Unearthing a life.....

Bookworm remarked over dinner this evening that it was such a disappointment to keep accessing my Blog only to find that I haven't put up a new posting. I am going to resist suggesting that I am the most prolific poster of this particular little group of mainly otherwise engaged Blogettes. Besides which, dinner was a serving of Weight Watchers Santa Fe Beans and Rice served on a bed of shredded lettuce. And I ate an hour before she got home from work. So, if you were flirting with thoughts of candlelight and veal cutlets, you would have been far, far off the mark. A 'bed of lettuce' - in my kitchen - refers to a heap of shredded lettuce that covers the whole plate to a depth of 1/2" to 3/4". This is like a push-up bra for skinny little servings of anorexic diet food.

We watched the Forty Year Old Virgin yesterday. It came highly recommended by Bookworm's clients and fellow churchgoers. We saw another film a few weeks back, also highly recommended, that I am not allowed to express my opinion of, so I will spit all my venom at the Forty Year Old Virgin. It was an eye-roller .... a sexist garbage can for the collection of frat boy off-color material. When the lead plods across the opening credits in profile, in his underwear, with a Long John Silver boner as his figurehead, you know you are in the cinematic Black Swamp of Doom. It tried to be cute and was not. And now I'll shut this paragraph down because I see that I may be headed for yet one more politically incorrect observation.

Safe Subject: The ever-present grandson. Sayer of cute things. Inventer of a constant stream of reasons why he should stay home from school. Today he informed me that there were vampires in the backyard, waiting to attack the house ... and that he was holding them off by peddling along on Bookworm's Exercycle .... THEREFORE, he could not go to school because if he quit peddling, the vampires would attack.
For the first summer in four years, I'll be getting some respite from my daycare duties. He is going to be going Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to a real daycare with other children ... and not at my expense. This will be good for him. An only child who spends most of his waking hours with his grandpa, does not develop good social coping skills. He doesn't know what to do once in the play environment, or how to sustain the play process. So - despite his initial enthusiasm - he tends to migrate out to the periphery of whatever's going on. This will be good for him and for me.

I'm enjoying my new camera.

On the 16th of June, Bookworm and I will celebrate our 38th wedding anniversary. We will celebrate with a dinner at the new Anthony's Restaurant in renewed downtown Bremerton ... and not our usual trek to La Fermata.

This pop quiz is out of bounds for Bookworm as she has access to the answer sheet.

Clue #1: A result of having raced around in a circle hell bent for leather.
Clue #2: As is common to those races confined to circular tracks, there is significant acceleration.
Clue #3: ...and collisions!

Additional clues .... (Tuesday)
Clue #4: Ernest O. Lawrence
Clue #5: University of California at Berkeley, 1929
Clue #6: My Uncle Albert.

Wednesday evening, May 31.....
When Uncle Albert got out of the Navy after WW II, he went to work at Berkeley involved with research being done with their particle accelerator.
He gave this item to my Dad, the Rockhound. When Dad passed away, I fell into possession of it. It is a 4" by 4" by 3/4" thick slab of lucite. It was stood on edge and a stream of accelerated particles was 'fired' at the midpoint of the 3/4" edge. The 'shot' created this tree effect seen when looking at the 4" by 4" surface. Seems like a lot of fractal characteristics going on here. I shot this close-up through the lucite slab with some dark objects behind it to make it show up better.

"It's the emptiness of all that drifts freely,
full of concrete and final roses."

Buttercups and poppies 'in the wild' and rhododendruns and azaleas in the front yard, May flowers have finally brought us showers -- though it's supposed to be the other way around. My camera loves this time of year.

With the powers of creation, come the responsibilities of control.

Having created this deadly looking green dinosaur that might well spell an early end for mankind, Allie reigned him in with the declaration, "He's a vegetarian!"

Probably why the critter is green. Overdosed on chlorophyll.

And here we are, back at the beginning of one more week in an average alloted progression of 4420 of them. What will this one bring? Last week brought a new camera. That was good. For me.

