Dora today

The breeder sent us photos of our puppy taken today.

It’s the real one

Granddaugher Lisa gets her first look at the real Statue of Liberty after five years of looking at the half-size reproduction at the New York-New York Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

That’s her mom, Nicky, on the left. Son Steve shot the photo about 1:30 p.m. CDT today.

Flying to New York

My son Steve posted this photo of granddaughter Lisa this afternoon during a layover at Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport’s Humphrey Terminal.

I presume they are flying from their home in Las Vegas to New York City to spend a weekend with Nicky and maybe do a little house-hunting.

Lisa, as always, is a Force of Nature.

Excuses, excuses

If my day was going according to plan, I would be sitting in my $8.43 red Walmart chair right now, next to my tent with my Indianapolis BMW Club friends at the European Riders Rally in Burkesville, Ky.

But my day did not go according to plan.

I am, instead, sitting at my desk in my upstairs office and my bike is directly beneath my feet in the garage.

I’ve been looking forward to this weekend since I got back from Daytona Beach Bike Week in March but digestive turmoil and a rain-filled forecast trashed my plans.

Mostly it was the rainy forecast. It’s a 6½ hour ride from here to Burkesville, not counting gas and rest stops. I had planned to hit the road about 7 a.m., but it was raining steadily and an examination of the radar made it clear that I would be in rain most of the way to the rally and could probably expect to set up my tent in the rain.

And the Weather Channel app on my iPhone says there is a 60 percent chance of rain tonight and again tomorrow, decreasing to 50 percent on Sunday.

As much as I enjoy seeing my Indy friends and rallying, that doesn’t sound like a good time to me.

I just sent an email to the rally organizers asking if I can still get a rally shirt and pin, since I pre-registered and paid $40. I am hopeful they will say yes.

I toyed briefly with the idea of driving my Lexus SUV to the rally, but dismissed the idea after I calculated it would cost close to $125 in gasoline. Plus, I would still end up setting up a tent in the rain and spend the weekend dodging raindrops.

And, yes, there was a time when I would have gone anyway. But when a guy gets to his mid-60s with more than 300,000 BMW miles behind him, he has pretty much run out of things to prove to himself. I’ve ridden hundreds of miles in downpours and, even though I have the best waterproof gear I’ve ever owned, I don’t care to do it this weekend.

In the mail this morning

I probably paid about $10 too much for these two Pioneer Trails cups from the Wallace China Westward Ho series, but they don’t show up very often on Ebay and I had none in my collection.

So there.

But I was a little alarmed when I picked up the package at the post office and heard the clink of cup-against-cup when I tipped the box from one side to the other.

When I got home and opened the box I found the sloppiest job of packing I’ve ever seen in my years of buying Western themed china online. It’s a testament to the hardiness of Wallace China’s restaurantware that there were no chips or cracks from rough handling in transit.

So now I await the arrival of three Pioneer Trails saucers and three Pioneer Trails dinner plates from another Ebay vendor.

From the September, 1954 Popular Science

My dad had a compass installed on the dashboard of our 1951 Ford and I thought it was ultra-cool.

This one is more advanced in that it pretends to give you information on the side-to-side tilt of your car and the rate of acceleration (or deceleration).

And how about this offer of a car tire for a buck? But wait, they’re used tires.

It’s our 12th anniversary!

Maria and I were married 12 years ago today under this quilt in the rotunda of the Boone County (Ind.) Courthouse by County Clerk and longtime friend Lisa Garoffolo.

Given Maria’s love for quilting and fabric art, it was the perfect venue.

The timing was perfect, too. We had both been divorced, but had taken our time about jumping back into marriage until we had our heads on straight and knew it was right.

It was right and I think God every day for this brilliant, loving woman.

Jack’s first encounter with the indestructible Varsity Ball

We gave Jack a $2.50 Walmart beach ball a couple of weeks ago, which lasted all of 90 fun-filled seconds until he punctured it.

I searched the internet for an indestructible ball and discovered the Varsity Ball which has survived prolonged encounters with lions and tigers and bears.

I ordered one and it arrived this morning. Here’s how it went before the Varsity Ball wore him out.

I think it’s stress

Yesterday’s Pipida scan showed my gallbladder is working fine.

So now I get to endure an endoscopy and a colonoscopy on June 4. At 6:15 a.m. Oh, well. I’ve been putting off the colonoscopy for a couple of years, so I might as well get it over with.

