December 2003 Archives

A brief lull between waking and people arriving.

We lit the bayberry candle last night, an old family tradition.

Bayberry candle burned to the socket,
Brings health to your home,
Food to your larder,
And wealth to the pocket.

The candle is still burning well into Christmas morning.

I received the appropriate salutations of the day from the family. Most people think that having your birthday anniversary on Christmas is somehow wanting. Actually it's pretty nice once you get used to opening presents one day a year. Christmas in the morning, birthday in the evening. Ample holiday goodies, the day off from work, it's nice.

But the age. Forty-nine! Does that seem as old to you as it does to me? Next year will seem even worse. I'm at that in-between stage: not quite old enough to be wise and venerable and too old to be bold and innovative.

But what can you do? All hair, teeth, and other appurtenances are still attached, everything works, I'll be running 8 miles later today, and now I can stay in on Friday night without feeling like an utter social failure. Some Lydia Cake, a microbrew or two (or three, maybe four), family and friends, good food, a book or two, a little blogging, and I'm fortified for another year.

It certainly beats the alternative.
K-

I'm on vacation till after New Year's. I get off the following Fridays if Christmas and New Year's are on Thursdays. So if I invest 3 days of vacation I get nearly two weeks to spend hanging.

Steven delivered the new Dell in record time although, as I figured, if you want to trick it out at all, there's still no getting a PC for under $1K. It's up and running in all it's XP glory. A- is playing Counterstrike like there's no tomorrow. (As with the cable modem, it was A- who finally convinced me we really did need to upgrade.) I still type and think about as slowly as ever.

I always enjoy Christmas Eve. The family is here, there's great food (I cook), and the expectation of Christmas still hangs in the air. "There's nothing doner than Christmas," as my friend John Green used to say. For me Christmas Eve is the tree-topper.
K-

Drove to Michigan for 8 hours Friday and then drove back Saturday to have the Mater in Maryland for Christmas. Nothing untoward occurred although I do have to acknowledge the tenacity of truck drivers who can get behind the wheel for 8 hours day after day.
K-

I'm away for a couple of days. I'm off to Michigan to fetch the aged parent back to Maryland for the holidays. Leave tomorrow, back Saturday. The trip is going to be as quick and short as I can possibly make it. I've tried to convince her that she really can jump into my car while it's moving at a slow roll but she insists I brake fully.
K-

Annie Oakley was 43.
Mark Twain was 68.
Wyatt Earp was 55 and living in Los Angeles.
Scott Joplin was 35.
Louis Armstrong was 3 and it would be another decade before he picked up a trumpet.
Albert Einstein, an obscure physicist working on his Ph.D., was a patent examiner in Switzerland.
President Theodore Roosevelt had recently proposed the construction of a canal in Panama.
A mechanic in Detroit set up a manufacturing firm, which he named after himself: the Ford Motor Company.
Neither the North Pole nor the South Pole had been reached.
Charles Lindbergh was 1.
James Doolittle, who was to lead his Raiders to Tokyo 39 years later, was 7.
Igor Sikorsky, who developed the helicopter, was 14 and living in Russia.
Chuck Yeager's birth was 20 years away, Neil Armstrong's 27.

This was the world, 100 years ago today. It was a thoroughly old-fashioned world at the moment of becoming a thoroughly modern one. A hinge was turning, a blade was moving, although hardly anyone was there to see it. A 25-mile per hour wind blew, which made the 40-degree temperature feel more like 30. Think of the steady wind blowing in off the cold surf, and two brothers, one running in the sand, the other, fitfully, in the air.
K-

Today CNN reports of the death of a 10-year-old North Carolina boy who got too close to the cage of a 400 lb. Bengal Tiger. The tiger lived in a cage in the backyard of the boy's aunt, who was babysitting the boy. Evidently the boy ventured too close to an opening, whereupon the tiger grabbed the boy, dragged him into its cage, and mauled the boy to death. During the struggle, the boy's uncle killed the tiger as well.

