Monday, October 31, 2005

Hey, Navy:

It’s October 31st, which is “Hide From the Demon Children Night” at the Moore house. Your seesters and Amanda/Sam got all gussied up and terrorized a bunch of third-graders into giving up their candy. They say they went to houses but we know the truth. YM got the house to herself while I was in class and she got the privilege of listening to Grama Boyce talk to her on the phone, and like the Energizer Bunny, she kept talking and talking and…

President Bush picked a conservative judge as is next nominee to the Supreme Court to totally tilt the bench to the Right for the next twenty years. Remember those choices you used to have as a civilian? Well, don’t get me started.

Another person you probably don’t know said she’s sending you a letter. Hope these things are coming in droves. And I wish I had something exciting to tell you but I’m drawing a blank. How about some strange stuff from the news:

- Woman Pleads Guilty in Scheme to Buy House (AP):A federal grand jury was looking into allegations that a woman had written tens of thousands of dollars of bad checks when investigators got a startling call: She had just bought a house using a $400,000 cashier’s check.

- Getting Drunk Part of Australian Identity, Study Finds (Agence France Presse): A National Drug and Alcohol Research Council study of 1,500 Australians found that some 58 percent of people agreed that sometimes having too much to drink was “simply part of the Australian way of life.”

- Woman Gets Donkey for 50th Birthday (AP):Former attorney general and governor candidate Heidi Heitkamp, a well-known Democrat, got a surprise birthday president from her brother that fits her politics, though maybe not her yard.

- Pastor Electrocuted While Performing Baptism (AP):A pastor performing a baptism was electrocuted inside his church Sunday morning after adjusting a nearby microphone while standing in water.

- More Britons Believe in Ghosts Than in God (AP): Here’s one to ponder on Halloween. A new survey says more people in Britain believe in ghosts than believe in God.

- Hurricane Wilma Claims Latest Victim — Trick or Treating (AP): Lingering safety concerns a week after Hurricane Wilma struck meant a curtailed Halloween for most South Florida children.

- Inquest Told of Student Catapult Death (The Guardian): A student was killed in a bizarre stunt after he was hurled more than 30m through the air by a human catapult, an inquest heard.

- Dutch Witches Get Tax Break for Studies (AP): Dutch witches were guaranteed a financial treat when the Leeuwarden District Court reaffirmed their legal right to write off the costs of schooling - including in witchcraft - against their tax bills.

All my love,
Air Force

Sunday, October 30, 2005

Hey, Navy:

Nice day here in Carson City. It started off right with the time change, so we all got a little rest (hope you got some, too), then YM and I went for breakfast at the Nugget. We then went up to the spiffy new Wal-Mart to get stuff. Lara has a new Jedi poster with that Ewan guy on it and Danielle got a white board.

Then for some silly reason, I climbed C Hill. Dunno why, other than to continue working out and burning calories. I used to climb it a lot when I was a teenager and it was a struggle then, but this climb was pretty much pain-free (going down was another story). Got close to the flag and found it’s all metal welded to a lot more metal. It’ll take a typhoon to blow that thing off the hill. Spent some time meandering around the summit. It’s very peaceful and tranquil up there, well worth the price of admission.

By the way, there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky, so I’m the proud owner of a pretty decent sunburn all over my face. Your mother, on the other hand, managed to get only one side of her face burned at the parade yesterday. Her picture is attached, but you might need a super microscope to see her in the picture. She’s the brown dot at the tip of the arrow.

From the Dilbert Newsletter:

- Our college just completed a new three-story building. While walking down a hall on the 2nd floor, I overheard two students say, “I really like the skylights on the 3rd floor.” “Me too,” remarked the second student. “I don’t know why they didn’t just put some on the 2nd floor too.”

- My fiddle teacher was teaching a large group class. She showed them her violin and said, “This violin was made in the early 1800s.” Someone in the audience raised their hand and asked, “So you got it used?”

- A few years back, I was in high school and we were celebrating Holy Week (the week before Easter) and we were watching a presentation on the last few days of Jesus. The teacher used a clip from the movie “Jesus of Nazareth” to make his point. As we were watching Jesus carry his cross, a girl in my class asked, “Is this live footage?”

