Plants for Air Heads

I think I found a plant that fits my horticultural skills perfectly... an air plant.
First of all, they're cheap. Little ones cost $1.50, larger ones cost $4.50.
Secondly, they're strange-looking. The ones I bought look like long strands of wiry hair that wander off in different directions.
Third, you can put them anywhere! I glued mine to the inside of seashells so they look like long tentacles of some weird creature reaching out.
Finally, they're pretty much kill-proof. All they need is exposure to bright light and a weekly misting.
So, if you're ever looking for an unusual and inexpensive gift for a plant lover, go buy a sea shell that is coiled - like a snail shell. Then take it to your local nursery and find an air plant that you can stuff part way into the shell's opening. Then glue the plant into the opening! For added fun, you can glue a magnet to the back of the shell so it can be used as a refrigerator magnet! Gorilla glue works great.

Home Again

Hello World.
At last... the band and I are back from an exhaustive round the world tour and I am gigged out. The callouses on my finger tips are as big as Robin's eggs - only they're white instead of blue - and my voice is just about shot. It's a good thing I had my vaporizer along or the tour would have been over months ago!
Most of our luggage made it back to the States. I was lucky. I only lost a 2-suiter, my golf clubs, my guitar, and a carry-on. Zip lost his electric wheelchair!
Wha?.. Oh... Never mind. I guess wasn't on a world tour. I just ran out of gas.
But now it's time to put on my thinking cap and start blogging again! Starting right...tomorrow... maybe.

Why I Don't Fly

With all due respect to my son, the airline pilot, I have pretty much decided not to fly commercial anymore. It's just not worth the hassle.
Case in point: Our youngest son left New York this morning, via United Airlines, on his way to Seattle, with a plane change in Chicago. He had a 55 minute layover between his arriving and departing flights at O'Hare. That seemed reasonable. The first leg of his flight was interrupted however when the airplane made an unscheduled landing at Grand Rapids, Michigan because someone on board was sick. If you draw a straight line from Grand Rapids to Chicago, it looks to me like it would have taken perhaps 15 minutes longer for the flight to continue on to Chicago, but no. I assume someone must have had chest pains. Is there any other reason that a pilot would be compelled to delay 149 people so that one person could be spared another 15 minutes of flight time? By the way, aren't flight attendants supposed to be trained on defibrillators? Anyway, the stop in Grand Rapids delayed his arrival to ORD by, can you guess?.. 55 minutes! BUT when he got to his departure gate at ORD, the aircraft was still there! Unfortunately, they had already closed the door and refused to let him board. He, and several others, were rebooked on a flight departing ORD two hours later so he sat down in front of a window facing the original flight he was supposed to be on and watched, and watched, and waited and waited. The aircraft sat at the gate for AN HOUR before pushing back. With that extra hour at the gate, they should have kicked off the standbys who took our son's and other's seat and let him and the others on. But it gets worse.
His rescheduled flight was delayed even more than the original! It didn't leave until an hour and twenty minutes after it's scheduled departure time. Why? Because one of the flight attendants was reassigned to another flight at the last minute and they had to wait for a replacement. Give me a break, United!
He finally arrived in Seattle 4 hours late. But that's still not all.
After landing in Seattle, he had planned to rent a car and drive 5 hours to Pasco to visit friends. Unfortunately, the drive to Pasco crosses the Cascade Mountains which, by that time, were under a heavy snow warning. I managed to convince him to fly over to Pasco via Alaska Airlines instead.
There was a flight scheduled to depart Seattle for Pasco two hours later. He got a ticket, checked his luggage, and went to the gate. Fifteen minutes before scheduled departure time, the gate agent announced that boarding would be delayed "about 10 minutes" while they replaced a light bulb. TWO HOURS LATER, he was still waiting in Seattle. He got on the standby list for a later flight and finally arrived in Pasco two hours later than expected. His luggage is still sitting on the original flight, of course, but we hope it will catch up with him sometime tomorrow.
Six hours of delays! To me that's not acceptable. I refuse to participate as long as the passengers are the only ones required to play by the rules.
So, to United and Alaska Airlines I'd like to send this holiday message: BITE ME!