Nowadays it's considered politically correct to rail against government intervention in citizens' lives. Big government is out; a cowboy I'm-gonna-do-what-I-damn-well-please mentality is in. As a result we get tragedies such as this. But I've got to ask: what possible need is there for a private citizen to own a Bengal tiger? (Or any wild animal for that matter?) Now here's the answer: there is no need. None. There is no credible reason for a private citizen to own a dangerous wild animal. So now we have one dead boy and one dead tiger.

Considering that tigers aren't native to North America, I seem to hear of pet tiger attacks far more frequently than seems possible. I hear of almost as many tiger attacks a pit bull attacks.

And there's no need for people to own them either.
K-

My younger son has a long-adopted practice that I find endearing yet at the same time lives in that gray area between cute and a little weird. It's one of those things when looked at objectively you find really nothing wrong with but for those of us with more, shall we say, conventional mindsets, well, we certainly wouldn't do it. It's much too outré.

He sleeps with his clothes on.

Now I don't mean as opposed to naked. Nor do I mean he sleeps in pajamas or sweatpants or a nightshirt. I mean he sleeps in the clothes he wore during the day.

This morning I came in to wake him up for school. He lay there sleeping soundly, covers pulled up tight under his chin, all snug and warm. I felt bad having to roust him out of bed. But once he got up he stood there wearing all his clothes from yesterday including the blue jeans and socks. In a way, I kind of admire the economy. If he had wanted to he could have slipped on his shoes and been ready for school in under 30 seconds.

I've asked him not to sleep in his clothes but only half-heartedly. With his approach if we were to have a fire, he's standing outside safe and sound while I'm running around trying to find something to wear.

I just can't bring myself to sleep in a tie.
K-

(Note change in units to accommodate blog visitors from the British Royal Navy.)

I used the treadmill up at the community workout room this morning for my morning run. I prefer not to run on a treadmill because it's soooo monumentally boring. But today the temperature hovered in the single digits, the wind speed was about 20 knots, and all the streets and sidewalks were snow-covered from yesterday's snow. Today an indoor run had a certain appeal.

As I jogged along the woman on the treadmill beside me said, "You know you run very quietly."

What a great compliment especially as I weigh in at just a tad over 14 stone.

I've been in the workout room with people - some of them very petite women - who have absolutely no skill at running. BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! as they jog on the treadmill. The crashing noise as their feet strike the tread is enough to drown out the TV. These folks can't be real runners; their feet and knees couldn't tolerate such pounding.
K-

I got my hair cut today. I get it cut every six weeks whether it needs it or not. This was the last cut in 2003.

I really like my barber (uh, I mean stylist). He's quick and he cuts my hair just the way I like it. My barber also has what I consider to be the most absolutely important requirement for any barber who cuts my hair. You might think that requirement is the ability to cut hair. But you'd be wrong. Accomplishment at hair cutting is only a secondary consideration. For me, the most important requirement for my barber is the ability to keep his mouth shut. I don't want to be held captive in a barber chair with some yakity-yak guy who wants to make small talk. No sir. I want total, complete, and utter silence.

From this morning...

"Same?"
"Yes, please."

*snip* *snip* *snip*
*cut* *cut* *cut*
*trim* *trim* *trim*
*dry* *dry* *dry*

"All done!"
"Looks great! Thank you very much."

My guy is well-trained.
K-

Pixie (or is it Dixie?) has gone on to his great reward.

Cats are now superfluous.
K-

Last night A- says to me coming in from the garage, "Daddy, I just saw a mouse in the garage. It ran towards the garage door into the shoes."

This morning S- wakes me from a sound sleep at 6 AM and says, "Kem, there's a mouse in the garage. I just saw it. You need to get up and take care of it."

On his way to school going out through the garage D- says, "Daddy, there's the mouse! I just saw it run across the garage."

OK, I have three confirmed sightings. I guess there's a mouse in the garage. I will not be left to rest until I have a corpse in hand. *sigh*
K-

Scientists are reporting that the earth's magnetic field is fading - 10 percent in the last 150 years - and could be gone altogher in another 1500 to 2000 years. Without earth's magnetic field, pocket compasses and the Northern Lights would no longer work.

