Category Archives: Family

October 5, 2018 · 23:04

Go Pro View – October 5th

It’s been a long, hard, exhausting day in many respects. Some of the exhausting parts have been depressing, some have been terribly sad, some have been frustrating, and some have actually been fun.

It’s called “life,” but today the volume might have been turned up to “11.”

Here are some GoPro pictures from the fun part. The non-profit I work for, Homes 4 Families, is having an “Over The Edge” fundraiser this weekend. (I’ve done this once before.) I will mention that if you’re in LA and this looks like fun and you can make a donation, we still have slots available for tomorrow. (www.Homes4Families.org)

This time there were two differences, one major, one minor. The minor one was that I was wearing a GoPro camera which was set to take a still photo every five seconds. The major one was that our son just happened to be in town today and since H4F’s mission is helping military and veteran families and since Steve is active military, we were able to give him a chance to go OTE with me!

Harnessed up, both the primary rope and the safety rope attached, getting final instructions. We’re TWENTY-SIX STORIES up. It was perfect weather.

Starting to lean back, get the feel of the clutch release, practicing feeding the rope up. Something on the order of 280 to 300 feet of that rope is heavy! And that pool looks very, very small.

Over we go! Just lean back, get into a rhythm with the rope and clutch, and walk down the wall.

Looking north into the eastern San Fernando Valley.

Looking north into the Cahuenga Pass and the 101 Freeway passing by behind us.

Who says, “Don’t look down”? That’s the fun part!

With a mirrored building, a lot of the pictures are various visions of me.

Steve got the hang of it and was motoring down – I was either more clumsy and awkward, taking time to enjoy myself a bit, or both. (Both!)

Getting closer.

Almost down by the trees – well, the trees up on the third floor garage outside of the main lobby. But that’s still 22 down and 4 to go!

There’s the plaza and my support team talking me down.

Terra firma! Death defied once again! And paying for it the rest of the day with some nasty cramps in my legs and the soles of my feet.

The other less corporeal exhaustion we’ll deal with tomorrow.

 

 

 

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Filed under Family, Homes4Families, Photography

June 10, 2018 · 20:11

Driving Lady Lilli

It’s always nice to see family – it’s especially nice when said family has a gorgeous old Model A that they let me drive!

(Photo by Melanie Kordis)

My dad had a 1929 Model A – this is (I think) a 1931 Deluxe Model A. The long-suffering-sister-in-law was kind enough to let me take it out for a while with her and she didn’t have a nervous breakdown or raise her voice or nothing!

(Photo by Melanie Kordis)

She did at one point very calmly and politely point out that we were passing the local courthouse and that coincidentally this is where the local speed limit was 25 mph and she had managed to not yet ever get a speeding ticket there despite the fact that it was heavily enforced… It seemed an odd point at first, but then again, I’ve often been accused of being a slow learner. (I slowed down, we did not get a ticket.)

Driving the Model A requires a delicate touch, even for those who are used to driving a stick shift. After doing my best to take 20,000 miles off the life of the transmission, I was catching on much better at the end. It was fun!

Thanks, Melanie!!

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Filed under Family, Paul, Photography, Travel

February 24, 2018 · 23:45

Noisy Visitor

My usual Saturday out at the CAF SoCal hangar in Camarillo. We had a somewhat rare and unusual visitor on the ramp.

A great-great-grandchild of sorts to our PT-19 trainer and the SNJ trainer that followed, the T-45 trainer is used today to teach naval aviators how to fly jets.

It says “Navy” on this side and “Marines” on the other – same difference to a certain extent, both are “naval aviators” and trained to take off and land from aircraft carriers. Note the launch hook sticking out from the front of the nose wheel, and the retracted tailhook at the rear. The T-45 is what today’s naval aviator is flying when he or she does his or her first carrier landings.

This would be a fun ride! I wouldn’t even need to be in the front seat!

There’s a whole bunch of “remove before flight” flags while it’s parked.

Not just for show, eventually they had to leave to go back to El Centro where they’re based.

Up close and personal, it’s really, really loud! (Video tomorrow if I get a few minutes to clean it up and edit a bit.)

 

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Filed under CAF, Family, Photography

March 31, 2017 · 23:30

Goodbye, March – Don’t Let The Door Hit You In The Ass

In what was a pretty high stress inducing, low stress relief, royal pain in the ass month, there were at the other extreme some pretty good times. There wasn’t a lot of middle ground it seems.