Thugball

The lead news story I heard on the radio this morning was about a professional football player who died from gunshot wounds. I don't understand. Please, don't tell me that is the most newsworthy item of the day.
The story suggests that the shots may have been fired during an armed robbery at the football player's house in Miami. Yeah. Right. This was a guy who got in trouble several times for everything from spitting on other players to brandishing a weapon. In other words, he was more thug than athlete. To me, the demise of this guy in Miami was just another in a rapidly growing list of pro football players whose thuggery finally caught up with them.
I wouldn't waste your time and mine writing about this except that I have been bothered for a couple of years now by the decline of professional football from "team sport" to, "Look at me, sucka. I'm Mister Badass!" Take a close look along the sidelines sometime. It looks like a street-gang line up! Long-haired, tattooed thugs with their baseball hats-on-backward, or stocking caps-pulled-down-over-eyebrows look like what you'd expect to find on a street corner in East L.A., not on the playing field of professional sports.
I blame the owners, coaches and officials for replacing sportsmanship with showoffmanship and thuggery. They have allowed team colors to become gang colors and that's inexcusable.
But all is not lost. Take a close look at the first-string offenses of the two best teams in professional football today, the New England Patriots and Indianapolis Colts. They are the reasons I keep watching.

Long Range Plans (Part 2)

Waaay back in July, I posted an entry in which I said the Park Ranger asked me to think about what the park could look like in the future. Well, in did that.

I imagined two new greenhouses that could also be used as shop and equipment storage areas, a trail system through undeveloped areas with exercise stations and water features, playgrounds for senior citizens, climbing boulders, a trail system that leads from the park to downtown and the marina, a gift shop, nighttime lighting so the park can remain open after dusk, and perhaps a covered swimming pool. Interestingly, I found blueprints for an Olympic-size swimming pool at the park that was never built. The blueprint was dated July, 1946!

I have no idea what the Ranger will do with any of my ideas. Unfortunately, the State Parks Commission makes most major decisions and they don't appear to be very interested in hearing from individual park Rangers. I say that because of the following: The commissioners are coming to visit our park next Friday. In anticipation of their visit, the Ranger started putting together a presentation and asked his Canadian counter-part to join in. But when the Ranger notified his boss of his intention, he was told, "You can probably talk to the commissioners while they walk from the parking lot the Peace Arch and back, but they don't intend to spend any more time at the park than it takes to see the Arch."

Okay... in other words, they are coming to the park so they can say they visited the park but they don't actually want to know anything more about the park than that it still exists.

Too too busy and too too self-important.

I wonder if anyone outside the park ever saw those 1946 swimming pool blueprints.

Not Just Another Day

FYI – Here is a brief history of this day gleaned from the internet. Time has bent, if not broken, the reason why 11/11 was designated in the first place.

1918
World War I ended with the implementation of a temporary cessation of hostilities between the Allies and Germany at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of November, 1918.

1919
The original concept for honoring those who had fought and died in WWI was for the suspension of business for a two minute period beginning at 11 A.M on the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

1920
On the second anniversary of the armistice, at the suggestion of church groups, President Wilson names the Sunday nearest Armistice Day Sunday, on which should be held services in the interest of international peace.

1921
Congress passes legislation approving the establishment of a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery. November 11 is chosen for the date of the ceremony.

1938
Congress passes legislation making November 11 a legal Federal holiday, Armistice Day. The United States has no ‘actual’ national holidays because the states retain the right to designate their own holidays. The Federal government can in fact only designate holidays for Federal employees and for the District of Columbia. But in practice the states almost always follow the Federal lead in designation of holidays.

World War II and the Korean War create millions of additional war veterans in addition to those of the First World War already honored by Armistice Day. On June 1, 1954, President Eisenhower signs legislation changing the name of the legal holiday from Armistice Day to Veteran’s Day.

1968
Congress passes the Monday Holiday Law which established the fourth Monday in October as the new date for the observance of Veteran’s Day. The law is to take effect in 1971.

1971-1975
The Federal observance of Veterans Day is held on the fourth Monday of October.

1975
Legislation passed to return the Federal observance of Veteran’s Day to November 11, based on popular support throughout the nation.

1978
Veteran’s Day observance reverts to November 11.

According to a Voice of America article today:

A study released last week from the public non-profit National Alliance to End Homelessness found that former U.S. military personnel now account for 25 percent of the nation's homeless population.

And finally:

Although most memorial observances take place today, the U.S. federal government is marking the Veterans Day holiday on Monday.