Not talkin' about a thirty-something mistress in low-rider jeans here ... talkin' about a brand spanking new Canon PowerShot S2 digital camera. I spotted this little sweetheart when I was shopping for a camera for Bookworm a week ago. I returned to that camera counter four times since ... to gaze, to ponder, to calculate, to lust after. Yesterday afternoon I fought my way through the cloud of moths that surround my checkbook and made her mine.

It's not just the bells and whistles. Most of them will never get used. And I can't feature using its 'movie' capabilities .... I've got an out-dated dust-gathering video cam for that ... should I ever be moved to become a video film maker again. I think the gathering dust speaks to that possibility. I believe much of the S2's allure is that it resembles a miniature version of my Big Love, the Canon SLR T90. Familiar territory. A promise of revisiting past pleasures.

At a certain setting, the camera will take sepia toned pix. Okay, so our computer has at least two installed programs that will change any picture to sepia tones, still .... I don't tend to remember to experiment with them. At any rate, I tried out the sepia pix setting on Bookworm with the quite nice results posted here.

I hope the S2 and I were made for each other, 'cause I just never could get a stable relationship going with that old Nikon 4500. She was a dark and moody camera and seemed to enjoy flashing her "Low Battery Level" message at me.

Have you ever looked Death square in the eye and flipped him the bird? Highjacked the Grim Reaper's scythe and used it to cut re-bar? Stood up on Charon's boat and rocked it till both he and his dog were seasick and puking over the side? If you haven't, you fall into my catagory: People Wary of Termination. I find it hard to accept that, like a pint of half-and-half at the grocery store, my life has a "use before" date stamped on it.

So ... when I feel a near death experience approaching, I lay low ... which usually entails taking to my bed and drifting in and out of consciousness.

Monday morning I arose in good spirits, went grocery shopping with Allie, fed said kid, cooked and ate a fine breakfast of my special Snoqualmie Oat Meal with raisins, nutmeg, and cinnamon. Then sallied forth alone to a 9:00 AM appointment with my cornea specialist at Harrison Hospital Silverdale. I began to feel 'strange' about halfway through the fifteen minute drive. In the waiting room, I began to get dozey. In the Dr's examination chair I was beginning to fight off nausea and dizziness. Then a woozy drive home with one eye dilated ... and the immediate collapse into bed where I existed fitfully for six hours before I could sit up-right again.

I suspect some of you are snorting behind your hands and thinking "Near death experience my arse." Okay, likely no one was thinking 'arse' .... the word is maybe too antique for common useage. But I calculate that I was 912 yards due south by south east of Death and that qualifies in my book. And I didn't see any white light and I didn't hear anyone calling me back from anywhere. Just some muttering from Bookworm while she tried to figure out how to operate the digital thermometer after it was under my tongue.

Tuesday was an up-and-down recovery day, but thanks to the ministration of the good Dr. Bookworm, today I'm at about 60%.
Good enough to get back to cooking breakfast and barking at the grandson again. His other grandma brought him in a pair of sandals this morning. They have vanished.
"I am not wearing those sandals to school 'n I'm NOT GOING to school today!", he announced ... bellowed, actually.
"Yeah! Why not!"
"How can I run!" he shrieked.
Point taken.
I rustle around in the washroom closet and come up with a pair of hand-me-down lace up Timberline (Timberlake?) shoes that he appears to have finally grown into and he went off to school happy .... after we'd played frisbee, beaten a badminton birdie around , and done a turn on his bike (with training wheels). A little too much activity for my state of recovery.

He did invent a game at mid-morning that I could play sitting down. He gave me a five-inch ball and then turned himself invisible. Then he would move around the room and it was my job to whack him with the ball if I could figure out where he was. Actually a good game. One time he forgot that silence was invisibility and said something to Bookworm and I whacked him. Another time he tried to move a drapery out of his way and when it moved, I whacked him.

Ah! It's always good to be moving away from any sort of confrontation with the Reaper, be he grim or not.

Aleister has always been artistically challenged. Not only is he loathe to color within the lines, he is loathe to color at all. But the rigors of kindergarten discipline seem to be having a leavening effect on him. He brought home the above assignment yesterday and I was moved to an outburst of chuckles when I read what it was (nickel added for size/scale).

