Getting around

I hope everyone had a good 4th of July weekend, now for the long dog-days of summer - - hot, humid, no Survivor, mostly reruns on TV and no football til August.

My dad came to the big city for a visit last week, it went fairly well, except for a minor glitch at the airport, which I am sure will never be mentioned by my family or friends: I honestly thought the day I was supposed to pick him up was the next day (I thought Thursday was Wednesday, basically), so I went to work, thinking I had the next day to get the house taken care of and finalize the DC tour plans. So, I was at work, knocking out a project, when I got back to my desk, I had several messages from Dad, Melissa, my boss, co-workers, etc. that dad was at the airport, ready to be picked up. Not a good start . . . but, dad did get the full DC tour as we rode the metro from the airport up to the Georgia AVE metro station and a taxi cab ride through the Petworth area of DC. Little bit of excitement, but no harm done, I think.

Our overall goal was to get up to Gettysburg and tour the battlefield, which we did the next day (1 JUL 11), which was the 148th anniversary of the start of the battle. We started the tour off by watching the movie and checking out the Cyclorama of the battle in the new visitor's center. For folks that have been to Gettysburg before the new visitor's center, this is a huge improvement over the previous Cyclorama presentation, there is actual narration of the third day of the battle (Pickett's Charge) very well presented. I had seen the Cyclorama before, but not with the narration, lights and sound effects, so, good job Gettysburg National Battlefield Park.

Pop always finds the pretty, religious zealots, then tries to pawn them off on me.

Quick history lesson: Dad and I went to the Mormon museum in Omaha one time, there was a Mormon tour guide, nice young lady, dad gave her my name and address. I was visited in Fayetteville, NC for about two years by every Mormon missionary going through the city.

At Gettysburg, he did not pass out my name and address to the nice lady.

After that we did a quick walk around some of the displays in the town, there were only a few folks in period costume (I was told that the big costume days were 2 and 3 July, so we missed the real show). I was kind of disappointed by that, I really wanted to see masses of folks in costume, but that is OK. I have seen a Civil War re-enactments before at Bentonville, NC:

Link to Bentonville Wikipedia page

There were about a thousand re-enactors at Bentonville, I was expecting a lot of that at Gettysburg. I guess I will have to go again next year. . . .

We then had lunch at the Pickett's Charge Buffet, a fine example of American cuisine, if it was fried, it was in there, plus macaroni and cheese and wide variety of cakes and pies. It is actually on battlefield, and was where a lot of the actors from the movie ate lunch on a regular basis.


After lunch, we took a guided tour of the battlefield with one of the Certified Gettysburg tour guides, that is the second best way to see the battle (the best way is with one of the Army History experts who was writing a book about Gettysburg, which my organization at work did about 2 months before). The guide took us through all three days of the battlefield, he really focused in on how the terrain, logistics, leadership and communications affected the battle. According to him, if Stonewall Jackson had not been killed at Fredericksburg the month before, the battle may have been different. Definitely one of those endless/pointless arguments that I try to avoid getting into with Civil War zealots. History is as it is, no sense what-iffing it.


Devil's Den as seen from Little Round Top


A Joshua Chamberlain wannabe

The next day's highlight was a trip to the Dulles annex of the Smithsonian Air and Space museum, which both dad and I wanted to see, it was very interesting, link . . .

National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center


They had some very well preserved, historical examples of airplanes there - - the Enola Gay, a lot of early aviation examples, WWI, WWII and cold war aircraft. There is also a full sized Space Shuttle mock up there, which was cool to see because the Space Shuttle era is ending. Pretty cool museum if you are into that sort of stuff, it is free, but you have to pay 15 bucks to park there and there is about 4 dollars worth of tolls to get out there.


The Fourth of July in DC

This past week was also my first National Capital 4th of July, which was pretty cool, actually. We (the group of friends I run with) had a potluck dinner at Jford's house in the Foggy Bottom section of DC. We made enchiladas and asian chicken salad (lots of it), both turned out to be pretty good. After dinner, we all headed over to the Kennedy Center to watch the fireworks from one of the outdoor decks there, one of the secret Washington insider spots for watching fireworks. Very impressive display, and we avoided the huge crowd of folks out on the Mall.

Of Note:

I actually ran a 5k race with my running group on 2 July, the Semper Fi 5k in Anacostia Park. I ran the first 2 miles with Jford, then picked up the pace for the last mile. All running systems were a go, I ran in my Vibram 5 finger shoes (almost barefoot running) with no problems noted. I enjoyed the run, Jford, Cletus, Rob, Lee and Dirk also ran the race, Lee finished fairly well - - 2d in his age group. I won't post my time, I am currently a mere shadow of my former running self, and just happy to be able to run.

Summer Time

Summer time is almost here in DC, we have only had one day of scorching heat, but I think more are coming along.

