Ramblings of the StarryEyeGuy

I Bless the Rains Down in Africa...

2011-09-25T10:50:00.003-04:00

Abby is back in Ghana, her third trip there since fall 2009. This time she's gone with her friend Emily. She keeps going back because she feels that she can make a difference in the lives of a few people (kid, mostly) in a town called Hohoe.

She understands that compared to the people in the town she comes from a life of wealth and privilege, with opportunities and experiences that eclipse almost anything that these folks will experience in their lifetimes. Yet she wants to try to do what she can to enrich their lives in whatever way she can.

While the kids have free education, they have virtually no exposure to art. When Abby taught her third-grade class in 2009, the kids couldn't even draw rudimentary stick figures. Abby used her time with them to expose them to drawing and color. It has been her mission ever since to expose them to this small act of self-creativity ever since.

This year she went over with an extra bag filled with crayons and other art supplies, intent on giving them to "her kids". Alas, they have all dispersed from the "Suzzy Mothercare School and Creche", but she is determined to track them down and encourage them to continue exploring drawing and colors.

Yes, it's a simple mission; one that won't affect the balance of power, the economic state of the Euro Zone, or the political turmoil that ravages so many developing nations around the world. But she sees beyond that. Making a difference in the lives of a few kids is her goal.

I am very proud of her.

Too many of us want our kids' "legacies" to be defined by the colleges they graduate from or the number of figures in their salaries. I think that is the wrong metric to measure by.

If someone can bring a little bit of light and joy into the life of a total stranger, to show them a means to express their creativity, then that is a legacy to strive for.

No, she's probably not going to earn a six-figure salary with a prestigious firm somewhere. But she's already brought smiles to a few dozen kids in a remote town in the heart of West Africa. That is something to feel really good about.

Still here...

2011-09-18T20:24:00.002-04:00

Jeez, it's been over a year since I posted anything here. Lordy...but then again my life's generally pretty boring.

I could go on about how sick I am of the politics of Washington, why the current crop of Republicans are assholes and idiots, and why the Dems ain't much better. But as Groucho once said "You're just wasting your breath and that's no great loss either."

Some of the best parts of the past year were when we were away from this cesspool of special interests and political hacks. Maybe it's time to move to Canada. Or at least Fishers Island.

The "Heinz" birthday

2010-06-13T21:42:00.002-04:00

It was my birthday last week. If you're interested in just how old I am, I'm calling this my "Heinz" year. Queen Elizabeth II was crowned on my birthday. My name was supposed to be "Elizabeth". Nothing like starting life off on the wrong foot before you're aware that you have feet. So I was named for the Archbishop of Canterbury instead. Quick thinking on Dad's part.

It's funny. I don't feel that different from the way I did when I turned say, 26 or even 18. But there are things that I just can't plain do or want to do anymore that date from those more youthful days. Good thing, I guess, as many of them are (and were) illegal.

I look in the mirror and see the same face I've been staring at all these years. It's a bit more wrinkled, grayer, and more bald. I've got a bit of a paunch and "spare tire", but basically I'm in pretty decent shape. I can still ride my bike to work, and have good workouts at the gym.

My kids are young adults now. They are ready to make their marks in the world. They now have tools that were beyond my conceptual grasp when I was their age, but here I'm using one of them now. They take these things as a "given". More power to them!

The world is indeed shrinking, and maybe, just maybe, their generation will truly understand what my generation has utterly failed to grasp; that we are part of a global society, and that one person can make a small difference for the betterment of someone else if they keep thinking that way.

Abby has returned from her second trip to Ghana, where she handed out a bunch of second-hand childrens' books collected from our friends and neighbors. The picture of her with the kids at "her" school in Hohoe is priceless.

Nat is probing the intricacies of cell biology. He is interested in gene therapy of "orphan" diseases. Here's another thing that in my 20's I never thought was possible. He's now doing it.

So on my "Heinz" anniversary, I am content with the knowledge that so far I've done pretty well. Not a bad birthday present for any age these days.

Back from New London, Back to Africa

2010-05-22T14:54:00.002-04:00

It's been awhile since I've felt like writing anything here. No particular reason, just haven't had much to say. But this week has been one involving the offspring, one coming home, the other leaving.