Take care of you. Miss you a lot. All my love,
Air Force

After weeks of working out on Dollar and the equipment at the gym, I decided that it was time for a real workout: climbing C Hill. According to the USGS, the top of C Hill registers at 5,756 feet and Cartoon City is officially at 4,730 feet, so it’s a decent ascent for someone who hasn’t climbed it since the 1980s. Armed with camera, energy bars, and very little brains, I headed out the door.

And that little digital camera takes some nice pictures. This is the first of the fifty-five pictures I took and it’s my favorite. When you click on the image, you’ll see there are two smaller hills in front. I started up the right hill (north) and went down the other one (south). For the record, there is a road to the far south that doesn’t appear on this picture, but that option is for wimps and four-wheelers.

As indicated, I climbed this hill twenty, twenty-five years ago and fairly frequently, too, but only because there was nothing else to do in this silly town. It used to be covered with the usual Nevada flora, that being tumbleweed, tumbleweed, and even more tumbleweed. Last year’s Waterfall Fire cleared that all out and it hasn’t returned, yet. In its place is cheatgrass, planted by the government to keep the side of C Hill on the side of C Hill. The black bushes that remained are the hardiest reminders of the fire.

I wasn’t a speed demon going up by any stretch of the imagination. I took small, measured steps the entire time, using hiking poles to steady myself, and kept my feet as straight as possible and pointed towards the top. The 17-year-old Bob of long ago didn’t have to worry about his knees, but the 44-year-old Bob needs to get out of bed tomorrow.

And before I knew it, I was at the flag. This is the second American flag up there. The first literally blew away. As you can see from the picture, the second one is all metal and riveted to a stainless steel frame that’s anchored onto cast iron pipes kept in place by a concrete foundation. It ain’t going nowhere.

I called Liz from the flag and she came outside for a picture. That brown spot by the arrow is her. She is waving.

Fifteen minutes later, I was on top of C Hill. The summit of C Hill is actually two ridges and that’s the eastern ridge.

The view from the top is amazing. Here’s downtown Carson City, and the trees in the middle are at Mills Park.

Looking west, this is about where the Waterfall Fire started. The brown house in the middle is under construction on the site where the first house was lost.

And on the way back, I took a couple of picture of the college with its spanking new baseball field.

The empty brown field next to the road on the far left of the picture is how close the fire got to the college.

The descent was much harder than going up because the different route I chose was a pain. The ground was soft and more prone to slippage, and there was far less cheatgrass and more weeds to scratch a person dumb enough to not to wear proper footgear. Next time, I’m taking more fluids, another pair of socks, and decent hiking boots, especially to support the ankles.

All in all, it was fairly anti-climatic event. The bike ride to Dayton was much harder.

And as I said, I took many more pictures, but this is the most boring blog entry in the world and you’ve suffered enough. :-)

Saturday, October 29, 2005

Hey, Navy:

The Nevada Day Parade was today and I missed all of it because I stayed at my desk Saturday morning so I could get to my Saturday labs where nothing happened again, which is good news. YM and Danielle went and took (no exaggeration) 99 pictures with the digital camera. They’re all on the laptop now and YM said she was planning to send you some.

Below is a picture of your uncle Dennis and soon-to-be Aunt Nikki from their wedding web site. They sent us the details of their wedding for next July in beautiful Nevan, Ireland (birthtown of one Pierce Brosnan). If you get to go, there are plenty of local attractions, including twice-weekly greyhound racing. Yes, that actually was on the thing they sent us, along with details about fishing in the nearby River Boyne.

Bumper Sticker of the Week:

IT’S GOD’S JOB TO JUDGE THE TERRORISTS
IT’S OUR JOB TO ARRANGE THE MEETING
UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS

Tomorrow, I will climb C Hill, weather and knees permitting. I haven’t climbed that silly thing since the 1980s, so it should be an interesting time.

