Random Access

Wednesday
Let’s try something radically different and get a post done before midnight…

Got up this morning and got ready in fairly short order. It was necessary. I was on a mission:

Jess and I were talking last night and she we wound up talking about something that we had first talked about two-and-a-half years ago; we laughed when she made the comment that it took her a little while to see some things. I started counting… and asked for a big-screen TV.

She asked if I was asking for that now because it took me a while to process things. I told her: Nope, I don’t have a that much of a time-delay problem; pick up most things fairly quickly¹. I just figured that if I asked for a big screen TV now that it would be almost perfect timing to arrive for Christmas 2004! She thought that it was funny, too. (Thankfully!) She then said that she wanted a Hummer®; actually, she has told me this on many occasions. Not only does she want a Hummer, she wants a yellow one. It seems that her time in the Army has spoiled her on this type of vehicle. And, thus did my mission begin…

Before work, I went to one of the local Toys ‘R’ Us stores in search of a Hummer. A yellow Hummer. You would think that they would be easy to find; it took me ten minutes to find them. They were hiding in plain sight. *ARGH* But, I got it! A radio controlled Hummer. Yellow. Booyah!

I brought it home and put it in the office on her computer chair. Then, off to work! She called me a few hours later to tell me that she had found it.

Mission accomplished.
Mission: COMPLETE

Work wasn’t bad. It was rather painless.

NPR/PRI Programming
The first segment of Talk of the Nationwas about foster care in America.

There are over half a million children in our nation’s foster care system. But the number of families willing to take these children into their homes is falling. In this hour of Talk of the Nation, join guest host Melinda Penkava for a look at why foster parents are burning out and how they would change the system to make foster care more attractive.

This was an interesting segment. Listening to the guests and the callers, it seems that there are a great number of disparities between the standards of the foster care systems of some states. Some of the issues included:

• Better services need to be accorded to foster parents for children under their care;
• More homes/families are needed for minority and special needs children;
• Stipends for foster families should be more commensurate with the ages and needs of the foster children;
• …and, unfortunately, some foster care providers (I refuse to designate these people as ‘parents’) are using the monies that they receive for personal gain and not for the benefit of the children under their ‘care.’

There were also positive accounts of some states’ foster care systems. I highly recommend listening to this segment.

Quotes of the Day:

• Lynn: What is your major malfunction, Private Maybury?!
  Jim: Looking at you, Sir! I told that to a drill instructor once….
  Lynn: THAT‘s why you have two assholes!
  Jim: No… but I did have KP for a month.

• Dee and I were talking with Jenny about a DJ/trance show that she attended. Some of the patrons were doing X and Jenny was telling some of the things that she saw.
  Dee: That’s why I could never do X: Anything that makes you that willing to step outside of your sexual boundaries… HELL NO!

Peace.

¹Some physics and calculus concepts have proven… more elusive.

Tuesday
It was a grey, dreary day.
Worked.
Came home.

And, for …
NPR and PRI

Tuesday on Talk of the Nation, guest host Melinda Penkava takes a closer look at the trial of Bobby Frank Cherry, a former Klansman accused in a 1963 Birmingham, Ala. church bombing that killed four black girls. How can revisiting past wrongs affect race relations today?

This was a very good segment; it was also interesting to listen to the opinions of the panelists and the callers/emailers.

• One caller recommended establishing a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” like the one that was established in post-Apartheid South Africa, to help everyone come together to address socio-economic and political issues and to simply open avenues of dialogue between the races.
• Melinda Penkava asked the question: “Do you think that whites and blacks see… looking at the past differently?” It was, in my opinion, a very astute question.

  Sonia Jarvis, one of the guests, answered: “I think it’s not so much that blacks and whites might view history differently; I think that the effect of different events, over time, have affected those communities differently.” She then cited the O.J. Simpson trial as an example.