Without whining and bitching, let’s just say that this time of year, being in charge of two different accounting departments, both for non-profits that are living up to that descriptor, has been…”challenging.” There have been a lot of hours and a lot of wondering, “Okay, how do I solve THIS one?”

Yet here I am, still (more or less) on my feet.

Meanwhile, there were two very lovely weeks where it was great to see my son home on leave. He’s in the US Air Force and was finishing a couple of years there and heading towards a couple of years over in this other part of the world, so it was great to see him again. To their credit, my boss and co-workers did a great job of kicking my ass out of the office to go to hockey games and baseball games and conventions with him. (To be quite clear, while the job has its good days and its bad, the people I work with are wonderful.)

The hockey was nice, even if my beloved Kings are hanging onto their playoff hopes by a thread with a week to go. But baseball starts on Sunday and hope springs eternal, even if my hockey team is checking out tee times.

The convention I went to last week was a ton of fun. I saw lots of good friends that I hadn’t seen in a while, in some cases in a long while. I could stand to do that more often.

We made plans, plane tickets, hotel, and car rental for our trip in August to see the total solar eclipse. More on that later, I’m sure!

And despite it all, I have managed to make some progress in the last few days on a number of long-range issues. There’s some satisfaction there, despite the two-steps forward and one-step back nature of it sometimes.

While I can itemize many good things that happened, over it all hangs a pair of clouds – I’m so freakin’ tired all the time, and I dread turning on the news or looking at what’s happening in politics. Both of those things are such a constant drain.

Yet we carry on.

Now we waltz into April. And the jokes are already filling up Twitter and FaceBook. Let’s hope there are some good ones. I could use them. We all could.

 

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Filed under Family, Habitat For Humanity, LA Angels, LA Kings

March 22, 2017 · 22:27

Home Alone

We’ve lived in this house for over twenty-six years. There have always been kids, wives (not multiple ones at the same time, smartass!), dogs, cats, etc.

Tonight I’m home alone for what I think is only the third or fourth day in that entire span. It’s a little odd.

For one thing it’s quiet. Like, really quiet. While I’ve been watching the World Baseball Classic on television (let’s hear it for the USA!!) I’ve found it easier to watch with the sound off. Fewer annoying ads that way, and no need to keep turning the sound off and on as the ads come and go.

Then the noises started.

Okay, so I’m not entirely alone. It sounds like Rocky and/or Raquel and the brood are up on the roof. I’m used to that, although it’s surprisingly loud when I’m not hearing it over music or the television.

Once they left, I started hearing a chirping every minute or so. Today, of all days, a smoke alarm started getting low on its battery.

Once I killed that, I was startled by some fairly loud gurgling and watery sounds. I honestly didn’t know what it was and was starting to fear the worst when I got up to investigate. It turns out my short-term memory also sucks – the sounds came from the dish washer I had started a while ago.

(Which is also weird. I’m proud of my “dish washer Tetris” skills but had to start it when it was less than half full. With just me and my visiting son here for a few days, we used paper plates but ran out of silverware. I thought it better to run a half-empty dishwasher rather than going out and buying more silverware.)

Then the music started. I was in the living room but I could hear music from my office. I came in here to find some great tunes playing from my usual Sirius-XM station. The only thing is that there’s apparently no browser open, and it’s not playing a recording from an earlier broadcast, so I have no clue why it started suddenly or how it’s playing.

At least my poltergeists share my taste in music! (Or they can’t change the channel.)

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Filed under Castle Willett, Computers, Critters, Family, Music

November 23, 2016 · 23:24

No New Dog Today

I think today was the first non-holiday weekday where I haven’t worked since we went to New York City in August. That means that the errands and chores had built up for all of the places that aren’t open on Sundays. (I am, of course, either at a Saturday work event or at the CAF hangar every Saturday.)

I had replaced the battery on the van over the weekend to get it mobile again. With that accomplished, first thing this morning I had it loaded up with aluminum cans and plastic bottles for the recycling center.

Once I was done at the recycling center I realized that the back of the van still had two or three boxes of dog food, treats, bones, and various dishes and dog toys. I had gathered them up for donation somewhere but hadn’t ever gotten around to it. But the recycling center is only two blocks from the LA County Animal Shelter, the same one where twenty years ago (HOLY GUACAMOLE, BATMAN, TWENTY FREAKIN’ YEARS??!!) we got the legendary “Lucky Puppy.”

