Odd / Even Conundrum

I used to have a thing about not liking odd numbers, but I think I am gradually getting over that.

I was born in an even year, most of my graduations occurred in even years, I got married in an even year......  I think you get the picture.

It wasn't until I met my friend Chris that I started to think more favorably about odds.  I mean, I had friends in school that were one year older or younger than me, but one day Chris made a funny statement that I HAD to follow up with more questions.

We were at some work meeting, and she was chatting away with some CAPT that she had just met, and they really were hitting it off; in that electric way where you can almost complete the other person's sentences, and they laugh at most of your "new person" jokes.  [A "new person" joke in my book is one that you can tell someone you just met, without much fear of offending them.]

I didn't really interact much with this CAPT during the meeting, but at lunch Chris mentioned, "I could tell that he was an 'odd year' before I even asked him!"  When pressed for more information, she explained that at the USCG Academy the odds and evens have a strong affinity for one another.

I guess it is similar to my all girls Catholic high school experience, where each member of the new freshman class get a junior to look out for them.  OK, there is some hazing involved, but nothing too serious.  The nuns make sure of that........

I think that the hazing Chris went through was a bit more significant, and it was coming from the 'evens' who had been there one year longer than she had.  The second class 'odds' were the ones making sure that the 'evens' didn't get out of hand with the new fourth class cadets.

She went on to explain things I can't even remember the specifics of, but it was something along the lines of, "You can always tell an 'even' by their {add desired characteristic here}."  I started to think back on all the Academy grads I had run across during my career, and if I knew what year they were commissioned, I tried to decide if they fit the picture Chris was painting.

Sometimes it made sense, and other times it didn't.

It reminded me of the reversible polyester pinnies that we wore during soccer or field hockey scrimmages in college.  They were not as nice as those pictured below, but they allowed us to easily switch teams so the coach could try out new combinations of players together.

[borrowed from http://bceagles.cbscollegestore.com/store/Vendor396/fullscale/rsz_bc_league_womens_pinnie-c.jpg]

Ours were gold on one side, greyish on the other, so the common chant was, "Gold is great!  Grey is gross!"  Luckily both those words started with G, so it was easy to switch the order around if you got moved to the 'dark' side of the force.  If it was too cold to just wear the pinnies over our sports bras or t-shirts, we wore our sweatshirts inside out, or rightside out, as the case may be.

I cannot remember what the chant was for sweatshirt weather.  Maybe it was, "Gray is great!  White is weak!"

[interesting change in spelling I made of the colour in that last quote, as the President of the University was Dr. Gray during my time there.  I wonder if she was ever passing by Stagg Field and heard us chanting??????  Did she think we were talking about her?]

But, as usual, I digress.  The point of this blog is that a leopard can change its spots more easily than you would imagine, and even an 'even' like me can finally make piece with the 'odds'!

The great whiskey barrel experiment

Every day at work I can look out my window and see the shores of Windsor, BC.  On a good day, when I get to spend some time outdoors, and if the wind is blowing JUST the right heading, and the Hiram Walker distillery on the opposite bank of the Detroit River is off-gassing at the right stage of their liquor processing, I can smell some really nice results of the fermentation process.

I think that part of my inspiration for this experiment may have been the MANY barrels of various kinds of liquor that poured across the liquid (riverine) border with Canada during the years of Prohibition.  There are may houses on the small rivers and canals in the areas in and surrounding Detroit which have basement boat bays that facilitated the smuggling of this precious commodity.  The liquor was brought across on a boat, and left the building sometime later in a truck.

[borrowed from https://www.reuther.wayne.edu/files/images/27833.preview.jpg]

This summer I bought two whiskey barrel halves to use as planters in the back yard.  The first one was a VERY well charred barrel that I purchased at the exchange.  I left it in the back seat of my trucklet for a few days (because the bed was too full of other crap, mostly sporting equipment like softball gear and golf clubs), and the aroma of whiskey residue was quite pleasant.

Since I have wanted a backyard fish and turtle pond for some time, I decided to fill the barrel with water and buy a handful feeder fish to live in there for the summer.  I think the barrel was a bit too charred and saturated with alcohol, because none of the 6 fish that I bought survived more than 3 days.