  David Garrow, another guest, posed the idea that America possesses an “incomplete memory” with respect to civil rights era crimes. He then said that a more focused study of civil rights era and minority-American histories (he cited the World War II-era Japanese-American internment camps) might help to fill some of the gaps in our national awareness/knowledge.

You can hear the entire segment here, in RealAudio format.

And with that, it’s time for bed.

Peace.

I just checked The Weather Channel’s webpage for an update on the weather and was more than a little surprised by what I found there.

No, I wasn’t shocked by the fact that it is 45° here, I had noted yesterday that we were about to have a minor cold snap; we are going from temperatures around 85° (over the past few days) down to the mid-50s. *twitch* Okay, I can handle that.

What shocked me was looking at the Doppler Radar map on the page: It showed green (light precipitation/rain) around the Salt Lake City area… and white (snow…..snow?!?) around Elko, NV. That had to be a mistake! It’s (roughly) the end of May, not March! I checked the weather page for Elko. 34°. Light snow.

::: braincramp :::
There is snow on the tops of the Wasatch. That I can grok.
Falling snow? In late May? That one’s a little harder to get my mind around.

Peace.

Monday
I went to work; it was rather uneventful day… until they started calling overtime for some groups. Not for me though! 20:30 came and I was gone, baby, gone! I talked to
I came home.

Sissy the Wonder Kitty is now craving attention.

::: hears meowing from another room :::
Great. I probably closed Xena in the pantry again. Cats. *sigh* Back in a minute…

::: checks pantry :::
No Xena. Meowing continues.

::: checks balcony :::
Enter Xena, running across the living room and down the hall.

Hmmm. I checked the balcony before I closed the sliding door; I didn’t see either cat. Of course, I probably should have turned on the light when checking since both cats have all-black fur. *shrug* Oh, well. I’m sure that the time in the fresh air was good for her.

I went into the bedroom and laid down on the bed to administer some reassuring petting. Apparently, this translates into the native cat language as “Climb up and lie on my chest.” (Note: If anyone has a Human-to-Cat dictionary, please let me know where I can get a copy.) I pet her, she purred and nuzzled my hand; this was good. A few moments later, I discovered that if the whole “being a housecat” thing doesn’t work out, Xena has a potential future in the lumberjack games that they show on ESPN: I rolled over, in an attempt to get her to jump onto the bed so that I could get up. No go. She simply ‘walked’ as I rolled, maintaining her position; if someone had been watching, I’m certain that it must have looked like the log-rolling¹ event.

That’s all the news for now. Tune in tomorrow morning for traffic and weather updates every :10, starting at 7 AM.

Peace.

¹ Log-rolling:

• Place two logs in a river/lake/body of water.
• Add one (1) lumberjack per log.
• Have each lumberjack walk along the circumference of the log as it rolls in the water.
• Have lumberjacks increase their pace.
• See who can stay atop their log the longest.
• Drink beer! (Optional)

  Variant Method

• Place one log in a river/lake/body of water.
• Add two (2) lumberjacks atop the log.
• Have lumberjacks walk along the circumference of the log as it rolls in the water.
• Have lumberjacks increase their pace and/or change direction of rotation.
• See who can stay atop their log the longest.
• Drink beer! (Again, optional)
  

…and the rest of my day was good, too.

• Lunch at Outback.
• A couple hours’ worth of drawing.
• Talking to various members of the family unit. I even discovered something: Apparently, my grandmother enjoys watching horse racing on TV; she watched The Preakness (which is held a couple of miles from my father’s house). I was too busy laughing about this news to ask her if she liked all racing or just the Triple Crown. That will have to be a question for the next time we talk…
• Being quite lazy with my evening.

A good day, indeed.

Peace.

Another bike jaunt.
Somewhere between 4½ and 5 miles.
I’m a little tired, but feel good.

Now, if I could just figure out what has possessed me for the past two days to get out and do this. Not that it’s an overall “bad” thing. Aside from the tired/achy feeling in my legs when going uphill, I am enjoying it.