They were more than happy to take the donation. When I walked back out to the van to start bringing the boxes in, a pickup truck had pulled up next to my van. The driver had gone in but in the truck bed was a gorgeous yellow lab.

He was friendly, wanted attention, a good dog. He seemed healthy, not too old, maybe five or six years, and was just a vision of the typical “I just want to be friends with everyone and everything – do you have a ball?!” yellow lab.

And this was the place where people drop off animals that they found wandering around lost or the ones that they can’t keep any more.

THAT DOG WAS NOT GOING INTO THAT BUILDING!

Now, mind you, I had absolutely zero factual reasons to believe that was going to happen. I had zero facts at all other than that this friendly dog was there sitting in the pickup truck outside of the shelter. This was not an intellectual decision of any sort at all. Pure emotion, pure gut feeling.

See, this whole election kerfuffle has us all just a bit off balance emotionally. I blame Trump! (That’s my new mantra for the next four years, by the way.)

I know that The Long-Suffering Wife and I had agreed that there wouldn’t be any more dogs for a while. We have changes in our housing situation coming up and a dog would be a serious complication. We have plans for travel and other activities now that we’re empty nesters and a dog would be a serious complication. I need a break from scooping dog poop from all over the yard and a dog would be a serious complication.

But I would have figured out something and I’m sure TLSW would have gone along with it.

Fortunately for our plans, the driver came out at that point with another dog, causing the yellow lab to go nuts with joy, as only a lab can. It seems that the other dog in the house was an escape artist (been there, done that, with both Lucky and Jessie) and had gotten picked up and turned in again.

A happy ending for all. But there’s no new dog here today.

Which is a good thing. A very good thing.

Yeah, that’s it – a very good thing. (Repeat as necessary.)

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Filed under Castle Willett, Dogs, Family

November 15, 2016 · 23:09

Stolen Joy

My son, who was in Chicago when my beloved Cubbies won the World Series, sent copies of the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times from the morning after they had won, as well as a “W” flag and a World Series Cubbies hat.

Do I have a great son, or what?

Looking at them tonight, it occurs to me that it’s yet another reason to absolutely despise what’s happening politically in this country.

As much joy as I had with my beloved Cubbies winning, that joy has been tainted, tarnished, and diminished by the fact that I’m so full of angst and anger.

I just hope we have an opening day next spring so that the Cubbies can get their rings and have that celebration. I really, really hope that the existential crisis that we’re in has passed, or at least let up, to the point where we can enjoy that celebration and rite of spring.

I don’t know that I would bet on it right now. I’ll be so, so happy next April if I can look back on this and laugh at how wrong I was.

I hope. Still.

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Filed under Family, Politics, Sports

April 4, 2016 · 22:59

Opening Day

It’s opening day for my two favorite baseball teams – the bad news is that they were playing each other. I guess the good news is that I had to be at least half happy with the result.

Baseball has a special place in my heart, having played the game as a kid and having coached my kids in it as an adult. I have many happy memories from my childhood of games seen in Kansas City’s old Municipal Stadium. The A’s weren’t very good, but it was always fun, and there were a lot of weekend double headers.

As an adult, I’ve had a lot of fun going to games in Anaheim (and occasionally in Chavez Ravine) with wives, kids, family, and friends. We still do – do a search for the “LA Angels” tag and you can find plenty of posts. When we travel we try to hit major and minor league parks for a game, and if the Angels are playing against the locals, so much the better. Fenway, Comisky, Safeco – we’ve followed them from one side of the country to the other.

If we need some background noise while working on something, there’s nothing better than a baseball game. There’s a rhythm, a cadence to a baseball broadcast, something that also harkens back to childhood. In the early 1960’s we didn’t have every game on television like we do today. We were lucky to get one game a week, and it rarely was our team. There was no such thing as a local broadcast station or network. If you weren’t there, you listened on the radio. I did a LOT of listening on the radio.

Even now, on a long cross-country trip in the summer, there’s nothing better at night than to pull in some far away broadcast on a clear-channel station. On a good night in the desert you can hear games from San Francisco, Phoenix, Seattle, Denver, Houston. When my family first moved to Vermont and I was missing my friends, my music, and my Cubbies, on a good night I could pull in the broadcast for a few minutes before it faded out.