All my love,
Air Force

Friday, October 28, 2005

Hey, Navy:

Fall is here and with it is the lazy feeling of watching the leaves change, which is far more interesting than watching the grass grow or paint dry. The kids in the neighborhood don’t run down the street; they huddle into themselves, as if they can force summer to stay within their arms by the sheer force of their will. No one can because the seasons change and we go on.

Biked over to the new Wal-Mart today because it is so keen to have a new store open in town. Barely holding onto my excitement, I wandered through the aisles and discovered it looks exactly like the one down south, except the floors are brown and the signage is a tad more 21st century. And they say nothing happens here in Carson.

This is how much fun we have here: YM and I were discussing the fact that on The Dukes of Hazzard, the Duke boys and Daisy are all cousins to each other, so they do not have a common set of parents, and Jesse is their uncle. YM pointed out there are two more Duke cousins wandering the planet and, again, they don’t have the same parents as Bo, Luke, and Daisy. So not only are they the result of a big family, no one knows what the hell happened to their parents, and we’re talking about quite a few adults (counting the other two cousins, that’d be ten parents becoming corpsified). It must have been some serious food poisoning from the local KFC or BBQ rib place.

BTW, please let me know if the Navy is still making “grinder chicken” jokes.

Watched The Cider House Rules starring Tobey, Charlize, and Mr. Caine, who is such an excellent actor. It was worth the time. And I finished The Time Traveler’s Wife, which turned out far better book than I expected. The common thread between the two is that even though love can hurt, it’s worth it.

Well, that has been an upper of a letter. And then there’s the rampant crime in the world:

- LONDON (Reuters) - The “flying” Ford Anglia used in the Harry Potter films has been stolen from a film studio lot, police said on Friday.

- SOUTH CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Stealing fake tombstones from a haunted trail in broad daylight isn’t a good idea. Particularly if the trail is operated by a Fraternal Order of Police Lodge.

- SEOUL (Reuters) - This wild piggy went to an upmarket hotel. This wild piggy went to a historic palace. And all the wild piggies were chased by South Korean police. Police in the capital have been battling an invasion of wild boars that have come down from the mountains into densely populated areas in and around Seoul foraging for food before the onset of winter. Friday, one turned up at an apartment complex in Kuri, east of Seoul, media reported. Police failed to catch it after a 90-minute chase.

All my love,
Air Force

Not much to write about today and will probably be making things up for Trina’s letter later. Slept in because there was darn nice sleeping weather out there: cool and light rain first thing in the morning. Graded tests at work then went for a quick ride to the new Wal-Mart via the back way by the college. Got a couple of hiking poles because I’m thinking of climbing C Hill on Sunday for fun.

Every once in a while, I randomly wander through various Bloggers to confirm that everyone is living a far more interesting life than me. There are a lot of happy families, cute babies, and vacation pictures out there. This browsing around reminds me that someone once said (paraphrasing here), “The accepted wisdom is that we lock a thousand monkeys in a room with a thousand typewriters and, in time, one of them will write Hamlet. With the internet, we now know that’s no longer true.”

Yet every once in a while, a gem emerges. This week’s winner is the blog of Sgt. Fay, United States Marine Corps, combat artist in residence at Camp Fallujah, Iraq. That man’s got talent and makes me even more proud of our warriors serving near and far. His work will gain nationwide fame in the next couple of years, just you watch.

One sad or reassuring thing is most blogs from writers in my demographic are as nearly vanilla as mine. A vast majority of us don’t write about a wide range of things: family problems, religion, eroticism, and other taboo subjects because we know our readership will be made uncomfortable by these insights to the private side of our psyche. It’s far easier to praise Aunt Martha’s cherry pie than it is to describe one’s physical reaction to a hottie, yet for some of us, these feelings and beliefs are what power our passion for life and discovery. It seems something is missing when we set them aside because of good manners and political correctness.

Another sobering thought is my window for making change in the world is shrinking. I once believed that I had the tools and energy to make a difference and to help people, but my life is like Dilbert: work is without meaning or end, and tomorrow unfolds exactly as it did yesterday. Nothing changes and the years are becoming a blur.