Endorphins GOOD!!! ::: gesture :::

Off to enjoy the rest of my day…

Peace.

Holy too-pooped-to-pedal, Batman!

I took my bike out for a 4.5 mile jaunt a little while ago. It was good to finally go for a ride. Until I got back home.

First ride of the year
+ Not going to the gym for (length of time deleted to avoid embarrassment)
+ 4.5 mile ride
+ 85° (give or take a degree or two) weather
+ Carrying bike back up three (3) flights of stairs
————————————————————–
1 Tired Rob

All in all, it was good; methinks that I’ll have to do it again… before another 6 months pass. Have to get back into that gym-thing, too.

Peace.

Our apartment faces the pool and basketball court in our complex.

This morning, I was awakened by the sounds of two kinder-forms playing outside. Actually, it wasn’t the ‘playing’ that woke me up… it was the yelling. And the laughing.

My first thought, after I realized that I was conscious, was “What in the Nine Hells is going on out there?!?” But, being FAR to lazy to actually get up and investigate, I laid in bed and listened a little longer. The exchanges went something like this:

• Child 1: *yelling something* *laugh*
  Child 2: *laugh*
  ~ running footsteps ~
  ::: repeat :::

Child 2 actually said/yelled something a couple of times, but the above pattern was the norm.

I listened to them for a few minutes before rolling out of bed. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a roll. Maybe it was a controlled fall. Maybe it was a graceful, almost poetically acrobatic exit. *shrug* Whatever it was, I got out of bed. I still didn’t look out of the window.

When I thought a little more about the kids, I actually started laughing: Many rains ago, that would have been my friends and me running around the “tot lots” (mini-playgrounds in most communities/subdivisions) in Columbia, MD or our babysitter’s house and yard in Ellicott City.

It was a nice “full circle” kind of moment. Thought I’d share.

Peace.

Friday
My faith in George Lucas has been restored.

Angie and I went to see Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones tonight. I went in praying that it wouldn’t be a repeat of The Phantom Disaster, and it wasn’t.

Watching it was like watching one of the ‘middle’ movies. There was some dialogue that I thought could have been changed (or eliminated), but I can only think of one scene that seemed a little… hmmm… disjointed – it looked like a bad editing job. Other than that, it was a good movie. There were also nice bits of foreshadowing. I may even have to see it again.

If I can’t be Benjamin Sisko when I grow up, I want to be Mace Windu.

They say that Mace Windu is one bad mutha…
Shut yo’ mouth!
I’m just talkin’ about Mace.
We can dig it.

And I have an all-new respect for Yoda. He’s the Man Jedi!

Peace.

Thursday
I did it. I wrote. Actually, I killed two birds with one stone: Not only did I ride, but it was a post in . But, I wrote! And it was good. Amen.

NPR and PRI Programming

• I was listening to The World and they had a story about the 2003 elections in Mexico and how a new law will add more women to the ballot. The new law will require that 30% of each political party’s candidates to be women. This is an effort to not only increase the role of women in government (according to the report, this will be something of an uphill climb) , but to also increase the female turn-out at the polls. You can listen to the segment here.
• There was also a segment on…. I might as well let you see for yourselves, I don’t think that I could do it justice:
  

  Student Read
  In most countries, if you’re about to become a graduate, the month of May means studying for finals. Not so in Norway. Across the country students celebrating the completion of twelve years of schooling have a rather unconventional tradition: They don identical overalls, kind of like a one-piece jumpsuit, and go on a major party spree. It’s kind of an organized chaos, and behind part of the organization this year is 19-year old Andrew Watson, who heads the committee responsible for 8,000 graduating students in the Oslo region. He says they’re quite a colorful bunch, literally.

