It was just a day in September.

I had worked all night, and come home to find that my wife had the day off, for some reason. She took our daughter to daycare down the block, and we chatted. We had been married for about three and a half years, and were comfortable and familiar, but still, this was a nice day when she was home. I stayed up and might have even had a late cup of coffee, well into the mid morning. It was nice.
We stepped out onto the front porch of the apartment, noticing the less-hot, but still sticky air. Our apartment manager Mac, from next door, told us that he reckoned that we had heard the news. Strangely, I hadn't. I normally would have killed an hour on the internet on my desktop computer (internet on cell phones was in its infancy, and anyway, we didn't have a cell phone), or listening to the radio, but this morning, because my wife was home, I had just enjoyed her company.

So I turned on the television, and we saw the news, and the re-recitation of it for about 3 iterations of the cycle. And the phone rang, and it was my best friend, who told me that we HAD to nuke the Muslims who did this.

I really don't remember what my wife did or said, the rest of the day.

I got to bed at around 1:30 or 2:00 that afternoon (5 hours late), slept poorly, and got up around 7:00pm to hear our President declare that they had identified the group that had attacked our country, and that we would go after them.  I then got ready and showed up early for work for another midnight shift.

17 years later, it suddenly occurs to me that one of the many, MANY casualties of that attack was my lovely day with my wife.

It's nothing, I know. But we didn't have a lot of weekday mornings together, then or now.

I feel ashamed for even thinking about it. People lost their lives, and their families. We lost a little part of our country.

Tell your loved ones how you feel about them. You don't have very many chances to do so. You might even lose the next chance that you think that you'll have.

She's leaving home (bye, bye)

The day we brought her home from the hospital. 

Renaissance festival, October, 2000. 

Airborne, 2003

All American Girl, Summer, 2009

Horseshoe Bend, Glenn Canyon, AZ, March, 2010. 

Drum Major, 2015

Senior in High School, February, 2016

High school graduate, 2016.

 About three weeks ago, my 18 year old daughter borrowed my pickup. We loaded her bed and her dresser and a bunch of clothes and other odds and ends into it, and she drove it away, with her boyfriend in the front seat. She had spent her last night in her room, and was moving into an apartment with one of her best friends and a friend from work.

She's not ready. Financially, I don't really believe that she's making enough to cover school expenses (though she has a pretty decent scholarship), car, rent, utilities, food, and sundry. She is taking on a good $5000+ in new expenses per year, just for the ability to say that she's moved out, even though her commute to college has only shrunk from 12 to 3 miles, and about the same for work.

I know-- kids want to feel grown up.  And she has a full-time job, and she pulled off a 4.0 GPA in her honors program at university this semester. She's a sophomore. She just bought her own Honda CRV. She's a great kid, and left the house with no animosity for her parents.

So why was I sobbing in my living room for five minutes after she left? Is this what I've become?

Okay, maybe I was the one who wasn't ready.


________________
For what it's worth, the recently remastered release of the Beatles' _Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band_ album is absolutely worth a listen. Particularly have I been listening to "She's Leaving Home." (The hotlinked version isn't the remastered one; you'll have to get the album or find it on Spotify or Google Play Music.)

My daughter's senior year begins.... Now.

To lots of people, the summer doesn't end until September First, or the observance of Labor Day, or when regular school is back in session. But when your child is in band, it starts earlier.

My elder daughter is a senior in high school this year, and is a drum major in the band. Today is the first day of band camp. Even though she has some kind of stomach ailment, she is fighting through it, and put together materialsm and cupcakes (hopefully safe?), and her water bottle and color-coded cards to give notice from across fields, and sunblock and sunglasses and her ever-present whistle (nicer than mine)-- all to get to school a half-hour early for the day.

This kid has been sleeping in until noon or later the last couple of weeks, staying up reading and watching movies with her sister. And she's been dating a little bit. But, she's been practicing her horn obsessively for the last month. She took a week earlier in the month and went to an elite drum major camp.  She's been working on summer assignments for her honors English, Math, Biology, and Spanish AP courses. We've been getting her into dual credit classes and getting her car set up for the school year, which basically for her starts today.

Here. We. Go.

239 years ago...

A group of men decided to sign a document declaring that they were citizens, and no longer subjects. This document started with a list of strident complaints against a man who was arguably the most powerful man in the world, and who believed he had a claim over their provenance. The subject and recipient of that document had standing troops in their homeland, and the resources to send many, many more.