Mark today on your calendar: my mid-life crisis has begun. Where’s my sporty red Trans Am?

About finished with my stack of books and will be looking for new input. With my mood, it’ll probably be a John Irving book.

Distance: 6.7 miles
Time: 33:59 minutes
374 calories burned

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Hey, Navy:

Another peaceful night in paradise as I write this (about 10:00 PM). Danielle is already in bed, YM should be going there soon, and the vampiress Lara is at the other PC. It was another early and long day for me, so after work, I took a nap and woke up with a desire for (surprise) pancakes. Went to the Carson Station for the biggest flapjacks I found in town so far and was pleasantly entertained by the house band who was doing a darn good version of Soul Train. The downside of those places is I come home smelling like I took a bath in a carton of cigarettes, so the washer and dryer are turning behind me as I hammer away here.

We got our first official letter from your United States Navy today, the one from the good Captain Moran explaining the Do’s and Don’ts of being a good Navy family (do they still call them Rocks and Shoals?). Your note at the end of the letter was priceless and it felt good that we could touch something that you were touching just a few days ago. YM is keeping the letter on her nightstand so she can read it, of course (but let’s not mention that it spent the afternoon at work with her, too ;)).

We’re still in a bit of a cold spell here with some intermittent rain, the first steady precipitation we’ve had in a while. The long range forecast for RTC is rain on Monday (10/31), then clear weather with highs in the upper 50s and lows near 40 through the week to Thursday (11/03). This is a forecast for me, but will probably be in the past for you by the time you read this. But what the heck? Gives me something to do.

And tomorrow is the beginning of the Nevada Day three-day weekend, but I’ll probably go to work to grade tests.

Helen Miers voluntarily (yeah, right) withdrew her nomination for the US Supreme Court, which the President “regrettably” accepted. Maybe he’ll nominate someone like, you know, a judge.

Some other quick nuggets from the strange side of the news:

- ROME (Reuters) - The city of Rome has banned goldfish bowls, which animal rights activists say are cruel, and has made regular dog-walks mandatory in the Italian capital, the town’s council said Tuesday.
- DUBLIN (Reuters) - Rehearsals for an Irish opera met with an unusual hitch after customs officers seized cocaine from a truck delivering theatrical sets to a Dublin theater preparing to stage one of opera’s finest works.
- DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) - A Turkish court fined 20 people for using the letters Q and W on placards at a Kurdish new year celebration, under a law banning characters not used in the Turkish alphabet, rights campaigners said Tuesday.
- STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Sweden’s prison service may allow babies to live in prison with their fathers, putting men on an equal footing with women in prison parenting, a prison service official said Thursday.

All my love,
Air Force

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Hey, Navy:

Looks like I skipped a day of sending you letters there. Sorry. Had a bad couple of days. And nothing really going on here to write to you about. Do you really want to hear about the traffic jams around the new Wal-Mart? Woo-hoo. This is one of the reasons you got out of Carson: nothing happens here.

Just got home from Sparky’s after watching the fourth and final game of the first World Series in the post-steroid era, and you probably know who won (White Sox). This is Chicago’s first World Series since the 1910’s and ends the second of three famous curses in baseball. Last year, the Red Sox buried the Curse of the Bambino and this year saw the end of the Black Sox cheating scandal of so long ago. You already know which one is left: The Billy Goat. Go Cubs!

According to the international media, one of your future husbands had to drop trousers for a military examination. Did you think even I could make up something like this:

LONDON (AFP) - Britain’s Prince Harry was forced to drop his trousers during a military parade to prove he did not have his girlfriend’s name tattooed on his royal rear, a British newspaper said.

The 21-year-old son of Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, is halfway through his British Army officer training course at the elite Sandhurst academy. The Sun, Britain’s biggest-selling daily, said Harry, third in line to the throne, was ordered to bare his bum after rumours spread he had blonde Zimbawean-born girlfriend Chelsy Davy’s name inked on.

During a parade, a colour sergeant yelled: “Cadet Wales, drop your pants and show me your backside!”

