Much Ado About Fifteen

Feels like it's been forever since I've written anything here.  I doubt anyone noticed.  Well, YOU did, I know.  But everyone else.....not so much!

I'm on 'vacation' currently.  Which in my case, just means that I've taken a week off of work, mostly because I can.  And, my fifteenth wedding anniversary was this week as well.  For this auspicious occasion, we returned to Mackinac Island, which is where we were married those fifteen years ago.

We were twenty five years old, we'd known each other for almost exactly 8 months.  We didn't tell our parents we were doing it.  And we differ now on whose idea it was to actually get married at that time.  I insist it was me, and she insists it was her who pushed for it.  Which is pretty funny.  I guess that means that we both wanted to, which is good!

Six other people were there with us.  My sister and one of my best friends, a close friend from work and his wife, and my 'boss' and his girlfriend.  My boss was pretty much my best friend at that time, so don't look at me like that! 

We arrived at St. Ignace for the ferry to the island, with not much time to spare.  We hadn't bought flowers for my wife to be, and she was insistent that we have some.  So after hitting some of the local stores, and coming up empty, we were driving along the main road, when my woman cried out "Stop!".

So I did, and she hopped out to the side of the road, in the middle of town mind you, and started picking flowers from the city flowers!  Flowers, and dirt got thrown into the back seat, and she jumped back in and we took off.  She assembled her bouquet from those flowers, and it looked quite lovely.  See below:

We were married in the garden of the Windermere Hotel, by a local preacher.  It was short, and sweet, and awesome.  The rest of our lovely day there on the island, was a long horse drawn carriage ride around the entire island.  Led by a very flatulent horse, of course.  We had our wedding dinner at the Yankee Rebel Tavern there on the island.  Most delicious, with strawberries and Dom after dinner.

At some point, we ended up with two visual souvenirs of the day.  One was a simply awful caricature drawing, pastel thing.  Didn't look like either of us I don't think.  The other, was to be our 'official' wedding photo I suppose.  It was at one of those vintage photo places, where they dress you up in vintage looking clothing, and pose you with props and things, so it looks like it was a hundred years ago.  Taken with old single shot cameras.  Twenty bucks a pop I think!  Each couple ended up with one, which meant four or five different shots.  My good friend from work took great happiness in doing a slightly different version of the stern bartender for each shot.  My wife and I were the newlyweds. Her in a very old looking lacey wedding dress, and I in a grey suit, with a top hat and cane.  We were told not to smile, and to look very serious.  Which we all did, except for my friend's wife.  She smiles like sunshine for every shot.  Which was awesome too.  

The wedding night was spent in a tent, in a campground in St. Ignace.  The marital consummation was performed with joy, but little comfort, as we had not discovered the modern air mattress as of yet.

And fifteen years on, we returned to the island, with our bicycles, and three children.  Visited the butterfly house, had lunch at the fort's Tea Room, and mostly were really tired out.  It seems the hills of that island get no easier as you grow older!

In fifteen more years, I hope to do it again.

Go At Throttle Up

As I sit here, watching the video feed of the final Space Shuttle landing that will ever be, I reflect upon the thirty plus years that I've noted this space program.  MY space program, if you will.  I'm 40 years old now.  The Shuttle program was started in the early '70's.  So just as the Mercury and Apollo programs were what I consider to my parent's space programs, this one, is mine.  Or my generation's.  However you choose to look at it.

There have been so many triumphs with the Space Shuttles.  The validation of the whole concept of the reusable space vehicle.  All the wonderful space repair missions.  The assembly of the International Space Station.  So many wonderful things.  Yet, as is my bent, I recall much of the tragedy as well.

When I was in  fourth grade, we all gathered in Sister Catherine’s Learning Lab, at St. Thomas Aquinas school in East Lansing.  She turned on the big projection screen television.  And we all watched excitedly, as the Space Shuttle Columbia climbed into the sky on it’s fiery tail.  I was totally in awe of the spectacle.  It didn’t make me want to become an astronaut or anything, but it definitely got me interested in such things.  My father bought me a plastic model kit of the Columbia, which I put together, painted, and hung from my ceiling over my desk with fishing line.  I had it cranked up in a reentry attitude.  And I looked at that up there for many years. 

