Lunchtime

Waiting for Maria to go to lunch. I rode to town.

More flying time

I let an anniversary get by without noting it back on Aug. 10.

It was on Aug. 10, 2007, that we got our first look at Jonesboro and the staff of the Jonesboro Sun got its first look at Maria.

We made a late-night run to Jonesboro from Crawfordsville, arriving about 2 a.m. and Maria had a full day of interviewing beginning a few hours later.

Neither of us was in a rush to leave our Indiana home, but the Jonesboro opportunity came at a time when things were falling apart in Crawfordsville.

It's hard to believe that a year ago tomorrow is when Maria gave notice to the C'vill paper and we got serious about uprooting our Hoosier lives and moving to the Natural State.

It doesn't quite feel natural yet, but it's getting there.

Waiting

Arkansas medical waiting rooms never fail to amaze me.
The woman sitting behind us is filling out the standard patient questionnaire.
"What does this mean - maiden name?"
Her husband explained.
An older man with a hearing problem is jabbering loudly and being shushed by his wife.
Another woman with a particularly annoying cell phone ringtone gets a call, checks to see who's calling, then decides not to take it. So we get to listen to what seems like a whole minute of her ringtone.

Coffee at Hastings

Blogging from the bookstore coffeeshop.
I drove Maria to work this morning and then headed over to Hastings to return some rental DVDs, get my morning coffee and use their free Wi-fi.
Maria's daughter Morgan is coming to visit next weekend and it looks like she picked a good time to burn the gasoline to drive down.
A gallon of regular was down to $3.45 at Kroger yesterday. Assuming this isn't just a northeast Arkansas anomaly, it will probably be about $20 cheaper for Morgan to drive here from Bloomington at current gas prices, compared with a month ago when regular was around $4 a gallon. Even so, the 822-mile round trip will cost about $120, assuming she gets around 24 mpg.
I may have to make a run to Thorntown one of these days to check on the house. Our Realtor emailed last week to say the lawn is getting mowed, but there are tall weeds growing next to the house that detract from the curb appeal. He also suggested we consider dropping our asking price again and maybe think about having the trim painted. Ouch.
But this albatross is bleeding us of $1,030 a month and the sooner we can stop that financial drain, the better.
So much for whining about money. It is what it is.
Among the rental DVDs I returned this morning was "The Big Trail," a movie chosen mostly by chance. We watched it last night and were blown away.
Director Raoul Walsh shot the film in a widescreen 70mm format in 1930. Walsh discovered prop boy Marion Morrison and renamed him John Wayne because Walsh was reading a biography of Revolutionary War hero Mad Anthony Wayne. It was John Wayne's first film and he looks almost painfully young in it.
The acting is broad and exaggerated in places, an artifact of the silent films many of the actors had worked in. The movie follows the progress of a pioneer wagon train from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Northwest, taking a curious detour through Momument Valley in northeastern Arizona. Wayne plays a wagon train scout whose life bears more than a passing resemblance to the legendary Kit Carson. "The Big Trail" cost a ton of money, being shot at various locations across the American west and was a financial failure, but it was ahead of its time.
The wagons and equipment and harrowing scenes of river crossings and descents into canyons have a look of authenticity that is striking compared with similar films from the 1950s and '60s.
If you're a film buff or just enjoy a good western, give "The Big Trail" a look.

Hanging out

I'm sitting next to this guy, blogging and listening to a Leo Laporte podcast at the bookstore next to Kroger while Maria shops for groceries.

Farmers' Market

Today is Saturday and that means the Farmers' Market is in operation this morning on the ASU farm property.

Rainy Friday afternoon

 

I'm blogging from the Hastings Hardback Cafe at Caraway and Nettleton in Jonesboro and it's raining like a mofo. People are coming in soaked to the skin.

Thunder was rumbling at home this morning and Pete the Nervous spent about an hour crouched at my feet under my desk. We usually leave the dogs out in the back yard/back porch when we leave, but I figured they'd feel more secure in their kennels with the stormy weather blowing through.

So I brought the laptop along when I came to town for lunch with Maria, looking forward to a few hours of not having to be a doorman for dogs. They both seem to find the sight of a closed back door very disturbing. Regardless of which side of the door they're on, they want to be on the other side and guess who gets to solve their problem for them. Yeah, someone with thumbs. Like me.