A few weeks later a bought a nicer quality (and much more expensive) barrel half at a local garden store.  This one I also filled with water and threw in maybe a dozen fish.  This time I think the problem was that the weather was too hot, and the poor things were getting boiled to death.  I grabbed a few out before they expired, and put them in with the turtles in the basement.

There were three HUGE goldfish in there already, as goldfish tend to grow very quickly when you feed them turtle pellets.  I gave one of the large guys to a colleague after her son's fish had died.  For the first few days he (Fred) refused to eat the regular goldfish food.  He probably thought that it was dust falling into his new, much smaller home........

Someone left a donut on my battery

The title sounds better if you sing it to the tune of "Grandma got run over by a reindeer!"

As I popped the hood on Bruce the Baja today to make sure that my bug (i.e., windshield wiper) juice dispenser was full, I was surprised to find a partially nibbled upon donut on top of the battery.  Maybe it was a bagel, it was pretty nibbled upon, but the circular shape and the hole in the middle made it fairly recognizable.

I have heard that cats can get inside the engine compartment of many cars and trucks, but the nibbles were so small that I assume this piece of carbohydrate joy was dragged into my car by a hungry little mouse or squirrel, maybe even a vole!

I was about to leave for an appointment, so I didn't take a picture of the offending time before removing it from the battery.  I assume that was the location they chose to store the item because it is nice and flat.

But why didn't they finish the munching, I started to wonder.....

• did the item become distasteful because of some leaking battery acid?
• did the little rodent become forgetful about where it left its comestibles?

It had been a very warm fall, so it is possible that there were so many food options that the little bugger found some more tasty options, like my lily bulbs, for instance.

I can say from a very scary and pukey experience several years ago, that lily bulbs, while they may LOOK a lot like wild onions (especially when someone has mown over the bulk of the original foliage.....), should not be consumed, EVER!  [I will have to check and see if I already wrote about that episode in another blog.  If I haven't, that is a good weekend project for me to document.]

South of US = Canada

I know that most NFL commentators have not had the opportunity to serve as Rhodes Scholars, but it offends me that they have such a poor schooling in geography to make statements like, "this is the only city in the US where you are north of Canada."

There isn't an NFL team in Alaska, but most places in AK are at least West, if not North of the bulk of Canada.

[borrowed from http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/namerica/usstates/aknewzz.gif]

Maybe I would not be so sensitive to these inaccuracies if I had not lived in AK for 4 years, but I am not completely sure about that.  Back to the football game where Megatron is trying to break one of Jerry Rice's records.  

Words create worlds

When I wake up early on the weekend, I try not to disturb the spouse and cats on the bed, gather up my electronic toys/leashes, put my sea otter slippers on, and paddle quietly down to the kitchen.  Once there, I turn on the radio, make (or reheat) some coffee and check my email.  Sometimes I feel inspired enough to do some cleaning or create a blog.  Today I have done both, and it is not even 1000 (that's 10 AM for you non-military types).

credit:  John Goodwin
[borrowed from https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9VJx12PND7Te6qBLAYPSX_ceX-G_3JCFicA8MpM0osLDD8QObyscCS2D9BhRao7dd6LBA-_uuXlOmX4Ovt1aHPRDTj9OzFI8Eg-RJ0SsGi6DdyBvxBHI2AFO715eCCqd8fu-MZtEctqk/s400/Heschel.jpg]

One of my favorite weekend radio programs is "On Being" with Krista Tippet.  This morning she was discussing the life and work of a rabbi who was a friend of Martin Luther King.  His name was Abraham Heschel.  Krista was mentioning something that her dad always told her, that "words create worlds".

This started me thinking about the 'crisis' du jour inside the beltway.  [See my blog from yesterday if you aren't sure what beltway I am referring to....]

Some are calling it the 'fiscal cliff', others are calling it a 'debt crisis', all terms which are meant to be scary and dire.  It is interesting that they are choosing those specific words.

The better explanation of what is going on, in my humble perspective, is just a lack of teamwork.  The two major political parties are so busy scoring points off each other, that they cannot fathom what it would be like to work together.

The words they use to describe one another are almost always divisive, so no wonder they don't want to compromise and get this stuff done before Christmas.

Fear and loathing in the Capitol

I love our nation's Capitol.

I love politics.

Unfortunately for us, politicians are humans, and there are some of them who just don't act very nicely...... especially these last few years in the USA.