Just when I get through worrying about the legitimacy of Gwyneth Paltrow's baby, something new crops up. Like Roseanne Rosannadanna says, "It's always something."
K-

This morning there was a story on the University of Michigan Athletics Website that I found interesting. It seems the Big 10 has announced its Academic All-Big 10 Team. To be eligible, a student has to be at least a sophomore, have a 3.0 GPA or better, and be a letterwinner. Michigan has 57 students from various fall sports named to the Academic All-Big 10 Team. Needless to say the Michigan Athletics Website was proud of that fact.

I did a few quick calculations to determine the percentage of each Michigan team that received the honor:

Men's Fall Sports
Football: 12% (Big 10 Champs)
Cross Country: 17%
Soccer: 42%

Women's Fall Sports
Volleyball: 44%
Soccer: 50%
Cross Country: 80% (Big 10 Champs)
Field Hockey: 85%

I'm seeing a disparity here. Must be the men athletes are taking much harder classes.
K-

So they've found a new largest prime number. According to CNN, a Michigan State student discovered it on his off-the-shelf PC.

We all know what a prime numbers is (or at least we should). The current largest prime number is:

and has well over 6 million digits. Imagine that! Now I know this is nitpicking but do you discover prime numbers or do you calculate them? Euclid proved to everyone's satisfaction that there is no largest prime. So we know that another prime number, even bigger than the one just reported, lurks out there somewhere. This latest prime was calculated using a bank of 200,000 computers distributed around the world. Folks just downloaded the prime number calculating program to their PC and let 'er rip till something turned up. Seems more like a calculation to me. (My own PC is involved in a similar distributed computing exercise as part of SETI's search for extraterrestrial life. My PC is basically performing spectral analysis on white noise collected from deep space in the hope that ET might be out there sending us recognizable RF drivel. I've analyzed 610 data units so far I'll have you know.)

Anyway, here's my own mathematical proof for the day. I can prove that the number 2 is both even and odd. Because 2 is evenly divisible by 2, that makes it even. But 2 is also prime. In fact, it is the only even prime number, which certainly makes it odd. QED.
K-

I spent last evening rereading some of the Christmas stories I've come to treasure over the years. They're all short so it was an easy matter to enjoy these four books in a single sitting.

The first was the poem 'Twas the Night Before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore. In all honesty, I'm not an especially big fan of this classic (and often parodied) Christmas verse. But when the kids were little, it was Christmas Eve tradition for my mother to read them this poem before bed so I read through it for old time's sake. We have the pop-up book version that's cute. Moore supposedly wrote this poem in 1822 for his two daughters. Now, however, there is some debate about the true author.

The second book was Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. I'm a huge Dickens fan and I love his depictions of Victorian London, the characters, and the cunning intrigues. While A Christmas Carol is well-known to late-night TV viewers - Alastair Sim and (surprisingly) George C. Scott with his undisguised American accent, are excellent incarnations of Scrooge - it is always worthwhile to go back to the original source material. Only Dickens can do the masterful job of transforming Scrooge from curmudgeonly Christmas apostate into a believably better man. (One bit of trivia: Dickens got paid big bucks travelling around the US at holiday time performing readings of A Christmas Carol to large audiences.)

Runner up on my list is The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree written by Gloria McClendon Houston and illustrated by Barbara Cooney. Set in North Carolina during World War I, this children's book tells the story of how Ruthie and her mother make sure their family provides the traditional town Christmas tree, the one Ruthie's father picked out before being called off to war. Someone - sadly I've forgotten who - gave this book to our family when the kids were little. I think I'm the only one in the family who finds this story affecting so I reread it occasionally. The story is simple and sentimental and the illustrations are first rate. It's hard not to get a lump in your throat by the end.