Nat has completed his Freshman year at college. I went to retrieve him on Tuesday, and we got back home on Wednesday. He was happy the year was over but looking forward to his return inn the fall. He seems to have found the right school at the right time for his interests. Thank you, Dr. Fred Kaplan! Nat has been inspired to follow in your lead. He will make life better for someone some day.

It seems like it was just a few weeks ago that Laurie and I were visiting him during parent's weekend...

It also seems like just a few weeks ago that we were picking Abby up at the airport after her 6 weeks in Ghana. Yesterday we put her on the plane to go back. She's returning to Hohoe to see her kids and Miss Suzy with donated kids books and crayons. I just talked to her about 2 hours ago when she called on her friend's cell phone to let me know she had arrived safely. To me, hearing her voice in real-time is still something that I have trouble comprehending even though I know the technology pretty well. There's something that's still miraculous about it.

She'll be there for 2 weeks this time, but somehow I think that that she will continue to return whenever she can. She is making life better for people right now, if the smiling faces of "her" kids are any indication.

I am so proud of my children. They have faced both good times and bad. They have driven us to the brink of madness and brought us infinite joy. And they are both thinking globally and figuring out ways that they can make a difference in the world they live in.

As their father, I am truly blessed.

Isn't Life Strange...

2010-03-24T16:50:00.003-04:00

I did something today that I've never done before. I had to identify a body. I had to be sure that the remains purported to be those of James Henry Sharp, my long-ago boss from 1983 - 1996 at the Einstein Planetarium, were indeed his. I chose to do this voluntarily, since I was the second-to-last person who was reasonably close to him to see him alive in late January just before the blizzards hit. He died on March 1.

Under Virginia law, virtually nothing in an estate proceeding can happen until the remains are identified. Jim's wife is in Colorado and I'm here, so the obvious decision was to have me do the deed.

It was a very interesting experience. Years ago, when I was in East Africa, I saw lots of Maribou Storks, which, along with the vultures and hyenas, are the trash collectors of the open plains. The storks always stood around in a kind of formal manner, and for some reason all I could think of was that they reminded me of some undertaker from a moldy Dickens story.

The attendants at the funeral home where Jim was instantly made me think of Maribou Storks. Older, somewhat hunched over, with a somber formal bearing and black suits. Originally I was led to the "arrangements" room, where they had all the sample urns, caskets, etc. Realizing their mistake, I was then led up to the "viewing" parlor.

Well, there he was. At first I was afraid that they had the wrong person in the box. This man was clean-shaven, and the Jim that I knew always had a beard. In fact when I last saw him he had a really long beard and hair, which made him look even more like Galileo than he did back in the late 80's and 90's when he impersonated the famous astronomer on a number of occasions. Well, the beard was gone now and his hair was trimmed, and for the first time I saw his chin. This threw me for a bit of a loop, to say the least. I mean I was there to officially identify him and this was not exactly the Jim I remembered. However, I was finally able to get a look at just the upper part of his face, and then mentally "grew him a beard". It was definitely Jim.

Thank goodness he appeared as if he were merely asleep. I half expected him to open his eyes and ask what I was doing there. But he had a look of serenity about him, a look that seemed to indicate that he was ready to meet his demise with dignity and grace. There was nothing unsettling about the experience. Actually the "Maribou Storks" creeped me out way more than Jim did.

We have a Facebook page dedicated to him now, and it's nice to see that people are finding it and contributing to it. He's been gone for three weeks now, and I guess I am now really the last person who knew him to see him. Hopefully this will clear the way for the settlement of his affairs and another interesting interlude in life closes a chapter.

Now, that's a "first"...

2010-03-21T14:19:00.002-04:00

As part of my job at the U.S. Naval Observatory I give "special tours" to groups of folks who have something to do with our mission or have some sort of inside connection to the Observatory, staff, tenants, and so forth. This is the time of year when I get besieged by requests for these tours. Fortunately, the Deputy Superintendent gets to have the final say on which requests are valid for my support.