[borrowed from http://aoc.gov/sites/default/files/styles/artwork-node/public/images/buildings/6345373408_e4f8fb2728_o_0.jpg]

I was having a long teleconference on tuesday with two colleagues from work.  We were discussion a contentious topic that really makes my blood boil.  At one point I blurted out something along the lines of, "unfortunately for us, we have to deal with humans who will not always tell the truth.  In fact, it is in their interest to lie in certain situations."  I have been in some interesting diplomatic negotiations where you KNOW that the person on the other side of the table is stretching [actually, tearing apart] the truth, but you have to sit there politely and keep your mouth shut.

For me, that is NEARLY impossible.  It helps when you are conducting the negotiations with non-simultaneous translation, because you have time to think of the right way to say, "uh uh!" in a much more graceful manner that doesn't cause an international incident.

I believe that the gentleman whose statue is shown in the picture above, good ole General George, would have been very disgusted with the way that our elected officials in the two houses of Congress are not getting along very well.  We sent them there to do good things on our behalf, but they spend WAY too much time making people worry about made up stuff.

They want us to fear some sort of fiscal cliff, they want us to worry about the future of social security, and one of the minority leaders spent the last four years devoting himself to trying to unseat the president.  Why was he focusing on that, rather than representing the people of his state, and doing things that need to be done?

I know the answer, and it makes me so annoyed that I am going to stop blogging right now and get some breakfast.

Have a great weekend everyone, and try not to be so fearful!

Legacy of service

I only met one of my great grandparents, but I still think that I can draw the connections between some of them to myself.  Having been associated with the military for the past two decades, when you meet someone for the first time and they find out you are a career military member, they often ask you if your parents were in the military.

I love to tell the story of when my dad was in the NJ National Guard during the Vietnam War.  He was a helicopter mechanic, but he didn't really want to fly in the thing after he had worked on it.  It had nothing to do with his confidence that he had maintained or repaired the machinery correctly, he just didn't want to go up in something that didn't have wings.

I frankly don't blame him, but I have enjoyed most of the helo rides I have taken during my time in the service.  However, there is something more comforting about being in a big C-130 fixed wing aircraft that might have a chance of gliding back to terra firm should something bad happen to all 4 of its engines.  I understand the theory of auto rotation of a helo's blades to bring you less precipitously back to earth should its engines fail, but I do not want to experience that first hand.

My dad's brother was a Marine during the same time frame, and though neither of them deployed overseas, they still did their part to serve their country during a very unpopular war.

My Norwegian great grandparents were soldiers of a different stripe.  They both served in the Salvation Army in New York for many years.  One of them achieved the rank of Colonel.  I am not sure exactly what that means when you are trying to save people's souls in terms of what I know of the US military chain of command, but it still sounds pretty impressive!

[borrowed from http://kxlt.images.worldnow.com/images/20171502_BG1.jpg]

I always think of these ancestors in particular during the holiday season, when I see the folks with the red kettles outside stores collecting money.  Please be as generous as you can during the holiday season (and the rest of the year as well) to great philanthropic organizations such as the Salvation Army, American Red Cross, Red Crescent, Heifer International, etc.

Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year to all!

Crabs crabs crabs!!!

Not sure if it is because I spent so much of my life in the environs of Baltimore, or because my mother was born under the appropriate zodiac sign, but I do love me some crustaceans!

Or maybe it is just that I have a very "Crabby Patty" attitude some of the time, and I tend to snap at things that might be good to eat!

When the spousal unit was working in AK most of the summer, I was back in MI, where the only live saltwater crabs I saw were at the local aquarium shops.  We bought an emerald crab a couple years back for our saltwater tank, but I think he got eaten by the ravenous snails (who also dispatched an unsuspecting blue spotted sea hare within 24 hours) many moons ago.

So I had a hankering for some crabs other than the ones you can buy frozen in your local seafood emporia here in the landlocked (big lakes don't count) midwest of the US, and when my favorite pet shop [Lou's] had blue legged hermit crabs on sale 10 for $7.99, I had to pick up some to take home!!!  They at least fared better than the feeder fish I was experimenting with in old whiskey barrels in the backyard.  But that is a story for another day.......