Think about that, the next time you're reluctant to churn out a memo at work which points out an error made by your boss.

This is what class looks like.

Longtime online pal Marko Kloos is so classy, he even apologizes for being a little rude when he correctly identifies a rude individual.

Winning a Hugo, up to now, has always been very valuable for a science fiction writer.

If you're like many of us, you want to find a magical story that will divert you from the drudgery of reality, without having to wade through the crap. Just give me the good stuff. So, it's incredibly alluring to see that list posted up on the wall of your local book store with the Hugo winners by year. I've been guilty of having perused the list, found a title that I haven't yet read, and pulled it off the shelf and immediately gone to the cash register. It's that simple: I didn't have to read the slush pile.

I know that I'm not the only one. As do smart people like... well, like Marko Kloos.

Marko, however, found himself in a very weird situation. He had written a very compelling page-turner, which would have found itself in the running for a Hugo anyway-- but which was pushed to the short-list by an unsavory person.

Vox Day, AKA Theodore Beale, is not a person I would invite into my home. He is racist. He is misogynistic. He was expelled from the Science Fiction Writer's Association because of his attacks on fellow writers based upon their race and gender. He is bitter. The funny thing is, the man can write. If he weren't so obnoxious, he probably would have won something by now. But there are lines which you cannot cross without having some backlash, and he crossed them. He will never win an award in science fiction.

To make up for this, Beale/Day came up with a scheme: pack the nominations. Campaign on fairness! Your favorite writers have no chance to win, through no fault of their own! Though they have wrought the best stories, their only sin is that they are white males!  The P.C.-minded establishment wants a multicultural field of nominees, at the expense of Quality! Hell, it sounds good. We all just want the best writing. Who cares what color or gender the author is? We all hate reverse discrimination, because it's just another kind of discrimination, right?

When I saw that online pal and best-selling author Larry Correia was being labeled as a racist (!) and misogynist himself, I began to think, Yeah, I can understand why you'd get ticked about these things. Larry's a good man. Larry is not a racist. He may be a conservative, but he's not a woman-hater. Larry's writings depict strong woman characters, multiple cultures in his good guys... anyway, you get the picture.  So Larry's corner started up a little group called the Sad Puppies. And frankly, I was on board.

Then Vox Day starts up the Rabid Puppies. He endorses a group of authors for Hugo nominations, and they get short-listed. Marko Kloos was one of the authors.

For a few days, it was heady times at Castle Frostbite. Think about this: You're nominated for the Hugo --one of the most well-known awards in your profession*-- and word is that you've got a very good chance of winning it. Heinlein won that award. Asimov won that award. Clark. Le Guin. Dick. Niven. Haldeman. Gibson. Card. Those are the giants on whose shoulders you will get to stand. I'm not gonna lie: I'm giddy just knowing a guy who gets to have his name mentioned in the same lists as those people.

The same rocket ship badge that is on every paperback of Stranger In A Strange Land could be on your books.

But then comes the crashing reality, which is that people would associate your nomination with the unsavory person who put your name on a list that he advocated be nominated.

Some stains you can never wash clean of.

So Marko, faced with that situation, quit. He pulled his book Lines Of Departure out of the running.
He took his ball (which he was winning with), and went home to Castle Frostbite.

Drop the mic.

He'll write more. And we'll get to read it. But when he takes the awards, it will be on his terms, and not via some shady deal co-opted by a shady jerk.  Hey, Vox? Marko was never your kind of people.
______________________
*Though, apparently, not really as critically-judged as you might hope. "Hugo Award nominees and winners are chosen by supporting or attending members of the annual World Science Fiction Convention, or Worldcon..." LawDog writes on his disappointment about the process.

17th.

We woke up with terms of affection, and consumed coffee, and my wife made sourdough bread while I documented the destruction from yesterday's snowstorm.

Actually? This was taken the evening before, but nearly captures what I saw in the morning. 

On the last day of February, in North Texas, you're actually more likely to decide upon long sleeves or a windbreaker as outdoor clothing, than to reach for a lined hooded parka, as I did yesterday. The average high temperature for February 28th at our local airport is about 60 degrees, with the average low being about 39.  Weather like this is actually kind of unusual, and just adds some spice to our lives; we don't mind it much. By February's end, I've friends up north who are very tired of the snow, and friends down south who are probably kind of bored with the lack of it. 

