Category: Diversions

I had counted on being most thankful this Thanksgiving for the end of George Bush’s reign in the White House, but that was not to be. I am instead sorry.

Nevertheless, I am thankful for many things;

• My wonderful loving family, every single one of them is special to me.
• Friends. Happily there are some people out there who ‘get’ me, and they keep it all interesting.
• My career. I am one of the lucky ones who enjoys their work.
• Entertainment. Books, movies, music, theatre, love ’em.
• Technology. The Internet, computers, Tivo, mobile phones, iPods. I can’t wait to see what’s coming next.
• Our spa. Thank you Jim & Julie for the hand-me-down hot tub. We love it.
• Too much else to list here. Life is good.

Happy Thanksgiving to All!

for further reading: Thanksgiving from Wikipedia, and 21 Reasons to Be Thankful from the Center for American Progress.

Industrial accident, or 9 x 7?

I’ve always been awful at math, just ask my checkbook. So I’ll gladly take any trick I can to cheat on multiplication tables. And weren’t nines the worst? No longer. At dinner tonight, my wife Jennifer (the teacher), solved that problem forever by teaching us the nine trick.

Here’s how it works; when multiplying by nine, hold up your hands and tuck down the finger that you are multiplying by (only works for single digits). The remaining fingers display your answer, with the digits on the left representing tens, and those to the right of the bent finger are ones. Nice. Where was this magic in the third grade when I needed it most?

You can find the pattern here…

This strikes me as a particularly worthy cause. For all of the Americans serving in harms way, the brief distraction that some good reading can offer must be a particularly welcome escape. It doesn’t even need to be a new book, a hand-me-down will do. I’ll post an update later with any news on my success at finding a match between a book in my library and a soldier I’ll gladly pass it on to.http://booksforsoldiers.com

(click for larger photo)

We still have two kittens to give to a good home. They’re three months old and have curiosity enough to run out all of their coming nine lives. One is an orange male that we’ve affectionately been calling ‘Spaz’. And pictured here at the computer with Colleen is our grey female who we’ve been calling ‘Eyeore’.

As you can see, this kitten still has much to learn about being a cat. While easily distracted by Colleen’s game of Battleship, she’s completely ignoring the mouse!

I caught this headline on the AP news wire today, “Police: Mom Threatens Chuck E. Cheese“. Shocking I tell you, simply shocking!I speak from experience, you see, I’ve paid my dues in that Rat Suit. Several years ago I wrote about the experience in an article titled, “Lessons Learned in a Rat Suit“. From time to time I’ll get an email from a fellow alum of Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre. Sometimes it’s someone who worked there long ago as I did, sometimes it’s a current employee. Maybe I could have taught something to the young girl who was assualted while trying to entertain young children while dressed as a rat. But then again, I never had a parent throw pizza at me, so maybe it is I who still have more to learn.

A friend’s blog recently led me to read the commencement speech given by Bono, lead singer of the band U2, to graduating students at the University of Pennsylvania. If there’s a rock star out there that deserve the praise and adulation he receives, I think this is the guy. Reading his remarks is well worth your time.

When I was in about the eighth grade, some friend of mine and I demonstrated our research skills by heading to the Huntington Central Park Library to dig up an old Newsweek magazine and read an article about Paintball battles.

Well, I’ve looked for the opportunity to join such a fight ever since. You can’t play army and squash as many plastic toy soldiers as I have and not have some lingering desire to test your mettle on a battlefield (especially when a nasty bruise is the worst consequence you’re likely to face).

After all these years, that moment came for me today on Hogback Mountain (about 25 miles west of DC). A group of my former Senate colleagues set up a day-long session for us, and I figured it was an appropriate way to commemorate MLK’s non-violent teachings on his day.

Saturday it snowed, but by Sunday the thaw was underway. So today found Hogback mountain a snowy/muddy battlefield. There was more rain this morning, adding to the muck, but the sun came out and we battled under clear skies.

The gun, semi-automatic powered by C02 can hold about 50 marble-sized paintballs and pump them out just as fast as you can squeeze the trigger. The balls don’t really have paint, just a water-soluble food coloring. We were shooting Yellow today, so hits exploded in a sticky yellow mess. That’s if they break, which they don’t always do. So even if you’ve been hit, you don’t admit death unless you’re bleeding yellow because bounces are just flesh wounds, not death. Not that bounces don’t bruise, but you can keep fighting. Don’t bother too much with aiming, as these things fly all over the place.

The place we played had about a dozen different battlefields on which my Blue Team repeatedly fragged those pussies on the Red Team. My finest hour came in a fight at ‘The Castle’, a field on which both teams are trying to capture the same flag hung in the center tower, and deliver it to the opposing teams side. In our first fight here I did the honors, surviving a long firefight, charging to the tower under withering fire, and then hauling ass to the other teams side (with a nice fall on my ass on the way). It was great.

We played from 10am until 5pm with a brief break for a lunch of hot dogs and chips. As you might imagine, we were soaked through, caked with mud, and splattered with paint by days end. Two of the smartest things I did were wear long johns, and bring extra shoes. The muddy boots and jeans went in a bag in the trunk, and I drove home in my steaming long johns and sneakers.

Of course, these days you can’t have an experience like I had today and not think about our soldiers who are fighting where the bullets don’t bounce. God bless ’em.

Anyway, it was a great time. Take the chance to play it you get it, I hope to again. And next time you’re all in Washington we’ll skip the monuments and head to Hogback Mountain.