I have been keeping busy at work, and learning more about the neighborhood I live in, as well as the local area's history. My immediate neighborhood was originally a small community of freed slaves, mostly agrarian, called Brighton, but later changed to Brightwood. Prior to the Civil War it was a sleepy suburb of DC as the capital developed. Modern day Georgia Avenue was 7th Street and the most notable citizen was a gentleman named Emery. Mr. Emery was the mayor of Brightwood, until the Civil War started and he joined the Army as a captain in the local militia. His house was on the hill immediately to the north of my house, now Brightwood Park. When the Civil War began, Brightwood Park and the Mayor's house became a semaphore signal station that communicated between the Capital (you can see the Capital building from Brightwood Park) and the ring of forts around Washington, DC.

About a mile north of my house on Georgia Avenue, there is a re-creation of one of the Civil War forts, Fort Stevens. Fort Stevens was one of the ring of forts along Military Road (now part of Missouri Avenue), it was also the sight of DC's only Civil War battles where Jubal Early made a last gasp attempt to sack the capital in 1864. He was repulsed in a short battle, Abraham Lincoln went to Fort Stevens to watch the battle from the ramparts. There were 41 Union casualties from the battle, they were buried in the Nation's smallest Military Cemetery, also off of Georgia Avenue.


On Memorial Day, a friend of mine, a Maryland native, Cletus (that is his real name, honest) and I drove around the fort and checked out the National Military cemetery.


We also went up into Maryland to a small church where the Confederates buried their dead prior to retreating back into Virginia.


We also went to Lincoln's summer home, and actually sprang to take the tour of the inside. I was kind of let down, normally, the houses are furnished in period pieces, but Lincoln's summer home was not. It was interesting to see the room where he wrote the Emancipation Proclamation and listen to how he struggled to frame slavery, the causes for the Civil War and the elimination of slavery as the reason for the Civil War. Slavery was one of the thousand pound gorilla's that hovered over our nation prior to the Civil War, from the founding father's forward. The more I read about Lincoln, the more I appreciate him as one of our greatest president's.

Enough of the history lessons . . . .

This weekend (Friday night to be exact) I volunteer drove for the Yellow Ribbon Foundation. A group of recovering veterans and their relatives went from Bethesda Naval Hospital up to Gettysburg for a BBQ and a ghost tour of the town of Gettysburg. I drove up with one of the Navy Corpsmen and Linda, a mother of a wounded vet, SGT Jason Ross. Jason is an Eagle Scout and a Marine Corps Explosive Ordnance Disposal Expert. He was blown up after he stepped on an IED in Afghanistan, losing both of his legs and shattering his right arm. He told his mom that he knew immediately when he stepped on the IED and that he was in trouble. He lost both of his legs above the hips and holds the record for surgeries (51) on the way to recovery. He was not expected to live past Germany, but he made it to Bethesda and is on month 3 of his recovery. His father, George, started a blog to let his family and community back in California know how things were going:

SGT Jason Ross - Marine

I was very inspired to hear his story.

At Gettysburg, a great family sponsored the families for a BBQ, letting them have the run of their vacation house for the night, including the pool and small pond for boating and some fishing. They were also hosted to a late night Ghost Tour of the city, pretty good night, I think most folks enjoyed it (except for the stories of the amputations at the hospital, that hit kind of close to home for George and Linda, I think). Many thanks to the great American's that opened up their house and generously put on a BBQ for the families.

On a much more personal and honestly insignificant note - - This week was the one year anniversary of my most recent bout of plantar fasciitis. In honor of that, I have started running again. I am up to 15 minutes a week now, taking it slow. My immediate goal is to be able to run 3-4 miles on Saturday with my friend's in the running club. This week was three 5 minute runs on the indoor track at the Pentagon. I will bump that up slowly over the next few weeks.

Movie update: We went and saw Meek's Crossing - - not the most dynamic and action packed movie, but if you are curious about prairie life in the 1840's on the Oregon Trail, this is a must see. The maker's went to great length to keep thing authentic and captured the tedium very well. The movie follows a settler group moving to Oregon as they cross the deserts to the east of Oregon. They are being guided by a mountain man that is quite lost, but too proud to admit it. They wander through the desert, looking for water for several days. The run into an Indian, capture him and try to communicate that they are looking for water. The movie ends before they actually find water, but some google research reassured me that they did eventually find water and make it to Oregon. Probably a movie you can watch on DVD.

RIP Cheney

It is always good to have a boxer around, they will let you know that your problems are not that important, but petting them is. Especially that one spot, just under my right shoulder . . . . .

Life is simple for a goofball boxer. Here, let me put my paws up on your chest and explain it to you. Just pet me, give me a marro bone, and I will let you in on the secret. The secret is getting pet a lot, more marro bones helps.

Now, let me lick your face, your problems will seem much less important. I can either jump up and lick it, put my paws on your chest and lick it, wait for you to get a little closer then dart in and lick it, or, if you would be so kind, just bend down a little bit.