I was on call this weekend, and I've got: 1. The oldest car in our fleet, and: 2. The only four-wheel-drive vehicle in our patrol car fleet. I wasn't going to be leaving town, nor imbibing any adult beverages.

My younger daughter made cocoa, as she's been doing lately. She's got a good hand at it.

My elder daughter invented a reason to go to her best friend's house (to work on a video for a Spanish project), and then happily trudged over in the snow with her rubber boots on (with lace-trimmed cable knit leg warmers visible over the tops of the boots, in the style that has lately emerged here).

My wife and I cleaned some, and discussed how to redo the kitchen. Mostly I said "do whatever you want."

My chickens got extra feed. They were happy, as we had shrouded their coop with a tarp and run a shop light inside it. Marko says that he doesn't get heat to his birds, but his coop is doubtless more airtight than mine. I poured boiling water over their water tray so that they would stay hydrated.

We consumed a black forest cheesecake that my wife made from scratch, and I felt light-headed at all the sugar in my bloodstream.When you're on a near-no-carb diet, you can swoon a bit on your cheat day. For us, that's Saturday.

We went to a fire fighter dinner, and had good barbecue.

We got home, and watched some shows on Netflix.

And I looked up, and it was midnight. My 17th wedding anniversary was over. I had spent the whole day with my wife. We didn't get each other anything, but we were happy with that.

It was a good day, this year, and that. 

Without fear.

Because I have a lot of nerdy friends and wanted in on the social references that they made, I bought a graphic novel that came highly recommended. But this post isn't about that.


The adult comic book was originally published by installment in 1986, and was written in 1985, which was set as the present, with a lot of reflection on the previous half century, at which point it had diverged from our real timeline.


What was fascinating, though, was how scared we were of pending war. In this book, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan seemed clearly to indicate that, without some kind of major interference, an invasion of Pakistan would occur. And from the man on the street to the POTUS, World War III seemed inevitable.


But it was just another timeline, in an imagined universe, by a good writer and his illustrator.


Friends, I remember being afraid, as a little kid, of nuclear war. I remember being afraid of something that our nation couldn't control, coming in and taking our lives away from us.


As the 1990's came, and the USSR fell, the nuclear threat (or the fear of it) diminished. I grew into adulthood. I had the opportunity to decide my future.


At no time in my adult life have I felt afraid that our nation would be attacked on a wide scale. Sure, individual attacks can and have happened, but think about how indignant we were to have even those occur.  When you attack our country, there are major consequences. It's not a good idea. We send guys like John Shirley and his mates over to kick your butt.


We don't think a whole lot about our military, because of how effective they are at letting us lead our quiet normal lives. I'm not saying that it's right, but I'm pointing out how well they do their job: we as a nation get to continue to be self-absorbed and silly, without paying attention to what our military really does, because they're just that good.


For about 364 days of the year, it's actually okay to be self-absorbed, and not think of who guards our freedoms.


Today, we think of our soldiers, our marines, our sailors, our airmen, and our guardsmen who gave everything. Because we really don't have to. You can bet that their families think about them a lot.

Thanks.

--The other night,  I watched on Netflix the Miami Vice episode "Bushido" (Season 2, episode 8). Best television that the 1980s ever brought us.




--The star PSR J1748-2446ad spins a thousand times every 1.39595482 seconds. It's outer surface moves at 24% of the speed of light. It orbits another star every 26 hours.


I want a pocket steam engine.




--My wife went to Corpus Christi last Tuesday night, and flew back Thursday morning. She grew up there, but said that it felt nothing like the town that she grew up in.


--Sports Illustrated put out a casting call for people that were at the bombing at the Boston Marathon last year. Here's their cover picture. For some reason, that puts a lump in my throat. I hope that Boston doesn't overreact to their terrorism incident like New York did to theirs.


--I've responded to two structure fires in the past month while doing my police gig. At one, I attached a 5" supply hose to the engine and got water started before digging our my PD thermal imaging camera and helping by telling firefighters where the real heat was on the roof. The other one, I just did a size-up and emptied a 15 pound dry chemical fire extinguisher onto peripherals that were burning, and got people out of the way as the apparatus arrived. In both fires, the most important thing that anyone seems to care that I did was to get initial scene pictures. 


--It's amazing the good that the American Red Cross does when there is a residential structure fire. When one A.R.C. lady arrived in the cold windy night and handed out cups of fresh hot coffee and granola bars, I restrained myself from kissing her (and her crusty male partner) on the mouth. They put the family up for the night, and provided other services. Support the American Red Cross.


