Raingutter Regatta

Luke's School Performance

Luke performed in his school chorus tonight. The children acted out various folk tales. My favorite was the one from Jamaica about Anansi the Spider. No starring role for Luke this year. The teacher said they wanted to give other kids a chance that didn't get to perform last year. That seemed fair.

One background star of the show was Becky's crafty stage props. This year, Becky was responsible for the bit of "sky" in Act II. This was another ingenious production of her sewing skills and PVC engineering. Becky is one of the unsung heroes of the Mountain View backstage magic.

Down and Out in Seattle, Washington

I must apologize to my readers. My usual standard of honesty--often reaching well beyond the T.M.I. level--has not been maintained. I have been remiss. I have not been forthcoming. I have committed sins of omission.

I have done this for very good reasons, however, and I beg your forgiveness. But it is only within the past two weeks that I have been able to muster the strength and fortitude to share the true story of my last day in Seattle on October 30.

Yes, Halloween eve in Seattle. It was a very frightening day indeed, and it began two days earlier, on the serene day of Wednesday, October 28th.

I was on a business trip. My work took me once again to the west coast city of Seattle, working with Boeing on a Navy program. Most of the day was spent cooped up with engineers from Boeing drafting software architectures. This was not the most exciting stuff, and I was glad when my meetings let out early for the day. I had been eager to steal away downtown, visit the Space Needle and try some of the local seafood at Elliott's Oyster House.

As I wrote before, I settled down to a Bacchanalian feast of two dozen raw oysters and two orders of scotch. Naïvely and eagerly, I wolfed down my first dozen oysters in less than five minutes. I was very hungry, and these would be my dinner for the night. My second dozen came, and these too I powered down as if I were a death row inmate at his final supper.

How soon I'd wish that this were actually the case.

All Thursday passed uneventfully. I ate a great breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, and for dinner, because I had spent over $100 on the oysters and scotch the previous night, I ate a simple cheeseburger, fries and chocolate Frosty from Wendy's. I watched a little CNN, and went to bed by nine PM local time, packed and ready to depart on my seven o'clock morning flight to Dulles.

Cue the ominous music.

At one AM, I awoke with an unhappy digestive system. It always starts like this, and I always know my fate when this happens. My stomach started bubbling and gurgling, softly at first. But relentlessly, it built and built, as waves of nausea hit me. An hour passed, and I was feeling worse.

I laid in bed, feeling ever more nauseated, and wrestled with the decision that I was eventually going to have to make: I must either get better quickly, or I would have to miss my flight home. I did not want to miss my flight, but I definitely was not feeling better.

At two AM, I decided to call Becky. It was five o'clock her time, and I woke her from a dead sleep.

"Hello," she answered, an obvious note of concern in her voice.

"I'm going to be sick."

"Oh, no! What's the matter?" she asked.

"I had a bad meal from Wendy's," I told her.

See, Becky knows my pattern as well as I do. She knew that I could recognize the signs, and that there was no stopping this freight train of sickness. I must push my way through it.

"I'm going to have to miss my flight. I can't fly like this."

"OK. Well, see how you feel and call me later," she responded, still hopeful that I could make it home on time.

I hung up and decided to call United and Hertz. I was feeling really close to being sick now, so I tried to get United to change my flights before I chundered across the room. Unfortunately, when talking to United at two AM, you're not talking to their A-list customer service team, so I had to endure many tens of minutes of searching and "Can I put you on hold a minute?" and "Just a moment please". I didn't think I would make it.

Finally, I got my flight set for the very hopeful time of ten PM. I decided if I'm not well enough by then, I will just have to change my flight again. My Hertz car was postponed. I called down to the front desk to extend my reservation. I put the "Do Not Disturb" sign on my hotel doorknob, wishing they had a "DANGER, QUARANTINE" sign instead.

Actually, at that particular moment, I would have preferred they have a surrogate mother service at the hotel: someone to come in and wipe my brow, check my covers, and bring me small sips of Gatorade. And to check to make sure I wasn't dead. I would have paid hundreds for this service. (Entrepreneurs, take note.)

I crawled weakly back into bed for a few more hours of nausea and sleep. Finally, at five AM--exactly when I should be leaving for my morning flight--it hit me. Time to be sick. I rushed to the bathroom for the disgusting but necessary cleansing of my upper G.I. tract.

This was bad stuff, but at least it was over. It was out of me. I began to feel better immediately, but still overcome by chills and weakness, I headed straight into bed and slept for four more hours.

The rest of my day was spent in that hotel room--curtains drawn, TV on--dividing my time between sleep, CNN, and calling Becky to let her know I was still alive. She desperately wanted me to come home on the afternoon flight, but I knew that this would not be possible. I was too tired and still too nauseated. I couldn't fly home strapped in a middle seat between two burly salesmen while I chundered in the quart-sized bag provided by the airline.