I don't recall whether I mentioned it during my road trip last month, but my XM satellite radio, a Delphi Roady 2, crapped out on me on July 16 as I rode from Rapid City, S.D. to Gillette, Wyo. I hit a bump and the sound went all fuzzy. I got it going again briefly by wiggling  the power connection, but it was clearly broken.

I raised the matter at the BMW MOA rally with Sean Franklin, owner of Cyclegadgets.com, and the guy who installed my first XM Roady several years ago. He said the problem was common with motorcycle-mounted Roady units: the solder connection with the power plug had broken. The newer XM units are even more problem prone, he said, advising me against buying the current model.

Of course the ultimate solution would have been to step all the way up to the XM-ready Garmin Zumo 550 GPS and I'm sure Sean would have loved to set me up with it for around $1,000. The Zumo also plays MP3s.

But since my Roady 2 mount is still in great shape, I figured the answer was to find a cheap now-obsolete Roady or Roady 2 online and soldier on.

In the meantime, I completed the trip using my iPod for entertainment, running it through my custom molded in-ear monitors/earplugs as I had done the XM radio. With more than 9,500 songs, I had plenty to listen to. I put it in the map compartment of my tankbag where I could poke the "skip" spot on the control wheel whenever a tune came up that I didn't want to hear. It worked great and, with the exception of the news channels, I hardly missed XM.

Last week, I got around to searching for a Roady 2 replacement online. I found what I was looking for on Amazon.com and bought it, using credit from a birthday gift from my stepdaughter Morgan.

So now I'm playing the waiting game, keeping an eye out for the letter carrier or UPS or FedEx driver headed for my front porch.

The Mick-a-Matic Camera

The Mick-a-Matic camera came out around 1970 and I bought one just for laughs.

The lens was in the nose and the viewfinder was where Mickey's third eye would be if he were enlightened. The camera used the then-popular Kodak Instamatic film cartridge. There was a socket between the ears for a rotating flashcube, good for four shots. The funniest thing about it was that you held it up, covering your face like a Mickey Mouse mask, to take a picture.

Then-Indiana Gov. Edgar D. Whitcomb was considered by some to be a bumbling lightweight and Jim Schweikert, United Press International Indianapolis Bureau photographer, took one of these to a Whitcomb press conference to the delight of the rest of the media.

I think mine went away in a yard sale and I was chagrined to discover today that these things are fetching $40 and more on Ebay.

Committing insecticide

It's high mosquito season here in northeast Arkansas and living near a wooded area in the middle of rice country, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a dozen mosquitos.

Our screened back porch would be a great barrier to mosquitos and other bugs wanting to get into the house except that we have to keep the screen door on the porch propped open so our two dogs can run in an out. And they run in and out maybe 100 times a day.

So the back porch fills up with mosquitos and other bugs. They enter through the open door and fill up the enclosed space. I can't decide whether they just can't find their way out or if they prefer the shade. The mosquitos congregate in the corners and wait for us to open the back door so they can buzz into the house and suck our blood.

There are few things more maddening than the high pitched whine of a mosquito hovering next to your ear, especially if you're about to fall asleep.

Rather than bomb the area with chemicals, Maria decided to attack the problem physically by going after the little varmints with our Shop Vac. The wand extensions make it possible to reach all the way to the ceiling and the suction is sufficiently powerful to yank in every hapless mosquito that gets within about 3 inches of the nozzle.

We quickly discovered it's extremely gratifying to watch those little bastards disappear down the vacuum hose and mosquito hunting with the Shop Vac has become a daily sport at our house.

We also realized that the back porch is a much more target-rich environment. In 15 minutes' time this morning, I bagged more than 200 mosquitos by attacking the swarms in the corners and picking  them off when they try to flee through the screens. That's probably more effective than having a flock of purple martins at work.

Then there's the "big game" of the porch bug world - huge inch-long flies that make a particularly satisfying "thunk" when the suction grabs them and fires them down the length of the hose into the Shop Vac canister. Add the occasional wasp and moth and it's more fun than a video game.

And when we run out of bugs to suck up, we blast a shot of Ortho insecticide into the nozzle. Hahahahahaha! Let's see you buzz in our ears now!

