Memorial Day

I'll be away from the blogosphere for a few days.

During the coming holiday weekend I suggest the following;

While you're stuck in traffic, rather than cursing at the idiots in front of you, take the opportunity to give thanks to those who have perished in the cause of defending our freedom.

When the piece of barbecued chicken you take from the grill is burned on one side, rather than complaining about the cooking, take the time to give thanks that you are part of a family unit that remains more or less in tact.

When the air conditioner gives out, rather than yelling at the technician who tells you he can't get to you until morning, take the time to pray for those who are wearing combat fatigues in the middle of a hot, arid desert.

This weekend is supposed to be about THEM, not US. Give THEM a few minutes of your life.

Have a great Memorial Day!!!

Weather-View

Remember View-Masters? The contraption looked like a pair of binoculars but rather than looking afar, they were used for viewing recorded images. A round paper disk containing a series of small film slides fit into the plastic housing. Depressing a lever on the side of the viewer caused the disk to advance and with each click of the lever a different scene popped into view.

Today's weather during the commute home brought View-Masters to mind.

I left the parking lot with a gray sky hanging above.

Two miles down the road - click - the weather scene advanced to a steady drizzle.

Another two miles - click - my car was being pummeled by a downpour.

Three more miles - click - I was in bright sunshine with blue sky overhead.

Click - I had zero visibility as rain fell in solid sheets.

Click - back to puffy white clouds and hazy sun.

I was so entranced by the rapid weather changes that I was home before I knew it.

Sea Sound

My weekend schedule was finally in sync with the weather and I was able to put in an entire day ocean side and reacquaint myself with the rhythm of the sea.

Even with eyes closed, I can track the movement of the ocean.

Water drawing back across the sand creates a sound like a sigh - the ocean drawing a breath in preparation for another surge.

The hiss of boiling sea foam tells of building forces - a swell pushing toward shore.

The hiss becomes a roar as the swell curls into a rushing wave.

The roar gives way to a thunderclap - hundreds of gallons of water crashing down onto a blend of sand and fractured shells.

A blow of sound - like air rushing from the lungs of a weightlifter who has jut moved a seemingly impossible burden - tells of water rushing to moisten drying sand.

Then a return of the sigh. Water retreating, the ocean drawing a breath, preparing to repeat the effort.

A Spring Evening

My apologies in advance for any typo's. I've spent the evening is solemn communion with Dr. Cuervo.

There's something about spending the night on the porch with outdoor stereo speakers supplying "classic" music that puts everything right with the world.

I was thinking this evening that outdoor entertaining is kind of like skinny dipping. You have shed all of the "clothing" or workweek reservations and are enjoying direct interaction with the world according to nature as well as rock and roll.

Oh jeez, I just know I'm going to look at this post in a day or two and wonder what the h... I was thinking.

Anyway, here's to Jose Cuervo, rock and roll, and an mid-spring's night (apologies to Shakespeare).

Day Control

Time is relative. It's an expression we use over and over. The expression has truth behind it.

There are days that seem to drag on and on and then there are days that disappear in a flash.

I'm sure the pace of time is connected to our mood. Certainly one person's runaway day does not correspond to another person's perception of time.

Now I'm no scientist but I'm thinking there's a mountain of money to be made in there someplace. If someone were to identify the hormone, gene, chemical, or whatever that controls mood then that someone could sell time in a bottle. (They could also rake in the cash as a marriage counselor.)

Totally enjoying a day so much that it's flying by but you'd rather it didn't? Ingest just enough day lengthening time elixir to make it seem the day is lingering a little longer.

Conversely, if you're having a bad day, ingest a whole sloshing gallon of day shortener and make the waking nightmare disappear in a flash.

Maybe I should have paid a little more attention in biology and chemistry classes.

I Scream, You Scream, We All...

It's one of those nights where my mind simply refuses to shift into creative gear. Spending a day reviewing government related documents can do that to you.

So I cast my thoughts in all directions hoping something would bring inspiration. I even channel surfed for a while and stumbled across a television station broadcasting a performance by a local band whose drummer looked exactly like Lt. Warf form Star Trek the Next Generation.

A Klingon drummer may be an oddity but I just couldn't see a blog post coming out of it.

Then I heard the musical tinkling of the ice cream truck outside my window and realized I had something. A Klingon ice cream vendor.

Imagine racing after the ice cream truck as a kid - despair that you had missed your chance turning to euphoria when you saw the truck pulling to the curb.

There would be confusion when you studied the pictures of frozen treats on the side of the truck and saw not ice cream cones and popsicles but something resembling squid on a stick.