"DRAW two lions lying on their backs with their paws up in the air."
"How many paws do we see?" 8
"How many ears do we see?" 4

He earned a big star on his paper ... and grandpa thinks his two lions are a real hoot!

Last week was not a great joy for young Aleister. On Wednesday he committed the social gaffe of clubbing his bus-mate 'Two-juan' over the head with his backpack -- which by luck of the draw contained the clay pinch-pot that he was taking home to his Mom as her Mother's Day present. The pinch pot was not damaged, but 'Two-jaun' was elevated to a loud martyrdom of tears and Allie was marched off to the office by the bus driver. On Thursday, he had to go to the Principal's office for a butt chewing and he lost his recesses for Thursday and Friday. He was also assigned the task of writing a note of apology to 'Two-juan'. With the help of his Mom, he printed out "I am sorry for hitting you. Allie." And they sealed it in a big purple construction paper envelope. The bus driver reported (to me) that 'Two-juan' was greatly impressed and had declared it very 'cool'. On Wednesday afternoon, facing his prospect for consequences, he remarked to Bookworm, "This is so embarrassing!"

Speaking of Bookworm, I bought her a Canon PowerShot A530 digital camera this past week. She demanded something simple, without bells and whistles. No such worthwhile critter out there that I could find. A clerk was assisting me and made an attempt to up-grade my intentions by saying "...but what if she wants to grow in her photography?"
"No, no!" I replied. "She specifically said that she didn't wish to grow in her photography. She wants to point and shoot. Period."

Certainly the A530 has a lot of bells and whistles. But as I pointed out to Bookworm during my bried orientation lecture ... "You leave this dial turned to the green mark where it says 'AUTO' and never move it and this button for on and off and this button (shutter) to take the picture. Leave everything else alone and you will not have to suffer bells and whistles." Now she can retire the old Polaroid Instamatic that she's used for years - at great expense. She took the two pix of the Azteca Restaurant posted on her 'Bremerton Review' blog site. I think she's happy with it.

An unforeseen problem arose. My Nikon 4500 that cost an arm and a leg 4 - 5 years ago cannot match her cheapie Canon (well, not all that cheap). The inexorable advance of digital photography has nudged me towards the rear of the shooting crowd. I am feeling an inner need to upgrade. WalMart has a nifty $400 Canon that has been crying out to me.
"Buy me, buy me, buy me!"

Mother's Day is almost upon us and so it may well be time for a small tribute and tasteful laudation of the 'Mother' in this household ... Ms. Dr. Bookworm. Because of znglass's use of the phrase 'back in the day', today's laudation will focus 'back in the day' when performance anxiety was King at our humble home. A decade otherwise known as 'The Seventies'.....


This is a faded old Bremerton Sun newspaper photo of Bookworm and our dear old friend Carl Wiltermood. Carl was my mentor of sorts when I was a young man. He gave me a smack up the head that reversed my political leanings ... from right-winger to liberal . In his youth he was a Wobblie ... International Workers of the World ... a radical, socialist union movement that was met with much violence here in the U.S. of A. And lynching here in Washington State. When I first met him, he worked in the shipyard and he and his wife ran a nudist camp over back of Port Orchard.

What's going on here in this photo is: Carl and Bookworm and Sam, the Washington State History teacher at East High, put together a program where Carl and Bookworm came each year and Carl delivered an oral history of the Wobblie movement in Washington State and Bookworm played guitar and sang songs from the Wobblies' "Little Red Song Book".

Bookworm as Ginney Jenny in "Three Penny Opera". She was totally mortified when she discovered that Ginney Jenny was not the one who got to sing "The Black Ship" song.

....and again from the Three Penny Opera.......

This is one of my favorite pictures even though it is a scan of a photocopy of a beat-up newspaper photo. Bookworm as Constance in "The Constant Wife", a show I always get confused with her wife's role in "A Little Night Music". These were all shows from the Olympic College Theatre.