--The Red River border dispute yet rages, but this time in the new light of the Bureau of Land Management making claim to private lands along the river. Here you see a news story which pivots on the definition of "accretion" and "avulsion" with regard to erosion and deposits.


--I am attending the NRA convention in Indianapolis on the weekend of the 25th of April. I purchased the tickets to go, before learning that this was also the weekend of the family reunion. The family reunion is always the Sunday following Easter. I never can remember when that is. The  First Council of Nicaea (325 AD) established the date of Easter as the first Sunday after the full moon (the Paschal Full Moon) following the March equinox. But there can be disputes. Check out this table of possible dates for Easter. Moveable feasts make little sense to me. Pick a date, and stick to it!

11/11/13 - Veteran's Day.

Most of you didn't have to sign up, but volunteered instead. Others, you were called, and you came.

And after you signed up, you had to go.

You had to go, but you didn't have to come back.

Most of you did come back, though.

And this nation is better off for the going, and the coming back both.

Thanks.

I remember.

Fifteen Years Ago Today.

Fifteen years ago today, I got up with a little bit of a hangover, and went to play a miserable game of golf with my two best friends, Scott and Bill. Y'all may have noticed that I don't talk much about golf on this blog. That's because it doesn't interest me to talk about. But it's a pleasant walk with a pair of good friends, and occasionally hand-eye coordination pays off. Also, it's an excellent way to polish your judgement of distance and wind.

After putting up a score well north of 100 (I never have seen the point in fudging my score, or adjusting the way my ball lies without taking a penalty. What's the point?), I went back to my house to get showered and changed. My fiancée was at the hairdresser's, getting ready. I was to meet her at the church.

We were getting married that afternoon.

I was muddy, and sweaty, and probably non-too-savory from the toxins that I was sweating out from the shindig that my friends had thrown me the night before. I got in the shower and drained the water heater, and then had to wait for the water to heat back up to shave.  Finally, I glanced at my watch as I put on my tuxedo. Ooh-- 3:20pm. Cutting it a bit close, for a 4:00pm wedding, with a 15 minute drive.

This was when I discovered that the vest was a size Small.

I'm not a Small. I'm not even a Large. I'm more in the range of XXL.

They had gone on and on about how the groomsmen had matching vests in one color, and the groom had another colored vest that complimented them but was distinctly different. I thought about where the tux place was-- 3.8 miles away, through town. I got my keys, and left at 3:30pm. Driving through town, there wasn't much of a way to speed up the drive. I arrived at about 3:40pm. I dashed in, told the girl at the counter the problem, and demanded a larger vest. She searched and found one, and then removed, if I recall correctly, about 19 straight pins from it before adjusting it to me. I was impatient, and told her that we'd have to make do with how it was. I fled the store, and hopped into my pickup, at about 3:53PM.

Google Maps claims that the 8.5 mile trip from the mall to the church takes 13 minutes to drive. Under normal conditions, I would have to agree, and on weekdays at drivetime, you can double that. But this was a Saturday, and I was wearing my wedding tuxedo and was en route to my own wedding. I decided that I would never in my life have a better excuse to speed.

The 1989 Ford F-250 extended cab pickup with full-length bed was a big old beast, somehow the same length as the King Cab that year. It's heavy, and handles like an ocean liner. Mine had dual tanks and a 7.3 liter International diesel engine, that put out stupid amounts of torque, and seemed to want to give me 12.5mpg no matter how I drove it. The speedometer only went up to 85, but playing around with a GPS, I had learned that it would do 103mph before the governor kicked in. I jumped the median from the access road, and floored it.

While en route up the hill to the church, I saw a slow-moving car tapping its brakes, as if the driver were lost and checking the house numbers. I blew past my friend Bryan and his wife, parked at the church, and walked in. It was 4:00:30 PM by my watch. My dad, who was standing in the lobby and looking anxious, laughed and shook my hand.

I joined the pastor and my two groomsman in the anteroom, off the side of the church. We sent someone to inform the bride that we were ready. And we waited. And we waited. For over 20 minutes, we waited. It turned out that my mother in-law, not content with the professional hair-do that my wife had just gotten, wanted to mess with her youngest child's hair some before sending her down the aisle.