Harry, apparently oblivious to the rumour, replied: “Are you serious?” before being ordered: “Just get them off, I want to see if it’s true”, The Sun said.

The prince had his trousers around his knees before the grinning colour sergeant said: “It’s OK, Wales, I’ll take your word for it!”

Those silly Brits.

All my love,
Air Force

Got a quick buzz on the stationary bike this morning but all of those bikes at the gym make a lot of racket when the seats are set as far back as they can be set. Not much to be done about it because my legs need the extension, so I smile apologetically at my fellow exercisers and crank the volume on my IPod.

Liz and Danielle stayed home today. They probably have a virus and as I write this, both should be back in bed asleep.

Fall is the best season in this part of Nevada. The leaves are changing in our neighborhood and they fall like rain in a good breeze. With the thunderstorm last night, it was positively warm and yummy this morning, and if I didn’t have class tonight, I would have biked to work this morning. Maybe tomorrow.

The conservative wing’s effort to push down the Miers nomination is gathering steam and their poster boy, the President, is looking more and more lame in his efforts to push it through. Don’t get me wrong because I think Miers is the best we’re going to get under the circumstances (again), but the longer this thing drags out, the better the chances Ms. Miers will step aside for “health reasons” or some other lame excuse. The next nominee will not be so centrist.

One positive outcome from this mess: the President nominated a qualified replacement for Alan Greenspan.

And the news media is saying White House staffers are walking on eggshells because the grand jury investigating the CIA/Plame leak may issues indictments this week. And key members of the senior Bush administration can’t sync up their stories with each other, so they may be seeing federal marshalls with subpoenas in hand very soon. And the Vice President may be one of them.

I guess the White House doesn’t have enough to do. Isn’t the country fighting a couple of wars, recovering from a series of devastating hurricanes, dealing with local and international terrorists, having trust issues with the current administration, etc. etc. etc….

Distance: 4.2 miles
Time: 15:00 minutes
313 calories burned

Monday, October 24, 2005

Hey, Navy:

Another tedious letter from the old man. Hope these do something for you. I won’t get mushy here. Much.

Woke up this morning at 3:30ish AM in a frozen sweat and could not back to sleep. Dunno what it was but it was not fun, so I watched SportsCenter until the dawn broke. Went to work, did that for nine or ten hours, then went to give yet another test, this one to my Monday class. About halfway through, the correctional officers kicked all the teachers out of the prison due to some emergency somewhere. We were not in any danger; I got the sense that it was a drill.

Got my December Bicycling Magazine a few days ago and my November issue today (go figure). There’s a good article about a dude who weighs 195 pounds today and 305 pounds (not a typo) not long ago. So maybe there’s hope for me yet. I was in the 260s when I started seriously biking and am now in the 240s. One day at a time.

On the official Navy website at navy.mil is an article from April 2005 you might find interesting, “Navy Releases Latest Selective Reenlistment Bonus Award Levels”. Here’s a nice sentence:

“Also announced in this message is the elevation of the ceiling limit on zone A nuclear ratings, as well as Cryptologic Technicians Interpretive (CTI) holding the 9211, basic Mandarin Chinese linguist, or 9216, basic Arabic linguist, NEC from $45,000 to $60,000.”

If that’s what they’re willing to spend today on CTIs who re-enlist, think about six years from now. That’s a frickin’ house, luv. :-)

Here’s some News of the Weird:

“Royalty by Opportunistic Encounter: After a lifelong search, Marty Johnson, a Minnesota mortgage broker, finally located and visited his birth father this year, according to an ABC News report. Dad is John Ogike, who was an exchange student from Nigeria when he had a brief affair with Marty’s mother, who gave Marty up for adoption, but today John Ogike is chief of the Aboh village in Nigeria, and Marty will be accepted as the new chief upon his dad’s death (but Marty is unsure whether to accept). [ABC News, 6-4-05]”

We had an unexpected rain shower and thunderstorm tonight, though it was nothing compared to what we saw on TV last night during the baseball game. It was a very nice change.

Time change on Sunday. Hope you got an extra hour of sleep.

All my love,
Air Force