they theoretically give your hour back in the fall after ripping it away from you, your body never really catches up. This is especially true if you have small children in the house. Setting your clocks back in the fall has absolutely no meaning to them and they will now get up when their body clock says it is time to get up.

I think the clock read 5:30 a.m. this last Sunday when my two-year old son sat up and declared he wanted to watch Tickerbell and the Lost Treasure. He then proceeded to sing the theme song from Little Einsteins while slapping out the drum beat on my back. This was followed by repeatedly putting a pillow over my face and pulling off and crying, "boo." My four-year old daughter quickly joined in the fun. My extra hour slipped out of the room along with the cat, both being chased by toddlers.

Dante has a level of hell just for whoever came up with Daylight Savings Time.

Personally, I like walking to the train in the morning in the dark. It is peaceful. And this is Seattle. Even if the sun is out in the morning, its behind a cloud, so giving me an extra hour of daylight means absolutely nothing.

You can bet our ancestors didn't try messing with time. I'm sure they dragged out of their caves as soon as the sun came out and scrambled back in as soon as it when down. They didn't need the village elders to decide they could save firewood by going out an hour earlier in the spring or an hour later in the fall.  The carnivores waiting outside in the dark dictated strict adherence to nature's clock.

Oh, I am sure there is a federal agency somewhere with the sole responsibility for defending Daylight Savings Time with a vast arsenal of charts and graphs showing us how much energy and money we save each year. Honestly, I don't care whether they are right or wrong. I just want them to leave my body clock alone. Go regulated plastic bags and bottles and leave my freakin' clocks alone.

Fly monkey, fly!

I am pretty much convinced that those people who do all of the polling about how people are going to vote and predict who or what will win could save a lot of money by simply asking me how I'm going to vote on any given office or issue. I have consistently voted in just about every election since I started voting back in 1976. And just about everything I've ever voted for goes down in flames.

Oh there have been a few anomaly's. I did vote for Jimmy Carter. I also voted for Bill Clinton and Obama. And I am glad they won, but if they knew my track history, they would have likely asked me to vote for the Republican opponent to jinx their campaigns.

I think part of my problem with picking losing initiatives and candidates is that I read the damned voter's pamphlets and try and figure out what the best choice is. I should just pick candidates the way I pick horses at the race track (usually a scientific method based on what memory the horse's name triggers or what color silks the jockey is wearing). I'd probably have a better record backing a winning proposition.

I have to conclude that a majority of the population doesn't research the issues and does vote based on important factors like which side the candidates hair is parted on or what color their yard signs were. Because every election night I sit in my easy chair and shake my head as the results trickle in.

I must say I kind of miss the actual act of voting before everything was converted to mail in ballots. There was something satisfying about entering the voter's booth and punching out holes next to your candidate or issue of choice. And it was kind of cool to hear the geriatric volunteers call out your name as having voted as you slipped your ballot into an actual ballot box. It was much more romantic than sitting in my easy chair in my underwear with a ballpoint pen drawing a line next to my choices while Man Vs. Food plays in the background.

But I suppose the mail in ballot eliminates the whole dangling chad issue that saddled us  with George W. for eight years and created the whole economic mess we're in in the first place. On a side note (nice way to say digression), while I was in San Antonio last month, I saw lots of these "Miss me yet" t-shirts with George W's image on them. I'm sure the gift shop people thought I had Teurette's because I'd blurt out an expletive every time I saw one of the damned shirts.

End of side note.

I wish there was an alternative to the democratic system of voting that didn't involve someone like Idi Amin and a secret police force with unlimited resources. My problem with voting is that I don't believe that because a majority of people approve something that it is automatically the right thing to do. But then again, I am a creative deviant in a world that demands order in a disordered universe. I firmly believe that if someone got enough signatures to get an initiative on the ballot declaring that black is white and the initiative got a majority of the votes, people would run around the streets screaming that it was about time the Republicans straightened that question out.

Fly monkey, fly!

There's got to be a morning after

The beauty of this blog post title is that it will drive traffic from people Googling "bad song from the Poseidon Adventure" to my blog at which point they will say, "Hey, this doesn't have anything to do with the Poseidon Adventure." It may even turn their life upside down.

Just a little Poseidon Adventure humor, ha, ha.

By morning after, I am referring to the morning after the debacle that was election night in the United States. Although I am bummed by the backlash of the unwashed masses returning the Republican weasels to the hen house to finish off the last of the chickens, I am more concerned that a local initiative to allow liquor to be sold in grocery stores seems to be failing.

