September 2003 Archives

Almost 15 and not yet 5 feet leaves one open to a lot of crap. I probably don't know half of what my son goes through in high school each day as this boy who's small for middle school walks around the corridors of high school. But he never lets it get him down.

Today D- was dismissed by his endocrinologist because "he's starting his growth spurt". About goddamn time. The doc checked all the vitals: weight, height, and the all-important bead size. The doc delights in showing us this string of wooden beads of ever-increasing diameters to help illustrate where the boy is along the bead spectrum; suffice it to say everything is normal. (Parents, to mortify your son beyond repair, please have him present at the bead discussion immediately following the doctor's firsthand inspection.) So no growth hormone and the reassurance that D- will likely be a staggering 5'7" or 5'8" by the time he is a junior.

That way his date for the prom will only be one or two inches taller than him.
K-

Meat Loaf turns 52 today. I would have guessed he was older than that and not quite as close to my own age. I own Bat Out of Hell but when I went to look for it just now, I couldn't find it. I guess all my LPs are gone. There wasn't much to it but I always liked that album.

The scene in Rocky Horror Picture Show when Meat Loaf comes crashing through the wall on his motorcycle is forever etched in my memory. You see his arrival on screen was punctuated off screen by someone in the audience riding a mini-bike up and down the aisles of the theater. All part of the event. If you've never done it, I highly recommend attending a midnight showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show. It is very strange.
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No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring cold; cold, piping for the blood to dance to; Golden sunlight; Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious. Glorious!
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

The weatherman tells me colder air approacheth. Quoting Ebenezer "Hallo! Whoop! Hallo here!"
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I suspect it's the comments people receive on their blog entries and not the blogging itself that motivates their self-indulgent publication. While I get a certain satisfaction from seeing one of my blog entries especially well-wrought, the real thrill for me comes when I see a new comment.

Today I received a cold dose of reality; a sharp slap on my cyber-face; a pointed stick in the eye of my virtual presence...

Someone left me a spam comment.

I discovered it by accident while preparing a new entry. The comment was recent but the entry commented on was quite old. I had to rebuild my blog to eradicate it.

And the spam advertised penis enlargement products! As if.
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D- was away last night. His newly formed confirmation class had a retreat. They get to know one another, establish community, sleep in tents, and eat mass quantities of junk food. I've no doubt the boys had a lengthy round of farting noises before going to sleep. (I've no idea what girls do on a camping trip while falling asleep; probably something utterly civilized like a pajama fashion show.)

Sleeping out overnight is no big deal for D-. He's done so probably more than 100 times in all kinds of weather. And for nearly every one of them, I've been there to make sure he takes his AED.

The AED is what makes his nights away from us a bigger deal for both him and us. D- would never tell anyone why he takes medicine. And only two or three times have I had to say to someone "Please take care of my son while you're away. Oh, and by the way, could you please make sure he takes his meds so he doesn't have a seizure?" Most people are cool but at the initial revelation I've got to spend time reassuring ("Last one more than 3 years ago! Only 1 in the last six years!"), explaining what to do if by some remote chance he has one ("Make him comfortable and call us."), and then making goddamn sure they treat him like the perfectly normal kid he is.
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Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head...

Tucson was unremarkable. (Although thanks to hurricane Marty, it did rain. A slow, soaking rain all 3 days. I've never seen such a thing in all the times I've been there. Tucson doesn't drain well.)

My meetings were unremarkable.

The return was unremarkable.

Though I felt a desperate need to blog, the dreary sameness of my life this past week instilled a crippling writer's block.

Ah, well. I still have Dubya and California to pique my interest.
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Close your eyes, Tucson, I'm coming through.

I made it to this hot, dusty outpost without issue. Except one. My suitcase made it here before me!

When I arrived in Dallas, I checked the departure board and discovered that there was a 6:38 flight to Tucson I could take rather than the 7:41 flight I was booked on. But I thought "I'd better not take the earlier flight because then I'd arrive without my luggage." So I arrive in Tucson at 8 PM, walk to the baggage carousel, and there sat my bag. It had taken the earlier flight arriving without me.

