Screw that love crap. This is what the world needs more of.

(Loads slow. Be patient.)

Thanks, JS!

[First heard about this last night at the prison Mr. Thompson escaped from. The correctional officers were in a pretty good mood.]

“Prison escapee captured in Vegas

LAS VEGAS - An escaped Carson City prison inmate was captured Tuesday in Las Vegas, three days after his story and photo were aired on a national television broadcast.

Jody Kenneth Thompson was arrested Tuesday by members of the U.S. Marshal Service and the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s SWAT team.

According to a Marshal Service press release, an anonymous tipster led authorities to an apartment in the 3900 block of Mountain Vista Street. As investigators from both departments closed in on the address, Thompson allegedly fled and ran to a nearby residence where he forced entry and attempted to hide. Thompson was found a short time later and placed under arrest without further incident.

Thompson allegedly mastered a prison break “fueled by love and a free ride,” said District of Nevada Acting United States Marshal Fidencio Rivera.

On the morning of Aug. 25, Thompson and others who were serving their sentences at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center on Snyder Avenue were assigned to load furniture onto a delivery truck going to the Lovelock Correctional Center. At approximately 8:30 a.m. the delivery truck departed NNCC. At approximately 11:30 a.m., Thompson was unaccounted for and believed to have escaped on the truck.

“Ironically he escaped with the assistance of Nevada Department of Corrections employee and love interest Ana Kastner,” Rivera said.

Kastner allegedly smuggled a cell phone into the prison and gave it to Thompson on or about Aug. 13, two weeks prior to his escape. Their alleged romantic relationship and her involvement were discovered during the investigation into Thompson’s escape. She was arrested on Aug. 27.

He was featured on Fox Network’s America’s Most Wanted television program Saturday.”

[Mr. Thompson will still be in the Nevada Maximum Security Prison in Ely long after my grandchildren graduate from college.][And I don’t have any grandchildren.][Yet.]

I play backgammon. A lot of backgammon.

Father figure Ken Ingerson taught me the game in the 1970s, but it was this year that I was bitten by the bug. My place of choice is It’s Your Turn which offers numerous games at reasonable prices. You can play for free but you’re limited to 25 moves a day; you’d be surprised how quickly those 25 moves disappear.

IYT offers eight or nine types of BG, of which I play three:
- Backgammon: this is the regular, traditional game, but with no doubling cube.
- Backgammon Pro: Regular game with doubling cube. First player to five points wins. This is match play, so there can be as many as nine one-point games before a winner is decided.
- Backgammon Pro-9: Regular game with doubling cube. First player to nine points wins. This is also match play, so there can be as many as 17 one-point games before a winner is decided.

You can play in three different environments:
- Regular games, which players can make moves from once every three days to once every 30 days. I always play three-day games because one-month games can take months to complete.
- Ladder games. Players join the game they want with set time limits they want (ex: moves every 28 hour moves to 100-hour moves). Failure to move within the set limit is a forfeit. Players climb the higher in the standings with each win.
- Tournament games. These are elimination tournaments where you play three to four players a round, two games against each player. I justed started tournament play and the highest I’ve ever gotten was the fourth round (13th place out of about 200 players).

Looking at my games right now…
Active regular games: 26. Most of these are plain old BG. (Only 26??? I’m slowing down.)
Active ladder games: 53 matches. Most of those are Backgammon Pro with one or two BG-9
Tournaments: 10 tournaments of almost all regular BG.

Now the big question: Do I win? Of the nearly 1400 BG games and matches I’ve played on IYT, I’ve won nearly 900 times which is two-thirds of games played (895/477/14 draws = 1386 games and matches). Of the three environments, I win about 62% of my regular games, and 70% of my tournament and ladder games.

All of which proves yet again that I need a life.

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Hey, Navy:

I’m typing this in class, which is pretty much on auto-pilot right now. I design my courses so the students work on assignments either from the book or from handouts. Inmates are a different type of student: my theory is they retain lessons much better when the teacher gets out of the way and lets them discover the material for themselves. After several semesters of prison teaching, I ain’t seen nothing to prove my theory wrong, yet.