• And, lastly, they did a report about Marlene Dietrich. Ms. Dietrich was born in Berlin, but left before World War II because she did not want to be associated with Hitler’s regime or the type of society that he promoted. She did choose to be buried in Berlin. Thursday, on the 10th anniversary of her death, she was made an honorary citizen of Berlin. Maybe I’m missing something, but…. wasn’t she a German citizen, and more specifically a Berliner, by virtue of birth? Okay, I just saw something that might shed some light on the subject: It seems that she became an American citizen in 1937. I’m not sure how recently dual-citizenship became a legal option, but I’m thinking that it is a fairly recent (past 15-30 years) item.

Friday brings not only the start of the weekend, but I’m also going to see Star Wars – Episode II:Send in the Clones… umm, I mean Attack of the Clowns…. no, that’s not it either… Attack of the Clones. Bingo! That’s the one. After the debacle that was The Phantom Disaster, I’m trying to hold preconceived visions of doom in check until I have actually seen the film. Hopefully, Mr. Lucas’ bout with insanity will have been a transitory illness. We’ll see.

That’s enough for one night. Now, it’s time to sleep.

Peace.

Wednesday
Mid-week. And a self-induced short week, at that. Life is good. Surely, Providence smiles upon me.

And now, we return you to your regularly scheduled LiveJournal post…

Even though I’ve mentioned this umpteen times already: I enjoy good writing. The rediscovery of this revelation came, as it so often does, from last week’s comics and episodes of X-Men: Evolution and Justice League. Even though the sources are somewhat divergent, they share a trait: The plots contained stories that were more or less contained within the given issue/episode, but they also had elements that develop larger multi-issue/episode story arcs.

Something else that I enjoy is finding that a small, seemingly irrelevant detail in a story winds up being an important part in advancing to overall arc. Sometimes, you can see it coming. Other times, you find that it has been biding its time and amassing a power and life of its own until suddenly it leaps out of the shadows to stand ominously before you. Were the signs there all along? If you had been wary, would you have noticed it before it reached fruition?

I hope to be able to correctly employ these techniques in my writing. Umm… when I finally get back to writing, that is. While keeping this journal updated has been good practice at maintaining something of a writing schedule, it’s not quite the same thing. Hmmm. I shall write today! I’m not sure what it will be, I don’t even know how much I’ll write, but something, other than a journal entry, will be written today.

Peace.

Tuesday

Oh my stars! An actual post that consists of more than: “I’m sleepy. I’m going to bed.” And now that we’ve established that point, let’s get down to brass tacks…

Today was good: I took the day off and got to spend it with Jess. We didn’t do much, but it was nice to have a common day off. Monday wasn’t bad, either. Not too much site-hopping and a good night at the bowling alley.

And now: The Arizona Trip
To say that I’ve been “to” Arizona, before this weekend, might be something of an overstatement… but not a lie. I have been there on a few occasions:

• On stopovers/plane changes between here and the East Coast. In fact, my first visit to Utah was through Phoenix’ Sky Harbor Airport.
• The fifteen minute stretch of I-15 that cuts through Arizona between St. George, UT and Mesquite, NV…. and, by extension, Las Vegas.
• The trip to Four Corners, where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah meet at one point.

After this weekend, I can now add Arizona to the “States I’ve Visited for More Than an Hour” list. That’s right, girls and boys: Land, Julia and me on a road trip to The Grand Canyon State. Four days, two laptops, and more miles than I care to admit. The weekend broke down something like this:

• Thursday
  • Work. 8 hrs. Yay.
  • Quick stops at Radio Shack (for an cigarette lighter adapter) and home (to get a few DVDs that I had forgotten).
  • Drive to Page, AZ
    • LONG drive.. about seven (7) hours. IF there had been a straight line route, it would have shaved at least an hour-and-a-half off of the drive time. But there are a couple of National Parks in the way, so…. long, slow drive.
    • Stayed up and talked to Julia, who opted to drive.
    • We arrived at Julia’s mother’s somewhere between 03:00 and 04:00 AST; Arizona (and part of Indiana) does (do) not change time for Daylight Savings Time.
    • SLEPT… for a few hours. Sleep was a welcome oblivion since I had been up since 9-something that morning. I. Was. TIRED.
• Friday:
  • Woke up somewhere around 08:00 and then performed the necessary hygiene rituals and then…
  • Off to Tucson! I was only able to stay awake for about :30, and then the world faded into oblivion once more…
  • I woke up just outside of Flagstaff, about 2-1/2 hours later. We tooled around town for about :20 before we got serious and got back on the road.
  • We stopped in Camp Verde for gasoline and something to eat at the local Dairy Queen. This was something of an experience: Just after we walked in the door, three U.S. Marshalls (one in uniform, two plain clothes…. ALL with guns and badges prominently displayed) walked in. Everyone in the DQ looked a little nervous. They didn’t find whomever it was that they sought. On the other hand, I did see what was touted as the “World’s Largest Kokopelli,” so it balanced out.
  • When we got to Phoenix, I noted an inordinate amount of pink as a major color in the architecture and in the gravel in the medians. Odd. (More on this in Quotes of the Weekend, below.) However, I did have a BEST BUY sighting! Noah had a dove and an olive branch, I have Best Buy. Go figure.
  • Between Phoenix to Tucson, we passed a verdant orchard, which struck me as a little… odd… being in the middle of the bleedin’ desert!!! We also passed an airplane museum/graveyard in Pinal. And… we saw more pink architecture.
  • After getting to Land’s cousin’s and resting a bit, we made a Best Buy excursion!!! ~genuflect~ That was followed by a trip to Starbucks and dinner with Land’s family: Kendra (cousin), Jessi (aunt), Logan (cousin), and Don (uncle). We entertained each other with stories of each other’s families over dinner. A short while later, a few more family members arrived from California: Tenderly (cousin), Chance (her son), Brad (her husband) and Tambin (cousin). More family stories. Great amounts of laughter. Land’s family is not only entertaining, they are quite nice; I enjoyed getting to meet them.
• Saturday:
  • Went to Kendra’s graduation ceremony. I witnessed two rather unusual things:
    1. One of the school’s deans, who was apparently retiring, danced (that’s right: DANCED – he got up and broke it down) around the podium before presenting his department’s candidates for advancement. He wasn’t bad, either.
    2. Students and guest threw tortillas, in a frisbee-like manner, throughout the ceremony. When I asked how/when this tradition started, no one seemed to know the answer. It was even more amusing that when one of the administrators asked that people desist from throwing them that a flurry…. no, a barrage of tortillas hurtled through the air.
  • Back to Kendra’s. We ate, talked and met other people.
  • BACK to Best Buy ::: bliss :::
  • Dinner
  • Back to Kendra’s and not too long thereafter, off to The Dreaming.
• Sunday:
  • Drive back to Page….
  • We stopped in Phoenix for gasoline…. and Powerball. Go figure.
  • Since I was awake (and driving), I got to see all of the things that I had missed on the way down. Translation: “Rob became a tourist.” And like a tourist, I had to take pictures of just about everything I could.
    • Wupatki National Monument
    • Cameron, AZ and the suspension bridge over the dry bed of the Little Colorado River
    • The Grand Canyon overlook just south of Page; this is the North Rim of the canyon.
    • Glen Canyon Dam, also just to the north of Page
  • We drove back to SLC… and watched Bridget Jones’ Diary on the way. Cute movie.
  • And then, we were back.

And that was our interpretation of Smokey and the Bandit. Of course, we were not a black Trans Am and/or a semi with cowboys on it. Nor did we return with a truckload of beer. Bonus points if anyone can remember:

• Where did they start?
• Where did they have to go?
• How much time did they had to complete the trip?

Quotes of the Weekend:

• Me: Pink is not a construction color; it’s a decor color or accent.
• Land: Natural resources have little to do with a nation’s prosperity; look at Sweden.
  Me: Sweden had ABBA…. they got lucky.