What kind of depraved world do I live in?
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Tucson bound today for business. Back Thursday. Will attempt travel blogging when feasible.
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Power to the house returned at 2:20 PM. Why the electric company chose to make my house one of the first to receive power I can't begin to guess. I'm just thankful my luck was good.

Isabel - a Category 2 hurricane at landfall - arrived in Maryland as "only" a tropical storm. The eye passed through Hancock, which is about a 2 hour drive west of my house. Last night, I saw only the outer fringes of the storm. Despite all this, Isabel packed a punch I won't soon forget.

I can't imagine what a real hurricane would be like. I'd just as soon not find out.

Paraphrasing the National Hurricane Center: This is the last public advisory issued by Plugs and Dottles on this system.
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Tropical Storm Isabel blew through my part of Maryland between 11:30 PM last night and 1:30 AM this morning. The wind really howled and a few of the more energetic gusts made my heart pound a little. The rain wasn't all that bad; I've seen worse from slow-moving, local thunderstorms. We lost power just before the brunt of the storm hit. I found it discomfiting to be unable to see either the storm or anything in my house. The electric company is being no more specific than "days" before everyone's power is restored.

The wind caused the most problems. Driving around early this morning I counted dozens of downed trees and many more damaged ones. The trees in my yard and the woods adjacent are relatively unscathed although my neighbor's weeping willow is weeping a bit more today.

Siding, shingles, windows, and other exterior appurtenances seemed to have survived intact. I detected no water damage. All in all I'm thankful it wasn't worse.

And only as those without the responsibility of home-ownership can do, both kids slept soundly all night long and missed the entire thing. (Although I would have thought my screaming "We're all gonna die!" when the lights went out would have woken them.)
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Driving to work today my radio station had a rundown of famous September 18 birthdays. The last birthday mentioned was for Leon Askin who happens to be 96 today. Who's Leon Askin you ask? I couldn't identify him by his name but once the announcer mentioned the character he played, I instantly recognized who it was: General Burkhalter on Hogan's Heroes.

What an amazing show that was. I mean how desperate for ideas were network executives that they thought a Nazi POW camp would be good for laughs? Bumbling Luftwaffe and Gestapo, dumb German soldiers, crafty prisoners who just happen to have an underground city going on... what could be funnier? Of course, this is not to say I boycotted the show; kids will watch anything. Saturday nights on CBS I was there. It's nice that network TV has gotten so much better.

Oh, and what did the announcer play right after making this birthday announcement? Richard Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra.

Classical DJs are such wags.
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Work let out early today. We were dismissed at 1:00. How cool is that? I guess my employer decided that it was too risky for the staff to remain in our cement and steel buildings during Hurricane Isabel so they sent us home to the safety and security of our 2x4 and plywood houses. Schools throughout the area are closed Thursday and Friday.

Being sent home early from work is like found money. I love it.
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The International Space Station actually has a use. My favorite picture of Isabel so far.

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Just as I got back from my morning run, all the elementary school kids were gathering on the corner waiting for the bus. As I walked around during my cool-down, a group of about 4 second, third, and fourth grade boys came walking my way. I got to overhear part of their conversation.

"I've been in a category 5 and a category 4."
Another chimes in "I've been a category 5, too. It was down in Florida."
A third claims "I've only been in a category 2."

Hurricane one-upsmanship.




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I hate yardwork with a passion. I have a black thumb not a green one so any task in my yard requiring mowing, raking, pruning, hauling, pulling, you name it, is low on my list. No yardwork is one of the reasons I like winter.

We were having dinner on the deck tonight. I looked around and decided that the lawn was looking very shaggy since it's been two weeks since I last mowed it. I figured this weekend was going to be pretty soggy so I'd better do it tonight. I announced "Well, I guess I had better mow the lawn."

In unison - with the perfect blend of incredulity and confusion - both boys asked "Why?"

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
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I suppose I've got to do something. Buy water? Candles? Poptarts? Beer? Lash myself to my outside lamppost à la Lt. Dan just so I can have it out with God?