As for the news around the house, the big story is Uncle Dennis and Aunt-elect Nicki decided to get married in Reno in June instead of Ireland. YM wasn’t surprised and it sounds like your seesters weren’t, either, but they all got passports out of the deal. I don’t know if Lara is taking the semester off, yet, because the main reason she was taking it off no longer applies, but I’m hoping she takes it off. She’s been working real hard and needs a break.

Danielle finished her third manuscript, which I find nothing less than amazing. We’re all going to be related to someone real famous. YM is not enjoying her time in the Hellmouth on King Street (you know how she gets sometimes) but she’s reving up for Christmas. Things are appearing out of storage in the garage, and there are garlands and other Noel things up on the walls. We’re probably getting a tree very soon but I’m thinking that when you get here, we’ll run out and get Charlie Brown tree. Lord knows we’re got enough decorations for two trees.

As for me, life is pretty much the same. I got my annual ear infection so I’m feeling a little light in the head (no smartass remarks, please), and I’m taking antibiotics that are the weight and size of an American quarter. I’ll probably stay home tomorrow and sleep all day. My hearing aid broke and is getting repaired, so my world is pretty quiet right now (except for the usual tennitis). My classes are winding down for the semester and I’m debating with myself whether to teach in the Spring. At one point, I wasn’t, but now I’m told I have three classes. It’s hard to keep up, sometimes.

We got our first serious snowfall of the season and were ‘blessed’ with about an inch on the valley floors. It got so cold, our neighbor’s outdoor sprinkler system blew a valve and water was gushing everywhere, higher than their bedrooms windows, in fact. As Murphy’s Law would have it, they were out of town, naturally. The neighbor around the corner had the tools to shut the water off at their main next to the street. It looks like we caught the fountain in time before it did any damage to their house and foundation, fortunately.

Since I don’t think it’s possible for a letter to get even more boring, I’ll wrap this one up by saying we miss hearing from you and hope you can write/call soon.

All my love,
Air Force

The ballot for the Baseball Hall of Fame class of 2006 was released today and I will be making fearless predictions soon.

Here’s the email I sent a year ago when the ballot for 2005 was released. This is what the Hall would have looked like if I was King of Baseball:

—————————————————-

Below is this year’s Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot. IMHO, Wade Boggs and Ryne Sandberg were sure-locks this year, and everyone else is a toss-up

If I ran the Hall of Fame and my vote was the only one that counted…

- Andre Dawson would get a gimme for the knees he lost playing on AstroTurf for the Expos, a substance that should be banned in the same category as acid rock at a church recital.

- Jim Abbott may not be a baseball HOFer, but he’s a true American hero for inspiring a generation of kids for being better than they thought they were. He’s in.

- Rich Gossage should be in the Hall, like there’s any question, but players with loud nicknames are automatically cool (”GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSE!!!”). Ditto for Chili Davis.

- One guy in the Hall has a disease named after him. Let’s put one in the Hall that has a career-saving operation named after him. Tommy John, come on down.

- The HOF is for career excellence, but I’m partial to a guy who pitched his team to a World Series victory in a series-clinching game. And the game went into extra innings. Jack Morris is in.

- Dale Murphy was (and is) a Christian gentleman in a sport and time that made bad decisions easy things to do. Oh yeah: he was a league MVP, he played hard, and gave the Braves street cred before their current run of excellence. You’re in, Dale.

- Lee Smith was the Mariano Rivera of his time. He’ll lose votes because he bounced around baseball. Not a problem here. You da man, Lee.

- Darryl Strawberry is a tough one because the BBHOF seems to care more about character that the other Hall of Fames. Give me a break. We forgave Lawrence Taylor and put him in the NFL Hall of Fame, and he never met a line of cocaine he didn’t snort. For Heaven’s sake, Ty Cobb is in the BBHOF and his hatred of everyone is legendary. Even so, I’ll take a pass this year. Darryl’s vices and self-denial impacted his teammates and organizations, both on and off the field. My memory will be a little more faded next year.