Democracy sucks. Give me a benevolent dictator any day. Because I hate to think important decisions are being made by people who base their voting decisions on the number of times they have seen a candidate's name on those annoying little yard signs that infest the roadside like dandelions on your neighbors lawn. I hate those signs. I am tempted to sponsor an initiative to get them banned. But the irony is that I'd have to print up a bunch of little yard signs urging people to pass the initiative banning them.

But I digress.

I suppose it really doesn't matter which party is in the majority. I've grown to accept that our political system basically negates anyone effectively accomplishing anything. I think Democrats are equally ineffective as Republicans, I just support them because they are nicer people, mean well and for the most part intelligent. Republicans are narrow minded, self-centered banjo players who idolize evil people like Sarah Palin. And I mean this in a nice way.

Deep down, I believe the act of seeking any political office makes a person, Democrat or Republican, suspect and unworthy to lead. We should select our leaders by kidnapping the best and the brightest and locking them in the Senate and House chambers and trade them food for decent laws and programs.

It could work.

Regardless, at least the mind numbing political commercials are done. It will be nice just to watch ads for the new Leopard Snuggie for awhile. I'd like to just pull one over my head until the Republicans fix the economy like they promised or monkeys fly out of my butt.

I've always liked monkeys.

It is what it is

Someone said to me the other day that they thought the phrase "It is what it is" was overused and cliche. This was right after I used the phrase. Ironically, it was only the second time I'd remembered using the phrase. And in the phrase's defense, it may be overused and/or cliche, but it is also dead on accurate in many cases.

Even Freud chastised people that a cigar is sometimes just a cigar. As a species, we are too quick to look for hidden messages or meanings in everything. We wonder what god's plan was or whether something was a government conspiracy or a big business ploy. But you know, nine times out of ten, it is what it is and there is no DaVinci code to crack. Maybe the Mona Lisa was smiling because she had gas (or Leonardo passed some).

I suppose this is disappointing to some people. If you climb to the mountain top and ask the guru in the cave what the meaning of life is and he or she says, "It is what it is," you are likely going to be a little pissed off. Because it is human nature to thrive on mystery and intrigue. We want there to be some master plan. And if the guiding principle to life is that shit just happens, there are lots of people who aren't going to want to get out of bed in the morning.

I don't think I believe shit just happens, though. On more than one occasion, I have made it clear that I firmly believe we make our own reality. So I believe shit happens because we make it happen. We set the stage for it to happen by the actions we take before it happens. But when it does happen, it is what it is. Because at that point you can't make it unhappen.

Oh, you can learn from it happening. But staring at it, dissecting it and stirring it around, doesn't change it. Asking lots of questions about why it happened doesn't change it happening, either. It is futile. I ask my children all the time why they do things like stick toast in the DVD player. They inevitably respond with something like, "Because." Why? Because there actions are what they are and they are who they are. Something motivated them to stick a piece of toast in the DVD player. Maybe it was just curiosity or they just like to see the DVD drawer open and close. Figuring out what the motivation was doesn't change that it happened. And more often than not, it won't keep it from happening again. I can tell them not to put toast in the DVD player and next time they won't. They'll stick a Pop Tart in there instead. And I'll ask them why and they'll respond, "Because." They cycle will never stop until I simply stop asking them why.

Time to digress. I have always been bothered by people who major in Literature of any kind or era. As a writer, I don't appreciate people who dissect writing. And by dissect, I mean they literally spread a piece on cardboard and pin it's legs and arms back for a vivisection, looking for god knows what. Maybe Melville was really just writing about a friggin' white whale, did you ever think about that? And what have you really accomplished by putting writing under a microscope? Writers are only projecting bits and pieces of themselves in their writing. It shouldn't be held up as some holy grail that masks the secrets to the universe.

End of digression. Just be thankful I didn't get started on film history majors.

I'll leave you with a quote from a great proponent of the philosophy of it is what it is, Popeye. He said it best when he said, "I yam what I yam and it's all that I yam."

Remember the...eh...er?

I was in San Antonio a few weeks ago on business and managed to swing past one of America's top icons. Well, at least it is the most famous attraction in Texas -- the Alamo. It is hard to forget the Alamo since most people in my generation grew up with the phrase, "Remember the Alamo" etched into our small brains. And, after all, it is where at the very least two popular American icons from our early history died: Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie.

Davy Crockett's fame may have died at the Alamo if he hadn't been one of the early experts at self-promotion. He created his famous frontier persona to win a place representing Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives. His exploits were turned into plays and dime novels. Something tells me living up to his own legend landed him in Texas facing a vastly superior force of the Mexican army defending their country's property rights.