My favorite Christmas story is The Story of the Other Wise Man by Henry Van Dyke. For me this is a true Christmas story and one that I've enjoyed for many years. The story is little known today probably because it has no Christmas trees, grinches, ghosts, or Santas. It concerns Artaban, a certain wise man or magus, who sets out with great treasures to join three other magi. The four are to travel to pay homage to a newborn king who comes from God. Artaban gets detoured for a time, thirty-three years to be exact. He ends up in Jerusalem and uses the last of his treasure for the king to ransom a slave without, he thinks, ever meeting the king. He considers his life a failure but then learns the path we end up on is not always the one we started out on. This story is a gem as we wait and watch during Advent.

If you've got favorite Christmas books, stories, or movies, I'd love to hear about them.
K-

In response to TW's request, here are my answers to some regional questions:
1. A body of water, smaller than a river, contained within relatively narrow banks? Stream

2. The thing you push around the grocery store/supermarket? Cart

3. A metal container to carry a meal in? lunch box

4. The thing that you cook bacon and eggs in? skillet

5. The piece of furniture that seats three people? Couch

6. The device on the outside of the house that carries rain off the roof? downspout and gutters

7. The covered area outside a house where people sit in the evening? porch

8. Carbonated, sweetened, non-alcoholic beverages? soda

9. A flat, round breakfast food served with syrup? pancakes

10. A long sandwich designed to be a whole meal in itself? sub

11. The piece of clothing worn by men at the beach? bathing suit

12. Shoes worn for sports? Sneakers

13. Putting a room in order? Straightening Up

14. A flying insect that glows in the dark? lightning bug

15. The little insect arthropod that curls up into a ball? I have no name for that.

16. The children's playground equipment where one kid sits on one side and goes up while the other sits on the other side and goes down? See Saw

17. How do you eat your pizza? By the slice pointy end first.

18. What's it called when private citizens put up signs and sell their used stuff? yard sale

19. What's the evening meal? dinner

20. The thing under a house where the furnace and perhaps a rec room are? basement

My regions include Massachusetts, Michigan, and Maryland.
K

Microsoft is dumping Windows 98 at the end of the year, people keep complaining about how "slow" it is, the color is that old fashioned shade of off-white, but it's only 5 years old. Isn't it a little young to retire?

But I have to say the new kid is pretty sporty. He gets here in January.
K-

1. All Christmas decorations up.
2. All snow shoveled.
3. All college applications submitted.

It's been a good weekend.
K-

I was in K-mart today looking for Christmas things. I happened to find myself in the Christmas decorations section. As I walked along I encountered an "animatronic" Santa singing Walking in a Winter Wonderland. It stood there 5 feet tall, glowing brightly, with its arms outstrtetched. You'd think it was reaching out to give you a big fat Christmas hug.

The Santa fascinated me. He would stand there motionless for a time singing this tinny sounding song and then all of a sudden he would start dancing this bobbing and hopping Christmas jig sort of thing.

This Santa has to be for all the evil parents in the world who want to scare the bejesus out of their kids. I mean if I were a kid lying in bed and woke up to find this 5 foot glowing robot standing in my room crooning Walking In A Winter Wonderland while reaching out to give me a hug, and then all of a sudden it started bouncing, weaving, and hopping all around, I would be scared out of my wits.

Needless to say I bought two.
K-

It snowed last night at my house. Six inches on the ground. More "wintery mix" on the way. Unusual to have this much snow this early in the season. Presage or chance event? Exactly one year ago on December 5, Maryland had 7" of snow and we ended up with more than 40" for the winter including the worst Maryland winter snow ever last February.

8:42 AM Update
The Lab is closed due to inclement weather. I get the day off to put up Christmas decorations and shovel the driveway. Oh, joy! Rapture!
K-

Yesterday my mother called me at work. She does that sometimes and I don't mind. She was all upset. Earlier this week she found out the repairs for a leak in her upstairs bathroom won't be covered by insurance. Yesterday she found out from her mechanic that a problem with her car would cost over $1000 to fix. She was frustrated that all these things were going wrong all at once and my father - who died a little more than a year ago - wasn't around to handle things like before. She lives in Michigan, my brother and I live in Maryland, and she gets tired of having to handle everything.