- And finally: Steve Garvey. There are probably good reasons to vote him in, maybe, but they’ll never convince me. All I can remember him knocking the Cubs out of the NL playoffs in 1984 and running the bases with his fist up high. I get a small amount of satisfaction that he had to do it in a butt-ugly uniform. Even so, he can bite me (I’m not bitter…nooooo….)

Later.

Not an overwhelming weekend. Youngest finished her third manuscript and rumor is that all of them are thousands and thousands of words long, which is amazing. The biggest thing I ever wrote was some papers for grad classes, so to be so proficient at such a young age….wow.

Did go to the gym yesterday and this morning, but sort of puttered around without really doing anything. I jogged a little for some variety and used some weights, plus did the usual 100 stomach crunches and 60 leg-lifts. Argh. Created a new game which I modestly call Thunderball. It involves throwing a basketball at a backboard above the hoop from a long distance amd doing that as hard as possible, and repeating many, many times. The point is not to make baskets but to make a loud noise and to have the ball come back at you at high speed. It is satisfying in a testosterone kind of way.

While on the court yesterday, I learned a life lesson. When shooting baskets for real, relaxing is directly proportional to the number of made baskets. The more I relaxed, the more “nothing but net” I got. It got me to thinking about life and achieving goals. Something to mull over some more.

One of my colleague’s friends posted this to the Craig’s List in Reno:

Kidney Stone for sale! - $20000

Here you go, a once in a lifetime opportunity to own your very own kidney stone.

I have one of these beauties stored away in my left kidney right now. It’s an impressive 1.5″ in diameter which makes loosing it impossible (it also makes it impossible to pass or even have it broken up by ultrasound). The only way I can part with it is by having a surgeon cut it out. While I have grown fond of the little guy and all the joy it’s given me over the last year, I have decided it’s time to sell it.

Here is where my loss is your gain.

Since I can’t get insurance (pre-existing condition) and I don’t have the 20,000 dollars needed up front to pay for the removal, I am selling it off for the cost of the surgery. Whoever pays for it will have this wonderful little gem shipped to them after it’s removed.

Be the life of the party. Be the envy of the neighborhood. (If you are a heartless bitch, it’s an added incentive to know that this thing has caused a man more pain than a butcher knife shoved into his back and twisted while at the same time having a pair of vice grips clamped onto his private parts).

Act now and I will even attach it to a keychain as an added bonus.

This is no joke. Thanks to our wonderful healthcare system, I am grasping at straws to get this thing taken out before it does any more damage. So if you are a Liberal, here’s your chance to work out some of that guilt for being successful in life. If you are a Conservative, here’s your chance to help out someone who’s taking matters into his own hands.

In a word, eeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwww!

What was I doing:

50 years ago: I am still in the future, but the events leading to my existence are coming together. My mother is fifteen years old and is having problems. Although bright and personable, she is battling her parents and teachers constantly, perhaps more than a ‘normal’ teenager, she confesses to me later, and her school days are quickly coming to an end. She will drop out of high school at 17 and begin traveling, sustaining herself by selling magazines and who knows how else. She will join the Women’s Army Corp in time to get some direction in her life and will meet my father along the way.

40 years ago: I am probably still living with my parents and two-year-old sister in 1960s nuclear family bliss. Dad is an army medic and my mother is his second wife. He’s already moved this family through four states in four years (Texas, Alaska, New Hampshire, Virginia). Vietnam is shifting into higher gear and my father will be leaving within the year to do a tour in Southeast Asia, leaving us to live in a Reno slum off Denslow Drive (he would eventually do three tours total there). The strain of the constant moving and separation, plus the ongoing fidelity issues between the two of them, would end their marriage four years later.