Weather forecasters tell me that Hurricane Isabel will pass about 300 feet east of my house bringing wind and rain and all sorts of other things that will make me a nervous wreck for the next few days. In 1972 Hurricane Agnes came blasting up the Chesapeake Bay inundating and nearly destroying historic Ellicott City, which is about 8 miles from my house. You can still see the high water marks above the lintels of some of the low-lying houses.

Maryland had its worst snow storm on record last February and now Isabel. S- can worry about food and water. Give me the lamppost. I'm having it out with God.
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My last long run before the Army 10-Miler was today. I did 11.8 miles. I definitely could never run a marathon. When you prepare for a marathon you have longer runs than that. The last two miles of today's run were not especially fun. Left knee hurting. And I am so slow.

3 weeks and counting.
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I asked my son to open a jar that I couldn't open and he did.

Please, somebody get me my drool cup.
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I need a picture of a wolverine standing on the neck of a leprechaun. Anybody? Anything?
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I consider myself a Sherlockian, a member of a small, rabid group of devotees of the world's first consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes. Indeed, my humble blog derives its name from a passage in The Engineer's Thumb.

Consider my credentials: I've read The Complete Sherlock Holmes at least 4 times, I've read Baring-Gould's Annotated Sherlock Holmes once, I'm a member of 2 scion societies of the Baker Street Irregulars, I read daily The Hounds of the Internet (a LISTSERV for Sherlockians), I have an extensive Sherlockian library, and I subscribe to two Sherlockian periodicals. So I like to think I know my Sherlockian stuff.

Imagine the mingled strands of glee and bewilderment I experienced on the way to work this morning when I saw this bumper sticker:

From a Sherlockian standpoint it makes no sense. Mycroft, who is Sherlock's elder brother and appears in 4 of the stories, rarely exerted himself and in no story did he risk life and limb to the point he required rescue by Holmes, Watson, or anyone.

What can this mean?

Who's behind it?

I have no explanation!

This is so tantalizing!

I must have an answer!
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While I was passing through Prince Frederick down in Calvert County, I happened to notice the Calvert County flag hanging at half-staff. I've driven through that town hundreds of times but this is the first time I noticed the county flag.

No doubt about who's king there. Perhaps not so surprisingly, I had to find this graphic somewhere other than the Calvert County website.
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It takes me about two hours to drive to Pax from work. The trip winds down through southern Maryland. (For the uninitiated, southern Maryland is on the west side of the Chesapeake Bay and not to be confused with the lower Eastern Shore, which is on the east side of the Chesapeake Bay). Because southern Maryland is more rural, septic systems rather than sewers are the rule. As a result, honey trucks are a common sight in Calvert and St. Mary's Counties.

Nearly all the trucks I see have a saying on the back, which gives you something to read when you're stuck behind one on a two-lane road. I followed a honey truck yesterday that carried the slogan:

"Number 1 in the number 2 business."

I had to laugh out loud.
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Exactly two years ago at this time, I was in my car trying to figure out how to get out of Washington. You see, about 9 AM I was in a meeting on the 10th floor of a Crystal City office building when the plane hit the Pentagon. My location was not half a mile from the impact point, so I had no problem seeing the thick, black smoke rising from the fire. My usual route home, which took me right by the Pentagon, had been blocked off. That day it took me 7 hours to find an alternate route out of DC and get back.

Several of my co-workers were actually inside the Pentagon at the time of impact. One died. There's a small memorial honoring Ron in the lobby of the building where I work. The memorial consists of his portrait and a small table. Usually there's only a small plaque on the table. Today there were flowers.

I guess you can have worse travel experiences than my trip to Tucson.
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I travel again today. This time shouldn't be too bad. Not like the Tucson debacle a couple of weeks ago. As soon as I finish this, I'm heading down to Patuxent Naval Air Station - Pax River - for a meeting. For you JAG fans, it's where CDR Rabb and LtCol. MacKenzie are always going. Of course, I just go to a big office building not the air field. And I definitely won't be seeing any marines that look like LtCol. MacKenzie.




