Category Archives: Family

April 7, 2015 · 22:55

Abstract vs Oh-Oh!

It’s one thing to “know” that you’ve got a 05:00 flight in the morning, which means that you have to check in by 04:00, which means you have to be at the parking garage by 03:30, which means you have to leave the house by 02:30, and just because it’s Los Angeles, by 02:15 or even by 02:00 might be better. You “know” you’re going to feel like crap and only get a couple hours of sleep (for the second night in the last four). But all of those are abstracts.

It’s another thing altogether to realize it’s already 23:00, which means even if you went to bed now (and you can’t yet go to bed now) you would only get two and a half hours of sleep.

Oh-oh!

Why even bother going to bed? Aside from the whole falling-asleep-on-the-405-Freeway-and-crashing-and-dying thing, or the falling-asleep-at-the-gate-so-soundly-that-you-miss-them-calling-your-flight thing.

This trip had better be fun! (It will be.)

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Filed under Family, Travel

March 30, 2015 · 23:39

Macho Studmuffinly Stuff

Okay, this is going to be stupid. I know that even before I begin. I’m going to tell the story anyway.

I’m not a big mechanical sort of guy. I don’t do a lot of work on cars, I haven’t built or rebuilt my own house. At the hangar I can get called on when they need an extra pair of hands to hold something or push something or help lift something, but no one in their right minds would ever let me actually use a wrench or pair of pliers or a screwdriver on a critical airplane system without the kind of oversight you might give to a 5-year-old who wants to play mechanic.

Well, maybe it’s not that bad. I can and have changed the oil on my (older) cars, I can change out the battery (even on the PT Cruiser, which requires removal of multiple tubes and air filters to get at the battery to begin with), I can change a tire. I can fix bicycles, we did strip wallpaper and paint the bedroom, I’m actually pretty good at some landscape and gardening tasks (except for use of jack hammers).

With that said, it’s time to bite the bullet, one way or the other, and get The Younger Daughter’s car fixed. About two years ago it had a $30 part in the ignition switch assembly break, I spent four days stranded in Coalinga, and Chrysler wanted $2,000+ to put in an entire new steering column instead of simply replacing the $30 part. I eventually had a mechanic in Coalinga jury rig the ignition to work around the broken part. It was enough to get me back to Los Angeles, and then the car got driven every now and then just to keep the fluids moving and the belts doing their belting thing. Functional, more or less, but it’s not a workable solution for daily use.

This was not a priority with The Younger Daughter in Asia or South America for years at a time. The car just sat in our driveway. When she showed up unexpectedly for my birthday ten days ago, the need to get it fixed shot to the top of the priority list.

The $30 part is available online, along with a video showing how to do the replacement. It doesn’t look like rocket science, almost easy enough for me to try, but it would require a couple of anti-theft specialty tools which I don’t have and don’t know if I could get. Plus, see above — “not a big mechanical sort a guy.”

Chrysler continues to be bureaucratic and stupid (no more Chryslers for us!) so we found a local, small, individual repair shop that got great reviews on Yelp. I had used them a couple times before for other things and had real good service, so we gave them a try to at least look at it. They were fantastic, checked out the part, looked at the video, listened to my story, and said, “Sure, we could do that for a couple hundred dollars.” Exactly what I was looking for.

This morning we got a call. The mechanic had gotten the part, had it installed — but did I have this other part from the housing around the ignition? It must have been taken off by the Coalinga mechanics when they jury rigged it two years ago, but I didn’t have it. It wasn’t anywhere in the car that we could see or anywhere here at the house. Could we order another one? Nope, not in any catalogs.

Time to give up and spend the $1,300 for the parts on a new steering column and have this guy install it for less than Chrysler would, but still making it a very, very repair?

No way! It’s time for an adventure!

The solution to this missing part problem? Someone (i.e., me and The Younger Daughter) need to go to a junkyard or “pick it parts place” and find a junked PT Cruiser, tear open the steering column, take off this one missing piece, and bring it back. Simple, no?