This past week I had two such tours, Friday and Saturday night. The Friday tour was for a group of Girl Scouts under the sponsorship of a staffer in the White House Military Office who works logistics at the VP Residence.

For several weeks one of the other staffers at the VPR had been trying to get me to do a special tour for a young couple, one from the White House, the other from State Department. The young man wanted to propose to his GF in a telescope dome, since she was into astronomy.

Needless to say had this request been routed through "channels" it probably would have been shot down faster than Dick Cheney can wing a lawyer, so I was able to convince the parties involved that the easiest way to do it would be to "piggyback" the couple on the Girl Scout tour.

Friday night arrived, and the Scouts were early. Fortunately I brought in lots of hardware for show-'n-tell, and I was able to entertain them outside until the couple arrived. I went down to fetch them at the South Gate, brought them up to join the Scouts, and proceeded to conduct my tour.

We went up to the telescope as planned to look at the Moon and Mars. Then, again as planned, I took the scouts outside to learn how to use star charts and pointed out some constellations, leaving the couple alone in the dome.

The Scouts departed at around 9:30 pm, and I went back up to the telescope to see how things were going. Well, the proposal was made on bended knee, and the young lady said "Yes". I gave them a long look at Saturn, which was high enough to see by then, and we chatted for awhile before they left at a little after 10.

Sometimes you just have to do the right thing. I was pleased that I was able to not only help the Scouts (a very attentive group, BTW) with their merit badge, but I also helped facilitate the start of a new relationship between two people. As far as I know this was the first marriage proposal conducted in the dome of the 12-inch telescope, and it had a successful outcome.

Love under the stars. A good start if you ask me.

Beware the Ides of March

2010-03-14T16:51:00.002-04:00

Well, I guess if I were Caesar I'd take this more to heart. But March is always a strange month around these parts. A month ago we were digging out from two massive snow storms. Today the trees are starting to bud and shed their little husks all over the place, bulbs are rocketing up in the flower beds, and we've just gone on Daylight Time. Crazy month, this March.

The start this year was somewhat inauspicious. On the 1st our friend Katherine, who is being treated for breast cancer, lost her faithful little dog Coal, who had been her constant companion while she endured the wretchedness of chemotherapy. Coal was my "little buddy" as well. I always played with him whenever I stopped by or when we visited Kath's cabin and,more recently, her cottage down on the Northern Neck. He was a great little dog and one of the primary reasons I felt we were ready to get Louis, with whom Laurie and I have become total mushes.

On the same day my former boss at the Planetarium, Jim Sharp, passed away. I had been trying to lend a hand to him and his widow by collecting his mail, helping him with his bills, etc. but hadn't seen him since late January. At that time he seemed to be in good spirits, in possession of all his faculties, maybe even upbeat. The blizzards prevented me from getting over to see him, then BAM! he was dead.

Now I'm trying to help tie up his estate with his widow. He left no apparent will, so the whole shebang is going to wind up in probate.

Yep, it's going to be an interesting month.

Well, now I've done it!

2010-02-20T12:18:00.002-05:00

Joined Facebook, that is...Getting snowed in the way we did last week will probably do that to anybody. The cyber-space antidote to Cabin Fever.

But it is really pretty amazing how quickly people find you out there. People I haven't heard from in years are now sending "friend" requests. It's actually pretty cool. As of right now I have 42 friends (39 if you don't count family).

The young folks are very gracious, allowing me to share in their goings-on. Please continue to keep the geezer entertained. I promise to do my best to not embarrass any of you...

Round 2...and records fall!

2010-02-10T17:07:00.002-05:00

Well, if nothing else we've set a record for single-season snow fall at all three area airports. The latest bout of snow came in at around 10 inches at home, but it was hard to measure since there aren't any good flat bare surfaces to start from!

This storm also brought high winds, so we had near white-out conditions during much of the day. There were interesting little "snow-nadoes" whistling down the street on several occasions. Apart from a power glitch this morning, everything seems to be online for now. Hope it stays that way.