I clearly did not poop in your backyard, that was another boxer. I am not sure which one, but if you pet me and give me a marro bone, I will tell you which one. That was only one marro bone . . .

Be careful, there is a cat over there, I will take care of it for you if you would like me to. If not, I will continue to stare at it, so it knows it is being watched and should not try anything catlike.

If the squirrel would like to eat Sam's food, that is fine, because it is not a cat, possum or chihuahua, and, it is not my food.

What would Cheney do (WWCD)? Bounce, wag the happiness indicator, flash the brown eyes, try to lick your face and let you pet her. And accept a marro bone. Or three.

Today, I took Cheney (documented criminal, cloaked wonder, devil dog, terror of cats, possums and chihuahuas) to the vet for the very last time. She has had a history of stomach problems and has lost a lot of weight in the past month. She wasn't keeping any food down, could barely make it through a short walk, and was very wobbly getting around. Up to the end, her happiness indicator was tinking away.

When they did an ultra-sound on her, she had a 6-8 inch blockage in her intestine, probably caused by her earlier problems (blanketectomy and twisted stomach), that blockage was not allowing her to digest food properly. There was a surgery option, but when the vet explained it to me, it didn't seem like it was a guarantee, and she may not fully recover.

Cheney was not my dog to begin with. A friend of mine adopted her from a family that had 3 cats, 2 kids, a deploying dad, and not enough time for a hyper-sweet, high energy boxer. When we went to pick her up, she just boxer-bounced (all four legs, straight up to your face so she can lick it) around the yard, licked everyone's face and spread boxer-joy around.

She hung out with Sam and just stayed around. Always happy to see anyone that walked out the back door, happiness-indicator (her stub of a tail) in full approval mode. When my friend moved out of the house, Cheney was left behind. Because she had the backyard dug up just the way she wanted it, I let her stay to take care of the cat and possum problems in the neighborhood in Fayetteville. She and Sam kept the backyard free of cats, possums, and chihuahuas.

Boxers are very stubborn, I could never get her to sit fully, and she would not shake my hand for anything. The closest I could get was a fake Cheney sit, where she would almost sit, her boxer-butt would be centimeters off the ground, but never touching. This of course would be enough to earn her a treat, which was what was important.

She stuck with me for 9 years, made sure I remembered that whatever my problems are, they were not as important as petting her. If my problems were really bad, she would give a soulful stare with her brown eyes, and lick my face. She and Sam chased PTSD monster away, a lot.

I am very sad that she isn't here. I hope she can find Chip in doggy heaven and wait patiently (as patiently as a boxer can wait) for me to show up and pet her and lick my face. My heart hurts, and is a little broken.


Her death hurts me a lot. Chip wandered away and I didn't have to confront his death. I was just sad for a long time, because I was never really sure what happened to him. Cheney's death is up close and personal (boxers are like that), in every way, shape and form.

I shouldn't feel this way, there are many people on earth that don't get fed the food of their choice twice a day, have a house and a blanket, but this still sucks.

I know my fan club reads this, if you call me up or talk to me, please don't talk about this for a while.

Not feeling very Green Beret-like today.

Easing into Spring

Well, spring is here in DC, some nice weather, some rainy weather, some hot weather and the occasional cold spells.

First off: Happy Mother's Day Mom!! Thanks for touring DC with me, I enjoyed it.

A couple of pictures from our tour: MT Vernon's back porch, Lincoln's statue outside of his summer house (where the Emancipation Proclamation was written) and Woodrow Wilson's typewriter. Three president's houses visited, pretty cool:








What's been going on? Hmmm . . .

I am still riding to work 5 times a week, and still get kind of worn down by friday, but that is ok. Everytime I pass by a bunch of cars sitting on Rock Creek Parkway, I am happy inside because I am not in one of those cars. Everytime I see one of those miserable buses on Georgia AVE, I am very happy because I am not stuck in one of them.

I have made some modifications to my route - - I now take Kennedy street through Rock Creek Park, then hit Beach drive. There is a pretty sweet downhill (which means a wicked uphill on the way home), and the road goes right past some of the prettiest parts of Rock Creek. It also means that I have to ride with some traffic, but I will take that trade.

Part of my route takes me through the DC (Smithsonian) Zoo. There is an exhibit of Asian Bears close to the route, normally when I ride by in the morning they are just coming out of their cave for a stretch so I can check them out; I also check out a couple of families of mallard ducks that live in one of the slow parts of the creek as it cuts close to the zoo.

Around the Hood . . .

Last weekend was Brightwood Park cleanup day, I instigated it. Brightwood Park is the park that Sam, Cheney and I walk through most nights, and one of Sam's favorite spots to poop (of course I pick up after him; for the record, Cheney poops in the backyard exclusively). DC has an elected/volunteer official somewhere between regular citizen and city council person. I contacted our local rep and asked her about cleaning up the park and she contacted the mayor's office (who sent a rep) and out DC City Council person (the only one not under investigation for corruption; who also showed up) and about 10 of my neighbors showed up to spend a few hours picking up the debris left in the park. It was a good day, the park is a little cleaner, I think we will do it again in a couple of months.