But harken back if you will to my comments about my mechanical skills and abilities, or the lack thereof. While I know of these places in theory and the task seemed relatively straightforward on paper, my first reaction to having me do it was to scoff. Or snort. Or possibly both.

The Younger Daughter’s google-fu was strong and she found a junkyard that does this sort of thing. (It’s Los Angeles, there are dozens of them apparently. Not a big surprise.) I re-watched the YouTube video that shows the repair to refresh my memory of how the steering column comes apart. We checked with our mechanic to make sure that I knew what part I needed. I asked about the specialized tools and our mechanic actually loaned me his. (No way there’s another auto repair shop in LA that does that!) Off we go, the stereotypical fishes out of water, looking like something out of a Chevy Chase movie.

The Younger Daughter can’t get into the monstrously huge pick-it parts junkyard because she’s wearing sandals. (Did I mention the “fish out of water” part?) I go in alone with my little bag of tools and I’m facing what looks like a hundred acres or more of junked cars, thousands and thousands of them. Their website says there are three or four PT Cruisers in here — it doesn’t say a thing about where.

Before I look totally lame and stupid to the junk-yard dudes and start asking for help, my tattered remnants of macho studmuffinly pride tell me to wander for a bit to see if I can find one. It’s only about 93°F out there…

And then a miracle happened.

After less than five minutes of wandering and looking at cars, I find a PT Cruiser. And its steering column is intact. And between my tools and the special anti-theft tools loaned to me by the mechanic, in less than ten minutes I have the steering column torn apart and the missing part in my hand. And it costs about $4.

We hustle it back to the mechanic, return his tools with a thousand thanks, and pray that it’s the correct part. I’m still figuring that the gods are just screwing with me and it will be the wrong size, or from the wrong year’s model, or somehow different and useless. But less than two hours later, the car is done and The Younger Daughter again has a functional vehicle.

I’m not a religious person, but that’s a close as I’ve seen to an actual case of Divine Intervention as I’ve seen in quite a while.

However, because I’m not a religious person, tonight I’m feeling quite unreasonably full of myself and taking great pride in my manly, testosterone-laced, mechanical accomplishments. (Cue all of those Tim Allen routines about “More Power!” and manly men pounding on their chests while hooting and honking like Neanderthals.)

I used tools!

I got grease and dirt on my hands!

I kicked that junked PT Cruiser’s ass and ripped out the part I needed to transplant in The Younger Daughter’s car!

Har! Har! Haarrr! Haarrrrr!! (*pounds chest and howls at the moon*)

 

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Filed under Family, Farce, Paul

March 18, 2015 · 22:02

Surprises

There are the ones when…

…that cop shows up in your rear-view mirror and the speedometer needle is somewhere it shouldn’t be.

…the job you really had a good feeling about turns out to be just another “Thank you, but” email.

…you turn the key in the car ignition and it doesn’t even make that sick clicky noise that means the battery or alternator or some other vehicular doohickey is broken — you get nothing but the sound of silence.

…you hear the doorbell and halfway to the door you hear someone messing with the lock and opening the door.

That last one had a wonderful outcome today, actually. It was the Younger Daughter, suddenly here, when the last we had heard she was in Argentina, headed toward Brazil on her year (OK, year-ish) in South America.

Surprise!!!

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Filed under Castle Willett, Family

March 13, 2015 · 20:10

My Funeral

First of all, I’m fine. I’m not dying, at least, not any more than the rest of us. I didn’t get any recent news of a tumor, blocked artery, or astronomically high blood pressure, nor do I know of a bullet or a bus with my name on it.