Like most people, I followed the NASA shuttle program rather casually.  When something big happened and my attention was brought to it, I followed it as close as the next guy, but then life took over my attentions, and I forgot about it for awhile.  Such was the Shuttle Program.

The next thing I remember vividly about the program, was from 1986.  I was sitting in Coach Smith’s Freshman Algebra class, when the announcement about the shuttle Challenger explosion  came over the PA system.  I was shocked, and I didn’t concentrate on anything for the rest  of the day.  It was made more real, and horrifying by the news coverage that evening at home.  The horrible pit  in my stomach as I watched the video for the first time, knowing that something was about to happen.  Then that fateful moment, right after the call for main engine throttle up, when the Challenger exploded into a geyser of fire.  The booster rockets going on their merry way, spiraling up into the sky.  Mission control still dutifully calling out telemetry, long after the explosion.

Then the horrible playing of the explosion, over, and over again.  As analyst after analyst talked about it, and examined the tape.   Much like the awful repetition of Joe Theismann's leg injure only a few months before.  The media loved showing it again, from a different angle every time.   Of course, we all know what happened now.  That "25 cent" O-ring around the solid rocket booster section, burned through, and shot flames right at the main fuel tank.  And nothing good comes of that.  Preventable, and a design flaw,, to be sure. 

But the biggest thing I remember, and that I dream of sometimes, is that last call out from the orbiter to mission control:  “Roger, go at throttle up”.  Then the explosion.  The pieces of debris falling, endlessly it seemed, to the ocean below.  The later determination, that the crew was possibly alive up until the crew module smashed into the water, didn’t help make it any nicer.

I was at home on that Sunday morning in 2003, when the Shuttle Columbia disintegrated on reentry.  I latched onto the live news coverage right away, and watched it for hours.  With great dismay.  I felt the urge to find the mission patch logo from NASA, and I took great care in printing out a large 1 ft long sticker of it.  I took it to work, and placed it on the back of my toolbox, something that was not allowed.  I did it anyways.  I wanted to look at it every day for some reason, remind myself of the risks of doing such things I guess.  I was working for Pratt & Whitney's experimental flight test division at the time, and it seemed appropriate.  Over the following months, the sun slowly bleached out all the color from my homemade sticker.  I sort of liked that.  It mirrored how our minds let tragedies fade away, until they are less horrible.  Eventually, it was a blank outline of the logo, and I scraped it away.

Once again, that accident turned out to be preventable.  Caused by insulation falling off the main fuel tank during launch, hitting the leading edge of one of the shuttle's wings.  That’s the way of it though.  Most accidents of that nature can be prevented.  We just don’t have the foresight to see that something is a real problem sometimes, until it is proven to us.  We are like that, as a species I think.  Rather optimistic. 

The risk is always there, whenever you get into your car, ride your motorcycle, take an airplane, or even get into a rocket ship.  We know that things can go horribly wrong for a myriad of reasons.  But we go anyways.  Optimistic that things will work out ok, and we will be able to do whatever it was we wanted to do.

I look forward to seeing what the private companies can do with spacecraft launching, and exploration.  I am heartened by what I see so far from companies like Space X, and Virgin Galactic.  I will watch their progress off and on, as in the past.

Hoping to never again hear the fateful  dead air over the radio, that came after “Go at throttle up”.  Like it did that one day in April.