Other things . . .

I am still not running, plantar fascitis is still working me over. It is getting better, I think about another month of not running will do the trick. I will report back in JUN. Biking too and from work takes care of my cardio workouts. If I am able to start running, I think it will only be a couple of times a week.

Husker update . . .

I am a little leery about the Huskers introduction into the Big 10. I read articles about how the Huskers will clean up, go un-defeated, etc. Then I flashback to the fold over the Huskers had in the second half of last season and remember how we did the dieing cockroach against the Huskies and balance it out. We'll see. I have confidence in the defense and hope the the offense doesn't rest solely on tender ankles of Taylor Martinez. So, I am optimistic, good bowl game, 9 or 10 wins and I will be happy.

Fantasy Football update . . .

I have no idea what the NFL will do this next year, and I don't really mind. I will play fantasy football and will watch a couple of games or so, but, you know, when spoiled athletes who get paid a ton start to complain to owners that are very rich (who claim they are losing money - - why keep owning a team if you are losing money???) when there are a whole lot of folks out of work, I really don't have much sympathy and lose some interest in the sport.

But, I will still try to smoke Wade in TFL.

Political Commentary (stop now if you don't want to read it) on the Death of Osama Bin Laden

I am happy that he is dead, he was the motivating factor behind some of the worst violence in the world. Not only the African embassy bombings and the 9-11 attacks, but some of the worst Sunni vs. Shia violence in recent times.

I also think that the war on terrorism isn't over. This is similar to the Cold War, a long slog against an entrenched enemy. The enemy isn't a military target that can be knocked off, it is a soft war of development and education.

There are too many motivating factors that will lead the rest of the world to continue to fall apart. When you look at a very young, poorly educated Muslim population that is growing up in a world where they are oppressed and don't have access to what the rest of the world has (education, work, quality of life, everything that they can see on the internet and can't have) you will have the roots of terrorism. If governments of the world don't pay attention to the needs of their population and continue to pay attention to their Swiss bank accounts and lining the pockets of their family/tribe/friends/political cronies there will be terrorist movements.

My hope is that the leading governments of the world don't declare victory and quit on the rest of the world. Good article:

The "Y" Article

OK, off the soap box.

This American Life

For those of you who may not know this, I am a huge National Public Radio (NPR) fan, I could listen to it all day long and wish more folks would so I would have something to talk about with them. I think their news is honestly very fair, they go to great lengths to talk to folks from both sides of the spectrum and they go deep into stories. My friend JFord will probably shudder when I type this, but I think their journalism goes way beyond anything that is in print today (except maybe the Christian Science Monitor).

One of my favorite shows is "This American Life", each week they pick a theme and develop 2-4 stories around that theme, they almost always make you say, "Hmmm, that was interesting, I wish they had another hour . . .". When their team of reporters broke down the financial collapse, it was amazing, I really understood it all. Very cool.

Well, this past weekend, they did a road show in Washington, DC and I got tickets to it, which was pretty awesome. For a modest donation to the local NPR station (WAMU) I got to go to a pre-show dessert event with none other than Ira Glass, the host of the show.

Picture of me with Ira Glass:

He was just like he was on the radio, nice, talkative, interesting and told a great story. For about an hour, he talked to the folks at the dessert social, answered their questions, signed autographs and let us take pictures with him, very cool. When I was in Iraq, I bought about 5 years of his shows on Audible.com and listened to them almost everyday. Some of the shows were from Iraq, which was very interesting, because I was there. After I listened to them, I understood a bit more about Iraq and how the conflict was affecting Iraq. This American Life went to great lengths to talk to Iraqi's, get their perspective and develop a different angle than most folks would hear.

(Editor's Note: I was not in favor if the Iraq invasion, when we first heard there was a plan being developed for the invasion I thought the folks in the plans shop were joking, but it was horribly true. To this day I can't listen to or see George W. Bush without getting angry about the invasion. I was happy to be part of the operation that turned the conflict around and made it manageable for the Iraqis, that was a year well spent. Whenever I hear of casualties (US or Iraqi) from the conflict, I literally see red. I am sure there are a lot of folks in my father's generation that felt the same way about JFK, Lyndon B. Johnson and Vietnam).

OK, off the soapbox . . . .

During the show in DC, the This American Life folks played four stories from their television series and talked about the 2 year Showtime show they put together and how challenging that was for them. Of the stories, the one that stood out the most was one done by an Iraqi (Hamid Hamsa) that received a Fullbright Scholarship and was studying in New York. For you This American Life fans, Hamid Hamsa had been on the radio show before, he talked about how the invasion had affected his family and his impression of the invasion as a young Iraqi.