Not every game’s a gem. It truly is a long season. But that’s part of it all.

I grew up with the game and my kids did as well. I may have screwed up a few things as a parent, but that wouldn’t be one of them. The Youngest Daughter was at opening night in Anaheim tonight with her boyfriend. We’ve been to a lot of home openers, but it was not to be for me tonight. But it’s great to have spring training over, the games counting, and hope springing eternal.

Losing 9-0 in the bottom of the ninth? We’ve got ’em right where we want ’em! It’s hero time!

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Filed under Family, LA Angels, Sports

March 5, 2016 · 22:38

All Together Now!

  It’s been years since the whole family has been together. 

Our son has been stationed overseas for years. Our daughters have been on various continents for months and years at a time, and while they’re back in California now, it’s a big state.

We’ll see them individually from time to time, and sometimes in pairs. Rarely all three. 2006 in St. Louis. 2011 (?) spring training in Phoenix.

This time it’s San Jose for Consonance, a small science fiction convention which centers around filk music. (I’ll explain later.)

For a day we’re together. With The Younger Daughter’s boyfriend, that’s a table for six.

(Thanks to Jim Robinson for taking our picture for me!)

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Filed under Family, Fandom, Science Fiction

January 1, 2016 · 22:51

2016 – Known Knowns

Yesterday I looked back at my highly dynamic, roller coaster, schizophrenic year in 2015. Today, let’s see what’s on the horizon for 2016, at least as well as we can see anything into the future.

The two big events I see are a “milestone” birthday (inevitable) and a change in residence for the first time in over twenty-five years (very high probability). As for the first, if you can’t avoid something like that, you might as well screw around with it and everything associated with it, so stand by. As for the second, with the pets all gone and the kids all grown and moved out, it’s not only unnecessary for The Long-Suffering Wife and me to occupy a five-bedroom home by ourselves, it’s downright silly. And expensive.

Along with that necessary move will be the associated task of sorting through twenty-five-plus years of stuff. I’m sure there will be much grumbling and pissing and moaning and complaining as we have to go through room after room and do the “toss/donate/keep” determination. (FYI, I’ll be the one doing the whining – I like stuff.) But that process actually started earlier in 2015, so now I just need to get it in gear big time.

I expect much of the first part of 2016 to be occupied primarily by me work schedules between my paid, full-time job at Habitat For Humanity and my unpaid, part-time job at CAF Socal. It’s obvious which one has priority, but I’ll be busy with both of them doing taxes, year-end closing, and audits through March and April, as well as simply getting settled into the job at Habitat.

It’s unlikely that we’ll be doing anywhere near as much travelling as I did last year, simply because I won’t have any accrued vacation time until at least the end of the year. We would like to get to New York City in July for our 15th anniversary, or to Kansas City for Worldcon in August, but it might at best be one or the other. Or it might just be three-day weekends where we have holidays. We’ll see.

In addition, my opportunities to go to any NASA Socials will be severely restricted do to employment commitments. As Super Chicken said, “You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred!”

I would like to start flying again this year. I’ll need to get my medical certification current (not that big of a deal) and I’ll need to get a few hours of lessons under my belt to become comfortable in the cockpit again (it’s been three years), but after that I’ll simply need to start building up some time and getting my flying skills re-honed. Once that happens, there are opportunities at the CAF to start training and qualifying to fly aircraft there, starting with our PT-19 trainer. That will be a big highlight for the 2016.

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions, but another personal goal this year will be to get back to running. As much as I hate thinking about going out, particularly when it’s cold or wet (or hot or dry), that’s just the “bad brain” talking. I know that I feel better after a run, and I feel better overall about myself and everything else when I’m running regularly. It’s time to start again.

Oh, and if my beloved Chiefs can win the Super Bowl, my beloved Kings can win the Stanley Cup, and my beloved Angels could win the World Series, that would be great as well. Just a suggestion for any of the gods that might be listening who think I’ve been good and need a treat or reward. (What? Oh, yeah. Well… Okay.)

If that sounds a lot less “dynamic” than 2015, bordering on outright boring and dull, well, that will be okay with me. I burned enough adrenaline in 2015, both good and bad. I suspect I’ll be busy as hell all year and stressed with time pressures from a number of sources, but I’m hoping that it’s nothing life and death. Literally.

What does your 2016 look like?

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Filed under CAF, Family, Flying, Paul, Travel