Confusion would turn to out and out fright when the door of the truck opened and a six foot five inch cross between human and lizard appeared with a coin changer hanging from a shoulder sash.

See - told you my mind was stuck. We'll all hope for better things to come

Mooning over Mars

NASA wants to join forces with the European Space Agency in a project to bring rocks from Mars back to Earth.

The estimated price tag is 10 billion dollars.

I have the feeling that's peanuts compared to what the security and damage control tabs will total up to.

Remember when rocks were brought back from the Moon? The astronauts were quarantined for weeks and the rocks even longer. There was barely controlled panic that the plague to end all plagues would be visited upon Earth if quarantine protocol was violated.

Can you imagine the security and quarantine requirements for Martin rocks?

We view the Moon as a harmless celestial body.

But Mars is a whole other matter. Mars comes to us with a history of devious green men and alarming creatures in ultra-advanced spacecraft. Remember the latest movie adaptation of War of the Worlds?

Maybe we should move Mars rocks to the Moon first. Built in quarantine. Built in damage control. If any life forms start growing we can blast them with the weapons of mass destruction collected from Iraq.

Morning Blaze

It was fortunate that I was approaching the fire station - because I could see a section of forest was on fire.

Above the underbrush and below the lowest branches, the spaces between the tree trunks were washed in a flaming orange/yellow.

I was about to turn into the driveway of the fire station when I realized the glow between the trees was constant - no flickering - no fluctuation in intensity - and suddenly I realized I was looking at the newly risen sun shining through the forest.

On an ordinary morning I might not have noticed, but this morning a storm front was moving in from the west. Above and behind me the sky was a boiling mass of black clouds. With that darkness as a contrast, the light coming from the east looked as intense as the glow inside of a glass blower's furnace.

I could have sat and watched for hours - but the ticking of a time clock mandated continued motion.

Under Penatly of Law

I'm sure you've seen them. The tags that come on new merchandise. The tags that say This Tag Is Not to Be Removed Under Penalty of Law.

In recent years the caveat, Except by End User, has been added.

Apparently a lot of people thought the Tag Police were going to hunt down folks who actually dared to remove the tag.

I know my father did. I found that out on the Christmas morning that I unwrapped my first sleeping bag. There was a big rectangular label hanging off the end of the bag. I promptly removed the label with a pair of scissors.

It was only after I had finished the delicate surgery that my father asked what the label said.

I started reading at the top. Not to be removed under penalty of ....

That was as far as I got before my father went into apoplexy. Had he been able to find the breath to do so, I'm certain he would have ordered my mother to close the curtains and turn off the lights.

When he finally did recover his voice he issued such a lengthy berating that I ran in search of a scotch tape dispenser (I probably should have done a sniper crawl to stay below window level) and tried to tape the tag back in place.

It took me the better part of a week to realize the U.S. Marshals were not going to come knocking on our door.

Warming Up to Summer

Two months ago I didn't think it would be possible that I would ever be warm again. Tonight I'm sitting at my computer with sweat dripping from my brow.

The temperature has swung from 45 degrees yesterday morning to eighty seven degrees tonight.

The hot, still air has me thinking the calendar on my wall should be displaying the month of August.

Fireflies ought to be blinking Morse Code to one another. Bullfrogs should be competing for croaking distance. Mosquitoes the size of bats should be buzzing in for a kill.

With these thoughts comes the realization that it's time for a frosty margarita and some Jimmy Buffet music.

Excuse me while I exit stage left.

Counting Lilies

It started with a single lily.

Eleven years ago I planted a single Easter Lily in the garden of my home in Lancaster, PA after the holiday had passed. I was both pleasantly and genuinely surprised when the lily grew and bloomed the following year.

Pleasantly surprised to discover my green thumb extended beyond vegetable plants, and genuinely surprised to find the lily doesn't bloom anywhere near Easter when growing in a natural environment. In the Lancaster climate, the lily bloomed just in time for Fourth of July.

Encouraged by my success, I planted two more lilies the following year. By the fourth year, between new plantings and the natural tendency of the lily to multiply, I had fifteen plants. July 4th of that year I enjoyed dozens upon dozens of blossoms.

Forty white flowers in a small space was pleasing both to the eye and the nose, so when I moved to Delaware I dug the lilies up and took them with me.

We remained in our first Delaware home for only a year before moving just a mile down the road - and again I transplanted my lilies.

Last year I counted 105 simultaneous blossoms. Here in the lower part of Delaware, blooming season is the third week of June. I guess the climate is just enough warmer to bring the lily into earlier bloom.