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Every year our church sponsors a team of doctors on a trip to Jamaica. It's not a vacation but more like "Doctors Without Borders." They visit Port Maria, which from the pictures, is about as far from a resort as you can get. There are a lot of insects, the electricity sometimes doesn't work, there's no potable water, and did I mention the insects? The team of docs consists of pediatricians, ophthalmologists, ob-gyns, internists, and even dentists. Some of the docs are from our church, others are just volunteers. In the 6 days they're there, they treat dozens of people who would otherwise not have access to medical care.

Yesterday, I surprised myself by volunteering for the next mission. Not as part of the medical team (Asking "Where's your mother?" is basically the extent of my medical talent) but to be one of the big, dumb guys who tote and haul and otherwise follow directions. I'm not sure why. You get to work really hard, there's no time for sight-seeing, and I've got to pay to go. It's by no means a sure thing since the team doesn't need many non-medicos and I imagine they get more volunteers than have slots available.

The trick will be to overcome the household perception that I'm going to Jamaica by myself in February regardless of the other circumstances.
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I like to cook although not nearly often enough for my wife. In the summer I especially like to grill. We sometimes grill as many as four nights a week.

Tonight I tried grilling salmon fillets, which I had never done before. I had them sitting on a plate when my oh-so-suburban 14-year-old son walks in the kitchen.

"Are those the salmon breasts?" he asks innocently.

"Sure are," I replied.

I've gotta have a talk with that boy.
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I love it when I fire up Google and there's a special Google logo. Today, Google turns 5. I can't remember life before Google. Happy birthday, Google. (I would also like to point out that the two founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, received their undergraduate degrees from the University of Maryland and the University of Michigan, respectively.)
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My 17-year-old son has been on his high school's cross country team for 3 years. Parents, I can't recommend enough high school cross country for your child. It's a sport a kid can do his whole life (Not many 48-year-olds play football or lacrosse but I still run), it's healthy (can't smoke and run), it's fun (Do offensive linemen really think football is fun?), and you can always find a personal goal to work towards.

But parents, here's the best thing about high school cross country... do you know where my big, strapping, 17-year-old son was tonight at 8:45? In his room, lights out, sound asleep.

Eleven consecutive 7-minute miles does tend to tucker one out.
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We slept with the windows open last night for the first time in a while. Usually it's quiet but about 11 PM S- woke me up and said there was a helicopter outside. She wanted me to go find out what it was doing.

Needless to say I ignored her but before too long the sound of the droning helicopter got the better of me and had me wide awake. Sure enough there was a helicopter circling above the neighborhood. It wasn’t directly above my street but it clearly wasn't too far away.

What was eerie about the whole episode is that the helicopter just kept circling the area all the while shining a big searchlight on the ground. I have no idea what it was looking for. The circus isn't in town so I decided it wasn't an escaped tiger. My house isn't near a prison so I figured it wasn't a fugitive. We hadn't been warned about mosquito spraying so I decided the chopper wasn't spraying for West Nile virus. I can't imagine what caught the attention of the helicopter. And I wasn't the only person interested. About 3 of my neighbors were outside. After about 20 minutes of sky-high surveillance, the helicopter drifted over our way, did a quick scan of my street with its searchlight, and flew away.

Before going back to bed, I decided our open-window policy was premature. I went downstairs, closed and locked all the windows, and turned on the AC.
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D- had a project due today in his 9th-grade English class. The class has just finished reading a short story called "The Medicine Bag" and his project was to create his own. He had to collect 4 items that were representative of our family's history and/or ethnicity, write a page describing each item, put the items in a decorated "medicine bag", and present the items to his class.

You wouldn't believe the difficulty we had coming up with those four items. I mean it was really pathetic, almost shameful, that none of us could come up with anything interesting and reflective of our family's history.

To begin, neither my wife nor I come from families with strong ethnic ties so neither of us had anything ethnic to contribute. After much cogitation and discussion, we ended up giving D- the following:

1. A small history on the gunpowder explosions at DuPont's Hagley Mill in Wilmington, DE. My great-great-great-grandfather, Samuel Fisher, and his son were killed in the 1863 explosion.
2. A sewing bag that came from my great aunt. She was a nationally-recognized weaver. The bag was made from cloth she wove. (And talk about handmade... my uncle once showed me a suit he owned. My aunt had made it herself from cloth she had woven.)
3. A rosary that belonged to my wife's great-grandmother. She came to the US in the late 1800s to escape Christian persecution in Lebanon.
4. A small doll that came from the Connecticut general store that my wife's great-grandfather opened after arriving in the US from Lebanon.