I've done a round of shoveling the sidewalks, and this time the snow is pretty powdery, so it's a bit easier on the back. We'll see how things hold up tomorrow for the second dig-out. I've also spent quite a bit of time attempting to break ice dams on the gutters before they all come a-crashing down. Looks like quite a bit of work is going to have to be done once this stuff all melts.

Six more weeks to the equinox...maybe we'll see the ground by then!

I'm getting too old for this...

2010-02-09T13:56:00.004-05:00

Memo to Ol' Man Winter: I give up. You win.

I was going to take a day off and go skiing this week. How ironic.

I am pretty sure that I have singlehandedly moved at least three tons of show over the last few days. I used to like snow. I'm from New England, for chrissakes. Growing up we had storms measured in feet. But we also had a Gravely Tractor with a snowblower attachment and a plow. We had awesome hills for sledding. I owned a set of snowshoes which got pretty regular workouts. One winter we had 10 feet of snow piled up against the fence at the lower end of the driveway. My friend Mitch and I made a snow fort, complete with secret entrances, tunnels, etc.

In college up in Worcester, MA we also had massive snowstorms measured in feet. Inconvenient for a day, maybe two, but you could drive a rear-wheel drive car down any street in town within 2 days of the show ending.

I've experienced some pretty big dumps of snow since moving to the DC area in 1977, but this officially takes the cake. I measured 20 inches in the side yard last Saturday after that storm wound down. Now we're scheduled for another 10+ storm with winds, etc. just to add to the fun. I don't like snow anymore. I hurt for all the wrong reasons. I've done nothing but shovel for the last three days. Looks like I'll get to do it all over again. Getting old sucks.

Another great bumper sticker

2010-02-05T16:22:00.002-05:00

I used to have one that said "Of All the Things I've Lost, I Miss My Mind the Most".

That was my fave until I was given a "Republicans For Voldemort" sticker back in 2004.

Wednesday night at the gym I saw another "must-have". It said "We Have the Fossils. We Win!" followed by a running "Jesus fish". My birthday's in June...

Happy New Year (but not the end of the decade!)

2010-01-08T12:45:00.002-05:00

What’s so special about a year ending in “9”? Well, the vast majority of us seem to think that it is the end of a decade, century, or millennium. If nothing else it gives news organizations and list-makers plenty of fodder, which can then be re-hashed next year as the “true” end of the decade. While there is no “official” determinant to a decade’s end I personally follow the practice of counting ten items such as stars or years from “one to ten” as opposed to “zero to nine”.

Consider this. In the Gregorian Calendar there is no year "0". The first year of the first decade/century/millennium was the year "1". The last year of the first decade was "10", century was "100", etc. So, sorry, folks, we've got one more year to put a positive spin on the "aughts" before the decade of the "teens". Call me a pedantic curmudgeon. Go ahead...I've been called much worse things. But dem's de facts, Jack.

This mindset actually proves very handy for those “milestone” birthdays; when I turned fifty I thought of it as the last year of the decade of my “forties”, which softened the blow until the following year, when I finally couldn’t escape the inevitable. So, for me, the decade lasts one more year. It can only get better, right?

How I almost killed the Vice President's dog...

2009-12-02T21:46:00.004-05:00

Those of you who know me know that I work at the U.S. Naval Observatory. Since 1976 the Observatory has also been the home of the Vice President of the U.S. Since 1997 I've had the chance to show three VP's and their families the various sights of the Observatory. The new tenants, Vice President Joe and Dr. Jill Biden, have been quite actively visiting us since moving into One Observatory Circle.

Dr. Biden in particular brings people up fairly often. Today she hosted a reception at the Residence for 5th & 6th Grade students from a DC Charter School and a military school from Quantico. One of the activities that was planned was a quick visit to our 26-inch "Great Equatorial" telescope, with yours truly as the host.

Between the students, Secret Service, teachers, & VP staffers there were about 35 people who eventually wandered up from the house, along with Champ, the Bidens' year-old German Shepherd dog.

Champ was having a grand ol' time cavorting on the lawn with the kids. As we all filed into the telescope dome he made a number of attempts to come in as well, until he finally escaped a staffer and found his way inside.