The television episode took place about 4 years after his radio appearance, the premise of the show was he wanted to ask American people why the US invaded Iraq. When he asked the question in NY, he was told that they didn't want to invade, they were against it in NY, he would have to go south to talk to the folks down there about the reason for the invasion. So, during his spring break, he built a stall (like Lucy's stall in the Peanuts comic strip) that had a sign that said "Talk to an Iraqi" on it and went south to talk to folks. He stopped in Fayetteville, NC, Savannah, GA and Jacksonville, NC among other places. It was interesting (and sometimes sad) to see how Americans reacted to him and the discussions that took place. He said that the folks he connected to the most were the families of Service Members because they had a better understanding of the conflict and were closer to what was going on than the general public.

Link to the This American Life webpage (you can right click on the links below and open in a new Tab if you want to stay on my blog page, I just learned that internet trick):

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/

Talk to an Iraqi episode link:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/tv-archives/season-two/two-wars

My personally favorite episode:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/175/babysitting

If you all are not into NPR, I recommend catching a few podcasts, they are free on Itunes. As mom said once after listening to a This American Life episode when she was visiting me in NC "You never know what you are going to hear on NPR."

Other New:

Final Four update - - My beloved Blue Devils got rocked out of the tournament. I have to admit, I didn't think they had it in them, but love them anyway. Coach K decided to go small at the end of the year, I am not sure why, but he is the coach with three rings. I wish they had more balance and it looked like they would this year, but they never emphasized the inside game. Sigh, live by the three pointer, die by the three pointer.

On the good side, UNC got beat as well.

Movie recommendation: Win Win, good family flick, just a little bit of violence, but really well done. I got a good laugh at the wrestling team all getting pinned. Paul Giamatti is one pretty good actor, even if he is playing himself.

Who's keeping track of this stuff???

The family has spoken, Mom and Melissa agree, the green pancake fiasco took place in Papillion, not, Grand Praire.

The first thing that goes is the memory.

Happy Birthday

March 17th is my little sister's birthday, so I had green pancakes in her honor for supper.

G family history: When growing up, while we were living in Grand Praire, TX, we would normally have pancakes on Saturday mornings. One Saturday morning fell on March 17, my little sister's birthday, and St. Patrick's Day. I got up early, made the pancakes and colored them with green food coloring. For some reason, nobody else in the family thought that was a great idea. I got in trouble, Julie, if I recall, cried a little bit, dad got mad. In retrospect I think mom and Melissa might have thought it was funny, but didn't voice their support. Anyway, the pancakes tasted normal, they were just green.

I didn't think much about it, until much later when Wade (Julie's husband) mentioned that the green pancakes had been resurrected by his daughter's, Sid and Abbey, so, here's to you, Sis, Happy Birthday. They tasted normal, but were green.

Riding News

Five days a week commuting is very relaxing to and from work, but I normally get a little tired about Thursday. No problems, I am sure that will work itself out. The state of Virginia has finally (after a year of work) finished the section of the Mount Vernon Trail that connects Lady Bird Johnson Park to the Memorial Bridge. There is now a nice, wide strip of asphalt instead of a narrow, cone infested portion of concrete. I saw them almost finish it off on Thursday this week, and was going to wait until they finished it that night to ride across it, but it was getting late. NOTE: There were two other riders waiting for the steamroller and work crew to finish it off so they could be the first riders over it.

I rode home on Friday over it, and was really enjoying it UNTIL a smarmy, annoying pair of riders stopped in the middle of the intersection to the 14th Street Bridge. Because they stopped, I had to slow my roll down to go around them. After I passed them up, smarmy, annoying rider number 1 (clearly out for his first ride this spring) said,very loudly, in a very annoying tone "If you would have signaled, we wouldn't have stopped". The PTSD monster inside of me wanted to go back and pound the smarmyness out rider number 1, but the sane rational balance to PTSD monster decided not to ruin my ride by doing that. I like the fact that other riders have opinions about my riding, I don't necessarily care to hear them though. The rest of the ride was just fine.

This was the second interaction with smarmy, annoying riders on the Mount Vernon trail. Last year, as I was riding back to Alexandria after another long day of Joint Staff work, I made a very bad pass on a group of riders and some folks could have looked at my pass as almost dangerous, and one of the riders may have had to put on his brakes. OK, got it, be annoyed, say something, got it, sorry. Instead, smarmy annoying rider decided to pull up right behind me and ring his annoying bell at me continuously for about 1/2 a mile. Once again, PTSD monster inside of me wanted to do some biker on biker violence, but rational sane person vetoed the recommendation from PTSD monster.

PTSD monster can be hard to control sometimes.

Sigh, OK, that is off my chest . . . .

On the better side of riding news . . . There is a section of my route that goes between the Jefferson Memorial and the George Washington Parkway, there is a very small garden besides one of the overpasses, in the garden is a statue of a person sitting on a park bench.