Codes

I hate codes. Codes are sdeeky! One day you're feelig great, then a code sdeeks ub on ya from nowhere and BAMB! You've god a code! DAB YOU, CODE VIRUS!
That's what happened to me yesterday.
I started the day with a mild sore throat. I hoped it was because I had slept with my mouth open or maybe it was residual irritation from breathing leaf dust for 6 hours the day before. The sore throat abated shortly after I got up however so I went to the park, did my volunteer thing for a few hours, had lunch, then went to the periodontist. All day I felt fine. Then, last night about an hour after the Novocaine wore off, BAM! I started coughing, one side of my nose started to run, and the other plugged shut, my head started to ache, and my eyes started to water. Oh yeah, and the sore throat came back. DAG NAB IT!
I'd like to take my head off, put it on a shelf, and wander around headless until the virus has run its course.
In other news: I bought some bumper stickers the other day. Now I have to decide which car to put them on. I know, bumper stickers are old fashioned and usually limited to gross insults on the back of rolling meth labs and junky pickup trucks. But, what the heck. I have a message to send and bumper stickers seem like the appropriate venue! Tell me, if you were stopped behind a Buick with one or more of these bumper stickers, what would you conclude about the driver?

"Roses are red, violets are blue
I'm schizophrenic and so am I."

"Are we over the rainbow yet?"

"What would Scooby Do?"

Well. What do you know?!!

I'm back!
So much time has elapsed since my last post that I forgot how to log on to my blog! After several failed attempts (YOUR PASSORD AND USER NAME DO NOT MATCH, moron!), I clicked on the "Forgot your password?" link and immediately got lost in a labyrinth of "Enter your ___ " and "Are you sure you want to ___?" So, I bailed out and did nothing for a few more weeks.
This morning, on a whim, I tried to log in again and this time it worked. Don't ask me why.
Now that I'm here, I should probably say something... "Hello, how ya been?" I've been good.
I'm going to a periodontal hygienist this afternoon for a deep cleaning on the left side of my mouth. Last week she did the right side - top and bottom - Novocaine and the whole bit. But guess what. It was not the horrible experience that I expected nor did I have any painful after-effects. Why? This lady knows what she's doing! Even the novocaine injections were painless!
I got mad at the dental profession 11 years ago and stopped going. Wifey has been on my case ever since. I finally gave in and made an appointment. Not surprisingly, the dentist referred me to a periodontist for deep cleaning. I figure I saved almost $5K in dentist bills over the last 11 years and who knows how many x-rays, gag reflexes, and pain I've avoided! And the consequence appears to be relatively minimal! After the deep cleaning sessions are over I expect they will want me to come back every 90 days for routine cleaning but I may call it good and go another 10-11 years without professional intervention. I told the periodontist that I only need enough treatment for my teeth to last another 20 years! He didn't think it was funny.

Long Range Plans

The Ranger asked me a question today that has me trying to think outside the box. He said, "What do you think should be done with this park?" My first response was, "Completely replace the entire infrastructure." That's because the buildings, plumbing, wiring, irrigation system (520 sprinklers, solenoids, valves, couplers and pipes), storm sewers, playground equipment, vehicles... even some of the hedges and trees are old, worn out, and falling apart.

A small version of the park, immediately surrounding the Peace Arch, has been in existence since 1921. The larger, 40-acre version, since 1931. One can only imagine the number of changes, re-designs, upgrades, lost blue prints and undocumented modifications that led us to today's mess.

Replacing the infrastructure is obvious and essential (and boring), but the more I think about the original question, more possibilities come to mind for improving the park in years to come. That's something I can get excited about!

I Stand Corrected

My bad.
I should not have disparaged "Hands Across the Border".
When I saw all the kids (from more countries than just the U.S. and Canada) laughing, posing for photos, exchanging patches, parading and having fun, I came to my senses. I realized I was witnessing one of the few remaining worthwhile activities available to kids today - Scouting.
In addition to the Scouting activities, the event included a re-dedication ceremony to our open border with Canada at the Peace Arch. The re-dedication ceremony involved Canadian Mounties and Washington State Patrol officers and military veterans from both Countries. There weren't any long speeches, but there was a solemn wreath laying ceremony accompanied by a bagpipe solo and bugle solo. Then new Canadian and American flags were raised atop the Peace Arch as kids sang both national anthems.
The ONLY negative I found was the number of people who started leaving before the ceremony was over. I'm sure it wasn't the kids idea. But I can't be too quick to judge the adults either. They found the time and made the effort to involve their kids in Scouting AND trucked a van-full of them to the event. That's more than I ever did.
So, to all the naysayers out there who complained about the highway closure I say, "Take a deep breath. It was worth it."