Author Archives: momdude

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About momdude

Space cadet | Family dude | Photographer | Music lover | Traveler | Science fiction fan | Hugo Award nominee | Writer | 5x NASA Social participant | KC Chiefs fan | LA Kings fan | Senior Director of Finance & Administration for ALS Network | Member & former staff Finance Officer at the Commemorative Air Force SoCal Wing | Hard core left-wing liberal | Looking for whatever other shenanigans I can get into

You Can’t Take A Bad Picture Here – November 07th

There are places on the planet where it is damn near impossible to take a bad picture, no matter your equipment, skill level, or whatever. I’m sure there are folks who somehow do manage to screw it up, but they’re in a different class from us mere mortals.

For example: London

My first stop has repeatedly been the Thames and the Battle of Britain monument. A favorite, it’s HUGE and wonderful.

A short walk to Parliament and Big Ben. It was grey and raining all day. That happens there a lot.

Some nice person figured that I might like to have proof that I was there. They were correct. Thank you, nice person!

St. James Park, looking toward Buckingham Palace. Not seen are the viscious geese that figured if I was there I just MUST have bread and was holding out on them.

Buckingham Palace.

Picadilly Square. Now getting dark and raining.

Trafalgar Square. Behind me was a guy on a unicycle playing bagpipes with flames shooting out the top. Not something you see every day.

The Albert Memorial in Hyde Park. It would be nice to get to see a concert or organ recital at Royal Albert Hall some day.

One of my favorite London pictures – an ancient, tiny cottage in Hyde Park, with a steel and glass skyscraper  just behind it. That’s London to me. Things hundreds of years old cheek & jowl to things built yesterday.

This was my second (third?) trip to London, in 2016, and all three have been about 18 hours long and a rush of how-much-can-I-cram-into-18-hours and how-little-sleep-can-I-survive-on-I’ll-sleep-on-the-plane-or-when-I’m-dead. It would be nice to go back for a few days or a week and see the city at a more leisurely pace.

Someday…

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Filed under Photography, Travel

Signs & Portents

Well, isn’t THIS just a fine fucking little nightmare!

I don’t even have words to start to express my disappointment and disgust with my fellow Americans.

Then I came out to this on the front porch this morning. It might have been an omen. Or is it a portent? Whatever.

Having the US flag ripping loose and hanging upside down seemed to be appropriate, especially with the leftover Halloween skeleton there.

(Image from ForeFlight app)

Probably not quite a sign from the gods – the winds had been pretty viscious all night. Whiteman was reporting winds at 45 knots, gusting to 60 knots, with Van Nuys, Camarillo, and Burbank all reporting similar readings.

If anyone has figured out what the silver lining or bright side to this debacle is, please let me know. I’ve got nothing.

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Filed under Photography, Politics, Weather

Just Trying To Get Home

Stuck in traffic

It was so beautiful for about two minutes. And then we moved on.

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Filed under Photography, Sunsets

At The Edge Of The Abyss

When bored, I will sometimes flip through videos on Instagram and the other social media sites, and since the algorithms will feed you more of what you have already liked, I tend to get a lot of videos of roller coasters, bunjee jumpers, skydivers, BASE jumpers, and so on.

That’s the feeling tonight. Or, as the meme my daughter shared said, “Srong night-before-Helm’s-Deep vibes today.”

Fledgeling birds learn to fly by leaping and having faith that they’ll figure out the flying thing before they get killed. I’m optomistic by nature. I want to believe that we’re not staring into THE abyss, just maybe AN abyss. Maybe this time we’ll learn to fly before we crash and burn and die.

But I remember 2016. I remember after the “grab ’em by the pussy” tape and the mocking the handicapped video and the porn star payoff and all of the THOUSANDS of other offensive, disgusting, ignorant things that TFG did, any one of which would have permaently eliminated him from the possibility of public office, and then after he left office in 2020 the top secret documents and all of the illegal activities he’s been caught doing and the coup on January 6th, my god, THE COUP! And yet he’s still here and there are ways for him to win and I never, EVER thought that he could win to begin with and now I swear I’ve got PTSD from being exposed to him for all of these years.

And just about when I’m about to have another panic attack thinking about another 4 years of him, or more likely 4 weeks of him and then who know how many years with Vance and all of the Nazis behind Project 2025 and the horrors that are lurking, I think about how incredibly ANGRY women seem to be now. And kids, the generation that are voting for President for the first time, who grew up with active shooter drills every month the same way we used to have tornado drills in Kansas City.

Back on August 18th, when the Democratic campaign was energized and reinvigorated by Harris’s entry, I went on http://www.270towin.com and created my “aggressive & hopeful” map.