I rode by it several times, always thinking "I should go over and see who that is". I did that on Wednesday morning, turns out it is a statue of George Mason sitting on a park bench (makes sense, the official name of the 14th Street Bridge is the George Mason Bridge). I read the sign that accompanied the statue, turns out, George Mason was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and a mentor to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Washington called him a great man and mentor, Jefferson thought he was one of the smartest men in Virginia. Jefferson used parts of George Mason's documents (the Virginia Declaration of Rights) as a model for the Declaration of Independence and for the Bill of Rights. Mason left the Constitution Convention though, after they failed to address slavery in the Constitution, pretty big deal for a Virginia man. Anyway, it is a pleasant little area, worth the walk and I am glad I stopped to check it out.

Weather update

The weather here in DC is reaching the point where it is no longer cold, just kind of brisk, Cheney may be allowed to roam the backyard without her cape. Last year she had a green sweater, which she hated wearing, but kept her warm. When I took it off of her, she bounced all over the back yard for a while. I think she will miss the cape some, but not much.

Husker update

Spring practice has started, it looks like there is harmony in the coaching staff, so we will see. I am cautiously optimistic about our switch the Big 10.

What has been going on?

Well, not much and a whole lot . . . .

I am now a 5 day a week bike commuter. I recently went all the way to bike geekdom and purchased a side pannier (saddlebag) for my bike. It is much roomier than the small trunk that I had on my bike's commuter rack, so I can carry more stuff - - - I don't think that I will need to use my Mondays to carry in all of my breakfasts, lunches, snacks t-shirts and socks, I can just put a couple of day's worth in the saddlebag. I know that sounds pretty exciting . . . but, to me, it is. I don't particularly care to ride the metro and buses, especially the buses. Normally when I get on a bus, it is very crowded and it stops every two blocks for a mile or so, sometimes, I see folks get on the bus two blocks from the metro stop, and then get off at the metro stop which I find very frustrating. That was why I was walking to and from the metro stop, but . . . . . .

I recently had to stop walking to and from the metro stop because my foot has taken a turn for the not healing so fast. I am not sure what I did, but the plantar faciitis came back with a vengeance earlier this week. When I trace it back, I think it was wearing my Army boots a couple of times (when it snowed once, walking to the metro). I coupled that with a run that I got a little too froggy on (running too far too fast, sigh) and I think I will not be running for a while, sigh. I will see the podiatrist this week and see what he has to say, hopefully it is just a matter of staying off of it for a while.

The only thing that I have to figure out is how to do my weekly stop at the YES, Organic Food Market on Georgia AVE. It was only three blocks from the Metro stop. I think I can make a modification to my riding route and get to it from a side street, rather than going down Georgia AVE (one of the more frustrating roads to ride on, lots of traffic and stoplights). I normally stop there and get some fruit and honey, they have an organic honey that is really good, made by bees that frequent orange blossoms down in Florida, and it is pretty in-expensive for that sort of honey. Those orange blossom loving bees make a mighty fine honey.

Outside of biking to work, hmmm, what has been going on?

Last night me and a couple of friends went to see a play at the Kennedy Center (yes, that Kennedy Center). They are doing a two week showing of Indian (the country, not American Indians) culture, displays, art, textiles, etc.

Link to the Maximum India Web page

Pretty interesting stuff, we had some Indian food at the cafeteria (pretty good flavor, but on the pricey side, of course, it is the Kennedy Center) and watched an Indian interpretation of an Ibsen play: When the Dead Awaken. I am not much into plays, especially if they are done in an obscure Indian language. About 30% of the dialogue was shown as subtitles on monitors next to the stage, but it seemed to be a lot of screaming and laughing, with some interesting use of props. Description from the web page:

"Selected for its universal human themes of death and resurrection, When We Dead Awaken directed by writer, director, and actor Ratan Thiyam puts an Eastern twist on Henrik Ibsen's final play of the same name. Chorus Repertory Theatre's production revolves around the buried symbolism in names and occupations. A sculptor who has grown cold to his wife is led to climb a great mountain by an intriguing woman. But the monolith proves to be too much for the sculptor in this enigmatic play that hints that when we wake up to our reality, there is little around to recognize. In this adaptation, scenes from the original play have been picked up and interpolated, without distorting the original idea and using unaltered dialogues from the original text. Performed in Manipuri with English surtitles. A free Explore the Arts discussion follows the performance on March 4."

We didn't stick around for the Explore the Arts discussion.

A member of our running club was interested in it, so we went with him. The play was performed in Manipuri, a part of north east India, near Burma. I have no idea how someone from Manipur discovered Ibsen, a Norwegian playwright. Interesting symbolism in the production. I think I will stick to English plays from now on though.

Other news:

Husker update: Bo has made my year, he let Sean Watson go, so maybe the Husker offense will pick up and have a distinct identity. I think the entire Husker nation breathed a sigh of relief.