Finally, the music played, and the pastor (a retired military man) led the processional to the alter. Interesting training kicked in; we all began on our left foot, and marched at 120 steps per minute in 30 inch steps to our places. Such is the so-called Quick Time march, which my friends and I had learned in high school JROTC. Thus, in very short order, we were in place, and watched the woman who presently would become my bride be escorted up to us by her elder brother. It seemed like that their march took several minutes.

The rest is kind of a blur. The pastor used his opportunity to give a sermon that I didn't want. We picked up candles and used them to light a single candle together, and I found that the candle wasn't really a 24" taper, but was actually a white-painted metal tube with a spring pushing up a small insert candle, to keep the "tapers" the same height. I grabbed the thing, and the spring shot out the bottom, and I somehow caught it, shoving up the wax insert just before it went out. I managed to light the communal candle without burning down the old church.

Then, it was over. I kissed the bride (as such she now was), and we turned to meet our future. A friend caught this moment with her camera. It was murky in that old church, so I hope you'll forgive the poor picture. (I think she only had 100 speed film.) 

The vest really doesn't matter much, does it?

We retired to my amazing friend Paula's house, and took some more pictures. My friend Blake served the most amazing barbecue and beans and smoked ham that I've ever eaten. My friend Kevin served the beer that he and I had brewed using his grain sparge system. (I got rave reviews on it, but of 10 gallons, I only got half a plastic cup. Figures.)

I removed my wife's garter, and flung it to the waiting bachelors before an amazing sunset. An hour or so later, I was told that it was time for us to leave. Apparently, the bride and groom are expected to leave while everyone else is still there, so that they can throw rice at the couple.

Friends, this makes no sense at all. Here I was, at a party with everyone that I gave a damn about in attendance, and I had to leave it early. What we SHOULD have done was go back to our house, changed out of our finery, and re-joined the party in blue jeans and flannel shirts. If you're getting married, do that, friends.

We went to a lovely bed & breakfast place that my best friend and his wife had provided for us, took care of a necessary formality, and watched Rowan Atkinson performing a stage bit, on the televisor. In the morning, there were chocolate banana muffins, and strada.

And we went home, a married couple.

My bride has borne me two amazing children. She has my love, and my loyalty. This is just the first multiple of 15 years.

Fangurl.

"Do you know what today is?" asked my elder daughter.

"Uh, not really, beyond that it's 21 Feb 2013," I responded. "And a Thursday."

"No, it's more than that," she responded with teenaged smugness.

She took out a marker and a sheet of paper, and explained thusly.

So what's a father to do? Beam with pride? Deny paternity?

Aw, come ON, guys!

So on October 14th, to honor Chuck Yeager on the moment of the 65th anniversary of his record-setting supersonic flight, the Air Force gave the retired general a joy ride in an F-15.

"I really appreciated the Air Force giving me a brand new F-15 to fly," Yeager told CNN.

Seriously? I think a cub CNN reporter got duped and missed the irony of that statement. The McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle went operational in 1976. Thus that "brand new F-15" may actually have been first flying at a time closer to Glamorous Glennis' historic flight than this commerative one.*

Stop down for a second and think about that. In 29 years we went from dropping an experimental rocket plane from a B29 to break the sonic barrier on its 50th try, to a third generation supersonic jet fighter being operational. Since then, we've made some advances in fighter technology, but nothing like that technical leap.

But if I'm Chuck Yeager, I'm saying, "It's 900 miles to Roswell. How about we check out a F35B, pop the sound barrier and super-cruise over to Roswell, and then hover while we watch Baumgartner do his falling trick?"

THAT's how you treat a living legend of aviation, folks. Oh, and give him an Aim 9 to make a final kill on a rogue balloon after Felix's jump, too.

__________________________________________
*Which is really impressive, when you consider that the Eagle is still considered a viable fighter. Imagine using Sopwitch Camels or Fokker Dr. I's as fighters in Korea. Or Mustangs and Lightnings in Grenada. Or F86 Sabres during, uh, something else in the early 1980s... (Look, Grenada was already a reach.)

Wiping our mouths and moving on.

While working out hard for his new job, my partner hit a dog while bicycling, face-planted, and injured his head badly. While he recovered in hospital, I heard his wife, who was understandably shaken by the nearly-tragic event, tell him "The bike goes. No more bicycling, ever."

I didn't say anything. She loves him dearly, and was speaking from her heart. She perceived that this veteran police officer's nemesis was a Trek bicycle. She wanted to eliminate it, even though riding it had given him low-impact, fun workouts which were integral to his losing weight and getting fit, which in turn was part of the equation that had resulting in his just having been informed that he was getting his dream job.  He is now employed there, working hard and winning.