Another Missed Up Shift

I missed a shift today on my old Magna.  Twice, I missed it hard.  Once accelerating away from home on US-23, the second time leaving the gas station, which I have to stop at  every day when I ride.  The 2^nd to 3^rd gear shift was the one giving me fits for some reason.  It never did before, and I hope the transmission isn’t going bad.  The old Honda Magnas have some sort of a history of doing that occasionally.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had missed shifts on a motorcycle.  The first memorable one, coincided with my very first power wheelie.  I was pulling out onto Grand River Ave going to work.  I was riding my father’s ’83 Honda Nighthawk 550.  The traffic was really heavy as usual, so I decided to shoot for a small gap, and use the turn lane as an acceleration lane.  I know, it’s wrong, but I did it.  I pulled hard through first gear, and power shifted into second, but I popped into Neutral instead, the engine over revved, and I got mad and jammed it into 2^nd gear, while the engine was still at redline.  When I popped the clutch, with the throttle wide open, I popped the biggest wheelie I have ever done, I didn’t know what else to do, so I just hung on for dear life, and held the power on.  I must have been quite the sight.  Wearing my long black duster, black helmet, and riding one wheel down the turn lane surrounded by traffic.  Everything got back to normal when I shifted into third, and I motored my way into work.

The second memorable missed shift incident, was actually many.  It was my ’74 Sportster, and among other problems, it liked to wreck the 2 to 3 shift as well., any time you tried to power shift even the slightest bit.  The only way to get it to shift clean, was to completely let off the gas, and shift it hard and deliberately with your foot.  Tom “Shorty” Palmer and I, tried about three times to fix it.  Removing the transmission, measuring and shimming the shift forks differently.  But it never shifted quite right.  Dumb old thing.

That happens sometimes.  I go like hell, and up shift hard, only to miss it somehow, and pop out of gear.  The engine revving uselessly.

When Pratt & Whitney planned to shut down our facility in Plattsburgh, they gave us plenty of notice, and a severance package.  They were quite good about it overall.  So I had about 8 months notice that I’d have to move most likely.  I decided to look around locally, and country wide, and see what was out there.  The second half of 2008 wasn’t the best time to be looking for a job if you recall.  3 months went by, and I made a decision.  I would contact my old employer back in Michigan, and try to get in with them.  It worked, and I arranged to have a good position, set to start one week after I had to leave my job at Pratt.  We put our house on the market, I sent the wife and kids out before school started, so they could start school at the right time in the new place.  We even found a decent house we were able to buy on a land contract.

My time in Plattsburgh ended, I drove the last load of stuff out to Michigan.  Leaving our wonderful house in NY empty, and for sale.  I arrived in Michigan, the first thing I noticed, was that I had wrecked my truck’s transmission.  I hauled it behind the U-haul on a dolly, and had ignored the “unhook driveshaft” label on the instructions.  Apparently, that was important.  Other than that, it went smoothly.  Everything got unloaded, and I started my new job at the end of that week. 

Two weeks after I started my new job, we were informed of some downsizing in the company, due to the economical climate, which was bad.  I was demoted out of the Inspection department, to a floor mechanic.  Ironically, working for a guy who was a helper on my crew back in the ‘90’s. 

In the following couple months, I was very unhappy at work, as this wasn’t what I had wanted to do.  Out in NY, our house ran out of fuel oil, and all the pipes froze, breaking the water radiators, and bathroom fixtures.  And we still had no offers on it.

At the end of January, I took a layoff.  From my new job, after only 2.5 months.  It was pretty discouraging to say the least.  Thus began almost 18 months of unemployment.  There were sad times, such as when we lost the house in NY to foreclosure.  There were good times, as when I got to do so much with the children and their school stuff.  A lot of the time was spent being kind of listless, and depressed, playing Second Life, or World of Warcraft.  Such was how I buried my sadness I think.

But overall, it was a good thing I think.  It helped me put things into perspective, and get my head straight.  I hadn’t been in such a good frame of mind after Pratt laid me off.  I had been there more than 8 years, and was sort of looking at that as a really long term thing. 

In the end, I went back to work, as an Inspector again.  I’m pretty happy now, looking forward for the most part.  It was just a really long transition period.

On my motorcycle today, I did slow down at one point and try accelerating again, just to see if the false neutral happened again.  It didn’t.  I just had to be more “manly”, and precise in the application of my foot when I shifted.  That’s a pretty simple solution for that.