I am not superstitious (or “stupidstitious”) about it being Friday The 13th. Today’s date means nothing other than tomorrow is “Pi Day Of The Century“! Which also means nothing, since the calendar and our measurement of time is about 90% arbitrary, but it’s a great excuse to be goofy and have pie. Mmmmm, pie…

But this song came up in my playlist the other day (see #16) and my brain got to spinning off onto a dozen tangents, as it is occasionally wont to do. (Silly brain.) So, given greater and lesser amounts of seriousness, to be updated periodically as I change my mind or come up with other goofy crap to do, here are some suggestions/requests/orders (you don’t want to be haunted, do you?) for my eventual funeral:

  1. Please do not call it a funeral. “Memorial service,” “life celebration,” whatever the politically correct term of the week is, but not “funeral.” Although as you’ll see, I want the “fun” put back in “funeral!”
  2. Someone take a LOT of pictures. I would do it, but, you know, “dead” and all that.
  3. If at all possible, start the event just before sunset, outdoors, under a clear sky.
  4. Wearing a suit and tie or fancy dress will be frowned upon, unless of course some serious (and entertaining) gender-bending is going on. Depending on the weather, if you must wear “normal” clothes, Hawaiian shirts for summer or turtlenecks for winter are okay.
  5. Extra points: Wear Hawaiian shirts with airplanes on them.
  6. Beaucoup extra points: Wear turtlenecks with airplanes on them.
  7. All things being equal, people should be encouraged to wear costumes — fannish friends might consider bringing extras for the mundane factions of my family and friends.
  8. If not into fannish costumes, mundane costumes will do. Angels, Chiefs, or Kings jerseys and/or hats are all acceptable. Their rivals’ gear will, obviously, not be acceptable.
  9. Extra points: Anyone wearing a combination of Angels, Chiefs, and Kings gear will be recognized for their creativity and given a seat of honor for the event as a reward.
  10. Beaucoup extra points: Have the Angels’ World Series trophy, the Chiefs’ Lombardi Trophy, or the Stanley Cup there for people to take selfies with.
  11. Have a flyover. My pals at the CAF will do a great job.
  12. Extra points: Get the Blue Angels or Air Force Thunderbirds instead of the CAF.
  13. Beaucoup extra points: Get the Blue Angels, and the Air Force Thunderbirds, in addition to the CAF.
  14. Everyone’s invited. (Yes, that means you too!)
  15. God’s invited (s/he’s included in “everyone”) but it’s my party, not God’s, so let’s not make any deities the Guest of Honor, ok? Either I’ll be some mythical afterlife actually talking to some deity or another (my mother’s bet) or I simply won’t (my bet). Either way, I’ll know and you won’t. (Wait, if I’m…then I won’t… Never mind.)
  16. Play “Into The West” from Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King, the one sung by Annie Lennox. I absolutely love that song and have wanted it played at my funeral memorial service ever since I first heard it.
  17. Extra points: Get Annie Lennox to sing it live with a full orchestra.
  18. Beaucoup extra points: Get Annie Lennox to sing it live with a full orchestra and Amanda Palmer!
  19. Tell jokes, tell stories, tell more jokes. I’ve done plenty of stupid things, let’s relive them in all their glory.
  20. Share my photographs, and keep sharing them for years and years beyond. They’re a big part of the proof that I was here.
  21. If I’ve managed to get any of my stories published, read some choice selections. If I didn’t break through, pick a couple of my less sucky Flash Fiction efforts to fill time until it gets dark.
  22. As it gets dark, keep the lights off (or at least to a minimum, or hand out flashlights with red lenses) so that everyone can get dark adapted.
  23. Bring out the telescopes and spend the evening (all night if you want!) with everyone taking turns looking through them at the planets, stars, nebulae, comets, moon…
  24. Whatever the venue, sing. Sing filksongs, but use the broad definition of the term (“Anything I’ve ever heard sung at a filksing”) so that things like “A Dying Cub’s Fan Last Request” are included (yeah, gotta sing that one!), and don’t limit it to just filksongs. If it feels good, sing it!
  25. With luck I will have had organs donated, so let people know what went where. I want any usable spare parts of mine used to help others when I’m no longer in need of them, and others should be encouraged to do the same. Have forms there for people to sign up for blood and platelet donations, as well as become organ donors.
  26. Serve chocolate chip cookies, Oreos, chocolate cake, ice cream, apple pie… None of this vegy plate and health food crap – life’s too short, as I will have obviously just demonstrated.
  27. Alternative idea #1: If it’s cloudy or you can’t find a dark sky location, or if it’s just later in the evening and you’re “telescoped out”, light up as many Christmas lights as you can (make it visible from space!) and then follow up with a massive fireworks display.
  28. Alternative idea #2: Have all of the above (or as much as practical) at a ball game. Angels, Chiefs, or Kings doesn’t matter. Can you just imagine a group of my family members, my CAF friends, my fannish friends, and other assorted knuckleheads taking up a whole section at an Angels game on a Big Bang Friday and partying all night?
  29. No flowers. Just because I’ll be dead doesn’t mean that we need to spend a money killing a bunch of innocent flora, most of which are probably allergens to someone in attendance. Instead, take the money you might have spent on flowers and donate it to a worthy charity. The CAF. Habitat For Humanity. UNICEF. Pick a group that’s going to deliver the biggest bang for your buck and help the most people.
  30. In other words, if you wish to donate in my memory, please pick a good, efficient charity, by which I mean one that isn’t going to piss away huge chunks of the donations on six-figure CEO salaries. Education is a huge area of interest, so maybe a group that puts disadvantaged kids through college, or just helps them get through high school. Or maybe a group that educates girls and young women in societies where they’re considered property. (You get the idea – if in doubt, read a few of my rants to see what pissed me off, then give to the group I would consider “the good guys.”)
  31. Hug The Long-Suffering Wife and my kids for me, early and often. As much as I might want this to be a silly & fun party instead of a somber & serious funeral, they might have have a tougher time than I will playing their parts.
  32. Have fun!!

