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.