• Dee and Land were talking about ecology and how man affects the environment around him. SOMEHOW, Land made a reference to elk and how they maintain a balance of available food and the size of their herd. He also noted that man was the only creature that could not only adapt to his environment, but also to enhance his environment. This led to the statement: Elk don’t have the sense to irrigate. When we mentioned this to Julia, on Sunday, she made an addendum to the comment: “Rabbits try, but they just don’t pee enough.”

And that also wraps up this post. Now, it’s time to wait for Morpheus to pay me a visit so that I can find a nice quiet corner of The Dreaming to inhabit until after sunrise.

Peace.

I had quite a bit that I wanted to say.

Actually, I still have it…. but I’m beat.
I think that getting rest overrules posting, and thus shall I retire for the evening.

Peace.

Sunday

Made it back.
Had a great time.
I’m tapped.

Tune in tomorrow night for: Weekend Recap.

Peace

Wednesday
Today was my brother and stepmother’s birthday. Two for the price of one! What a bargain!

The workday flew by pretty quickly. After work, I made a trip to Shack d’Radio and the local Borders. And then, home again home again (but no jiggety-jig).

Quote of the Day: At lunch, we were debating some of the vagaries of Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. Things that we covered included:

• If you are mounting an invasion of a giant battle station, let alone in the middle of said invasion, do you really have spare personnel to watch each pilot and point out things like “Luke, you turned off your targeting computer…. Is something wrong?” Why wasn’t this guy telling him something useful: “There’s a TIE Fighter on your tail” or something like that. On the same note, why didn’t Luke mess with that guy and say something like:
  • “It’s the damned droid! He’s turning shit off and on and I can’t make him stop!” or….
  • ” *BEEP* Sorry, I can’t answer the com-link right now. I am trying to fly a spaceship down a trench that is barely large enough to navigate. Please leave a message at the tone.” or…
  • “‘Is something wrong?!?’ I’m attacking a planet-sized space station with a one-man spaceship AND being shot at AND trying not fly into anything! What makes you think that there’s something wrong?!”
• If using The Force was rated on a 1-to-10 scale, Darth Vader was about a 20 (thanks to Episode I – The Phantom Menace‘s ‘immaculate conception’ idea), which would make Luke and Leia 10s, WHY didn’t they get some kind of feeling about either each other OR Vader when they were around him? I’ll actually give Luke a ‘bye’ on this one and chalk it up to raging hormones. Why? Think about it: Teenage farmboy meets (nominally) hot space woman. Do the math.
• And now, for the first time ever: The Visual Quote of the Day!
  We started talking about why the Sith Lords never used their powers in more… ‘creative’ ways:
  • The Force Wedgie.
  • Smashing ships into the walls of the Death Star using the Force.
  • …you get the idea.
  • Dee: Why didn’t Darth Vader simply use The Force to ‘poke’ the Luke in the eyes, like this, and cause him to crash?
    Harmon: Because Luke would have just done this and been okay.

Links of the Day:

• The first link comes to us from John, Rana’s significant other. Yes, she’s in the Ukraine. No, he’s not. I’m not here to discuss the logistics of long-distance relationships, I’m just here to relay a link. And speaking of that link, here it is; the page’s title is “Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About.” John left it for me in an IM while I was at work; it is a long page, but it’s damned funny. I poked around the rest of the site… it’s just as funny. Enjoy.

  And on a serious note,

• Joe (the one who was here last week) has gone back to New York for the first time since he moved to Florida last spring. He sent me this URL; it is a series of pictures that he took from the World Trade Center site. Joe is a native (and until last year, a life-long) New Yorker; he told me that it was difficult to be there and see the emptiness of the area. I can only imagine.

I am going to Tucson tomorrow night, and probably will not post again until Sunday night or Monday morning… but who knows? Road trips. Gotta love ’em! And that’s all the news from Lake Saline… where all the women love to argue, the men are unimaginative Lords of the Sith, and the children have their own ideas about what “Use the Force” means. Goodnight, everybody!

Peace.