30 years ago: My mother, her third husband Richard, and I return to northern Nevada after a year in Henderson. If there is a tragic figure in this life of mine, it is him. He was medically and honorably discharged from the Army during Korea for reasons I never discovered, but he is a gentle soul. Because of his soft nature, he is completely whipped and browbeaten by my mother, and I have no respect for him and treat him horribly, one of the deepest regrets of my life. He plays the viola like an angel, but those angels cannot save him from his own inner demons. I come home one day to find he’s swallowed a bunch of pills. He survives and my mom divorces him, then remarries him later. They divorce again not long afterwards and he fades from our lives. Richard dies in 1996 at the age of 64 in Santa Clara.

20 years ago: I have my own nuclear family and cannot believe it is possible to be so happy. My wife is pretty and sexy, and my daughter is the smartest child in existence. I have been in the Air Force a little over three years and am already a non-commissioned officer, a fast burner by any measurement. I will be a team chief of a million-dollar data processing facility in the near future, one of the youngest ever, and I’m thinking about going twenty years. But I am not satisfied with my career path. Soon I will pass a test to become an drug and alcohol abuse counselor and leave my family for San Antonio, Texas for schooling. It does not work out for many reasons and I return to Nebraska, the first of many career failures. There is a gigantic silver lining: Liz and I conceive our second incredible daughter shortly after my return.

10 years ago: I graduate with my third associate degree. I’ve been a civilian for four years and every penny is precious, especially with raising three dynamic and energetic daughters. All are much smarter and cuter than their father, who is silently amazed that his gene pool is even partially responsible for them. If I could, I would reach back and grab those days once again…but they are ten years ago….

5 years ago: I am working at the university where my grandfather dedicated so much of his life, but unlike him, I am not a good fit for this school. The long-established cliques take my hiring as an intrusion into their self-inflated status quo and despite my efforts, the waters are poisoned for good and I will be “invited” to find new employment elsewhere. I will bounce back from this failure, which I take far too personally, but it takes years to rebuild my confidence to the point where I will try new things.

1 year ago: I’m back to teaching college computer classes at the prison. It’s actually only one class and although it started with more than 10 students, prison life and a lax drop policy has whittled my class down to three whole students. My grandmother, a longtime family fixture around the holidays, has moved to California and we cannot make the trip to see her. It will be her last Thanksgiving. Eldest daughter has given up on school and is beginning to make noises about the Navy; she will be gone to basic training within a few months. Though I do not know it at the time, 2004 is the last year I will have the complete set of relatives in my life, but that is the way things are. Life moves on…

There are significant events that don’t make this chronology because of the timing, notably the abomination that is my mother’s second husband. There is also high school, Ken, ROTC, being a Baha’i', and my first real girlfriend, but those are stories for another time.

I wrote this not long after I had my appendix taken out. To set things up, I had felt a pressure on the lower right sector of my abdomen on the previous Saturday. This was not unusual because I had felt something there for many weeks, especially after working out, and since the pressure never got any worse, I could usually rub down the muscle and it would eventually go away. By the next Monday, the pressure was constant and it was time to be thinking about a couple of scenarios: hernia or appendix.

—————————-

Thursday, February 25th, 2005:

6:00 AM: Woke up and realized I’d be going to the doctor today or tomorrow. Pressure is still not bad, but it is an “adult moment”: this thing is not going away and it ain’t going to get better by itself.

6:45 AM: Decided in the back of my mind that since I possibly could be on an operating room table very soon, I would break my diet and chow down on the McDonalds Big Breakfast of grease, carbs, and soda. One of the few good decisions I made today.

9:15 AM: Called for an appointment to see Dr. Jones. Nothing is available for a week except for something at 2:50 PM in the afternoon. I take the appointment in a week.

9:20 AM: My lower abdomen twinges. I call back and take the 2:50 appointment.

10:00 AM: Another adult moment. I realize the possibility of surgery is evolving into the probability of surgery. I have one last donut and drink.

1:00 PM: I take the rest of the day off as sick leave. First stop: my other job at the Prison. I need to get a TB test because some correctional officers tested positive for exposure to tuberculosis and all staffers must have a test. Part of my mind realizes that as I’m walking and climbing stairs, my right hand is in my right front pants pocket pushing down and I’m not walking straight up. And I don’t get the TB test because it has to be assessed with 48-72 hours, both of those days landing on the weekend. A wasted trip.