Davy Crockett ended up executed along with Jim Bowie who lent his name to the Bowie knife, a large hunting knife almost as big as a machete. Bowie wasn't from Texas, either. He was born in Kentucky and spent most of his life in Louisiana. He became for a fight on a sandbar in Louisiana in which he killed his opponent with his Bowie knife after being shot, clubbed and stabbed repeatedly. Bowie moved to Texas after the fight and eventually became a Mexican citizen before the revolution landed him in the Alamo trying to figure out how to fight thousands of soldiers armed with rifles with a big knife.

Obviously, I didn't spend a great deal of time at the Alamo reading up on the history. I was too busy trying to decide whether to buy a shot glass with a image of the Alamo on it or a Christmas ornament with the image of the Alamo on it. I didn't buy either, but I did buy my kids a couple of polyester coonskin caps which they refuse to have anything to do with. My daughter insists her hat was a cat and keeps it in a bag with her other stuffed toys. My son simply won't touch it.

I was a bit disappointed since I had one of the caps when I was a toddler and wore it proudly while prancing around in my diaper. I suppose wanting to be king of the wild frontier skips a generation.

But I digress.

More fascinating to me than the actual Alamo (which is pretty damned small in real life) were the Texas volunteers who staff the park. To Texas' credit, they don't charge you to visit the Alamo. Thus they rely on volunteers to keep people in line and stage odd reenactment tableau's on the grounds.

I took photos of the people dressed up in vintage uniforms from a distance because I have phobia of such people similar to my phobia of people who hand out free samples at the grocery store (a long story). I was afraid if I approached them they would engage my in scintillating conversation about trench latrines and hard tack.

I did find the reenactment people a bit more friendly than the people working in the actual Alamo itself. I stepped into the hallowed ground of the main structure and was immediately accosted by a volunteer who berated me for wearing a hat inside this holiest of Texas holies. He spied my camera and also warned me that photography wasn't allowed. Presumably flash photography is as offensive to the spirits of the brave but not terribly realistic defenders of the Alamo as baseball caps are. I fought the urge to suggest that I am sure Davy Crockett never took off his coon skin cap in the Alamo and just took off my hat. I hid my camera in it while the volunteer followed me around the crowded former church turned fortress waiting for me to try and put it back on again.

I have to admit that it was kind of neat seeing the Alamo. After all, it did spawn several movies including one of the only ones John Wayne died in (he was playing Davy Crockett and they couldn't figure out a way to get around him dying in the end when they wrote the script) and one where Billy Bob Thornton played Davy Crockett (hopefully sans a vial of Angelina Jolie's blood around his neck).

And all and all, San Antonio was a pretty cool city. 

Man V. Food

I hate to admit it, but I spend an inordinate amount of my very little free time watching the the Travel Channel and in particular the Man V. Food series which one would think would more appropriately be shown on the Food Network. I suppose, Adam Richman, the star of Man V. Food does travel around the country in his search for disgustingly large portions of food to consume, so there is a travel angle. And if you are a traveler who likes to go to new cities and discover where you can get the world's largest hamburger, omelet or pancakes, the show is a must see.

I am not sure why I am obsessed with watching Adam (I was going to call him Mr. Richman, but after watching him consume a five pound jumbo Stomboli (sort of an inverted Calzone) in Butte, Montana, I feel as though we should be on a first name basis) eat amounts of food that would choke a horse. Maybe since I have lost 50 pounds, I am living vicariously through his self-indulgence. This is not to say that I have eaten a pizza the size of New Hampshire or a steak dinner that pretty much encompasses the whole cow. But I kind of enjoy watching Adam act as though he is not going to be able to choke down 500 oysters and then pulling it out in the last minute.

I truly worry about how long Adam can keep his prodigious eating talents on the air. I do notice that most of the programs I see are reruns. And I ashamed to say that I don't change the channel even though it is the same program I've seen ten times before about a hamburger joint in Boise (the city of my birth) that serves hamburgers the size of frisbees.

I suppose it is the same compulsion that draws people to sideshows in carnivals to stare at two-headed calve fetuses in a jar. I watch with horror as Adam, a seemingly normal sized man, eats a 72-ounce steak and all of the trimmings with no thought to the consequences to what all of this will have on his body. And other than what I assume is a healthy salary he gets from the Travel Channel, the only other reward Adam seems to get from eating a 12-egg omelet is a t-shirt and his picture on the wall of the restaurant.