.... as Nancy(?) in the Bremerton Community Theatre's production of the musical "Oliver". She may be surprised to find that I still remember how she had to battle with keeping her voice .... due to the smoke machine that produced a stageful of oily, rancid 'fog' during one of her songs.

....as Sally Bowles in BCT's production of "Cabaret". If I remember correctly, this was her last major theatrical performance. After a decade in local theatre, we both drifted off to other things, she to finishing her Masters Degree at PLU and teaching at Writer's Conferences, and me to photography and fossil hunting.

And through all of this, she was a good mother to her son and to my two teenage daughters. I WILL be providing her with Breakfast in Bed this coming Sunday morning.

What I notice most about the illegal immigrants who are posing such a great problem here in the Land of the Transplanted European, is that most of them are from Native American bloodlines. These are remnant peoples of great civilizations of the past. And not necessarily civilizations which have crashed of their own accord, but many that we destroyed when we found them living in our path.

Spotted Tail had this to say about the illegal immigrants of his day:
"This war did not spring up on our land, this war was brought upon us by the children of the Great Father who came to take our land without a price, and who, in our land, do a great many evil things... This war has come from robbery - from the stealing of our land."

Foto By FossilGuy - 2005

Addendum:

This just in from my beloved Democtatic Representative to Congress Norm Dicks. This is the last line of a message muddling the illegal Alien issue.

"I wanted you to know that I intend to continue to advocate for a comprehensive approach to immigration reform that will strengthen our borders, protect workers, and help bring millions of undocumented immigrants out of the shadows."

Norm, Norm, Norm! They are not in the shadows! That's them out there in the asparagus fields under the full blare of the sun. No shadows!

May I direct your attention to the new link I added today (on the right) to our dearest Bookworm's ancillary BLOG .... Dr. Bookworm's Bremerton Review.

A couple of my rhododendrons are nearing full bloom. Hope you all have a great second week of May, 2006.

I called 5000 people and asked the question, "Do you think Dick Cheney is doing a good job?" ... and 7000 of them said "No!"

......from the witty brain of FossilGuy

Okay, so you didn't ask. I can hardly imagine anything so uninteresting as another person's diet. Unless, of course, it was on TV and incorporated a race for a million dollars. I confess to having got caught up in that in the past.

The inexorible upward creep of weight - my weight, to be precise - has become a real shackle when it comes to enjoying things like the ocean beach trips. A touch of asbestos in the lungs, forty-eight years of serious smoking, and forty unnecessary mid-line pounds all join ranks and work to prevent me from taking long walks on the sand and other pleasureable forms of extended exercise.

So I came home from the annual Ocean Eat Out looking like FossilGuy before (see photo below) ... at 221.6 pounds. Bookworm and I started out on an "eat half" diet as soon as we got home ... or maybe a day or two later. The diet was conceived as eating half portions of the things we normally eat ... but (for me) has evolved into a diet of 1/2 cans of soups and/or chili, 80 calorie tubs of flavored yogurt, and most suppers of low cal Santa Fe Rice and Beans on a bulky bed of shredded lettuce. With medium hot salsa added. An apple or a 100 calories snack pack of Pringles - or both - to ease me through TV Primetime.



It is working. Slow, but sure. Creeping in a downward arc. Between six and seven weeks have passed since I began this. This morning I weighed in at 205.8 pounds .... just shy of a sixteen pound loss. That's a little over two pounds a week. See FossilGuy after below. Okay, not spectacular yet but headed in the right direction.



I thank you for your attention, if attentive you have been. If not, I totally understand why not. This is painfully boring stuff. But enduring pain often builds character. Or serial killers.

"Saddle sore that vaquero rode into town, his thirst as dry as an empty laundromat’s lint traps ... he looked snake eyes at the third person he encountered and asked “where can I get a root beer?” "

The above photo caption was posted to my yaFro photo site by my yaFro friend 'Eye'. He is a master of the dislocating photo caption and/or comment. You can visit my yaFro site from the direct link to the right on this page. I've been adding a lot of our ocean weekend photos there over the past week.