And at this point, I wasn't sure if I was done chundering.

Damn that value meal at Wendy's! I thought. Certainly, it couldn't be the oysters. It had been over thirty hours since I ate the oysters. All day Wednesday had been fine! No, it was definitely not the oysters. I couldn't bear it if it was the oysters. I love oysters!

I cursed the unsanitary practices at Wendy's. I was sure that my frosty was a lethal cocktail of chocolate, sugar, powdered dairy and E. coli. I swore I'd never eat another Wendy's value meal.

As the day wore on, I became absolutely bored with CNN's pre-election coverage. I couldn't bear to listen to another campaign speech, so I switched over to Discovery to learn about fractal antennas and the parting of the Red Sea. This was wondrous stuff! I was so ready to go home.

Feeling a little stronger, I trekked down to the front desk to purchase Gatorade. The mini twelve ounce bottles at the front desk cost $5 each, but I was desperate and they knew it. Cha-ching, cha-ching.

Slowly, I introduced the Gatorade into my system, small sips at a time. Able to keep that down, I slept more and waited restlessly for eight PM to arrive. Finally, it was time, and I could leave for the airport and my ten PM red-eye flight home.

I was still very queasy, but I desperately wanted to get home. I would have to take my chances. As I got on the plane--yes, in a middle seat between two large salesmen--I prayed, yes prayed, to just let me sleep. I couldn't take five hours of queasy wakefulness, the endless flight rolling by minute by minute. I just couldn't bear it.

Thankfully, I did sleep the whole way home, and by six AM, I felt the wheels of the plane bump down onto the tarmac. We had landed, and I was on my way to the parking garage.

I still had not conceded the oysters to be the cause of my ailment. It was only later, when my mother, an R.N., informed me that, "No, in fact, it takes between 24 and 48 hours for bacteria to incubate in the gut," that I began to suspect maybe I had gotten a little crazy with the oysters.

You can look at this as a numbers game. If there is a 2% chance that one oyster will make you sick, then eating six increases your odds sixfold, to a 12% chance of being sick. Not too bad. But then you get nuts and decide that 24 oysters sure would be nice. I now have just under a 50% chance of being deathly ill. It's like playing Russian roulette with a full clip of bullets. The more bullets, the more likely I am to die.

Later, my friend Sharon chastised me. "Scott, you're too damned old to eat that crap! Hell, you're almost forty now!"

Cousin Mary Kay also smirked on Facebook, "Methinks maybe one too many erster?"

Okay. Maybe. Maybe it was the oysters. Maybe I should issue an apology to Wendy's.

And now, the thought of eating oysters makes me sick to my stomach. I don't think I can ever eat another one. They've been ruined for me.

Anthony Bourdain, the executive chef at New York City's Les Halles and author of Kitchen Confidential, wrote this:

Good food and good eating are about risk. Every once in a while an oyster, for instance, will make you sick to your stomach. Does this mean you should stop eating oysters? No way. The more exotic the food, the more adventurous the serious eater, the higher the likelihood of later discomfort.

...

Like I said before, your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride. Sure, it's a "play you pay" sort of an adventure, but you knew that already, every time you ever ordered a taco or dirty-water hot dog... why not take a chance on the good stuff?

You only go around once, and by God, you should enjoy it. Get back on the horse and start wolfing down those oysters again.

Well, I'd like to. I really would.

But I'm just not quite ready for that. Yet.

Martin Luther King, Jr. by Luke

Luke wrote a report for school on Martin Luther King, Jr. I'm very proud of Luke. This was a great report! Here it is in full:

Martin Luther King, Jr.

     Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15 ,1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. He started his civil rights movement after Rosa Parks had been arrested in 1955. This started the Montgomery bus boycott. Then in 1959, the Supreme Court found that bus segregation was unconstitutional. However in many parts of the South nothing changed. The success in Montgomery triggered sit-ins and other protests all over the South. In 1963, adults tried marching through Birmingham, but the police attacked them. Next, the children tried and it worked! After several marches when the police were shown on TV attacking children, they stopped following orders. Also in 1963, King delivered his “I Have A Dream” speech. In 1964, he was the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and the Civil Rights Act, which King had worked for, passed through Congress. Unfortunately, he died on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee, shot by an assassin. This was a shame because he was only 39 years old and he could have done so much more.
     He was a good citizen because he fought for equal rights for all people peacefully, and went to jail willingly for the cause even though he didn't like it. He showed people that you don't need guns to change the country.

School Photos

The boys' school photos are in, and they are pretty good! Becky got the portraits free this year for volunteering to help the photographer.

No Hard Feelings

Got this from a co-worker, and thought my mother, father, and probably just about the rest of my Oklahoma relatives would enjoy and approve:

No Hard Feelings...to the Democrats

Election day is over,
The talking is done.
My party lost, your party won.
So let us be friends,
Let arguments pass.
I'll hug my elephant,
You kiss your ass.