As morbidly fascinated as I am by watching Adam eat, I am equally as fascinated in a more disgusting way at the people in the restaurants who watch him live while he confronts hostile food products. On last nights program about the Jumbo Stromboli, one belligerent red neck berated Adam to "put on his man pants" and finished the "bleeping" Stromboli. Being a man in Butte apparently means you can consume things larger than your head. And judging from the red neck's belly he consume lots of things larger than his head and definitely many things larger than his brain.

Adam is, however, only 36 years old. If he keeps this up his over indulgence until he is 40, we'll be seeing him on the Biggest Loser, a show I've also watched. It isn't nearly as entertaining watching people lose weight as it is watching them pack it on.

I suppose the beauty of watching Man V. Food is that it does let me consume mass quantities of food without gaining a pound. So for that, god bless you Adam Richman!

The blogger always posts twice

It was a gray commute in this morning. Fog had set in on the Puget Sound and washed away any color it may normally have. I just stared out the train window, marveling at the number of cranes there were. I counted 14 until the shoreline slipped away and was replaced by the train yards.

The cranes seem like such patient birds. They stand there stoically waiting for fish, unmoving and without any emotion. I can't imagine a crane laughing. I wonder, though, what they think about as they stand in the water waiting for breakfast to swim by. Or do they think at all.

These are the deep thoughts I think as I ride the train in the fog. I kind of regretted deleting the Twitter app from my Blackberry, because the moody fog was just ripe for a 190 character witty tweet. Though I wasn't really feeling witty. I haven't felt witty for some time now. Perhaps I never was and am just realizing that now.

I did think about blogging while I was counting cranes. I thought about all of the farewell blog posts I read over the years and how odd that seems. How do you quit doing something that isn't really anything to begin with? And who are you saying farewell to? I've come to the conclusion that blogging is about the most solitary form of writing there is. Most blogs are hidden by the masses of other blogs out there that the odds are astronomical that they are ever read. It's kind of like being marooned on an island carving your journal on the rock walls of a cave pretty much certain no one but hermit crabs will ever look at your words.

Anyway back to farewell blog posts. Seems like a pretty pompous thing to do. It's kind of like quiting a job thinking you are irreplaceable only to discover that your replacement is already putting pictures up on your office wall. Life is like waves on the beach, constantly erasing tracks to make way for new ones.

I envy the cranes, though.

This too shall pass...eventually

I have never thought too much about kidney stones. Like everything else in life, until you experience it, you don't really give it much thought. Now I have experienced a kidney stone first hand and I am here to testify I'd have rather been left in ignorant bliss grateful that other people had them and I didn't.

I do not go to doctor's easily. I associate going to doctors with that same feeling you get when you open a package of cottage cheese that is a few weeks past its pull date. You do it because you have to out of morbid curiosity, but you are pretty sure that once you open the lid, you aren't going to be able to get rid of the stink.

I went to the doctor because twice I'd gone to work feeling fine and then ended up on the floor in the men's room blowing the porcelain tuba, much to the discomfort of my co-workers on the other side of the men's room wall. And the last straw was when some idigit planted himself in the bathroom stall with what I assumed was a copy of War and Peace and didn't come out for what seemed like an hour. So I ended up puking in my wastebasket in my office.

I figured something was wrong because it felt as if someone was sticking a knife in my groin and the waves of nausea kept coming long after my breakfast had. Fortunately for me, the doctor on call at the offices I go to wasn't one of those who simply told you you had a virus and to call if you were on your death bed. She looked at my urine sample and suggested that traces of blood in it indicated I could have a kidney stone.

My immediate reaction was relief. At least it wasn't my appendix, stomach cancer or some unknown disease brought on by my nasty disposition. I was a little concerned when I asked how you treat kidney stones and she said you simply drank water and waited for them to pass. This did not sound like a fun leisure activity to me. But to confirm I had kidney stones, the doctor scheduled an ultra sound at the hospital for the next day.

After another night of vomiting everything I even looked at, the ultrasound was a relief. I even forgave the admissions clerk who typed out loud and muttered constantly about EPD numbers, whatever those were. She also kept giving me accusing looks because some paperwork wasn't printed out ahead of time and I seemed to be a subversive type trying to infiltrate the hospital for an unauthorized ultra sound. But finally, after about ten minutes of typing and muttering, she printed out some forms, handed them to me without making eye contact and pointed me towards the radiology waiting room where a cheerful man took my paperwork and told me he'd let someone know I was there (presumably someone who knew how to work an ultra sound machine).