I only wish missed up shifts in Life, were so easy to recover from and compensate for.

Feeling it

My left knee hurts today.  Hurts to walk, hurts to climb stairs, hurts to go down stairs.  Puts me in a foul mood.  Makes me think about how old I'm getting.  Wouldn't it be ironic, that after 20+ years of being an overweight, I lose most of my excess pounds.  Only to suffer the physical effects of chronically overstressing my joints and everything?

A side note, so that that makes more sense:  I have lost over 35 pounds now, I'm averaging about 14 pounds a month loss.  That's a good thing.  I've had to step down into some of my "skinny" jeans.  I could go down another size, but those pants are put away somewhere.  I'll have to look in the black pit of storage that is my garage.

So I'm thinking of age, and what happens when you get older.  I have a routine, and it goes with some of my issues.  Every night when I get home from work, I shower (obviously!).  Then I go to my bedstand, and take the water holder out of my CPAP machine, and take it out to the kitchen to fill it with water.  The CPAP is my machine that supplies me with air through a mask while I sleep at a set pressure, that way I do not snore, or suffer the effects of my sleep apnea. 

I then sit down on the edge of my bed, and lotion up my feet.  Then I rub the excess on my elbows, and palms, they get dry too.  I get out the Vicks Vapor Rub then.  And I don't want to hear how it's just a wives tale, it helps me.  I put it on my toenails.  Yes, toenails.  I have that yellow looking flaky fungus under my nails, well most of them anyways.  And my doctor told me all about the 'real' medicines to treat it.  How they were really bad for your liver, how they were ridiculously expensive, and that insurance companies are loather to cover it, AND that lots of times the fungus just comes back anyways.  So try Vicks he says.  Use it every night on the nails, put on clean sox, and in a few months you'll see improvement.  Keep going, and the fungus will go away.  Apparently it does come back eventually, but, just more Vicks then.  After more than two months of using it, my toenails are looking decidedly better.  I've trimmed away as much of the yucky nail as I can, and new nails are growing in.  I figure if I keep it up, I'll have normal looking feet in another two or three months.  Yay!

That's step two, if you were keeping track.  Or three, if you count the shower.  Shower, Cream feet, Vicks toenails, then the clean sox.  Then, I put skin cream on the back of my neck, it's some kind of zit cream actually, to prevent, well, zits.  On the back of my neck, from the straps of my CPAP mask.  Crappy that sometimes one solution, will cause another problem.  But that's the breaks.

After that dries, I put on the CPAP mask, and put a clean washcloth under the straps, that helps with the skin too I've found.  Then I lay down and turn on the machine. 

It takes me about ten minutes.  But I do it every night.  And it gets me down. 

It's gotten to the point where I'm so used to sleeping with that darn machine on my head, giving me the pressurized air, that I find it very difficult to nap or sleep without it.  I end up waking up gasping, like all the air is out of the room.  When the power goes out at the house during the night, I'm screwed.  I might as well get up and do something at that point.  No meaningful sleep will happen.

All this is sounding like a quasi-medical "What's wrong with me?" site blog or something.  And I guess I apologize. 

Looking at the nightly baggage I've saddled myself with, for the sake of better health, makes me pine for my younger days.  I slept wherever I wanted, no worries about creams, lotions, machines.  I snored, and didn't realize that I had sleep apnea.  I was tired all the time......I had trouble staying awake on my commute to work......ok, I guess it's not such a bad thing.

Still, I'm getting old, and these things are a daily reminder of that.  Oh yea, and this fucking knee right about now.   I'll be getting up from the chair in a minute, so I'll curse ahead of time:  "Bloody Hell!"

Cheers

Psychology of a Coward

I remember, back in High School, Coach Smith more than once stopped the game films that we all watched on the Saturday after our football game.  He would point to my little figure on the screen, and exclaim something about my hustle, how I was one of the only linemen to pursue the ball carrier, no matter if I had a chance of tackling him or if he was thirty yards away.