2:00 PM: Stop off at the house to get the checkbook. Two of the daughters are there and I know I should say something…but what? At this point I realize I haven’t told Liz yet, which I know I will pay dearly for later. I call her at work and tell her I’m going to the doctor and there’s a “slight possibility” I may need to go to the hospital. I honestly don’t know who I’m trying to spare: her or me. Danielle senses something amiss but I wave her off with some glib remark and leave early for the doctor.

2:15 PM: My appointment is 2:50, but the nurse has an open room and I spend five whole minutes in the waiting room. She gets the history and vitals. BP is 138/80 (darn good for me, considering) and no high temp. Dr. Jones comes in, lays me down, presses my abdomen, and I make the appropriate noise. Up until now, there’s only been pressure. He pushes the side and it is painful. He’s not fooled by my witty banter and points me to the bathroom for a urine sample.

Oh boy. I haven’t taken anything for four hours and the tank is dry. Running the tap and drinking three cups of water produces…nearly nothing…into a large, clear plastic cup. After fifteen minutes of jumping jacks (okay, I hopped a little) and more water, still nothing. I wrapped my hand around the bottom of the cup to hide my less-than-masculine sample and hand it to the nurse below waist level, trying to subtly hint that this was the best I could do under the circumstances. She holds it up to the light above her head like it’s an Olympic torch and breezes it past her three attractive colleagues at the nursing station, who are strangely mesmerized by my pathetically minimal urine sample. Can it get worse? Oh yeah. I forgot to zip up my fly.

Back to the examining room and Dr. Jones is taking no chances. He is sending me literally across the street to the hospital for a Cat scan. He says while I’m not showing any of the atypical signs of appendicitis (no fever, no nausea), he had a patient yesterday that showed nearly the same symptoms. He doesn’t say, and I find out later, that this patient’s appendix had burst.

2:50 PM: Two minute drive across the street and not a legal parking spot to be found. This strangely occupies my mind more that it should for the next few hours.

3:10 PM: I check in through Outpatient and head for Radiology. There I get the lovely news: in order for the Cat scan to work, I need to drink Barium. Lots of lovely, delicious Barium. Three large drinking glasses of Barium. I start sipping at 3:45 PM. More good news: it takes two and a half hours for the stuff to completely coat my digestive tract. Now I start feeling sorry for myself. The only saving grace is I get to change the TV in the lobby from some chick flick on Lifetime to Patton.

4:00 PM: I offer the nurse at the counter $20 not to let me finish the last half glass.

4:01 PM: $30.

4:20 PM: I finish the Barium, which has to be slowly ingested for maximum effort. One of my fellow patients says the drink used to be a lot worse. How can it get worse than that putrid drink?

5:00 PM: One of the side effects of the liquid: it’s a purgative. Whatever food is left in my system is gone at warp speed. During one of these episodes, Dr. Jones comes in the bathroom and yells over the stall wall that I’m not to leave the hospital until the Chief of Radiology clears me. I hope my responding moan sounds a little like English. Now I’m really down on me.

5:30 PM: The remaining Barium is resting heavily in me and pushing my appendix really hard. Sitting down is no longer an option, and not only am I not standing up straight, I’m bent over to the side (“I’m a little teapot, tip me over and pour me out.”). I let the nurse know it may be getting time for some painkillers. Lots of painkillers. She sends me out to get my IV.

A defining moment in my life. One I will never forget.

The patient ward where I’m getting poked is the same ward where cancer patients get their chemo, and two of them are there today. One patient is with her adult daughter who is knitting at the speed of light (not too hard to figure out why). The other is a young girl half my age. They’re getting their drugs via taps into their upper chests. The girl has no hair on her head and she talking about how the estrogen in her body is transmitting the cancer throughout her system. What follows is the worst needle experience in my life but it isn’t the worst in the room. I take it like a man.