We've just refinished the floor in there, which happens to be an elevating platform to gain access to the telescope. It's nice and shiny and slick. Champ was darting between people, skidding into turns, and generally having a ball. Until he skidded once too often. There's a large hole in the floor where a spiral staircase gives access to the basement. Out of the corner of my eye, amid all the confusion, I see Champ's rear end disappear down the hole. He hangs desperately onto the lip for a brief instant with his front paws, then Whoosh! Down he goes like Alice down the rabbit hole.

My first thought was "Oh, shit! He's either dead or has a broken back! Either way this doesn't look good..."

Several agents and Dr. Biden rush down the steps. I at least had the presence of mind to turn the light on and got Bill (one of the real astronomers who works with the telescope) to clear access to the more conventional basement stairway.

Then one of the aides says "OK, Mr. Chester, we're all ready for your presentation!"

Well, somehow I pull it together, do my speil, during which Dr. Biden comes up to indicate Champ's OK. Does that qualify as "Grace under pressure?"

Greatest C&W Song EVER!!

2009-11-10T20:43:00.001-05:00

My favorite used to be "Drop Kick Me, Jesus, Through the Goalposts of Life". Now it's "I Just Got Flipped Off by a Silver-Haired Old Lady Who Had a 'Honk If You Love Jesus' Sticker on the Bumper of Her Car".

'Nuff said...

"It's The End Of The World As We Know It" (R.E.M.)

2009-10-16T15:18:00.002-04:00

I got an email from my brother the other day. He'd been driving from Seattle to Denver and, in the AM static of late-night radio in the wide-open spaces, heard some doomsayer predicting the apocalypse in 2019 thanks to an asteroid that had us in its sights. My brother is a reasonable, rational, intelligent guy, but he still needed some re-assurance that we weren't going to end up like the finale in a cosmic "Mythbusters" episode. So this is what I wrote him in response.

Mark Twain said it best: "The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right." Over the past 30 years of employment in this business I have collected what is now amounting to a fairly fat folder of various "end of the world as we know it" theories, schemes, alleged cover-ups, etc. In case you missed them (I certainly did) there were at least a half-dozen apocalypses since 1984. I'm talking about complete annihilation of the planet and all we hold dear to our hearts. It's possible that I might have missed three of them for colonoscopies when I was under general anesthesia, but reliable sources tell me that the only things I missed while in dreamland was my own extreme flatulence. Someday after I retire I'm going to write a book...

The rock in question, (89959) 2002 NT7, caused a brief stir when it was first found in 2002 as the first object to rate a positive value on the "Palermo Scale", an empirical impact threat hazard rating. Values of zero indicate that the potential threat is comparable to that of a random event. A value of 1 indicates that there's a 10-fold increase in risk over the random background level, 2 means 100 times, etc. This li'l guy had an initial value of 0.06 (big woo...) As often happens with these things, once an orbit is determined, we can go "data mining" in old photographic plate collections and find older observations of an object which can then be used to furhter refine its orbit. About 3 months after 2002 NT7 was found, its image was duly tracked to an older survey plate, and the new orbit (fitting both the contemporary and older observations) changed its Palermo Scale rating to -0.25. In other words you're more likely to get bonked by a random event than by this particular one.

Now, all that aside, there are plenty more where this guy came from. Asteroid (99942) Apophis is a similar critter. When initially discovered in 2004 it racked up a Palermo Scale of 1.10, and some early calculations indicated that there was a 2.7% chance of it hitting us on 4/13/2029. Subsequent data have refined the orbit enough so that we now know it won't hit us at that time, but it will whizz by at a distance of some 20,000 miles. There was some probability that this close pass would deflect the asteroid enough to set up another possible impact on 4/13/2036, but a battery of optical and radar observations made over the past few years have reduced this chance to about 1:250,000. The object has been measured with radar instruments, so we know its size is about 250 meters. Were this to plop down in Puget Sound you and your immediate neighbors between Bellingham and Tacoma would not be happy campers, but this won't send folks east of Idaho scrambling for the rosary beads or bomb shelters. Unless it lands on the Yellowstone Caldera...

