Monday, May 30, 2011

Memorial Day

It would take someone much more eloquent than me to properly express the thanks that we, as a nation, owe to everyone who serves and has served. So, because I don't think I can say it all, I'll just say…thanks.

Thanks to all of you who went through the tough training, and all you who devoted yourselves to training them so they could stay alive to come home. Grateful remembrance for those who didn't survive, but died on the messy site of some battle, or in the rubble of some distant city with a name we always mispronounce. Thanks to those those who managed logistics, kept communications going, flew support….

Thank you Tom, Bob, Buddy, Gary and Steve; thank you Paul, Curtis, David and Ric. Thank you all the other guys I went to college with who were just back from Vietnam. And thanks to that group of men I worked with at USAA, twenty years afterwards. I remember your stories, and the glimpses we got of what you had been through. Thank you.

Thank you Chuck. Thanks for telling me so matter-of-factly, all those decades later, about how things were, about the soldiers you saw die, sometimes in a group, and what you did to keep your guys as safe as you could. Thanks for serving so well, and I hope you weren't offended by my dark thoughts at your funeral, about someone in charge deciding it was okay for you to be exposed to the Agent Orange that eventually killed you.

Thanks to my late father and my father-in-law, who served in WWII. Thank you Wendell, Richard and Milton. Thanks for your devotion to accomplishing your mission, doing your job excellently, making the difference. Maybe someday I'll relate some of the stories you tell.

Thank you, Eva! During the first Gulf War, I worried about you and wore a yellow ribbon tied on my name badge. (If you recall, I handed you tiny scissors and you cut it off after you came home.) Thank you for the critical work you did…and also for the mental picture (at once amusing and very frightening) of you working under a table when there was incoming fire.

I've never really quite understood the difference between Veteran's Day and Memorial Day (and that's a different post), but I've decided it might be this: Memorial Day should include those who also stood and waited. Their sacrifices weren't as likely to involve blood, but were still pretty costly. They didn't see their dads, their husbands, wives, sons or daughters for long periods. They lived with the constant fear of getting official notification that the worst had happened. They moved, a lot. They were patient and understanding, through their frustration and longing. And they also deserve thanks today. So…thank you, Nancy, Richard, Greg & Tim; thank you, Cindy, Barbara, Linda, Steve and Milt. Thank you, Mark; thanks, Jean. Thank you Ann, Yolanda and the boys.

Thanks to everyone whose name I've forgotten to mention, and everyone I haven't personally known and yet would still like to thank personally. Your contribution is beyond measure, and we truly are grateful.

Happy Memorial Day, everybody.

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Complaints

I hate it when people complain! My friend Joe used to say that, until one of his young sons pointed out that statement itself is a complaint. I happen to agree with Joe, but here I go, blissfully ignoring that fact. I don't mean to complain and all*, but…
  • I really hate website pages with black (or otherwise very dark) backgrounds. They bother my (apparently) aging eyes. I follow a couple of blogs that use black backgrounds, and I try to skim over them very, very quickly. If at all.
  • Firefox is once again having problems with Google-related websites (yes, blogger/blogspot is owned by Google). The top of the page for this blog is supposed to look like this:
but instead looks like this:
which means it's a challenge to log in. I like the user interface of Firefox, and the fact that it's kept pretty current, but it really doesn't play well with Google or any sites having anything to do with Google. It's greatly annoying me, and possibly forcing me to the Safari side.
  • We have too. much. stuff. Still, even with everything as tidy as we could get it in preparation for Erik** and Hessu's*** visit. I'm digging out the things that I ended up just sticking away somewhere out of sight before they came. (Okay, there wasn't much of that, but there was some.) I just opened a drawer in the breakfast area and found a bunch of chargers for mobile phones that I'm pretty sure we haven't used in five years. Oy.
  • Erik and Hessu went home. I liked having the company! Granted, it was a little odd those last couple of days. They were supposed to leave Tuesday morning, but ended up leaving late Thursday afternoon. Because of the weather in the U.S., and the volcanic ash from Iceland, flights were canceled and airports were closed, and they kept being bumped back another day, and another day, and another day. When they finally left, I told them (very sincerely) that I hoped they would come back soon — but not that same day.
  • All day I haven't been able to decide whether today is a day to get things done or relax. I've been alternating being industrious and taking geography quizzes. (FYI, I love knowing where places are, and I'm willing to waste a lot of time to be sure that I do.) It's been an oddly busy/casual, productive/relaxing day.

Okay, done with complaining for the moment. Back to geography quizzes.

You have a great Memorial Day weekend!


*That's a line from a song from the musical Working, a play from the '70s you've never heard of, but which was directed by Steven Schwartz and featured Patti LuPone, Joe Mantegna, and Lynne Thigpen, among others. You can buy the soundtrack from amazon.com for only $200. I have a copy of it around here somewhere, and I think it's going on eBay pretty darn quickly.

**Those links won't work for you if you're not on Facebook. But, really, sign up. It's fun!

***While you're at it, check out the video Hessu took during the bad weather that happened while they were here. Being European, they haven't much experience with tornadic activity. In fact, as Erik pointed out to me, Finland is kind of uber-safe, natural disaster-wise. No seismic activity, no tornadoes, protected from tsunamis, no hurricanes. Granted, there's the occasional avalanche in the far north (Hi, Saariselkä!), and maybe a flash flood or two, but nothing widespread or anything. We made them sit in a closet for a while during the tornado warning. It was a new experience for them.****

****In case I haven't mentioned it before, I love Finland. Finns, as a group, are admirable and likeable people, and there are many, many things about their culture that I enjoy and respect. And despite what you may have heard on Conan O'Brien, it's a great place.