The nurse is experienced in giving IVs but cannot find a cooperative vein in my left forearm, despite a couple of minutes of digging. She gives me a local in my right arm and the vein there agrees to be poked on the first try. I leave the ward thanking God all I have is a bruised arm, a bad appendix, and a more realistic understanding of what is happening to me. I’m done with complaining for the day. The day, though, is far from over.

6:45 PM: The Cat scanner becomes available. I lay down, have some Iodine pumped into me for contrast, and learn I have to hold my breath for six seconds while this $1.2 million thingy spins around me like a whirling dervish (I always wanted to say that). One more time, six more seconds. This is easy. One more time. 23 seconds. Aw crap. I’m so not ready for that. Not only am I turning blue, my lungs are pushing everything down, including my appendix and the remaining Barium.

7:15 PM: Here comes the Chief of Radiology. I have a slightly inflamed appendix. I call Liz to tell her I’m spending the night.

7:30 PM: Off to the ER to get checked in and they are backed up into the hallways, but an appendix is a show-stopper. While they’re freeing up a bed for me, I got outside to clear my head and stop the shakes (I’m getting seriously operated on for the first time in 35 years!). Through the bright lights, there’s a star, probably the left arm of Orion. I ask it to look out for my family. I ask nothing for me.

7:45 PM: Into bed and the hospital gown, and giving the vitals again: By now, I’ve got it down: 6’5”, 260 (ding), no fever, no drinking, no smoking, nothing since 10:00 AM (except Barium (yuck)), and other boring medical history. In all, about twenty people will be hearing that before I leave the hospital.

7:50 PM: Liz arrives. I’ve told her before not to come right away because there was nothing really going on, but I knew there was something. She is worried and more than a little pissed, especially when she hears I’ve been feeling like this for days. I don’t know if it’s the macho thing that kept me from telling her all this time, but we agree we’re going to have a talk later. Long after I give up the advantage of being in a hospital gown and bed. Darn it.

8:05 PM: Dr. Bessette, my surgeon, starts feeling me up and he is perplexed like Dr. Jones. Again, the only symptom I’m showing is the pressure; no nausea, no real pain, no fever. He says he’ll look at the Cat scan, which is nearly foolproof, and the blood work. He’s fairly certain he’s operating on me and says the appendix is coming out, one way or another, and if it looks good, they’ll look around inside for something else. I’ll be completely out under general anesthetic, which everyone in the operating room would agree later, turns out to be a good thing.

The nurse comes to take my blood and, as God as my witness, I don’t feel a thing, not even the needle going in my arm. This is a good sign. I find out later that my blood work is perfectly normal. I’m weirding these people out.

10:45 PM: Time to go to my room upstairs. Because the house is full tonight, I get a private room in the…OB ward. God has a great sense of humor. I start making the dilation and epidural jokes. Nobody is really amused by my show of bravado. Liz is enjoying the rich justice of the moment. As much as she can.

11:40 PM: Things are really moving along now. The OB nurse got me checked in and I got about three minutes to catch my breath, then it was off to pre-op. I talked to Dr. DeReimer, my anesthesiologist, who is a really nice guy. He asks me if I really want an epidural. We have a good laugh. In a few minutes, I’ll be scaring the crap out of him.

11:50 PM: Liz leaves for the waiting room and I have my first panic attack. A few deep breathes and the sedation they gave me helps.

Friday, February 11th, 2005:

12:00 AM: Operating room. My last memory is climbing from the bed to the table. I don’t even remember laying all the way down. The operation officially begins.

Dr. DeReimer told me about what happened later, but he started off by saying, “The first thing we tried didn’t work. That’s okay. Just like an airline pilot, I have back-up procedures.” When you hear that, it’s a clue. It appears I can’t have a normal intubation procedure down my throat because the opening below my voicebox is smaller than anticipated. After a few attempts (and my oxygen level dropping down to 65%), he had to intubate through the nose. The entire process stressed him out a tad, but things worked out okay. I was in the operating room for 90 minutes, an hour longer than they anticipated.