So I said, "One thing at a time. What's wrong with the car?"
"Well the temperture light on the dashboard comes on occasionally. It stays on for a while, then it'll go out. It doesn't always do it. It's kind of intermitent. It shouldn't do that and I want to get it fixed."
"Is the car overheating?"
"No."
"Does it run OK?"
"Yes."
"Does it sound OK?"
"Yes, there aren't any strange noises coming from the engine."
"Did the mechanic say the car is safe to drive?"
"I asked him that. He said it was OK to drive."
"Well what does he want to do to fix the problem?"

She then proceeded to rattle off this huge list of things that needed to be done: disconnecting water pumps, replacing gaskets and sensors, flushing coolant, renewing all sorts of parts, a whole host of things. The total for the repair was almost $1100.

I said, "So basically he wants you to pay over $1000 to have the light go out?"
A pause. "Well, yes, I guess so."
"I think you need another data point. The car is safe to drive and it's not overheating. Why don't you take the car to the dealer and have him look at it? Who knows? Maybe they've seen this problem before and can fix it right away."

I had a voicemail from her this afternoon when I got back from lunch. "I took the car to the dealer, they fixed the problem, the total cost is $138."

It's nice to know that sometimes your advice is worth taking. I wish I could fix the bathroom leak as easily.
K-

A friend sent this to me today. It's probably bad but I find this picture hilarious. If you click on the thumbnail, you can see the bigger image.
K-

Again I wake up with a song in my head from nowhere. Where do they come from? Some short circuit along the plaque-encrusted byways of my brainpan? A subliminal doppelganger? Who knows? All morning long, John Lennon has been singing to me his contrarian paean. At times, I join in singing aloud. I love it.




you say yes
i say no
you say stop
and i say go go go

The paper today contains a story about GloFish, fluorescent zebra fish that is the first genetically altered household pet. Scientists in Singapore developed the GloFish after they discovered they could turn usually black-and-silver zebra fish green or red by inserting genes from a jellyfish or sea anemone. The result is a fun pet that actually glows in the dark.

Now, I'm not particularly creative. I can't play a musical instrument, I'm a terrible artist, and my photography is only fair to middling. And I almost never have a good idea. But this time I felt sure I had this great idea that was really, really creative. You see a short while ago, I developed my own genetically-engineered new pet, one that I thought would be great for kids and available just in time for Christmas. I mean I've been working soooo hard on this project. I even have a prototype up and running. All I had left was to figure out how to mass produce it. And now I see I've been beaten to the punch. I'm not sure whether to keep on working or just head back to the drawing board.

I took a picture of my prototype and I truly want your opinion. So you tell me...

I admit it. I'm a weather groupie. I love to read about weather, hear about weather, and most especially, experience weather. I could never live in a place like Tucson or LA. They have climate; they don't have weather.

During the winter I like to follow the weather in Fairbanks, Alaska. Here are current conditions in Fairbanks:

11:55 Local Time: Temp is -42 degF. Areas of dense ice fog persisting into the afternoon.

How cool is that! Check it out at the Weather Underground.

Perverse as it sounds, I would love to experience -42 degF with dense ice fog (once).
K-

Saturday night we were sitting in the Double T Diner waiting for our dinner. During the conversation, S- announced that her plans to attend the Maryland Christmas Craft Show the next day had fallen through. The friend she was going with had to cancel out at the last minute. S- was bitterly disappointed because the Maryland Christmas Craft Show is one of her favorites. My heartbeat quickened as I sensed trouble looming on the horizon.

Now at this point, D-, my youngest son, decided he just had to help her out. So he started suggesting the names of all of S-'s top shopping buddies who might be called upon at the very last minute to accompany her to the craft show. I prayed fervently but for a variety of reasons, none was deemed suitable.

Then D- asked her, "Why don’t you go with Daddy?" Slowly folding his hands together while interleaving his fingers for emphasis and effect he added, "You two could have a nice romantic trip together."