This year the lilies are coming up in even thicker clusters than last year. I can hardly wait to enjoy the stunning visual impact and delightfully sweet aroma. Could 150 blossoms be possible?

Driving Soapbox.

Aarggh, oommph, garumph, ugghhh,

Oh, hi there. Give me just a minute while I finish dragging my soap box into place.

ooochh, almost... aarrgghh, umph, there.

Forgive me but I feel a need to expound.

I was driving home tonight in the rain - tooling carefully along in the right lane of the highway- when I noticed a driver in the left lane and one car ahead was... texting!

His blackberry, clasped in both hands, was perched on the very top of the steering wheel and he was using his wrists to guide the car.

Sensing impending doom, I slowed my speed dramatically.

It was fortunate that I did for in the next moment the texting driver realized he was about to miss his exit. He cut across two lanes of traffic, angled across the section of concrete between main highway and exit ramp painted with diagonal white stripes, then continued onto the ramp. In so doing he sent no less than six cars into braking skids.

Just what kind of a... common sense challenged person (calling him and idiot would be politically incorrect)... tries to text while driving at sixty-five miles per hour?

Obviously this person was in the wrong line when brains were being handed out.

Actions such as I witnessed should be grounds for having one's drivers license permanently revoked - and for being whipped soundly with a soaking wet towel.

Why Congratulations?

Media Girl is weeks away from High School graduation.

I submitted a vacation request to my employer since the graduation ceremonies occur on a weekday and the approval came back with a notation - congratulations.

I studied that word for a long time. Why should I be offered congratulations for my daughter's milestone?

The reasoning hit me during the drive home. I was looking back over the years leading up to this momentous event beginning with the baby who puked after every bottle of milk and continuing right up through the current surly teenage years. In between there were the terrible twos, the incessant nagging of a brother, the drama of junior high, the driving learner's permit.

I was being congratulated for hanging in there, for retaining my sanity, right up to the very end - Media Girl had reached 18 and was graduating. I had done my duty and lived to tell about it.

Congratulations to Motivated Mom and I!

Cooking Measures 101

There were two things about the tanker truck that caught my attention.

First was the Perdue name and logo plastered on the back end of the gleaming steel cylinder. I expect to see the name of a chicken processor on a tractor trailer loaded with metal chicken transport cages. I really never expected to see the name on a rolling vat of liquid.

The second thing I noticed was the content labeling - vegetable oil.

I tried to picture the size of the fry baby that someone at Perdue was going to be filling. I guess "baby" would have no place in the description of an industrial chicken fryer. Then my thoughts turned more realistic and....

You guessed it... I got to wondering.

Just how many chicken parts can you fry with a tanker truck full of vegetable oil?

According to Wikipedia, a tanker truck holds anywhere from 5,500 to 9,000 U.S. gallons of liquid.

Let's see, figure about 3 tablespoons of oil in the bottom of a frying pan large enough for five chicken breasts.

There's 256 tablespoons in a gallon, so a tanker truck with a 9000 gallon capacity would yield 2,304,000 tablespoons.

2,304,000 divided by 5 gives us 460,800.

So nearly half a million chicken breasts can be fried up with a tanker truck of vegetable oil.

Whew, I'll sleep better tonight knowing that answer!

Mother's Day

It takes a special kind of person to be a really good mother.

Who else but a mother could love a baby covered in vomit just as much as when the baby is cooing and laughing?

Who else but a mother would admire the frog her son carried home in his pocket?

Who else but a mother would patiently teach a daughter to brush her hair one hundred strokes a day?

Who else but a mother would even touch the clothes that have been hiding under a child's bed for a month?

Who else but a mother would cook healthy meals night after night even though her children come up with two hundred and twenty reasons not to eat the vegetables?

Who else but a mother stands ready to embrace a child that has turned his or her back on her?

Who else but a mother accepts a Mother's Day phone call as apology for endless weeks of silence?

When you talk to your mother today, remember to thank her for being special - then call her next month to tell her again.

Happy Mother's Day to all of the mothers out there.

Horse Teeth

I'm sure you've seen the latest trend in advertising on automobiles - white lettering applied to the rear or side windows. The fad started with the "In Memory of" announcements and has since spread to business advertising.

I was following a Toyota Corolla today. The rear window was filled side to side and top to bottom with business info for Equine Dentistry. I guess the good thing about being a horse dentist is that, unlike a farrier, you don't have to pull around a wagon load of equipment.

What, I wondered, does a toothbrush for a horse look like? I thought of one of those gag pencils that are about three fingers thick and pictured one with some monster bristles on the end. I imagined the bristles would need to be a cross between a coarse scrub brush and a wire brush - after all, horses must get some serious plaque buildup.