A new officer has come into our organization, he is from western Iowa, and went to the University of Nebraska at Kearney (formerly Kearney State College). He has the same huge Husker magnet that I do, so I figured out he was a Husker fan. That should make this fall a little more interesting.

Survivor update:

If you are not watching this season of Survivor, sorry for you. It is probably the best season in the past several years, there are some true characters on the show. I really enjoy watching it and discussing it with the two other folks on the Joint Staff that watch it as well. One of my Survivor buddies DVRs the show and watches it several times over a weekend. That is dedication.

Movie review:

I haven't seen too many movies here lately. The most recent two were Toy Story 3, which I did enjoy. I saw the first two, so I Netflixed the 3d one. Good story, and a fitting end to a Pixar empire.

I also watched Winter's Bone (Link to the NY Times Review), which was very, umm, gritty? If you want to watch a painful to watch movie about how the meth industry has affected rural America (the movie is set in the Ozarks), this is it. Very similar to Precious a few years ago, intense and hard to watch. I probably won't be driving through rural Missouri for a while.

OK, Updated Pictures from Roatan

I spent a few hours messing around with some of the simple editing tools for digital pictures that I have on my computer. The link for those photos is on the right, at the top of the link lists.

I went through the 200 or so pictures that I had selected as Keepers from our last Roatan trip, did some cropping, brightness, saturation and other edits on 96 of them. About 30 of these will be printed up, about 20 of those will be framed and a few will make their way back to the island for display in the cabin.

I received a few comments about the 211 keepers, here are a few explanations.

"You seem to have a lot of pictures of juvenile spotted drums." Well, yeah, they are pretty little fish. I edited out most of them, but to be honest, I like those fish, they are very cool to see underwater.

"What was that fish next to the bottle?" That is a juvenile scrawled filefish, with it's file in the up position. Dad saw that, I lucked out and got a few photos of it.

All in all, I am happy with the Olympus, now that the mystery of white balance has been solved after a short 3 years.

Other News:

Wow, no football. Luckily, Survivor has started back up. Survivor Redemption Island is turning out to be pretty good TV. For those of you that are Survivor fans, Boston Rob and Evil Russ have been brought back to continue their clash of personalities and methodologies for another season. Neither has won the overall show, and they seem to be polar opposites, but they both want to win. Rob is more of a team builder on the outside, but on the inside, he knows his team is weak and he is in full Survivor mode. Russ knows his team is strong, but there are some folks on the team that know all about him and his methods. Should be interesting to watch.

Characters to watch: "Secret Agent" man, Phillip. He is pure entertainment. If you are a Survivor fan, you may have noticed that there hasn't been a lot of personalities on the show, he is a pretty good one to watch.d

Amazing Race starts up tonight, it looks like they are using some Survivor methods: Bring back some fan favorites that haven't won.

Husker update

The state of Nebraska has spoken and Bo Pellini has listened. Shawn Watson is no longer coordinating the Husker offense. I will never say anything bad about college football players, but coaches, that is another story. I am glad he has moved on, Nebraska's offense used to be a thing of beauty to watch, but it has languished under Shawn Watson. I think he is the last of the Callahan coaches. If the offense can come close to matching the defense, the Huskers will do all right. I am not in the crowd of folks that demand a National Championship every year, but I want to watch a team that hits on all cylinders and competes on both sides of the ball. Last season, the offense was hard to watch, it was predictable and didn't seem to be focused or disciplined. I am very interested to see how we compete in the Big 10.

Biking update

Last week in DC was beautiful, great weather, warm and sunny. A warm ride is much more fun than a cold one. I have added a few miles to my route to get a better work out. The additions are mostly on the mall and allow me to go by the Jefferson and FDR memorials.

Diving Trip and Other Things

Well, life has finally settled on down some. I have declared victory in the house moving process, all of my stuff is in the new house in DC, all of the boxes are unpacked, the rooms are all set up for the most part, pictures are on the wall and life is pretty much back to normal.

I have been without internets (except for while at work, and whatever Gs and Bs I could work from my phone) so I have not been posting on here. Two weeks ago, COMCAST finally got me connected (after 5 tries), so I have high speed internets, cable and the all-important HD channels that I was missing. For the life of me, I have no idea how anyone can watch TV without HD.

What has been going on? Well . . .

My father, two brothers in law and I completed our annual Roatan Reef Survey. Pop, Mark, Wade and I spent a week diving and relaxing at the cabin in Roatan. We dove about 20 times give or take, and painted both cabins while we were down there. The reefs were their normal spectacular selves, the diving was very good for that time of year. On our first day of diving we had incredible visibility, best I recall, and I got some pretty good pictures. I will post them to Picasso a little later on. The visibility on the Prince Albert (the wreck in the CocoView channel) was great on the first day, I and got some very good ambient light shots of a trumpet fish (the best is below here) and some good shots of the coral growing on the wreck.