But seriously, folks...we now know that asteroids hit the earth all the time, relatively speaking. Last winter one in the 25-50 meter class landed in Somalia. It scared the bejeebers out of a few Bedouin, and an airline pilot saw its flash from ~250 km away, but it exploded in the atmosphere and basically scattered small rocks over a wide swath of Sahara desert. Objects of this size hit us ~2 or 3 times a year. Objects on the 100 meter class smack us every couple of centuries. Apophis-sized objects hit every few millennia. They will produce impressive results. I've stood many times on the rim of Meteor Crater in AZ, the result of the most recent such encounter ~50,000 years ago. Yes, it's a very impressive hole in the ground, but once you're ~10 km from it you'd never know anything cataclysmic had happened.

Why don't we see more of these types of craters on the earth? Well, 70% of the planet is covered with water, and 90% of the population inhabits 3% of the surface. "If a tree falls in a forest..."

Now we know from the geological record that there have been some major "show-stoppers" which have occurred in the dim & distant past, viz. the dinosaurs, the great Cambrian extinction, etc. As a species we owe our very existence to these events, so its only natural to suppose that one might eventually do us in. Do I lose sleep over it? Nope. Won't do me any good. I'm confident that Apophis will sail by merrily in 2029 and 2036. If I live long enough it will be a really cool thing to watch in the telescope. However, one of Apophis' undiscovered buddies could smack us tomorrow with little or no warning.

Since 1994 various groups have been operating remote telescopes to survey the night sky to look for what we call NEOs (Near Earth Objects). In the course of this work they have discovered hundreds of thousands of rocks of various sizes, and out of this vast collection they have identified ~1500 "PHAs" (Potentially Hazardous Asteroids). These are generally ones that have a 1:100,000 or better chance of hitting us in the next 1000 years that could potentially result in near-global-scale effects. At these odds I can tell you in all sincerity that none of them will hit us in that time span.

However, I can't tell you anything about the estimated 300 - 500 that we haven't found yet... :-)

But if you're a die-hard doomsayer all of this is moot. The next date for the end of the world is December 21, 2012. That's when the current 13-baktun series in the Mayan Calendar ends and the calendar supposedly resets, with the usual attendant bad shit happening. What the doomsayers don't tell you is that the Maya had another cycle in their calendar called a "sun", equivalent to five 13-baktun cycles. Five suns is equivalent to ~26,000 years, which happens to be the precessional cycle of the Earth's rotational poles. Prophets of the End of Times? Nope...the Maya were just damn good astronomers!

My brother replied to this today with a wonderful pearl of wisdom he ascribes to an old Sicilian proverb: "The Mother of Stupidity is always pregnant".

The Boys Are Back In Town...

2009-10-05T15:17:00.002-04:00

Some of you may have noticed that my posts seem to have some sort of connection to music now and then. As with many of us, I'm sure, certain events become associated with certain songs. The song in today's Ramble was by a group named Thin Lizzie. I was never a big fan, but this song still gets a fair amount of airplay on the "classic rock" stations.

So why should I care about this song? Well, today I had my third colonoscopy. Seems I'm a veritable polyp factory, so, lucky me, I'm on the "view every 2" year plan. Lots of people seem to fear this procedure. Not me. I don't mind it a bit. It beats surgery any day. I think what most people fear is the prep for the procedure, which is no picnic but is on the whole pretty benign. Once you've gotten past the prep, the rest is easy-peasy.

The best part of the whole deal is that you are blissfully unaware of what they're doing to you. They gave me Propofol, aka "Milk of Amnesia". Yes, it's what killed Michael Jackson, but it hasn't killed me. Yet.

So here's where the music comes in. My doc loves classic rock. It's playing in the background as I'm wheeled into the exam room. Two years ago, as I was going under, the boom box happened to be playing Led Zeppelin's "Dazed and Confused". The last thing I remember was the beginning of Jimmy Page's solo where he uses the cellist's bow to get those whoopy effects out of his Gibson. How appropriate.

Today, I related the story back to my doc, and he switches the box to a really good guitar song by a group who's name I didn't quite commit to memory before memory got erased. But for some reason, Thin Lizzie's song seemed to keep playing over and over in my head for what seemed like forever. But then *boing* ... I'm awake.