Off to Dayton today...

This has been a busy week of travel. Continuing on my whirlwind tour of the U.S., I am leaving Seattle today bound for Dayton.

Tomorrow, it's meetings all day, and then hopefully home by bedtime.

Happy Veterans Day

Happy Veterans Day! Today, I want to thank the folks in my family who did their part to keep our country free and safe. War, no matter what the cause, is ugly business, so I am genuinely thankful to those who were forced to be a part of it.*

Grandpa Harris was enlisted in the U.S. Army and fought in World War II. He is registered with the National World War II Memorial site in Washington DC. You can read his profile here.

Grandpa Guier also fought in World War II, but he served in the U.S. Navy. You can see Grandpa Guier's World War II Memorial registry here.

Ed served in the U.S.M.C. in Vietnam as a radio operator. Shipboard, he made it through a hell of a big typhoon in the Gulf of Tonkin, which the next morning had buckled the ship's deck more than twelve inches.

My own Dad served in Vietnam in the U.S. Army as an Ordnance officer, stationed at Cameron Cam Ranh Bay. Dad then went on to a 20+ year career as an Army officer, retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel.

I can't forget my good buddy, Jim Alivs, who served in the Infantry in the first Gulf War. He scared the enemy with that face!

Thank you, vets!

*I use the term "forced" here not because these gentlemen were conscripts, but because nobody wishes to be a part of a war, and the events of history force themselves upon us.

Flooring is FINALLY done!

Before I started this project, I had estimated it to be one that I could easily finish in a single weekend. Unfortunately, as is usual for me, I woefully underestimated the job. The flooring took more like four weekends to complete, but as of tonight, it's DONE! Hooray!

So, as a recap, our entire second floor is now Witex Town and Country Honey Oak. The boys have new furniture from Ikea, and Becky's allergies are already getting better. (That carpet was nasty!) Frank is having difficulty getting enough traction to get onto beds, and he skitters into walls most hilariously when we get him wound up with his toy. We'll have to get him some no-slip pads for his footies.


The flooring looks absolutely gorgeous, and because it's a floating floor, I had to install quarter-round around all the baseboards. Of course, my best looking miter cuts are those that are placed in the back corners of closets, under toe kicks in the bathroom, or behind the bedroom doors. All the visible miter cuts, the ones you will see every day, are, well, not as good. That's just my style. I'm like a spy--all my best work is behind closed doors.


My favorite part of the floors, strangly enough, is how nice the transition strip between the wood and the attic carpet looks. I don't know why, but I really like it! It's so clean and screwless!


No sooner did I finish the flooring job, than I had to run outside, spade in hand, and get my 1,000 King Alfred daffodils planted before it snows. Yeah, I said one thousand. I kinda went a little nuts this year. Sure enough, I wasn't able to get 1,000 planted today, but I'm really pleased (and a little surprised) that I did manage to get 500 of the bulbs into the ground. The boys and I planted them all along the hillside, so our neighbors should have a lovely display come late March.

If anybody wants to buy a spare bag of 250 daffodils or so, just let me know. I've got a couple bags I'm not using.

Scouting for Food

Scouting may have its faults, but one thing that I'm really proud of are the service projects we do each year with the boys. I think it's really important to expose the boys to a number of service projects. The boys learn that there are needy people out there, and that they can help to make a change for those folks. The boys see tangible results from their own efforts, whether it's cleaning up an old lady's yard, pulling weeds at the church, or my personal favorite: Scouting for Food.

This was Scouting for Food weekend, and today we went around the neighborhood collecting bags that we had set out last week. People donated canned and dried goods, which we delivered to Loudoun Interfaith Relief, the local food shelter. Times are tough for a lot of people right now, tougher than in years past, so it was really gratifying to do this work with the boys.

For my own den, which is about ten boys, we collected over 800 pounds of food! That's 80 pounds of food for each boy--about double the pack average! For the pack (about 50 total boys), we usually collect just over 2,000 pounds of food. That is a lot of food. All of it then goes on the shelves at Loudoun Interfaith Relief and costs them nothing.

The boys have a lot of fun collecting the bags, and I believe events like this also help them to appreciate just how lucky they are to be setting down each night to a warm meal. Lots of people, even in our wealthy county, still struggle with that.

Becky's First 5K

Becky's been running lately, and not just away from us boys. For the past six months or more, she's been training from a book called Running for Mortals. She's really enjoying herself and was ready for her first race today.

Sharon came over at about 7:30 and they headed up to the train station, where the "Turkey Trot" began. The race came right down the street behind our house (where we cheered enthusiastically for her!), and then looped around the north side of town, and back down the W&OD trail back to the station.