Once I was breathing normally, this is what Dr. Bessette did, courtesy of WebMD:

“Laparoscopic appendectomy: Three or four incisions, 0.25 in.(0.6 cm) to 0.5 in.(1.3 cm) long, are made in the abdomen. A surgeon inserts a viewing device (laparoscope) into one incision. The laparoscope is attached outside the body to a video monitor, allowing the surgeon to see inside the abdomen. Surgical instruments are inserted into the other incisions to remove the appendix.”

What isn’t mentioned they also open another hole and stick a third tube in to blow some air around the organ so they can do the cutting (as I write this the following Sunday, I’m still feeling incredibly bloated with air). Once everything was visualized, Dr. Bessette told me everything went smoothly and he extracted an infected appendix.

While this is all going on, Liz is getting worried in the waiting room. After they take me to post-op (of which I have no memory), they let her come in to see me. I’m a bloody mess from the intubation through the nose and I’m talking. She won’t tell me what I said. After they take me back to my OB room, she finally heads home. It’s about 2:30 AM.

10:00 AM: I wake up. I’m groggy, my mouth is drier than any desert, but there is little to no disorientation. I know where I am, why I am there, and Liz is beside the bed waiting for me (she had gotten two whole hours of sleep compared to my ten somewhat adventurous hours of unconsciousness). My first meal is, appropriately, lots of ice chips. My new nurse, Ronda, hints that my snoring is a tad loud. There’s no justice for men, especially in the OB ward.

11:30 AM: I am getting dressed and getting out of there. Both Drs. Bessette and DeReimer have stopped by with their news and stories. The good news is because of the procedure and the minimal aftereffects, I can resume a normal life with no diet or lifestyle restrictions, and I can go back to work whenever I’m ready. The downside is because of the difficult intubation, I’ll have to wear a MedicAlert for the rest of my life.

As I write this a couple days later, small things start to filter in.

There are little band-aids covering the five small holes they opened in my chest. The hair around those holes do not like me taking off the band-aids.

My jaw line and the muscles under my jaw are sore, probably from when they were holding my head while they were intubating me. When I got out of my hospital bed for the first time after the operation, there was a large Velcro strap in the sheets. They were using that and others to hold me down.

The doctors, nurses, and staff at Carson Tahoe Hospital are the best. I’ll pay those bills gladly. Within reason, of course.

The young girl with cancer was envious of my veins.

Life is feeling pretty damn good right now.

Saturday, November 26, 2005

Hey, Navy:

The highlands to the west got their first serious snow of the season last night and the snowline itself dipped pretty far into the valley, but not onto the floor. Instead, we got rain which immediately froze to everything. Lucky it was the weekend because there was lots of black ice out there. It looks like it was ‘warm’ at RTC today and it’s still above freezing as I write this (9:15 PM PST). It looks like you’re going to enjoy 50 degree weather at the beginning of the week with some thunderstorms, then back into a below-freezing cold spell.

It was another quiet day in the Moore house. Lara went outside while the sun was shining and did not burst into flame. Danielle was showing off a public service announcement she created which is darn cute and has exceptionally high production values. She can tell you more about it. YM is watching Braveheart, or as she probably calls it, That Crazy Irishman Who Saved Scotland.

I did some schoolwork today, but more interesting (probably only to me), I checked out a pictorial history of Abraham Lincoln. The Civil War trivia is fascinating and some of the photographs are startling, such as the one of the soldier literally torn apart by artillery at Gettysburg. His chest cavity is open to the world and his left hand is…way over there, if you know what I mean. Brutal.

On a cheerier note, here’s some stupid people from the news. Makes me proud to be an American.

- Inmates to Process Moose Meat for Charity: Alaska inmates at a prison work farm are taking on a new assignment: butchering the meat of moose struck by trains each winter along 68 miles of track.

- Man Cuts in Line, Is Wrestled to Ground: Security guards wrestled a man to the ground in a Wal-Mart after he cut in line to get laptop computers that were on sale.