[borrowed from http://www.tropicalfishkeeping.com/userpix/47_blueleghermit2_1.jpg]

I did do some research on them before I actually purchased them.  I was also waiting for the new saltwater tanks at Lou's to get firmly established, so that I was fairly certain that the critters living in there were healthy.  My research also indicated that the crabs themselves can be crabby about finding new and bigger places to live, and that they might attack snails and try and take their shells.  To forestall any more death in the saltwater tank, I went thru my extensive seashell collection and found a few good places for crabs that were bulking up, to potentially trade up into.  (Yikes!  Two prepositions next to each other AND ending the sentence......  but I am too lazy to rewrite it now, so it will have to stay that way.)

Instead of the crabs picking on the snails, someone has been eliminating crabs.  I think the likely culprits are either another nasty crab, or the aforementioned bullying snails.  I found a crab carcass in the back of the tank last sunday, and the urchin was making a beeline for that area.  When I looked in the aquarium a few hours later, the crab was gone, and the urchin was taking a  nap on the other side of the tank, just in case it got blamed for the original crab extraction from shell, is what I am thinking it was thinking......

Not really sure how complex the urchin brain is though, so I may be giving it too much credit.

Polarization and Mobius strips

I can never remember if I live in a red state or a blue state (my spouse would say that could be the mad cow disease kicking in), as the colors are both in the American flag I can see outside my window at work every week day.  There are some places where the red stripes are touching the blue field of stars, but you would not think that is the case with our two primary political parties in these "supposedly United" States these days.

[borrowed from http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/american-flag-2a.jpg]

I tried to watch some of the RNC this summer, but after the robot Callista and creepy Newt show, I could not continue to expose myself to such torture.  I have heard some clips of the even more creepy Clint Eastwood performance later in the week, and they make me disappointed that an actor whose body of non-political work I respect would stoop to that level.  [I had a good laugh when he later said that anyone who gave him a live unscripted spot on TV got exactly what they deserved.]

More than 160 years after the War Between the States (there is nothing civil about most wars), it seems that we are suffering from an unhealthy level of partisanship.   There are red states and blue states and blue dog democrats (not to be confused with the yellow dog democrats) and the number of politically dominated news [and comedy] shows seems to have exploded in the last 10 years.

I find it interesting how the far left and far right perspectives are closer to one another than they might think.  The folks in the middle, the moderates of each party (in our primarily two party system) are also fairly close.  I like to think of it as a mobius strip, where the moderates are close to one another in the middle of the straight portion, while the extremists are right at the ends where the twist happens.

[borrowed from http://images.yourdictionary.com/images/main/A4mobius.jpg]

Made in Macau

I went to Comerica Park today for a meeting about the Detroit Police Department's security concerns for the upcoming World Series games, and I just happened to stop by the overpriced Tigers shop.  Since I don't know whether I will be willing to afford any tickets for the upcoming series, I decided to buy a hat.  I wanted a world series one, but those have not been delivered yet, as they want to have the logo of the Detroit opponent to be embroidered on them.  Right now, we don't know who that is.  I am hoping it will be the Giants, but I think it is more likely to be the Cardinals.

[borrowed from http://media.mlive.com/sports_impact/photo/tigers-celebrate-alcs-620x400jpg-32b8382536a1dcdc.jpg]

When I got back to the office and took off the tags, I noticed that the item was "Made in Macau".  I knew it would most likely be manufactured somewhere in Asia, because it has to be made quickly and cheaply enough to have nearly half of the items dumped for a mere fraction of the cost that I paid here in the US.

It reminded me of shopping for sporting apparel in the garment district near the big soccer stadium near Seoul.  When I visited my friend Jon in Seoul after attending a fisheries meeting a few years ago, there were quite a few Utley Phillies jerseys, and a bunch of other baseball and football related items that didn't make sense to me.  There were hats and t-shirts festooned with sporting facts that I knew were not true.

At first I thought that I had misremembered who had won a specific series or Super Bowl or division championship, but when I asked Jon for some confirmation, he explained that people like to buy items with english characters on them, and it doesn't really matter what it says on the shirt or hat.

I remember buying a japanese baseball jersey at a street fair in Chicago, having no knowledge of what the characters indicated about its former wearer, so I can relate to that phenomenon.

I wonder how much in advance MLB and other sports teams order their playoffs paraphernalia?  I wonder if the teams have to order these themselves, and if they are required to destroy the ones that do not reflect reality?

Do they look at the betting odds when they decide how many to order of each outcome?

So many unanswered questions.......

Go Tigers!!