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Quick ham update (and not a single Rapture reference)

The Dayton Cowboys survived Hamvention. I don't know how wild and crazy they got, but a sewer line did break, flooding part of the flea market. I'm not pointing any fingers, you understand.

They'll be at the Air Force Museum tomorrow morning, then start back to DFW. I expect some stories. Rich emailed that he thought about buying me a "Retro Game Console," aka an old quarter slot machine. I answered that it wouldn't be a bad saving system. I could play the slot(s) all I wanted and get to keep all the money. I'm not sure it would do much for my productivity, though, and that tends to be just a little bit marginal as it is now.
Actual slot machine that could soon be in my living room.
or
My new method of saving (75¢ at a time).

I'm going to go lie on the sofa, sip a cool drink and read. I wanted to do that earlier, but we were out of Diet Coke (my cool drink of choice), so I had to go get some. I could have gone to a grocery store, but it's Saturday and I would've had to wait in line. If I have to have the soda all drunk up by 6:00, I just don't have that kind of time. I went to the Exxon station instead. Plenty of sipping time left! (Okay, one Rapture reference.)

Monday, May 16, 2011

The Dayton Cowboys hit the road

I have a couple of meaningful and, you know, deep posts I've started writing, but it's going to be a few days before I can finish them. I've been and will be pretty busy these couple of days.

Besides my on-going job of volunteering for the Chamber, I've had extra cleaning and organizing to get done. Erik and Hessu will be getting here tomorrow evening, then the Dayton Cowboys© will be leaving at o-dark-thirty Wednesday morning.

Dayton, Ohio, is the site of Hamvention, the goal of a yearly ham radio operators' pilgrimage. Hamecca, if you will. It's the big annual amateur (ham) radio event. Erik and Hessu are a couple of Finns who are going to it. You see, Rich is a ham radio operator (since he was, I think, 12 years old). When he was working for Nokia and traveling to Finland six or eight times a year, he made friends with a bunch of Finnish hams. He visited them when he traveled there, they'd do radio stuff together, and a few of them would come here for a few weeks every year (usually timing it so they could be here for Hamvention). They stayed with us. Erik and Matti were the ones who came most often, and I simply loved having them visit. They were perfect house guests, charming, interesting, and low maintenance, and I was very sorry when they stopped making their annual treks. (Matti got a new, very demanding job. Erik got married and had kids. You know how it goes.) Well, this year Matti won't make it, but Erik's girls are older now, and he'll be here tomorrow! Hessu, whom I've never met, is coming as well, and I'm sure I'll like him. Finns tend to be a likeable bunch, as a rule.

Texas and Finnish flags
fly at Hamvention in '03
(That's Jouni, Erik & Matti.)
All these guys who make this trip, in years past, used to get a little bit…well, wild is the wrong word. Silly isn't the right word, either. But they're both in the ballpark. They would…well, okay, here's an example. One of them bought a radar gun at Hamvention (no, there was no actual reason for it, he just bought it), and they spent the two-day drive back playing Trolling For Tail Lights. That is, they'd be cruising down the highway, point the radar gun forward, pull the trigger, and see how many cars would hit the brakes to get back under the speed limit. See? Not wild, or silly, exactly, but something not too far off.

When they first started planning their trip, I asked Erik if he thought they'd be more sedate now, since they're all older, or if they'd be like a bunch of dogs off their chains because it's been so long. He speculated that it would be both. I have a feeling he's right. We'll see, though I suppose it may take a while for me to hear the details of some of what they do.

I'm calling them the Dayton Cowboys, BTW, because a road trip across the U.S. has a little bit of mystique to it and, well, they're coming to Texas, after all. Plus I thought flying fifteen hours just to drive for two days deserved some kind of special recognition. And that's just the name that occurred to me as I put it on my calendar for Tuesday: "Dayton Cowboys hit the road."

So Rich and I have both been tidying up for the guys' visit (it's amazing how much stuff accumulates in the corners and on every horizontal surface). They'll only be spending the night, then leaving very early on Wednesday morning. But we're doing some cleaning and organizing that should have been done long ago, and trying to get it done before they get here.

Meaningful posts later, after the guys are on their way. For now, back to shoveling.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Rain vs. bladder

I was on my way to deliver a print job a little while ago when it started pouring down rain. Since it seemed like hauling cardboard boxes of (expensively printed) paper out of my trunk in the middle of a deluge might not be the best idea ever, and since I was very near Southlake Town Square, I zipped into one of the parking garages to wait it out.

I read my email. I looked at Facebook. I read through all the tweets in both my personal and business Twitter accounts. Still pouring.

My attention was flagging a little, but the threat of several hundred bucks' worth of envelopes turning to pulp, or — worse — hail damage to my new(ish) car, kept me stationary. (Stationery. Envelopes. Har!)

After a while, though, I started wondering if it were the iced tea and water I had had with lunch, or the coffee I had afterwards that I was beginning to regret. Eventually I began having second thoughts about the whole bunch of them, plus all other beverages, so I took my chances with the rain.

There's a joke here about being wet, raining, pouring, outside and inside. I'll leave that up to you.