My M.D. daughter-in-law opined that I may have diabetic gastropariesis. I just looked up the symptoms:

Typical symptoms include:

• Nausea - sometimes
• Vomiting - no
• Abdominal bloating - no
• Abdominal pain - sometimes
• Feelings of fullness after only a few bites of food - no
• Heartburn or gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) - sometimes
• Changes in blood sugar levels - maybe
• Lack of appetite - no
• Excessive weight loss – hell no

I’m more inclined to think I’m dealing with stress-induced or aggravated Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). I had something like it when I was in my teens and early 20s, but it stopped cold when I learned Transcendental Meditation. I haven’t been a regular meditator since late in 1992, but the times I’m included TM in my morning routine lately, my symptoms have abated. Since it costs me nothing to try, I’m going back to the prescribed regimen of 20-minute meditations twice daily and see what happens.

God knows I’ve been under enough stress over the past couple of years.

Does posting about my medical adventures qualify me as an old person?

Does riding 1,000 to a weekend motorcycle rally redeem me as an active late middle-ager? One can hope.

Our Lady of the Roses

This figure of Mary, which we acquired from Maria's brother when he became Amish, spent several years in parts of the yard that were prone to weeds. Now she has a more appropriate setting

I like it

Surprisingly smooth and not hoppy.

Family portraits

One of those little gray butterballs is our little girl Dora, shown here with her littermates and her proud mother Mercy.

Here’s Storm, the father:

Two hours of intense boredom

This is how I spent a couple of hours this morning at St. Bernards Medical Center, getting my gallbladder function scanned.

The worst part of it, aside from the discomfort of lying flat on my back for two hours on a steel table, was the tedium.

I was glad to have Maria along for company and photography.

We expect to get results tomorrow or Wednesday.

Waiting

Waiting for a Pipida scan at St. Bernard's  Medical Center and listening to horror stories about kneecaps being put in upside down and backward.

Oh, Canada!

Canadian-grown heirloom tomato from Kroger.

It’s Dora

Joleen Marple, the breeder we’re getting our puppy from, sent a couple more photos of our blue merle little girl.

We’re decided to call her Dora, which was my grandmother’s name and goes nicely with her last name of Flora. The name means “gift.”

Joleen said she’ll start calling her Dora so she’ll know her name by the time we take her home on June 22.

Joining our family

I just put money down on this 10-day-old blue merle Aussie female puppy.

Maria has been praying for a puppy for weeks and I stumbled across an Arkansas breeder on Facebook this morning who had two blue merle females in a litter born May 1.

She gets to come to our house on June 22, which creates a quandry for me, since I had planned to be at the BMW RA rally at the Biltmore that weekend.

What to do? What to do?

In the meantime, we’re accepting suggestions for names.

Our hope is that, given the appropriate amount of time, she and Jack can have a couple of litters and we’ll be up to our eyes in Aussie puppies. What a happy circumstance!

Happy Birthday, Blog

My blog is nine years old today.

I never expected it to continue this long, but here we are. This is my 4,818th blogpost. The counter I installed in May, 2007, has recorded more than a quarter-million pageviews since then.

When I began blogging on Monday, May 10, 2004, I was a youthful 58 years old, living in a 101-year-old Queen Anne Victorian house in Thorntown, Ind. with my wife, who was working at The Indianapolis Star’s Metro West Bureau in Avon.

My stepson Austin was living with us and still in high school and his sister Morgan was a student at the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics and the Humanities on the campus of Ball State University in Muncie, Ind.

We had one dog – Ruthie – and I was looking forward to my second riding season on my new 2003 BMW K1200GT.

If you had told me I would be living in Arkansas and liking it some nine years hence, I wouldn’t have believed it. Ditto for having my second Australian shepherd, driving a Lexus SUV, and owning an office building in downtown Jonesboro.

My son Sean was in Portland then and still is, but his brother Steve and his wife and daughter moved from Cincinnati to Las Vegas and are preparing to move again to New York City, or maybe just across the river to New Jersey.

Austin has grown into a responsible man with sensitivity and character. Morgan has been married, moved to Arizona, divorced, moved in with us in October, landed her dream job as a children’s librarian, and is buying a home for herself here.

And we have renters living in our Thorntown house.

Isn’t life interesting?

I hate it

I hate it when the people in the booth behind me fail to control their kid.

I can assure you that neither of my sons was ever permitted to annoy other diners thusly.