Back to the classroom

I've agree to teach a multi-session digital photography class for the local senior citizen center and I've been going through our thousands of images looking for pictures that illustrate the various concepts I want to discuss.

Like for instance this shot that Maria took of her niece Sarah. It's a great example of a silhouette created by shooting a subject in shade and exposing for the sky.

Free Wi-fi!

Since Indco Cable can't maintain a TV/Internet connection to our house this morning, I decided to take my laptop to the public library and use their Wi-fi to do my Internet business.

We decided it would be wise for me to drive Maria to work this morning because she's still a bit dizzy from yesterday's attack of vertigo - the apparent result of inner ear congestion.

So imagine my chagrin when I pulled into the library parking lot at 8:10 a.m. to find the place closed with a sign on the doors announcing that, effective Aug. 4, they will be closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.

I went in search of free Wi-fi and found it at the Hardback Cafe at Hastings at Nettleton and Caraway. It's a very pleasant environment, although I'm not crazy about their choice of music on the PA system. I'd use my iPod, but I don't want to be completely oblivious to my surroundings.

I've decided to sell my modest collection of East German military uniforms - a mix of army, air force and border guard stuff. Among the items I listed this morning is this Luftwaffe major's uniform - trousers and tunic with decorations - that appears never to have been worn. I had to do a bit of Google searching to determine that it, indeed, the insignia for a major on the shoulderboards.

I don't have any reason to think this stuff will bring big bucks on Ebay. A scan of completed sales of East German uniforms turned up lots of failed sales and low selling prices. Whatever. I just want to turn it into cash and free up the space in the garage where the big mover's wardrobe box is sitting.

Kroger

I didn't expect to see this price again.

Indco cable strikes again

I called again yesterday to complain about a bad TV signal and skechy Internet connection.
So the whole connection went out last night as we were sitting down to watch the Olympics.
Gotta go to the public library this morning to do my Internet business.

Waiting room hell

We're stuck in the First Care waiting room this morning because Maria has vertigo and we're forced to listen to this woman's loud voice as she talks on her cell phone.
She's talking to a friend who is planning a trip and just put in a request for a carton of cigarettes if the friend goes through Missouri.
Aaaaaaaaaaaahhh!
Damn! She just got another call after 2 minutes of blessed silence.
Too bad cell phone jammers are illegal in the United States.

No Internet, no cable

Indco Cable of Batesville, Ark. has failed us again.
We lost our cable service about a half hour ago and, of course, there's no one in their office to take our call.
So much for my Ebaying or watching the Olympics tonight.
I'd dump them for satellite service except that they're my only option for high-speed Internet.
The cable offerings are pathetic - no HD content, lots of flaky Protestant religious channels and no Comedy Central.

Working on Flickr.com

I just finished posting a gallery of images from the late '60s, the '70s and the '80s of friends and colleagues at The Indianapolis News. Just click on the Flickr.com thing on the right side of the page to view them.

Camo goes mainstrean

Calvin Klein camo briefs at Dillard's.

Damn those homonyms!

I found this a few years ago in the National Archives photo collection.

(Click on the photo for a bigger version.)

63 years and counting

  Today is the 63rd anniversary of the destruction of Nagasaki in the world's second atomic bomb attack.

The results were so horrifying that no nuclear weapon has been used in war since then. But there is little doubt that Islamofascists wouldn't hesitate to do this to us.

The B-29 that dropped the Nagasaki bomb was named Bockscar and it's on display at the U.S. Air Force Museum at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.

One size fits all

Here's the replacement driver's license I got from the State Revenue Office (no DMV or BMV in Arkansas) last week, with identity theft stuff obscured.

I'd hoped to get a new photo, but they just knocked out another copy from what was already in the computer database.

Notice anything missing from the information? Like weight and hair color? I suppose it's no longer politically correct to reference race or ethnicity, so I didn't really expect to see that here, but why eye color and not hair color? In my case, hair color is pretty easy to distinguish, despite the crappy photo, but it could get tricky with shades of black and brown hair.

And what about weight, not that I'm happy about being heavier than I should be?

Take away the photo and all this says about me is that I'm a 63-year-old 5'10" male with brown eyes. Not very specific, is it?

So much for our preoccupation with IDs and homeland security.