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It was another O’Dark Thirty flight.

Once here we got settled in a FABULOUS hotel. (I’m sure many pictures to follow.) And had a beautiful (if chilly) sunset.

Fifty years ago, tonight.

Christmas Eve, 1968.

1968 had been a total shit show of a year. The country was tearing itself apart. Every single day’s news brought another nightmare.

Vietnam, starting with Tet

North Korea & USS Pueblo

Racism

Prague

Paris

Politics – Johnson was not running, Nixon was and got elected

Martin Luther King had been assassinated

Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated

The Democratic National Convention in Chicago had been surrounded by riots

Olympics protests

I was twelve and we were living in the suburbs outside of Chicago. I remember wondering how far the riots would spread and my father, who worked downtown, not being sure that he should or could go into his office.

The country was desperate.

On Christmas Eve, 1968, fifty years ago tonight, three brave men gave us what we needed.

For the first time, people from this small, blue dot saw Earthrise with their own eyes.

Photo courtesy of NASA

I’ll never forget it.

Now here we are, fifty years later. Christmas Eve, 2018.

2018 has been a total shit show of a year. The country is tearing itself apart. Every single day’s news has brought another nightmare.

Racism, actively encouraged by the ruling political party

Politics – Trump is a clinically insane madman, a fascist, a wanna-be dictator, and a traitorous tool of Putin

We have children and innocent people being slaughtered by the thousands while the NRA funnels illegal Russian money into keeping Trump and his ilk in power

The economy is suddenly in freefall as billionaires got monstrous tax cuts, the stock market has now dropped into a bear market in less than a month, and millions lost health care

The fools in power in Washington have now shut down the government, leaving millions of federal employees not knowing when they’ll get their next pay check, and then they have the gaul to act like it’s a good thing

There are tens of thousands of immigrant children who have been separated from their parents and put into concentration camps with no accountability

The extremists in Washington are trying to return to the isolationist tactics that worked so well prior to World War I while ignoring the centuries of immigration and inclusiveness that literally made the US the world power that it was

We have been turned into THE BAD GUYS! We have been turned into the kind of insane, totalitarian regime that we used to go to war to overturn. I can’t put it any more plainly than that.

So here, on Christmas Eve 2018, fifty years to the night after Borman, Lovell, and Anders gave us a reason to hold onto hope, let’s pray that history repeats itself, SOON, and we get that lift we need.

Because it’s going to get ugly quickly in 2019 if we don’t.

Why were we in Seattle just before Christmas?

Oh, yeah! A good friend from work is from Seattle and his family has Seahawks season seats. He gets a few sets of tickets every year and this year got them for tonight’s game. Which he couldn’t go to.

But he knew that I was a Chiefs fan, so…

I was less than impressed with the final score, but it was a close, great, exciting game to watch and we had a LOT of fun.

Now I’m going to thaw some body parts I would prefer to not be frozen since we’ll probably be looking at 20°F lower next Sunday!

Following along on the holiday adventure?

The change in planes last night (when our original flight got delayed by over three hours – never did check to see when or if it ever made it or just got canceled entirely) unfortunately left us in the “late C” group instead of the “early B” group in boarding. (Southwest Airlines, obviously.) So it was sitting separately and middle seats all the way, and getting in at 2:30 instead of 1:20AM.

Then it was time to wake up the counter guy at Hertz (literally, and we’re not talking about a bit of voice clearing, we’re talking about finally slapping the desktop loud enough to be like a firecracker), find our way to the hotel, and then finally to bed around 3:30AM.

The highlight of the evening for me was Sage, Isiah, Nicholas, Jonathan, and Bubba. When we got to Oakland I kept an eyeball on them as they bounced off the walls while waiting for our connecting plane. And listened to their parents/guardians bark, and holler, and scold, and threaten them.

I’m not one to judge the parenting skills of others (what a crock, I am SO MUCH totally judging!) but if I hear Sage’s mom count, “One! Two!! Three!!!” one more time… Sage never once even came close to obeying or paying attention. She could have counted to Aleph-Null and back again and Sage would still be off doing whatever it was he wasn’t supposed to be doing.

Then there were Isiah and Bubba. They sat directly behind me and one or the other of them was kicking my seat constantly. Accompanied by their adult male person who said some version of “STOP THAT!” through clenched teeth about as often as Sage’s mom was proving she could make it to three.

Best was when we landed and Bubba wouldn’t wake up. (Remember, it was 2:30 in the morning after a two-hour flight.) “Dad” started threatening to just leave him behind on the plane if he didn’t stand up and get ready to deplane.

Not a nominee for “Father of the Year.”

And what’s up with all of the freakin’ dogs on planes? You would have thought we were on our way to the Westminster Dog Show for all of the tiny (and very much not so tiny) beasties getting on planes.

But that was all just the spice that made the experience interesting.

Today was quiet, a good day to rest up and get a nice dinner. Tomorrow we’ve got some football.

GO CHIEFS!

There’s a reason there was no post yesterday. In one of the worst possible times I’ve managed to come down with a touch of flu.

The good news is that it appears to be a mild case. After spending about twelve hours “worshipping the porcelain god” last night I’m past the worst of that (I hope) and now just dealing with a fever, body aches, and feeling like I would lose a battle with a drunken kitten.