I think about how we as a nation responded to the worst national day of my life, exactly 11 years ago today.

"Never again," I heard said time and time again.

That was silly talk. Of course our nation will be hit with tragedy again. That's part of what comes when you're the most powerful nation on the planet; you become the target. And if I haven't made it clear in my rants here, or you're new, understand this: no amount of expenditure will stop us from being attacked, somehow. But our nation overreacted. In the name of safety, we imposed undue restrictions on ourselves, and spent inappropriate amounts of money, and perpetuated military actions that could have been shut down far sooner.

When an enraged punk manages to land a punch on your kisser, the toughest and most effective thing that you can do is to wipe the blood off your mouth, smile, and tell him that he hits like a little girl. That is, not to stop down, curl up into a tight ball, and say (incorrectly) "he can't hurt me now."

When it happens again, let us resolve to conduct business as usual. Oh, sure-- hit back if there's a shot available. but do not overreact. Do not cease the free enterprise that actually made us great.

Take what you will from it, I guess.

The history of our national day of giving thanks is disputed.

It has become fashionable lately for people with (Midnight Oil's "Beds Are Burning" playing on infinite repeat) to tell us that Thanksgiving is a terrible celebration of the massacre of the trans-historic indigenous peoples of North America. There's quite the movement afoot to banish the holiday, or to reinvent it as a day of sorrow and atonement.

Hey, if that's all you've got in your box, then I guess it's going to rattle around a bit.

If you're an atheist, then the question arises: to whom are you giving thanks? Certainly not to God. Okay then: how about just appreciating how you got the things for which you may count among your blessings? Somebody likely helped you get there. Thank them. If you did it all by yourself, thank the person in your mirror. Saying "thank you" is polite.

I've always liked the way that William Bradford looked at Thanksgiving: as a celebration of capitalism as a way to get through the harsh winters. It seems that before, the Plymouth Bay Colony had tried collectivism of corn, and that hadn't worked out; the hardest workers got no more than the shirkers, and they had almost starved the year before. So when they tried the concept of working for one's self, and trading for whatever was needed, the colony flourished.

It is interesting to note that some of the colonists worked for the local Indians, planting and such, to get their seed corn. I've heard one reference to them working "as slaves" for the indigenous people, but slaves don't generally get to walk away with any profit for their labors. This was an exchange of labor for commodity. That yellow seed corn was truly their specie.

Here at Better And Better, we try to see the optimistic side of things*. So on this day of Thanks Giving, I'm asking you all to simply see what is good in your life, and spend at least part of the day loving that.

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*We've also been known to fail at this, on occasion.

Even dead guys can remember to Remember.

Ambulance Driver pointed out that the newly-late William The Coroner must have pre-loaded a post into Blogger to commemorate Remembrance Day / Veteran's Day / Amistice Day.

 It popped up this morning, to the surprise of those who use blog readers. Kind of strange seeing him post, post-mortem. (Hope to see more 'dem post-mortem posts, William.*)

__________________________
*Stop looking at me like that. The guy was a known punster. He'd have approved.

No need to jazz it up.

I know that it's cute to have Corduroy Day on the day with all the vertical lines in the date.

But maybe it's better to use today to remember warriors and wars past. That's what we set this day aside for.

If you (like me) never took on the duty, there's certainly nothing to keep you from appreciating the securities provided by those who have done so. If you are a pacifist, then now is the time to reflect on the horror of war, and be glad that it isn't coming to your home. There's a reason for that, you know.

I look forward to the day that we celebrate armistice, yet again.

Until our men and women come home --and even then-- remember.

Damn.

I first became aware of William Zeus Bligh-Glover, MD back in late 2007. He posted on my blog and on others, and started up his own, under the moniker "William The Coroner." Thy guy was laser-sharp, and a fierce proponent of civil liberty. Science was science, without regard to politics. Pathologists are the ultimate Crime Scene Investigators, and of course I found myself drawn to read this guy. He tried to give me a bubba'd-up SMLE once. Anytime that we had discussions, I found that his take on civil liberty was even more stringent than my own. How could I not like him?

I always meant to call him. I had a case study that I wanted his professional opinion on, and meant to mail him some stuff and chat with him about it over the phone. Why didn't I?!? I guess that I thought that his time was too valuable for my prattling.