Boy do we come from some incredibly boring stock.
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I just polished off one of the last of Maryland's summer peaches. This got me to thinking about one of my favorite albums, Eat a Peach by The Allman Brothers Band. This album has influences from both Duane Allman and Dickie Betts. Les Brers in A Minor, Blue Sky, One Way Out... all good.

But then I thought, Allman Brothers at Fillmore East was pretty outstanding, too. Whipping Post is so good on that album. The cognoscenti on Amazon.com give each 5-stars.

It's hard for me to decide but I'm thinking Eat a Peach by a hair.

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Actual conversation with my 14-year-old son on the way to his Confirmation class kick-off picnic:

"Daddy, when is our first class?"
"Uh, I'm not sure. I think it's the last Tuesday in September."
"Who are the teachers?"
"I forget. I think Mrs. J- is one of them. They'll all be at the picnic."
"Will I have to do an outreach project?"
"I don't know. Maybe."
"How many kids are going to be in the class?"
"I don't know! I'm not in charge of Confirmation!"
"Well, you should be."
"Why should I be in charge of Confirmation?"
"Cause then you'd know the answers to all these questions!"

duh.
K-

Michigan Wolverines 50
Houston... who cares 3

I think we're ready for that execrable team from South Bend.
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I was watching CNN tonight. At the end of the broadcast, they had one of those offbeat stories. It seems that David Blaine, a "street magician" notorious for performing some really bizarre stunts, is attempting another one, this time in London.

It appears that Mr. Blaine has placed himself inside a clear, glass box that is sealed and suspended 30 ft or so above the Thames River by a crane. There's not much in the box besides Mr. Blaine. He will endure starvation for the next 44 days.

What I found amazing is that Mr. Blaine and his promoters hope that this stunt will become a "major tourist attraction." Imagine, a man starving to death being promoted as a tourist attraction. What a decadent world we must be living in when starvation becomes spectacle for gawkers.

I bet if we worked hard enough we could find a few thousand starving children to watch. Of course, they wouldn't have Mr. Blaine's self-aggrandizement for us to enjoy.
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About 10 years ago I was in a weight loss mode. (That's dieting for you non-engineers.) Every day during lunch I would go for a brisk walk around the grounds where I worked. One day I was walking through the employee parking lot (with that morally superior attitude weight-loss moders acquire) and noticed up ahead of me a concrete drainage cut in the grass median that separated two rows of parking spaces. As I approached the cut, I thought to myself "Gee, that concrete still looks wet. But they wouldn't leave wet concrete unmarked for someone to just walk through."

So onward I walked right into the cut where the concrete was, of course, still wet.

I left three of the most beautiful footprints you ever saw.

Because the concrete was almost set, they remained. And for the last decade every time I saw that drainage cut, there were my footprints, tangible, if anonymous, evidence that I had been there. Several times I have said to people "See those prints. I made those."

Today for reasons known only to my employer, they jackhammered the concrete cut where my footprints were into rubble. Perhaps they just discovered my vandalism. But in any event, I found myself in a peevish mood all day, the symbol that I had been there now gone.
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S-'s birthday has come and gone. We had a delightful dinner meticulously and lovingly prepared by yours truly. I sweat for hours over a hot stove. I even broke out the good china to serve the food in (sample left). She really enjoyed her dinner and the fancy, individually-wrapped, folded cookies I baked for dessert.

She liked her presents immensely. The height of the evening came when she unwrapped a watch she had been hinting she wanted. I thought it was nice. It has a silver face with small pearls surrounding it and the band is two strands of pearls with silver links. As soon as she opened it my son A- hollers out "That's bling bling!".