I remember doing it too.  I played defense, usually as a guard, and after the initial crunch after the ball was snapped, and the ball was in motion, if I wasn't down and under someone, I was on the move.  I'd run after the ball carrier like my life depended on it.  Jumping over people on the ground, and loving it. 

I never did reach the ball on any of those sprints I did.  I'd like to think that me being there, in the pursuit may have helped funnel the runner towards my own defense people, like just being there left them one less avenue of escape.  And you never know, there might be something you can do to help.

But that was my short football career.  Mostly fun, one injury, not a lot of excess glory.  I never got in any fights though.

Well, that isn't true, I was in one real fight.  I don't mean the pushing, tackling, maybe even spitting (!) on each other things you get into on the playground, or with your friends when things get out of hand.  A real fight.

I suppose by today's standards, it wasn't a real fight.  Nobody got curb stomped, or kicked until brain damaged, or cut, or bones broken.  It certainly wasn't on Youtube.  Or betamax either.

There were three of us.  We were leaning on a wall outside the Meridian Mall in Okemos, MI.  We had watched a movie, and we were waiting for someone to pick us up, we weren't 16 yet.  We were laughing, telling jokes, having a grand time mostly.  Suddenly, from across the entrance to the mall, about twenty yards away, three younger kids, all black (not important in and of itself, but wait for it), called out to us.

"Hey, you laughing at us?" 

My friends and I looked at each other in brief confusion, then Brad yelled back, "No!  But we are now!"

Was it smart?  Probably not, but that's how we were.  We were indestructable, and thought every damn thing was an opportunity to make a funny.  Yes, I still think it was a semi-funny comeback.

The younger kids went into the mall.  Only to emerge a minute later with about a dozen late High School aged guys.  All black (keep waiting for it).  They surrounded us against our wall, and one of them, assuming the role of leader I guess, asked my friend David, "You guys were making fun of them?"  Very angrily I might add.

David gives him a goofy look and says, "No dude, no.  I wasn't, but HE was."  David pointed right at me.

In Dave's defense, it was just him goofing on the guy.  None of us realized how serious they were.

So the guy steps up to me, and asked the same thing.  I didn't even get the word "No" out of my mouth, before he punched me.  Right in the eye.  It sucked.  My glasses flew away into the night, the back of my head hit the wall I was leaning against.  I covered my head and ran like a coward. 

It only lasted about ten or fifteen seconds.  Some older folks came running over to break it up.  I was freaking out, someone handed me my glasses.  I was crying.  Pretty much hysterical I think.  Things like this just didn't happen to me.  In my world, I was in a bubble, and nobody touched me like that. 

Mall security came over finally, and sorted us out.  Asked if we wanted the cops.  None of us really did. 

We told our side, which was pretty much as I've described.  They told their side, which was that we were calling them "N-words, etc" 

I was dumbfounded at that lie.  Once again, not in my world, were such things yelled out to other people, or fights over nothing.

So that brings me to a brief connection with a previous post.  One where I stated I was a little bit racist.  It's true, and it was things like this, that have taught it to me.  As usually how the world works, the negative things seem to make a larger impression on me.

When I see a large group of black people, it makes me feel that an ass kicking is about to happen, on me.  That's about it as far as the race thing.  Sorry for the build up.

Back to fighting though.  I wasn't a fighter.  Other than that one time, which was real enough for me.  I've never been in a fight.  Lots of arguments, and I've intimidated the hell of a few people until they backed down.  But no real fights.

For some reason through High School, and after for a bit, some friends and acquaintences were convinced that I was a badass.  That I'd been in lots of brawls, and kicked ass.  I admit, I did nothing to quell that rumor.  I figured it wasn't a bad thing to have people think I could handle myself.

The truth, is really too emasculating.  One fight, never really defending myself in it either.  Then nothing.  I have dreams sometimes, of being in fights.  Of swinging so hard at someone that I feel I could break stone.  But when I hit them, nothing happens, it's like a feather hitting them.  No matter how many times or how hard I try to do it.  There's some serious psychology fodder in there somewhere I bet.