I’ll see you there! (Wait, I forgot…)

Actually, by the time I plan on going, we’ll be doing all of this just to say goodbye to the meat-sack part of me. The all-important “me” part of me will be uploaded into a computer or robot and I’ll be there partying right along with you.

Beaucoup BEAUCOUP Extra Points: Upload “me” into the computer of a Goliath-class starship scout vessel, load the party and all of my friends and family on board, and let’s party on (or at least, near) all nine planets! (Yes, Pluto too.) Drop off those who want to stay back on Earth, then the rest of us will head outbound at some large multiple of c.

Yeah, that’s the best plan of all.

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Filed under Astronomy, CAF, Christmas Lights, Family, Fandom, Fireworks, Flying, Habitat For Humanity, KC Chiefs, LA Angels, LA Kings, Music, Paul, Photography, Sports, Writing

February 17, 2015 · 22:08

Panorama: Hannibal, Missouri

My last stitched panorama post was also from Missouri and also featured the Mississippi River. It’s a sheer coincidence, other than the fact that it’s a part of the world I grew up in and seem to visit more often than not. Not a theme. (Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.)

Where last time I showed Chain Of Rocks Bridge near St. Louis, this time (a different trip) we were up by Hannibal. If you’re familiar at all with classic American literature, you know what Hannibal represents and why it’s a huge tourist draw.

When I was a kid growing up in Kansas City we visited Hannibal a couple of times. I remember those trips very fondly, especially since I was a voracious reader from an early age and was well familiar with “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn.” Even in the mid-1960s Hannibal was a tourist town playing up its history as the birthplace of Samuel Clemens (aka “Mark Twain”) and I was thrilled to get a chance to see the actual sites which many of the scenes in the books were based on. (The infamous cave where Tom and Becky Thatcher got lost is fantastic!)

This panoramic picture was taken in August, 2007. (Click to enlarge.) This time the whole family was visiting my son, who was stationed nearby at Scott Air Force Base. This view is from the “Lover’s Leap” outlook, from which you get a fantastic view of the town of Hannibal and the river that is its lifeblood. You can see the paddlewheel boat that gives tours up and down the river – we took the evening dinner cruise. The food was okay, the cruise was wonderful.

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This panorama comes from fifteen images of 3456 x 2304 pixels (8 megapixels each) taken with a Canon Rebel XT DSLR, combined into a trimmed image of 24,357 x 2203 pixels (53.6 megapixels).

