smacky and bucky

My grandfather (pictured left) was an MP in the Fifth Army Air Corps (before the Air Force existed, it was a branch of the Army) in the Pacific in World War II. Back then you were in "for the duration," so he was there for over two years (1943-1945), never making it home for a visit to his wife and soon-to-be-born daughter (my mother). My mom was over one before she ever met her dad.

Laura brought a scanner along and scanned a lot of photos and documents at my grandparents' house. There's one of him standing by a downed Japanese plane on Wake Island. Here's a pic of the motorcycles the MPs rode on the islands:







The visitation is this afternoon, the funeral is tomorrow, and (since the gravediggers don't work on holidays) the interment will be Tuesday.

Oh, today is also my and Laura's fifth anniversary. Five years ago we were down at the river getting hitched.

I received a call Monday morning to hightail it to my old hometown, as my grandfather was in the hospital and it didn't look good. Early Monday afternoon I had a petsitter lined up and was on the road. Monday evening he was actually feeling good and we were catching up and joking around.


Today, they diagnosed what he has and we actually said goodbye to each other in case he doesn't make it to tomorrow.


So yeah, not blogging much. Just checking in. The family has come to town from all over, so it's nice to get a chance to hand out when its not a holiday, but the circumstances totally suck.

I've eaten lunch at a neighborhood Chinese place up the street from my office maybe five times in the last year. For some reason, I slip the fortunes into the business card holder on my desk. Yesterday I received a fortune that looked familiar...


Same fortune, with the same typo. But the lucky numbers on the back are completely different, so it's not simply a duplicate fortune. So it's official. The Chinese have spoken!

As I write this (7:30 pm, Wednesday night), Barack Obama is speaking in Lynchburg, Virginia, the small town where I was born, raised, and ultimately escaped (no offense, Lynchburg!). Virginia has voted for a republican president in 12 of the last 13 presidential elections, but this year there's a real chance for the state to go for a democrat. (Also in the picture, Senator Jim Webb, former republican that had enough of the bullshit and ran as a democrat!)

Just busy, and uninspired to write. Wife's mother was in the hospital again last weekend, but she's home now. That German shepherd is still staying with us. Happy this is the week that I get Friday off. Lord almighty, I'm boring myself.


This paragraph from Waiter Rant about sums it up:

A blog is defined by the hive mind over at Wikipedia as “a website usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order.” I have to admit, however, that the definition Urban Dictionary cooked up is often more apropos. “A meandering, blatantly uninteresting online diary that gives the author the illusion that people are interested in their stupid, pathetic life. Consists of such riveting entries as ‘homework sucks’ and ‘I slept until noon today’.”

That's why I'm not posting much lately... to spare you the details of my meals. I'm not unhappy, and I certainly won't make the fatal mistake made in so many wacky comedies, thrillers, and scifi movies and say "I wish something interesting will happen..." because of course that's when the aliens attack, or you find out you have terminal cancer. (That interesting enough for ya?). No, I'm just not feeling very interesting right now. Each night the Olympics are on, which the wife loves and I view as mostly background noise unless something amazing or strange happens. Competitive trampoline? How is that a sport for adults? Men's field hockey? They have men's field hockey???

I am catching up on my reading, which is nice.

Not a lot out of the ordinary going on. We have three or four layers of old linoleum on the steps to our back door, and I've been painstakingly removing them, praying the bottom layers aren't asbestos, because I don't need to be breathing that in. Sliced my thumb open yesterday with a linoleum knife, which looks like this---->

...and is the perfect shape and sharpness to allow a nice, quick, deep slice of the thumb. So deep it didn't hurt. So deep it didn't bleed right away. Not right away. A tight bandage later, I was back at it, this time cutting away from myself. Lesson learned.

I have a few posts about this weekend, but this one will be about how smart our dog is. We were down at the river, out in the country, and at 4am Saturday morning, I was awoken by what sounded like a dog hyperventilating. It was Lexi, and she was standing by the bed looking at me and breathing in and out through her nose very fast.


I got up to see what had gotten her so excited, and I found the front door open. The German shepherd of my mother-in-law that we have been watching for what feels like forever had opened the door and run out. A quick look around confirmed our pup Kirby was gone too. We called for them, but there was only silence for what seemed like miles around. I grabbed the car keys and started down the driveway, knowing the German shepherd would be compelled to run up to the car barking. Like clockwork, the shepherd popped out of the woods between two neighbors' houses, Kirby trailing behind. I got them in the car and drove home, making sure all the doors were locked before going back to bed.



Lexi, rather than jumping at the chance at freedom to explore, woke me up to tell on her brother. She's the Cindy Brady of the dog world. She was so excited to see them come back, and was so proud of what she did. We just need to work on how she tells us these things. A bark or two would have been faster.

Haven't had much to say lately. Work's gearing up (I have a LOT going on with it), then by the time I get home it's time to feed to pets, walk the dogs, have dinner, then relax a bit 'til bed. Routine.

Since I've started the 9-day schedule, today is my Friday once again. The three-day weekends every other week are nice, though the work email piles up when I'm out. The rest of the world doesn't respect my day off!

Oh, I can recommend some good background music for editors/writers/proofreaders: A band called Lemongrass. It's chill music, mostly instrumental. The MySpace page calls it "ambient/jazz/lounge."

Looking forward to some time with the Wii this weekend. Since it's at our other place, I've only played it one weekend since I got it. Still have one game in the wrapper! Lego Indiana Jones is a very fun game, by the way, though it would be fun on any system. Nothing makes it better on the Wii, unless there are some extra levels specific to this system. Shrug. The Lego Star Wars kept me entertained for hours, and it looks like the Indy game will do the same. And in September, Lego Batman comes out!

I'm so conflicted by Wal-Mart. On one level, I understand that Wal-Mart is a very big reason stores I used to like such as Tower Records, Sun Coast, and Kay Bee Toys are gone (or barely alive). On the other hand, I needed a new floor lamp, and the cheapest one at Target was $40. At Wal-Mart, there was a big display of floor lamps for... $7.50. SEVEN DOLLARS AND FIFTY CENTS.

How the heck can anyone compete with that? Johnny's Lamp Emporium just crapped its pants and slapped up a "going out of business" sign, because I bought the cheap lamp. The mind-bogglingly cheap lamp. The lamp that cost $3 less than the 16-pack of AA batteries I bought. BATTERIES COST MORE THAN A LAMP.

In other news, it looks like I'll have lots of time to read the stack of books awaiting me, since Laura is going to demand that the TV be All Olympics All the Time, including Tivoing events while we sleep. NBC will be showing it all on seven different networks. They promise to show everything, even if it's at 3am on CNBC (which no one watches. I used to watch the John MacEnroe Show on that channel, but it only lasted about seven weeks).

Yeah, I've been at work since 6:30, but as I was checking Yahoo, I noticed a link to a story about a solar eclipse, which linked to the NASA website, which linked to Exploratorium, which was broadcasting live from China. I saw a total solar eclipse live from the remote Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in northwestern China near the Mongolian border on a webcast! It was amazing. You can see more about it here. They should have posted photos by now.

It's a kick-ass way to start a Friday, even if I have to be at work!