Yesterday I started to hear in the blog community that William Zeus Bligh-Glover, MD, a.k.a. William The Coroner had passed away. I went to Breda, and she gave me the bare details that she had: he had been sick for a while, and was found on Saturday to have passed. I was stunned. He had just blogged on Friday afternoon!! The man was only 43! Friend Rabbit and I raised a glass last night to his memory last night. Euripides had a point about debts.

When I got the confirmation today that it was true, I read his brief obituary, and learned that his family requests that any memorial gifts given in his name go to Heifer International.  Hey, if Bill was like me, he'd rather you spend the money on something worthwhile rather than flowers. So I looked up what this worthy organization is about. They have a project where they get dairy cows and chickens and goats and the like to starving people to manage and help themselves. Their motto is "We give a hand up, not a handout." I like that.

I'm going there to donate right now.  I don't have much. But hell, I'd have at least bought the man dinner. That's worth $25, right? Can I get you all to kick in just $5 each? Make sure that it's known that you're doing it in the memory of William Zeus Bligh-Glover, MD.

We lost a good one, this week. Make it count.

"'We're all worm bait waiting to happen. It's what you do while you wait that matters.'” --Kinky Friedman, quoted on William The Coroner's Forensic Files.

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EDIT: Okay, there doesn't seem to be a dedication place, though you could register your donation as coming form William Bligh-Glover, and then fill in the credit card stuff from yourself. Or just make mention on your blog or to a friend that you did this thing in his memory. BTW, though they would like you to buy a share of a heffer or a flock of ducks or trio of rabbits or a llama or whatnot, they'll also do whatever number of dollars you want to donate, to wherever the need is greatest. I trust that Bill's family chose this charity for a good reason.

Random Halloween Day Thoughts.

• --The Eighth Grader In The House carved up a jack-o'-lantern that was better than any that I've done in 40 years. My wife, a sculptor, was impressed. Not fancy; just well-executed. I don't have a picture because the effect is lost without darkness and a candle, and I forgot to take one last night.
• --I still need to finish cleaning guns from Blogorado. Next year we should put together a gun-cleaning table to sit and chat at while cleaning guns at the end.
• --While working the crosswalk during the city-sponsored Halloween event this weekend, my partner and I wondered how else girls would learn to dress up as sluts in public, if they didn't have their hot moms to show them how at Halloween.
• --Yard decorations for Halloween have gotten out of hand. I don't think Christmas-style strings of orange house lights were even seen before about two or three years ago. Now they're ubiquitous.  Front yard graveyards are thick on the ground. Stupid inflatable fabric lighted yard decorations? All over.
• --My daughters are terrified that I'm going to wear my kilt and pith helmet while accompanying them and their pack of friends trick-or-treating this evening. I've let them believe that I'm going to. Talk about the scariest thing that they can think of on Halloween! Heh.

• --While in the front yard spattering stage blood (left over from my graduate studies) onto the white lace garage sale dress that The Fourth Grader In The House was wearing, I thought to myself that the greater horror for me was seeing my kid in a bridal gown.
• --My younger daughter, while standing outside with the blood drying on her bridal gown, saw the cat playing with a mouse. She tried to save the mouse, and got bitten for her trouble. Didn't break the skin, and the mouse was healthy as could be. I told her that she was lucky that I got to see the rodent, or I would have her getting shots. Do they still do that? I also threatened her with a thrashing if she ever again tried to touch a wild animal of any stripe. I killed the mouse, which did have a broken back already. The cat looked at me disgustedly, and ate it.
• --My elder daughter dressed in black, painted her nails, eyes, and lips black, wore a giant silver cross and a chain belt, and made her face white, and went as a Goth Girl. She practiced sighing and rolling her eyes as she announced, "Trick or treat" in a voice dripping with irony.
• --My neighbor thought that it was AWESOME when I put Burglar Bob, the reactive shooting dummy, on the front porch. He liked it even better when I put the words "Free Candy" on my skeevy old van parked out front. I took some pictures, and then chickened out. I gotta work in this town.
• --At the last second I had to run get some candy. The door hasn't been knocked on yet.
• --I should probably fix that doorbell.

Just stop it.

My mother and I were talking today about the public reaction to the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001.

And we're appalled.

"Commemoration" isn't such a distant cousin of a word from "Celebration." It would seem that many have forgotten that there actually is a difference, and that those that know it seem to be blurring the lines pretty heavily.