- Baltimore Losing Light Poles to Thieves: Baltimore city streets are getting darker because thieves, some disguised as utility crews, are stealing 30-foot light poles.

- Reno Man Accused of $200,000 Legos Theft: William Swanberg, 40, of Reno, Nev., was indicted by a grand jury, accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of the colorful plastic building blocks from area Target stores.

- Drug Smuggler Crowned Miss Penitentiary: South America’s latest beauty queen won’t be campaigning abroad for world peace any time soon, unless, of course, she’s granted early parole.

- Teacher Accused of Anti-Bush Quiz: A high school teacher is facing questions from administrators after giving a vocabulary quiz that included digs at President Bush and the extreme right.

- Bear Bites Hunter Who Shot It: A black bear bit and clawed a hunter who had just shot it four times in what authorities said appeared to be a first.

- Frozen Turkey Used to Break Windows of Burning Car: An elderly Illinois couple was hospitalized after being rescued from their burning car by a man who used his Thanksgiving turkey to break the windows.

- Woman Who Dumped Kittens Sentenced to Night in Woods: Snow and temperatures in the 20s are expected when a northeast Ohio woman begins a 15-day jail sentence by spending a night in the woods.

- Two ‘Wives’ Fight Over Sergeant’s Remains: The final resting place for a retired sergeant may be determined by a judge as two women battle over which was his wife at the time of his death.

- Man Leads Police on Slow Lawnmower Case: Bad idea: fleeing from police in a stolen car. Terrible idea: fleeing in a stolen lawnmower. But that’s what police say a “happy drunk” did, a decision that landed the suspect back in prison for violating his parole.

Try to call and write when you can. Thinking of you.

All my love,
Air Force

Friday, November 25, 2005

Hey, Navy:

Have had this letter open on the laptop for a while and it ain’t filling up by itself, so I’ll start with the usual. There’s lots of rain outside at 7:00 PM, and Elaine emailed this morning to say it was raining in the Bay Area, so it looks like we’re entering a wet phase for a couple of days. The ski resorts were doing their usual bitching in the newspapers about how the snow gods were ignoring their goat and baby calf sacrifices, but it appears they will get the white stuff tonight.

YM and L are at what I lovingly call the Carson Rathole Theaters watching Walk The Line, the Johnny Cash biopic. Danielle is writing up a storm in the living room and her bedroom. I’m mentally kicking myself for not finishing my homework from class. Graded some tests, but got sick of looking at the DEEP stacks of assignments that my students have so meticulously produced for grades. I’ll go back to my office tomorrow and spend a lot of time there.

You mentioned to YM that you might stay at a motel while you’re here over Christmas, which you’re welcome to do, though you’re welcome to stay here. Be warned that Danielle has completely taken over your former space so you may have to either (a) sleep in the living room, or (b) bribe your seester.

The Urban Legend web site says that turkey meat does not make you sleepy:

Turkey does contain tryptophan, an amino acid which is a natural sedative. But tryptophan doesn’t act on the brain unless it is taken on an empty stomach with no protein present, and the amount gobbled even during a holiday feast is generally too small to have an appreciable effect. That lazy, lethargic feeling so many are overcome by at the conclusion of a festive season meal is most likely due to the combination of drinking alcohol and overeating a carbohydrate-rich repast.

And this was in your local civilian newspaper, the Waukegan News Sun, where it talked about feeding 6,000 recruits at the RTC:

In the past the base has served up 2,416 pounds of turkey, nearly 100 birds. There was also 2,250 pounds of prime rib and 1,680 pounds of baked ham. Recruits can have as much food as they want. For dessert, there were 312 pumpkin pies, and 126 each of apple and cherry pies. The three galleys were festooned with holiday decorations. “The galley puts on quite a show. They have a lot of pride in what they do,” said Moody. One reason is that for many of the young sailors this is their first Thanksgiving away from home. “They try to provide a meal that compensates for that,” he said.

That latter part applied to you this year. We’ll make it up to you at Christmas. LYL!!!!

All my love,
Air Force