Becky didn't get her time, but she wasn't that interested in what it was anyway. She was just glad to do her first race! She did great!

There goes Sharon. You had to take the picture fast, because she's so speedy!

Here comes Becky!!

Look, she's not even winded! Piece of cake!

Man, look at that sprint! What determination!! That's the same look she gives when Eddie's about to do something he shouldn't.

Pretty tired when it's all over.

Pajama Outtakes

It took great effort tonight to get the boys to take one nice photo this evening for their Nana. For the one photo of them smiling together, I got twenty five more of these:



Luke was not happy that I forced him to sit close to Eddie, or have Eddie put his arm around Luke. Hmmpfh! Brothers!

Boys' New Jammies

Thank you, Nana, for the boys' new Christmas pajamas. They look very handsome in them.

Election Chaser...

Haiku on a Breakfast Burrito

Bracing fall winds blow,
My soul longs for something warm--
Burrito saves me.

The Day After...

To all of my Republican family and friends: A Plea for Unity

Every one of you know that I boisterously supported Mr. Obama, but I want to take moment to try to provide you some comfort. I know this is a hurtful time for you right now, and I pray that this Democratic win does not leave you in bitterness, darkness and sorrow.

This man is not your enemy. He is not Satan. He is not Jimmy Carter. He is not a Muslim terrorist. And the world is not ending.

We must come back together as Americans to rebuild this shattered country. If there is one element of Mr. Obama's campaign that struck me most, it was his call for unified and grassroots change. President-elect Obama has never offered government as the solution to all our problems. Rather he asked each of us to make the changes we need starting at home, and in our churches, and in our schools, and in our local government. He called upon us to be better than we were before, to cast aside party labels, gender labels, race labels, social labels, sexual-orientation labels, and to work together as Americans to improve this great land of ours.

The task will be daunting; the challenges are many. But we cannot do it without your help. So, I urge you, as Mr. McCain urged you in his very gracious concession speech, to work with us.

Cast aside your fears. Turn off the TV news. Let us lock hands together and redeem our country.

Help us build a stronger America. For all of us.

YES! WE! DID!

WE DID IT! WE DID IT! WE DID IT!

HELL YEAH!

WE DID IT!

From this:

To this:

And finally, this!

SUCCESS!!!

Last image courtesy of AP/Getty used for non-commercial fair-use.

States to Watch Today

I said it before, and I shall highlight it again. Today, the two states that will decide the final outcome are Pennsylvania and Virginia.

McCain can have Ohio and even Florida, but in my estimation, if McCain does not carry BOTH Pennsylvania and Virginia today, he cannot win.

It's certainly not decided yet; both states are too close to decisively call, and polls have been wrong before.

So, go VOTE!

VOTE!

No matter the weather, go VOTE today! We may never see the like of this historic election. Be a part of it, and go VOTE!

Take a book, or a Gameboy, or better yet, a friend to endure the long wait, but just make sure you show up at the polls on time!

Home Improvement -- Progress Report

I took off from work today to try to get done with the new flooring job. I didn't finish--it took a lot longer to move all of Eddie and Luke's stuff (putting it nicely) than I hoped it would.

But I did finish Eddie's room, got his new Ikea furniture installed, finished the reading room, and got Luke's room 75% finished. I still have to do the hallway and boys' bathroom, but most of the crazy angle cuts are behind me, so it should go pretty fast from here on out.

Cavaliers, Courage, and Coffee -- When Mosby Owned the Night

Tonight, our family attended an interpretive lantern-light tour of the life during the Civil War in the Mosby Heritage Area (just south of our home in Atoka, Virginia). This was a captivating tour, with stories told by actors in period costumes. We learned about the guerrilla warfare of the Mosby Rangers, and how devastating the war was to people, civilian and soldier alike, on both sides of the battlefield.

The event was presented by the Gray Ghost Interpretive Group and sponsored by the Mosby Heritage Area Association. If you're ever in town, this is an event any Civil War history buff would hate to miss!

Luke's Final Soccer Game

Luke's soccer season ended with a stunning 4-1 victory today! Luke played some awesome defense. He played three quarters of four, two as defender and one as goalie. Honestly, we should call him the Spiderman, because nothing gets past his web! He was on fire!

This was a great season, and Luke and I both are already looking forward to Spring ball.

R.I.P. Bob the Rat

Luke's beloved fat rat, Bob, passed away today. Bob had been battling a very large mammary tumor, which had grown to the size of a large tangerine. The tumor was accounting for half of Bob's body weight, and she could no longer breath easily nor move around.

So with a sad heart, we said goodbye to Bob. Luke was very brave, but very saddened too. Now, he's just going to have to give Fred all the love and affection that Bob gave.

If you think of it, send Luke a kind word. He's still very sad. This was his very first pet.

Happy Halloween!

Dance off!