Since I run an accounting department and it’s the last two days our office will be open this year, this is far from ideal. Since we have a Christmas trip planned and I’m supposed to be on a plane tomorrow, it sucks a LOT.

EGBOK – Everything’s Gonna Be OK

The good news is that while I was home this afternoon for one of my brief waking periods I got to watch bits and pieces of the original “Airport” movie on cable. I loved that movie as a kid but hadn’t seen it in decades.

Now I don’t know if it was the fever that made the movie so hilarious and BAAAAAAD or if it’s just that it was (by today’s standards) a terrible, terrible movie. (David Attenborough narrator voice: “It was not the fever.”)

I did note that, like with Tuesday’s article about the Hallmark Christmas Movie plot generator Twitter bot, at the end of “Airport” the “…and they fell in love” tagline still applies. They just all fell in love with people who were not the ones they were married to.

Video from today:

…will not upload to save my freakin’ life.

And on that note, I’m going to declare victory, bow to the inevitable, and go to bed.

Trust me, it’s cool, and I had a really great punchline.

In the distance a lonely train whistle wails. The hangar is dark, cold, lonely, a bit spooky as it creaks in the wind. What little light creeps in through the cracks separating the giant doors is barely sufficient to outline the looming shadows of the planes stored all around.

P-51 Mustang. F8F Bearcat. F6F Hellcat. SNJ Texan. B-25. Zero. Spitfire.

Off in the far corner of the hangar is a light, a beacon of hope, a symbol of better times to come. There, far beyond the dark aisles of P-47 parts it lies…

There is a God! One Diet Coke left!

Warmth will have to wait – tonight we have caffeine!!

I’m a friendly guy. I like meeting & knowing my neighbors. I get that the whole “no one in LA knows their neighbors” meme contains a large grain of truth, but that doesn’t mean that I think that it should be that way or that I want it that way in MY neighborhood.

Since we moved into the new house in May I’ve been making an effort to say howdy and meet the neighbors, with some moderate success. In addition, the brush fire two weeks ago helped double the number of people I’ve met and swapped contact information with – packing your cars to evacuate as a team building exercise might lack something in subtlety, but it’s very effective.

But there’s one elusive resident that has resisted every effort of mine for introductions. I’ve seen her now and then and tried to talk to her, only to have her run away. I’ve even seen her in the back yard peeking in through the sliding glass doors into the kitchen and bedroom, then running like hell when she saw me looking.

But this afternoon while I was putting up some more lights outside, she finally decided that I was probably mostly harmless and came over to say hello. She might have also thought that I looked like a softie who could be hit up for some treats. (This is an accurate assessment, but without any advance warning, I didn’t today.)

After an appropriate amount of cautious sniffing and then some rubbing of her head and neck against my hands to mark me as hers, a little scratching behind the ears, it turns out she’s a total little attention slut. I don’t go for the belly rubs on the first date my new feline friend, especially since you appear to be fully clawed and you might have one of those spots which I don’t know about – maybe next time.

She’s very pretty, grey and white striped, with white paws. No collar so I have no idea if she’s feral or just an outdoor cat – I suspect the latter since she seems well fed and well cared for.

Given the owls and the hawks around here, maybe she wants to be a little bit more cautious about being out in the open. On the other hand, maybe if I’m going to be out in the yard for the day I’ll put some treats in the garage.

I can already tell that it’s going to be a complicated relationship.

Cops? Well, yes, but that’s not what I was thinking of.

Winning lottery tickets? Obviously, but I know the math and the odds and that whole reality thing totally sucks when you know those.

Scissors? Yeah, but solved that by buying a couple dozen pair and leaving them all over the house.

No, basing my argument in reality while bemoaning the nature of reality (and not being in the presence of any scofflaws whose activities might be endangering me), I speak of the one great item (given that whole adulting thing and the odds of successfully running away and joining the circus being on a par with that aforementioned lottery ticket) that’s missing from my life when I really need it.

A pillow fort.

I’m telling you, I’m sitting here, exhausted, looking for inspiration on what to write tonight and what kept coming back to me was how much I would love right this second to crawl into a warm pillow fort with my iPad (it has a whole library on it, as well as movies) and read for a while from a book I’m really enjoying and then falling asleep and not waking up to an alarm clock more tired than when I went to sleep, but instead waking up only when I was rested and was ready to wake up…

I need that pillow fort.

What’s up with buttons these days?

Specifically, has there been some amazing but unsung advance in thread technology in the past couple of decades? Something that has completely escaped my attention?

I ask because it occurred to me while putting on my shirt this morning that it’s been YEARS since I lost a button on a shirt or jacket.

I can remember back in my single dad days that it was not uncommon to have a button come off once every month or so. Not to mention all of the buttons that came off of the kids’ clothes when they were much younger. I always had to have needle and thread handy, so much so that I kept one pre-threaded at all times in the valet on my dresser.

Now? I literally can’t remember the last time I had to sew on a button or lost one.

Trust me, as I’ve aged, my svelte, sexy, six-pack abs have expanded more than enough to put some massive strain on the shirt buttons. (David Attenborough narrator voice: “There were never any svelte, sexy, six-pack abs.“) There are plenty of shirts that I can only get on with some serious gut sucking, yet when I have the need to actually take a full breath, no buttons fly across the room like shrapnel.

So what changed? I’m clueless.

In other news, my brain really needs to get out more.