The other vivid memory of this day came after dark when we were headed back to the St. Louis area. We were on a state highway (taking the scenic route back) rolling through farmland. We ran into a couple miles of HUGE clouds of bugs, tens of thousands of them smacking into the windshield so that the wipers could barely keep up. It was unusual, fascinating, and utterly grotesque.

 

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Filed under Family, Panorama, Photography, Travel

February 4, 2015 · 11:12

RIP Joey Chan

Joey Chan, the remaining domestic feline at Casa Willett, started having some disturbing symptoms in the last two weeks or so, initially showing up as an occasional diminished appetite. By the middle of last week it was getting serious, and by yesterday it was time to see the vet. The results were grave and it was pretty clear that Joey’s remaining time with us was short. Since our society treats our pets with compassion, we did what was necessary to make sure she passed on peacefully and painlessly.

I’m grateful that her medical problems only manifested themselves very recently and didn’t result in any prolonged problems or discomfort for her. She was almost fourteen years old and had a good life. She will very much be missed.

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Filed under Cats, Family

January 28, 2015 · 23:16

Where’s A Good Place To Retire To?

A friend in Vermont who had put up with a bit too much cold and snow last night was speculating where she could move to that wasn’t so brutal in the winter months. That got me thinking again about a recurring topic of discussion here in Port Willett — where do we want to retire to?

It’s not going to be Los Angeles. Too crowded, too expensive. We have decades of history here as well as tons of friends and things that we like to do, but we can come and visit every now and then to see them and do that.

It’s probably not going to be California, although we’re not ruling that out. It would be nice to get a major change of pace and lifestyle when the time comes, and California is a big place with lots of different options so far as urban density, climate, altitude, and attitudes go. It won’t be in the desert (sorry, Palm Springs!) or in a big city (sorry, San Francisco, although I could be persuaded to talk about San Diego, a wonderful little city) but that still leaves many, many options.

Looking at it from the other direction, what do we want in our own personal little Nirvana?

I don’t want a small, small town (too little privacy) or a big city (too expensive, too crowded). On the other hand, I want to be somewhat near a big city (an hour or two away) so that we can get to a major airport. I intend to travel! (And take LOTS of pictures, but you knew that, right?)

We like sports and live entertainment and restaurants and so on, so to that end I think that a college town would be great. Someplace where we can start rooting for the local team, see an occasional game in any of a dozen different sports. Somewhere we can still get live concerts from some major artists and acts, plus some nice guest lectures.

Environmentally, the Deep South is probably out. The Long-Suffering Wife isn’t real fond of heat or humidity. While I would love to see snow again every now and then, I wouldn’t necessarily be thrilled with the winters in Minnesota or New England again. (But for you, Vermont, I would make an exception!) On the other hand, it would be nice to actually have four seasons, a pretty fall, a bit of snow in the winter, a nice green spring, and so on.

I would like to be somewhere fairly central to as many of our activity centers as we can. We like going to baseball games, we like going to science fiction conventions, so someplace where there are a lot of major league cities and large SF cons within a six to eight hour drive would be nice.

Put it all together and you end up somewhere in either the mid-Atlantic states or the lower Midwest. Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Kansas.

The Long-Suffering Wife has an affinity for the Hokie Birds of Virginia Tech, and Blacksburg meets a lot of the criteria set out above. On a trip to Virginia for other purposes, we took a couple of days and drove up there. It’s lovely, probably on the early “short list.”

But there’s a lot of time to look around before any decisions have to be made. I’m not even sixty yet, and I don’t think that I get to retire until about a week after I’m dead, so there’s no need to rush to judgement.

Maybe some future side trips can be arranged to “scout out” some other possible locals. I’ve been to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, for example. It’s lovely, if a bit small and flat. I like mountains and hills, but it would be a great place to fly my own plane regularly. Columbus, Ohio probably is close, although it’s a bit on the big side. Burlington, Vermont is a wonderful place, but a bit cold.

Lexington? Louisville? Cincinnati? Indianapolis? Kansas City? Or at least, some college town an hour or so away? Lawrence? Knoxville? Chattanooga? Richmond?