If I’m in my good head, if I’m not listening to the demons of my TFG PTSD, the only thing I would change tonight is that I think Iowa will turn blue. I think it will be something like 456-82 to Harris. But I’m mentally prepared (I hope) to be more disappointed than I’ve ever been in my entire life.

Get out there and vote tomorrow if you haven’t voted early. In so many ways, this truly could be the end of the world as we know it.

I’m really not feeling so fine.

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Filed under Deep Thoughts, Politics

The Next Week

I’ve seen this meme a dozen places in the last 48 hours and it’s ringing so very, VERY true right now. Another one says, “It’s like the whole world is waiting for biopsy results on Tuesday.” That’s true too, although I’ve been feeling more like the characters in “Melancholia” or “Deep Impact” waiting for the comet or rogue planet to hit the Earth.

Let’s keep the faith, keep breathing, keep our sense of humor, and hope for a

over the next 72 hours.

In the meantime, we’ve been experiencing our first good windstorm of the winter, which meant that the roads this morning were littered with palm fronds (which can shred a tire in an instant), small tree branches, tumbleweeds, and the odd, migrating Halloween decoration. In our back yard,

We will rebuild!

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Filed under Memes, Photography, Politics, Weather

The Ventura County Gateway To Hell

I just hate it when the Ventura County Gateway to Hell opens up, especially when the wind is blowing from the west.

The smell of sulphur and brimstone can be horrible!

It was, however, a very cool looking effect for about two minutes at sunset. Timing, as always, is everything in life.

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Filed under Photography, Sunsets, Weather

Sunset Photons

All week they’ve been promising our first rain of the season for tomorrow – they lied. Or, at a minimum, they’ve reneged. Apparently the remnants of a tropical storm that fell apart off of Hawaii got sucked into the jet stream and sent our way, but it’s going to go more north.

We still get some nice, high, wispy clouds to ogle, but the chance of any actual raindrops is quickly approaching zero.

Of course, those nice, high, wispy clouds turn pink at sunset, so that’s nice also.

Enjoy the weekend! Don’t forget to take a moment to ogle the clouds!

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Filed under Photography, Sunsets, Weather

No Mo’ NaNoWriMo

Tomorrow November starts, and in many years that would have meant the kickoff of a National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) effort on my part. If you’re curious, you can look back in the archives here and search for that term – I’ve always published my feeble and incomplete efforts on here. A couple of them I liked, a couple were just embarrassing. You pays your money, you takes your chances.

This year there’s no way on Earth I have the time or energy to even think about another campaign. I’m already on such physical and emotional thin ice with other time pressures and priorities that it would be suicide.

In addition, in the last year there have been “issues” with the management of NaNoWriMo, which runs as a non-profit. A number of the issues are serious, and while some heads have rolled and some changes have been made, I’m not convinced that the problem has been adequately addressed. So I won’t be a part of the NaNoWriMo organization or efforts, even if I did have the time.

There is at least one other group trying to get a new organization going (I forget the name of the group) but I haven’t heard much, just that it was trying to get started, so maybe we’ll see where we’re at this time next year.

For now – as expected, not a single trick-or-treater tonight at our house, primarily because we live off the beaten path a bit on the top of a huge freakin’ hill. Again, we’ll see where we are at this time next year, hopefully in that legendary Forever Home in a more pedestrian and family-friendly neighborhood.

November starts tomorrow and it will be a big one, especially with the US national election in five days. The fact that it could still go either way is terrifying. For the life of me, I truly can’t understand why it’s not 95/05 in the polls, or more. And even if it does turn into a resounding defeat for fascism, what the Mango Mussoli and his cult do in the days afterward has the potential to be horrific.

C’mon, November. I know you got the short end of the stick and a tough assignment. Make us all proud!

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Filed under Forever Home, Politics, Writing

Adulting Wednesdays Suck

“Adulting” is a curious term that apparently means doing things that you REALLY don’t want to do but you’re SUPPOSED to do because you’re an adult. Like getting a trainer and going to the gym every Wednesday after work and supposedly “enjoying” being so sore you can barely move for the next two days.

Those four green bars from 17:30 to 18:30? Yep, doing that to myself ON PURPOSE! And paying for the priviledge. At the end of a sort of sucky day to begin with.

This crap is for the birds!

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Filed under Health, Paul

Random Old Photos – October 29th

Twenty years ago, my one and only trip to the tip of Cape Cod.

It was very, very flat and very, very windy and sandy. We did not go swimming, no matter how competent that lifeguard looked.

Does that sign say “Danger” or “Dancer”? Twenty years that’s haunted me…

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