And just how to you get a horse to curl its lips back so that the teeth can be polished? Does it require teamwork? Does the horse hygienist stand with brush poised while a partner tickles the horses belly to prompt a lip curling giggle?

Those two words - Equine Dentistry - raised so many questions that I just may have to audit a few veterinarian classes.

Cinco Sombrero

Happy Cinco de Mayo. The annual celebration of the day Mexico defeated the French - along with the annual celebration of the discovery of Tequila.

Well, okay, the second part might not be quite accurate - but there does need to be a day for celebrating the world's foremost alcoholic beverage.

It is on May 5th every year that people of all backgrounds descend on Mexican themed restaurants to consume the best of Mexican cuisine and copious amounts of Margaritas. I was one of those people. I got so caught up in the moment that I donned an enormous sombrero and posed for a roving photographer.

I have to tell you, it requires some well developed neck muscles to support a hat measuring three feet in diameter. Those sombrero's are heavy. No wonder it's a south-of-the border tradition to indulge in an afternoon siesta. It 's either that or commitment to wearing a neck brace.

To Wash or Cut

I think it's save to wash my car now. That is to say, I think my car will actually stay clean if I was it. For a while there it had been a losing battle.

A string of eighty degrees forced every tree, shrub, and flower into simultaneous bloom. The result was bright green pollen lying so thick on motor vehicles that it looked like every car and truck was growing fur.

I first noticed the fuzzy coating even before I left the house one morning. A nearby streetlamp provided just enough illumination for me to see the roof of my car looked like it was sporting a buzz cut. I half expected I would be able to feel short strands of - something - brush against my palm should I run my hand just above the metal of the car.

That very evening I swiped my debit card at the local car wash, chose the super bubbly option, and pulled forward to let scrubbing bubbles and water jets do their work.

I arrived home the proud owner of a shiny clean car - and woke the next day to discover I would need to take my vehicle to the barber shop.

At least I didn't feel like I was the object of attention on my way to work. Every car I passed had the same brilliant green hair as mine.

The First Boiling

I eat my breakfast on the go these days. I'm a firm non-believer in fast food so at the beginning of each week I mix up a large bowl of fruit salad and hard boil nearly a dozen eggs. I put a single serving size container of fruit along with a banana and two eggs in an insulated bag every morning and spend what would otherwise be down time at red lights eating portions of my breakfast.

It was while I was hard boiling eggs this weekend that I got to wondering - who came up with the idea of hard boiling eggs in the first place?

I imagined a Cro-Magnun man breaking open an ostrich egg, wrinkling his lip in disgust as viscous, opaque fluid trickled down his forearms, and saying Matilda we need to figure out a better way of preparing these things.

Perhaps the first cooking attempt was to place the egg in the crook of a forked branch and hold it over newly discovered fire - only to have the branch burn through and the egg fall into the hot coals where it burned to a crisp.

Approach number two might have been to crack the egg open on a hot rock that formed part of the fire ring and wait for the egg to sizzle. While the ants and grubs that sizzled along with the egg might have provided an extra protein source, I imagine they might have upset Matilda's delicate stomach.

After those flawed attempts, it was probably in disgust that "Cro" tossed the third egg into the boiling water used to clean the serving stones. Then along comes Matilda who shoots Cro a look of disgust for fouling the stone water. Matilda scoops the egg from the pot and tosses it aside.

Imagine the grunts of surprise when the egg landed on the ground with a solid thump and Matilda and Cro peeled away the cracked shell to discover a perfectly cooked egg.

Morning Orchestra

It was still half an hour before actual sunrise but the lime yellow glow on the eastern horizon had the morning orchestra tuning up.

A dozen gray feathered geese, trumpeting out in turn one after another, paraded single file from the south end of the pond to the north; their black necks punctuated by white slashes at their chins giving them the appearance of a tuxedoed horn section filing into the orchestra pit.

From the surrounding trees crows called out raspy, non harmonious notes. Between caws they flew from branch to branch in interrupted upward spirals as though in hopes the discovery of just the right perch might allow their shrieks to come out on key.

A flock of seagulls circled overhead, screeching out high pitched counterpoints to the deep, throaty trumpets of the geese.

All at once, as though an unseen conductor had tapped a podium with a baton, the cacophany rose three octaves as the geese broke into pre-liftoff run, the crows rose like a shadow from the tree tops, and the gulls broke from a tight group into ragged formation.

In a matter of seconds all were gone.

The remaining silence was louder than the echoing bang of a gong.