I get that no documentarian worth his salt would fail to comment on the tenth year passing since our nation suffered an attack that had such ramifications. But the goal of those watching, and the goal of those showing the documentaries seems to be a type of entertainment.

Like a horror movie. "Ooh, it gives me shivers to remember where I was when I heard..."

I'm disgusted, and I'm not participating.

You want to wave our flag? Push to bring back most of our troops from the errands we've sent them on. Push to sunset the Patriot Act for good. Push to fire the TSA. Push to strengthen our borders (still as porous as they were 10 years ago, from what I see.).

But don't use some arbitrary tenth anniversary of the death of our countrymen as a day to be entertained. Do something GOOD for your country for a change, would you, please? We've spent the last 3,652 days dismantling it.

House Party XLIV

I turned in a request for 24 hours off this weekend, to burn some of the 400 hours of vacation and 80 hours worth of holiday time. I feel bad about having another guy work for me, but it's use it or lose it, y'know? Then too, there's the issue of where I went, and why.

Phlegmmy threw a bit of a shindig at her house for our beloved LawDog.

The food was rich and very plentiful. There was a case of Nerd Beer for LawDog (written on the side: "LawDog's! No Fraudulatin'!") And a case of Nerd Beer for the rest of us rabble.("Fraudulate all you want.")

The stories were thick and well-told. The weather, on Saturday evening, was shirt-sleeve-worthy. Christina, Vine, Old NFO, FarmGirl, Jennifer and EvylRobot, me and my wife, Phlegmmy, LawDog, Ambulance Driver, my dad and his bride, and others all chatted freely.

Old NFO (whom I cannot believe was not linked here. What the heck?!? My shame is boundless. I had him on my Favorites that I would click directly to him on my browser. Fixed.) handed me a couple of interesting pistols. There were grins when I double-checked each pistol before handling it. Apparently, this was something of a theme of the evening: EVERYONE multichecked each gun before handling. If only it were understood how common that action is among responsible gunfolk. I don't mean to say that it's absent-minded. I just mean to say that, when handed a firearm, I have the sudden urge to check the status of that gun that is as strong as the urge to pee after having a triple-iced-tea lunch.

Old NFO handed me a like-new S&W 637 that he's been talking about just flat giving me. I could not possibly accept such a generous gift without recompensing him with something, yet I couldn't afford to give him what it was worth. He kindly accepted a promise of a mere pittance from me. I later found out that Dad and Holly covered half of that! My heavens, but the generosity of the friends and family around me is amazing. Thank y'all. More on that gun in a later post.

EvylRobot brought his home-roasted coffee, which I incorrectly declared to be too darkly roasted, but which LawDog used his fancier French press to produce utterly superb coffee from. I restrained myself to only about 25 cups of that coffee. We reloaded the french press approximately 20 times during the weekend. Note to self: trust EvylRobot.

Ambulance Driver had called me earlier and asked if I wanted to go in with him on a nifty gift to LawDog: a signed first edition of Elmer Keith's hardcover book "Hell, I Was There!" I kicked in along with others (I'm sorry; I've forgotten), but this was all AD's idea.

My own meager contribution was a fair bit of good loose tea for LawDog, and some muslin bags to make teabags with on the run, and a couple of bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon for the the house, to belatedly celebrate Phlegmmy's housewarming.

As the air chilled and the hour got late, several of us retired to a very nice inn that was just two blocks away from Phlegmmy's house, and found our underpriced quarters to be very pleasant. We planned on going shooting in the morning after breakfast.

Come morning, a front had moved in. Shooting just didn't sound that fun. We broke our fast at a joint with heavy smoke coming from the barbecue pit. Note: ALWAYS choose the smoked meats at such a place. We camped at our tables until lunchtime, then moved back to the house, where we hung out into the Sunday evening. Phlegmmy fed us yet again with a very rich dish, of which I was only able to get two or three bowls* down.

I was glad to introduce my own wife to some people she had not met before, part of the tribe that I've become part of. She, ever the introvert, said little. She said she liked it.

LawDog, an introvert his ownself, was at home. He was among people that had come a fair distance to see him because they love him. He was at his home, with a lovely lady who admires and revels in him. I've seen the 'Dog stressed, and I've seen him happy. I don't think I'm speaking out of turn to suggest that he was happy, this weekend.

I hope my own 44th birthday is as good and filled with good cheer.

Happy birthday, friend.





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*Large bowls.