I don’t know if Nirvana is out there, but there are a lot of places to look at that by default must be better than Los Angeles!

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Filed under Castle Willett, Family, Travel

January 25, 2015 · 19:44

Panorama: St. Louis, Missouri

The Mississippi River is one of the great rivers of the planet, draining all of North America from the Appalacian Mountains in the east to the Rocky Mountains in the west. Periodic flooding in the areas near the Mississippi River are a way of life.

Route 66 was the great cross-country highway of the mid 1900’s, the primary route from Chicago to Los Angeles before the interstate highway system was built after World War II. Route 66 has been idealized in stories, songs, and movies, an icon of American lore from that era.

Where Route 66 crosses the Mississippi River, you’ll find Chain Of Rocks Bridge. It’s unusual in that it has a 30° bend in the middle. While it was later abandoned and neglected following the building of the interstates, it’s now been restored as a key link in a network of walking and bicycle paths along the Illinois and Missouri shores north of St. Louis, Missouri.

This panoramic picture was taken in September, 2008. (Click to enlarge.) I was visiting my son, who was stationed nearby at Scott Air Force Base. This particular viewpoint is from about the middle of the bridge, where the bend is. In the river you can see two water intake towers for the local pumping station. In the distance you can see St. Louis. Off to both sides there was some minor flooding going on as the river level was up, but not up anywhere near the catastrophic levels that it is capable of reaching.

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This panorama comes from seventeen images of 3456 x 2304 pixels (8 megapixels each) taken with a Canon Rebel XT DSLR, combined into a trimmed image of 26,450 x 2165 pixels (57.2 megapixels).

It was warm and muggy, as this part of the country often can be in summer, but nowhere near as bad as it could have been that day. In addition to the bridge, the river, and the scenes of flooding along the river banks, what I enjoyed seeing the most were the thousands of wild birds, dozens of different species, whole flocks of hundreds of cranes circling overhead.

 

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November 27, 2014 · 20:23

Thanksgiving 2014

As empty-nesters with kids off on three different continents, it was a quiet holiday for us. We had our turkey, cranberries, green bean casserole, stuffing, pie, mashed potatoes, and so on, but in portions much smaller than if the whole family were here. In what might be considered an abomination in today’s American society, there are very few leftovers.

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We had done a “Hallow-Thank-Mas” dinner in July with the big turkey, all the fixings, and the good china. Two of the three kids were here so we took out best shot when we had it. Today was for relaxing, watching football, and getting caught up on some reading and chores. One of these days we’ll again have all three kids, everyone here at once. Then we’ll party like it’s 1999!

If you’re in the US, I hope you had a good day as well. We all really do have a lot to be thankful for, no matter how many things we have that could be improved. For this one day at least, let’s think in absolute terms, not relative terms.

Happy Thanksgiving, y’all!

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November 10, 2014 · 21:30

Panorama: Dayton, Ohio

I find there’s a lot to like about the American midwest. In particular, I like a lot of things around central Ohio. I like the fall colors. Combine all of that…

This panoramic picture was taken in October, 2009. (Click to enlarge.) My kids had been wonderful enough to send me to a favorite convention (Ohio Valley Filk Fest) in Columbus for my Christmas present. My son was able to meet me there for a great weekend. While there we also went to see the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, at Wright-Patterson AFB. It was a couple of weeks after the peak fall foliage — that time when it’s not quite all brown yet, but not quite still ablaze in fall colors. The last gasp of fall, with winter on the horizon. (Literally, from the looks of it.)

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This panorama comes from seventeen images of 3888 x 2592 pixels (10 megapixels each) taken with a Canon Rebel XTi DSLR, combined into an image of 37,158 x 2576 pixels (95.7 megapixels).

It was a grey and gloomy day, and shows well just how flat it can be in this part of the country. Get up on a bluff that’s a hundred feet high and you can just about see into the next state. I might end up liking some place like Ohio, Indiana, or Illinois, but I might miss the mountains at the same time.

 

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Filed under Family, Panorama, Photography, Travel, Weather