God I love irony.
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S- has a birthday today. Like most people she has to work on her birthday. She prefers to be at school by 7 so she was out the door before the rest of us could even assemble in one place. We'll have a celebration tonight. (Mental note: go to Safeway to buy birthday cake.)

Feel free to give your regards if you see her. And be sure to ask her how old she is; she likes that.

We're in mutual agreement that we can't believe our spouses are as old as they are.
K-

Results of informal poll:
Old guy: Knows Newman and Rose. Never heard of bling bling.

Birthday Girl: Knows Newman and Rose. Heard the term bling bling but doesn't know its meaning.

14YO: Never heard of Rose. Knew Newman was an actor. Heard the term bling bling but doesn't know its meaning.

17YO: Knows Rose played baseball and Newman was an actor although he's mainly the "salad dressing guy". Knows what bling bling means. I'm not sure whether I'm disappointed or encouraged that he knew its meaning.
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Bling Bling? BLING BLING? So what the hell is "bling bling"?

Evidently, it's what au courant college freshman call flashy jewelry. I never would have guessed we needed to invent such a dopy term for something as inconsequential as flashy jewelry. (So what if the jewelry you're wearing isn't flashy... is that just "bling"?) Bling bling they know.

On the other hand, they're not expected to know who cultural icons Paul Newman and Pete Rose are. "I've never heard of those people," laments University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee freshman Pamela Westmoreland.

Excuse me? Never heard of them? OK. Maybe she hasn't seen Paul Newman in a movie or Pete Rose play baseball. But I guess I expect her to know Newman is an actor and Rose is a ball player.

I'm thinking Pamela's going to be a psych major.
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Have you ever watched one of those TV programs that show home videos catching people in embarrassing moments? You know, America's Funniest Home Videos, Real TV, those kind of shows? They always show someone getting their bell rung usually by an inadvertent but sharp blow to the crotch. You see those videos and you think to yourself, "Yeah, that's gotta hurt."

D's in a yo-yo phase right now and he's attempting all sorts of tricks with his yo-yo. Last week he ordered a yo-yo off the Internet made from "airplane grade aluminum". It arrived today. Needless to say he was excited about the prospect of performing "Around the World" and "Rock the Baby" using this new aluminum yo-yo. And I have to admit, it does look sleek.

Well, anyway, tonight he's showing me all these tricks with his new aluminum yo-yo and somehow one got away from him. The yo-yo, which he throws down with not a little force, came racing back up the string, over the back of his hand, and bonked him right off the forehead. The concussion gave off quite a pleasant ringing sound. (His head not the yo-yo.)

As soon as I saw it I thought, "Yeah, that's gotta hurt."
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Now that Labor Day is done, the effort to get A- into college commences in earnest. First on the list of things to do is get our short list together. We've visited Virginia Tech, University of Virginia, and Maryland. Today we arranged campus tours for James Madison, Carnegie Mellon, and Michigan. We'll probably visit at Johns Hopkins and, maybe, University of Maryland/Baltimore County.

A- tells me his short list is not so short; he likes this about one, that about the other. He can't decide... he'll think about it later. Unfortunately, later is now.
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Not too long ago, I waxed rhapsodic about the locusts that sing from Maryland trees this time of year.

Today's Baltimore Sun had a science article that informed me they are not locusts (a kind of grasshopper) but cicadas. My mistake. Somehow the noise attracts a mate. Thankfully, human males have other means besides screaming at 130 dB for the same process. The bad boy in the photo had the misfortune to be trapped in the web of a wolf spider in my backyard.

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I usually don't see many people on my morning jogs. At most I'll see 4 or 5. What I find unusual is that very few of the people I pass acknowledge me with a "Good Morning" or even a glance.

Most actually just continue to stare straight ahead or down at the ground pretending they don't notice this 200 lb. sweating mass of human protoplasm lumbering its way down the street not 3 ft. from their path. And some of these folks I pass by regularly.

I pass one old guy every time I run. Whenever I pass by he locks his eyes straight ahead. Today as I ran by I hollered "Good Morning!" to him in as cheery a voice as possible. No reaction. None. And I know he's not deaf.

I guess I'll just have to add him to all women under 30 for whom I have now become invisible.
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