I sat in the waiting room watching a hostage crisis on CNN and reading a sign on the wall urging me to notify the person at the desk if I waited 15 minutes beyond my scheduled appointment. After 25 minutes, the ultra sound person came to get me and took me to a small dark room. Without a word she squirted some liquid on my stomach and began the ultra sound. She finished in about 20 minutes and told me she'd send the results to my doctor.

After another night of vomiting (I can never eat another Hawaiian steak slider as long as I live...not sure what I was thinking), the doctor called and said there was a blockage in my kidney and I needed a cat scan. So once again I was sitting in front of the same muttering admissions clerk devoid of EPD numbers and appropriate paperwork trying to infiltrate radiology for a cat scan. Another ten minutes of typing, muttering and nasty looks and I was once again in the radiology waiting room staring at the sign telling me to notify the front desk if I waited longer than 15 minutes. Ten minutes later I was escorted into a room for a quick x-ray and then scooted off to a room for my cat scan.

As I lie on the table listening to a computer generated voice telling me to hold my breath, the pain in my kidney started up again. The scan was quick, thank god and I was told to wait in the waiting room again while they faxed the results to my doctor. Within 15 minutes she called and told me an on call urologist had looked at the scans and said I had a kidney stone the size of Connecticut that wouldn't pass without medical assistance. She told me I needed to get into the urologist's office right away.

Within 15 minutes I was at his office trying desperately not to vomit on the counter. I was rushed into an examining room, handed a small kidney shaped dish (ironically) to puke in if necessary and told I could lie down on the examining table if it felt better. At this point, I believed the only thing that would make me feel better would be to have my kidney removed. Then in rushed a cheerful urologist who asked me if I liked to fish. I shook my head. Then he said, "If you were a fisherman, this stone would be a keeper. It's a whopper!"

Okay, when you are lying on a table writhing in pain trying desperately not to puke your stomach out, laughter is not the best medicine. Then the doctor proceeds to show me colored drawings of distorted kidneys and bladders and tells me this is what mine probably looked like. Then he said that I was being checked into the hospital for an operation in two hours to push the stone back in my kidney because it was stuck in the tube leading to my bladder and wasn't going any where. Then they were going to put a stint in my wing wang (my terminology) to allow me to pee freely until they brought me back to his office in four days to use an ultra sound machine to break up the stone so the pieces could pass.

Fifteen minutes later I was back in front of the muttering admissions clerk who was livid that I'd been there earlier for a cat scan and was now trying to barge into an out patient operating room. She was on the phone jabbering about the EPD numbers and how she couldn't admit me without them. I clutched my kidney shaped puke dish in my hand and let my head down on the desk while she babbled. She looked up and asked if I needed a bigger dish. I desperately wanted to puke on her, but shook my head.

After what seemed like hours, she put me in a wheel chair and wheeled me up to a room. Within minutes I was wearing one of those comfortable hospital gowns without a back and having IV's stuck in my hand. Mercifully, the IV's provided pain killers and anti-nausea meds. I almost fell asleep as they wheeled me into an operating room. Next thing I knew I was awake and being given a big orange pill that would "help me pee."

They wheeled me back to my room, handed me a menu and told me I could order anything I wanted off from the room service menu. Despite just coming out of surgery, I was really hungry. It had been awhile since I had been able to keep anything down, so I ordered soup, a sandwich and some ice cream. I'd barely finished it when they told me to get dressed because it was time to check out.

I felt fine when I got home. The only noticeable side effect from surgery was that I felt like I had to pee every ten minutes and the medicine made my pee looked like blood orange juice. The next day, I had an appointment at the urologist for my pre-op to get the stone blasted. I got there and was escorted into a surgical room where I was told to sit in an leather recliner while a nurse went over what would happen on my surgery day.

The surgery day arrived and I checked in, donned my comfortable backless gown and waited to be knocked out for the final chapter in the stone saga. Once again I woke up in a recovery area. There was no noticeable pain. They handed me a strainer and a cup and told me that I needed to watch for bits of the kidney stone. They told me they wouldn't be any bigger than a grain of sand. The first ones weren't. But as the night progressed, I became impressed by the magnitude of the stone. My collection jar rivaled my marble collection as a kid. And I marveled as the pieces kept coming.

So now I think everything has passed. On Monday I get to look forward to having the stint removed. I shudder to think of them doing that while I am fully awake. And I'm curious as to what they will tell me after analyzing the stones. If it is of a certain type, there is a pill they can give me that is supposed to keep anymore from forming. And god knows I don't want anymore.

I realize this post has included entirely too much information about my kidney stone, but hey, who else am I going to tell.