Even though he was sitting directly across from me I guess D- didn't see me making all the gestures that you naturally make when this kind of situation arises: a gun to the head, a single finger being drawn madly across one's throat, a head hanging limply from a noose, my hands clutching tightly around his invisible neck.

As if this thought had never occurred to her, S- turned to me and sweetly asked, "Oh, would you go with me?"

Glowering at D- as he laughed hysterically I said, "Sure. I'll take you."

So that is how I found myself at the Maryland Christmas Craft Show bright and early Sunday morning. Boy, let me tell you, what an estrogen-charged place a craft show is. Young women; middle-aged women; old women; women with strollers; women with strollers but no babies; women pulling wagons; stout women, skinny women, tall women, short women; craft shows bring out every type of woman. There were women in wheelchairs. I saw one woman walking along pulling an oxygen tank. A couple rode in Rascal scooters. I can only suppose the Maryland Christmas Craft Show will not draw Jewish women but I'd only have been mildly surprised had I met one. Of course, being the pack animals that women are, all were in groups.

A very few women had male companions. Men at craft fairs have no say, no input, no idea, really, about what is going on. Their women are in charge. Females own this arena. The men are simply beasts of burden. Men carry the bags.

Men walk around craft fairs with this dour, kind of stupefied look on their faces. It's like we can't believe we're there and now that we are, we're just mystified by everything. ("You mean there are no guns or bass boats on display?!? None!?! How about golf? None of that either? Power tools? Tell me Home Depot is here! No? HDTVs, stereos, cell phones? Anything useful at all? Please tell me there's a tractor-pull later…")

After the initial shock has worn off, a nascent craft fair curiosity takes over. Men do start looking at things. I found this one guy who makes sculptures out of old railroad spikes, nuts, bolts, car springs, and other metal effluvia. He welds this stuff together to depict humorous caricatures of various professionals. One tasteful sculpture he called "Proctologist". I feasted on dips and sauces of all kinds although at one point got my hand slapped for double dipping. I found several booths offering samples of Moravian cookies but I never did discover where Moravia is.

But the disbelief that became curiosity quickly becomes the urge to sit. Men stop looking for crafts and start looking for chairs. That's all. A simple place to sit down. Now the craft fair managers know this and provide only a few places to sit. They need to keep the men up and moving, to stay with their women, who are spending the money. So when the sit urge finally overcame me, I found all the chairs, all the benches, all the stools, in use by other men. Everywhere, all around the fair grounds, sat these poor wretches in a stultifying air of dejection, faces downcast, bags of crafts strewn at their feet, silently mouthing Kurtz's final words, "The horror. The horror."

I feared that by sitting I might become one of them but my desire for repose was strong. My brain reeled; my mind clouded; my knees started to bend.

The scent of kettle corn brought me back.

"Uh, honey? I'm ready to go now."
K-

The drive between my house and Michigan takes me through a certain little town in Pennsylvania. Nestled between Interstate 70 going west out of Baltimore and Exit 161 of the Pennsylvania Turnpike is Breezewood. It has to be the most vile, execrable, nasty place in these 50 United States. Breezewood is a place totally devoid of charm. Saturday early-returning traffic caused a massive tie-up here giving me ample oppurtunity to see what Breezewood has to offer.

The reason for its existence, I suppose, is that Interstate 70 from Baltimore ends in Breezewood forcing all drivers to drive through Breezewood to the Pennsylvania Turnpike if they wish to continue on west. Breezewood is nothing but gas stations, truck stops, fast food restaurants, and motels. In fact, billboards leading up to Breezewood proudly proclaim it as The Town of Motels.

Nothing above base quality exists here: whether it's Fat Jimmy's Outfitters, 50 States Souvenirs, or what must be the last Stuckey's in America.

Normally, Breezewood is a blur as I blast through it on my way to anywhere else. Yesterday it took me 45 minutes to get through the 4 traffic lights along the main drag of this wretched little place. The longest time I'll ever want to spend in The Town of Motels.
K-