The trumpet fish provided some very good poses, this was probably the best one, but I saw him on several dives. If you have the time, scroll through the Picasso page (link in the normal position, the top link in the list of links on the right hand side of the blog). For you underwater photography folks, you will notice the INCREDIBLE white balance on these shots, I got lucky on the first day, and made a discovery on the next to last day of diving that has allowed the Olympus camera to redeem itself. Basically, there are some underwater settings in the digital camera scenes mode, two of the settings allow for automatic white balance setting, I figured that out about thursday, on saturday, I figured out that you could do the same thing with the video camera mode. Unfortunately for the video setting, I didn't figure it out until the very last dive, and there was nothing to really video with it, but I will post a bit of the video to show how good it can be if I can find something to video.


Coral on the Prince Albert



Garden eels near the Prince Albert. The area around the Prince Albert (PA for short) is a wide sandy bank that leads up to the shallow area in front of the resort. Normally you can see a few interesting things there, but this was the first year (out of 10 or so) that I saw the garden eels. I spent about 10 minutes taking pictures of them, using ambient light, as you will notice, the sand is white (the color it is supposed to be). The eels were cool because I had never seen them before, not very dynamic, but interesting to take pictures of. Ambient light is good for this sort of stuff because a flash would have bounced off of the sand and the shot would have had a bluish tinge to it.



A National Geographic Moment

For those of you that dive in the Caribbean, you have probably noticed the invasion of the lionfish. They are all over the place in Roatan, and have the potential to do some serious environmental damage to the reef life. Roatan and the reefs around it are famous for the smaller fish, which the lionfish (not a native species, so there are no natural predators) love to eat. That said, they do provide some very dramatic photos. This shot (ambient light, with the new, magic white balance setting) is of a competition between a scorpionfish and a pair of lionfish for a prime hunting grounds. You have to look carefully to see the scorpionfish, they camouflage themselves to look like the reef they are sitting on, waiting for a fish to swim close, then they eat it. For this shot, I was originally taking pictures of some Peterson cleaning shrimp on Newman's Wall (leading to the PA), I got a couple of good shots, then looked down and saw the scorpionfish. I started snapping away at the scorpionfish, when I saw some movement out of the corner of my eye, it was two lionfish trying to intimidate the scorpionfish and move it away from the coral ledge he was sitting on. This went on for about 10 minutes, the scorpionfish eventually moved down a ledge or two, but it was pretty cool to watch.

Warning, non-whitebalanced video, but a pretty cool sequence.




Some white balanced video for comparison:




The week of diving was pretty darned good all around. Family diving note: For some reason, dad is very good at spotting little things while diving. He always manages to find something cool to see despite being very near sighted. Normally, I hang back from the group a little bit, take pictures, then catch up, by the time I am done with the shots I am on, he has found something else to take a picture of.

Other news:

I have begun running again, I am cautiously optimistic about it, and am keeping the mileage low to avoid my most common recurring injury: plantar fasciitis. Most of my runs have been shorter, I have been hitting the mall in the morning, running past the Lincoln Memorial (what would Abe Think?) and visiting my Korean War Memorial buddies. If you visit the mall, the Korean War Memorial is probably them most vivid memorial in my opinion, the patrol of stainless steel soldiers is pretty cool in the morning, and there are no crowds so you can run through there. Once my feet get used to running again, I will start to creep up in the miles and visit some of the other good running routes.

I have also began riding to and from work from the new house. It is always difficult to start that off (what's the new route? what if I get lost? what if I take a wrong turn? what if I forget my badge?) but once I do start off, I always think back about my trepidations and wonder what was I worried about? My new route is mostly flat, downhill on the aggregate on the way to work, which means uphill on the way back from work. The route goes through Rock Creek Park and takes advantage of the bike/running trails that wind through the park. The only time I am on a street is about the first 1.5 miles to and from the house to the park, and most of that is residential.

Winter riding has it's challenges, I had my first, pretty spectacular bike accident this past week. There are a few patches of ice along the route, I managed to hit one on Thursday morning, luckily, my body protected my bike from serious damage. I was coming off a bridge, and accelerating along a fun part of the trail, I hit the ice and the next thing I knew, I was laid out on the ground. Outside of my damaged pride, I have a pretty spectacular bruise on my left hip. There was no damage to the bike, so I just dusted myself off and rode on into work.

I suspect that once things start warming up more, I will have a few more riders in the morning for company.

Fantasy Football News

I did not finish in last place this year, which was good for my ego. I was able to pass my brother in law Mark during the last week of the season and finished in second place in the family contest. My niece Sydney "won" the family trophy, her all names strategy did not work out and she can read through the fantasy football advice book for a year. Wade, my other brother in law won the family competition and finished in the money, so I will have to listen to him for the rest of the year. My strategy for next year: No Diva wide receivers, thank you for fading into oblivion Randy Moss. Joe Flacco will be on my team, as will Aaron Rogers. The rest of the team will be up for re-assessment.

Future updates: Sam and Cheney, neighborhood description, movie reviews