I just don't like altercations, especially as I get older.  I don't like arguments, well other people arguing mostly.  Sometimes I still get a hot head, and argue with someone, but then feel ashamed afterwards. 

As a matter of fact, when just about anything happens that is big and unexpected, I'll likely be the one jumping out of my skin, and screaming like a woman.  No offense to women, who are braver than I on any given day. 

Nope, I am not the hero type I don't think.  I try to compose myself when things happen, but it really isn't fast enough to be the guy who saves the day.  My head spins for a few seconds when I get freaked out.  You don't want to be near me when the shit goes down. 

But, a few seconds after the big bang, I collect myself, and try to do the right thing.  I go towards the noise, the light, the fire, whatever.  Maybe I can do something, even if I can't be the superman. 

Just like all those years ago playing football.  Running like hell to try to help, hopelessly behind, and probably won't be the one to make the save.  But being there sometimes makes a difference.  Even if I can't see it.

Cheers

On Identity & Virtues

I had a whole discussion in my head the other day about identity.  Reflecting on the different personas we take on throughout our lives, willingly and unwillingly.  The names we are known by, and why.  And categories we get lumped into simply by our preferences, or genetics.  It's worthy of a thesis project actually. 

And I'm just as sure that somewhere out there, someone has already written one about just those things.  So I decided to make a trite little poem-y thing about it instead.

That was today's item, #189 Who is Anyone, Really. 

I'm moving on tomorrow, and going to push out my Seven Deadly Sins series.  I did finally write the last couple ones, Wrath, and Envy.  I'm not a fan of them necessarily.  They are about sin, and I got a little graphic in a few.  But, that's what it's all about, neh?  Sin, awfullness.

One thing I noticed, while writing them, is how interconnected a lot of them are.  How the one sinful characteristic leads almost naturally into the next.  Oh those silly church people, dividing and categorizing our sins for convenience.  It's as good a list as any I suppose.  They are, all seven, definitely not good traits to exhibit, at least in excess.  lol

A little gluttony is a good thing, see Thanksgiving, and Christmas dinner, for example.  Some Lust is good as well, without a little lust, we'd have not nearly as much interest in the healthy recreational activity of sex.  And so on.  A little of this, a little of that, is a decent thing.  Oh, I almost forgot, a little envy, can go a long ways towards motivating one to better one's self. 

I did have a hard time with envy.  It's actually a fairly natural emotion to have.  I probably didn't do it justice, maybe I'll rewrite it before I press publish. 

Anyhoo, I did mention a while back, that I would do a companion piece addressing the seven virtues.  Brought to you by the same church scholars, no doubt. 

I'll work on that maybe during my seven days 'off'.

Cheers and love to you all.

Well dee well

At the end of another three day holiday weekend.  I have to reflect that I didn't get much done.  I'm told that I should not worry about that, as it was a holiday, after all.  But, I still have several projects left undone. 

Still to do, is to install our new food grinder in the sink.  I wish it was an Insinkerator!! but it's not.

I still need to build a fence in the back for the dogs.  The old orange snow fence is getting a lot long in the tooth at this point.  And the poodle can jump over it whenever he pleases, the little ones, can scoot under with the same ease.  Only their great training keeps them in the yard. 

That was a joke by the way.  These are the same small dogs that are wearing daipers while in the house.

I am however, getting almost done with the Seven Deadly Sins series I was making.  What is that?  You ask?  Well, it's simply seven bad poems, about the seven deadly sins.  You know, like in the movie Seven.  Which, by the way, is an excellent, scary, creepy movie.  Highly recommended.

Perhaps I'll start putting those out.  Which means I'll have seven days off, sort of.  Like I could stop making these things completely.  haha

Well, I did manage to post a pic of my old Newport, with the sharks mouth.  It's on Facebook at the moment.  If you aren't my friend, then I guess you're SOL, but that's the breaks. 

Cheers you lovely monkeys.  :)