Capt. Kroon’s V-E Day Letter

Sixty-eight years ago today, 26-year-old Capt. Philip C. Kroon, an artillery officer with the U.S. Army's 144th Field Artillery Group, took pen in hand in the garden outside an Austrian hotel and wrote a letter to his young bride in Redlands, Calif.
It was V-E Day - Victory in Europe Day - and the young captain from Grand Rapids, Mich., had been in combat since his unit came ashore in Normandy a few weeks after the June 6, 1944, invasion. He was looking forward to coming home, but mindful that the war against Japan seemed far from finished and that he might be needed in the Pacific Theatre.
Here is what he wrote on a sheet of Adolf Hitler's personal letterhead, liberated a day or two earlier from the Führer's Berghof retreat at nearby Berchtesgaden:

My adored wife,
Finally the work of the past year for me and over three years for the nation is completed. The war here is over completely. Of course, we are glad it is over, but to us it is sort of an anti-climax. For nearly two months now, we have completely routed the Germans. During the past few days we have seen steady streams of German soldiers marching to the rear. At some places, even the super-highway is jammed. It was a sight never to forget and one that only happens once in a lifetime. I wanted to get some pictures of it, but my camera was stolen some time ago. I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to worry. I now have another very good German camera that I took from a German soldier, so am better equipped than before.
Now that we are no longer at war here, I should have more time to write you and expect to get off better than one letter every five or six days. In fact, it's now been seven days this time. I'm sorry, darling. I'll try to make it up to you.
About a week ago I went through the Dachau concentration camp. Any pictures you see or stories you hear are only a small part of the picture. The stench was indescribable as well as the actual scenes. I saw some of the toughest soldiers nauseated. I won't tell you any details for they shouldn't be put on paper. It was the most terrible thing I have ever seen.
In contrast, a couple of days ago I went through one of Hitler's palaces -not the one at Berchtesgaden, but an old Hapsburg palace  that he took over. It was a paragon of beauty and symmetry. In the two main floors was not a sign of Nazi Occupation except that most of the furnishings had been looted, mainly from France.
The walls were covered with priceless tapestries, the floors with thick pile rugs. We were nearly the first soldiers in the place and looked through it by ourselves. We went snooping in the cellar and came across two storage rooms. One was nearly filled with medals, of which I have a few choice ones. I also found one silver knife (not table) in the house - the only one there, so I suppose it belonged to Hitler. In another room, we found some stationery, of which this is the choicest. His personal. I have quite a bit of it and will send it home. You can give a sheet to various people, but save some of each kind, especially this with just "Der Führer" on it. I also came across some other excellent souvenirs - One pair of field glasses - the best I have ever seen - fifteen power - this may not mean much to you, but they are two and ½ times as powerful as the ones I and Pop used to have The must be worth three or four hundred dollars. I also have a pair of Luftwaffe swords that are not in the best of shape but will look good fixed up and crossed in my den if I ever have one.
Guess what, Sweets. I shaved off my mustache today - because the war is over. No one noticed it so I guess it couldn't have been so good. I'm not making any plans for a quick return home, beloved, nor am I getting any fancy ideas about it. I would give anything just to spend a few weeks with you, but there is much to be done, both here and in the Orient and I'm sure I'll be one place or the other.
Some will get to go home on their way to the Pacific and rumors are already afloat, but I'm not counting on anything - then we won't have the disappointment.
These Bavarian Alps are really beautiful, dearest mine. They are all snow covered yet, although we are not very high and last week we had snow in Munich. Today was marvelous. The view of the mountains is similar to that from our front yard, though the mountains are much closer and not as high.
During the last mad rush we have been getting practically no mail and I'm way behind, although today I got the letter you wrote on the eve of our anniversary. Sweet - just as they all are - but why not, with the sweetest wife in the world writing them. I wish my letters would get there more regularly. You probably have had a batch since that time, but it is nicer when they come spread over a long time.
Darling, I adore you completely. I don't dream of you often, but that isn't my fault. When I'm awake I can control my thoughts and they always include you. Always I wish you could share the beautiful scenery and the old German cities - Worms, Nurnberg, Augsberg, Munich, Saltzburg and the rest with me. Maybe, in future years, after they are rebuilt we will see them together. Anything we could do together would be wonderful. One thing in particular - I miss you so, Jeanie. I'll always adore you.
Your only Phil
P.S.
A little picture of you know who.

The cease fire order for XV Corps.

Capt. Kroon came home six months later. He made a career of the Army, taking a reduction in rank to sergeant in order to remain in a downsized postwar military. His last duty post was as an instructor in the Reserve Officer Training Corps program at Purdue University. Following his retirement, he worked for the U.S. Postal Service. He died of cancer in 1988. Diane, the first of his three daughters, was born Oct. 30, 1946, and grew up to be my first wife.