So now I have two songs to remind me when my next exam is due. As far as today went, I had a sessile polyp and several smaller ones excised, so they're still finding happy homes in my gut. I'll have to go back in another two years, but as long as the tunes are decent I won't mind. Wonder if my doc will take requests ...

Where the streets have no shame...

2009-09-29T22:17:00.000-04:00

So I'm driving into work this morning, taking a somewhat more indirect route than usual. This involves driving along some mixed residential/business streets rather than the usual slog up I-395.

I'm driving on 23rd Street in Crystal City. This is a fairly busy road when traffic is backed up, which is usually always. There is a woman standing in the street talking to a guy in an SUV who's half in the parking lane. She's on the driver's side, chatting as if nothing out of the ordinary is going on, except that all of us trying to get to Jeff Davis Highway have to pull into the oncoming traffic lane to avoid hitting her.

Traffic in DC is bad today, so I can't take my usual route uptown through eastern Georgetown. I get on the Whitehurst Freeway to Canal Road and go up behind Georgetown University. As I'm driving up 44th Street there's a contractor, standing by the driver's door of the ubiquitous white van, talking on his cell phone. I have noticed this behavior with almost every contractor who's worked in my neighborhood over the years. Is it just me, or do they really get better reception standing in the middle of the street?

Finally I turn north on 39th Street near G'Town Hospital. There is a man in a business suit, carrying a briefcase, walking up the street beside the parked cars. There's a perfectly good sidewalk on the other side of the parked cars. Good thing he's only a block away from the hospital...

Butterflies...

2009-09-27T23:50:00.001-04:00

No, not the cute ones that pollinate flowers, I'm talking about the ones you get in your innards.

I have never been much of an athlete. In school I was forced to play soccer, which I hated, basketball, which I hated, and baseball, which I didn't hate but as with the other two I basically sucked. And football? Fuggeddaboutit!

The one team sport that I ever enjoyed playing was ice hockey. I grew up near a lake that froze over inn the winter, so pond hockey was a big activity once you plowed enough snow off to make a playing area. And I sucked at that, too, but at least I had fun.

I never played "organized" hockey until I went to a small boarding school in New York. My junior year I finally made third-team, and they put me on defense because I could skate backwards. Senior year I made JV.

In college I played in a few frat leagues, and after moving to DC I picked up the game again after an 8-year hiatus. Then came Abby. Those late night starts in Bowie and Columbia lost their charm...

Then my daughter decided she wanted to play.

Well, since I was paying all this money for practices, etc. I decided to skate and help out with practice drills and the like, and the bug bit me again. After 15 years! So now I've been playing on and off for the last 7 years or so in various "C" leagues in the area.

One thing, though. Before each and every game I get those dang "butterflies"! You'd think after all these years that stuff would go away. By this past spring they were seriously getting to me.

This summer I decided to take the season off. I have always said that I'll keep playing until a) it's not fun anymore and b) I can't for some physical reason. Condition a) was violated last spring, so I figured time away would be a good thing.

Well, I've just returned from my first game of the season. We lost ... nothing new there ... but it was fun, and I can still play a more or less decent game. So now I have to work on those butterflies. I still get 'em before each game. Maybe I should go see a good lepidopterist ...

That song from the "Pepsi" pavillion at the 1964 World's Fair

2009-09-26T18:43:00.001-04:00

Yesterday we placed our oldest offspring on a plane at Dulles Airport. When we got home I used some web site to follow the progress of the flight to Frankfurt. This morning I did the same to follow the progress of her second flight to Accra, Ghana. Yes, Ghana. As in Africa!

This afternoon, about 24 hours after we parted ways, she called on somebody's cell phone from the city (?) of Hohoe, where she'll spend the next six weeks doing volunteer work. She called! We heard her voice! The weather's hot and muggy, her butt is sore from the lousy seats on the plane, but OTW she's fine.

Wow...

It really is a small world after all...

Now I can't get that silly ditty out of my head.

Opinions expressed here...

2009-09-26T12:33:00.001-04:00

Yeah, you all know what they say about 'em. Well, here's where you'll get a random selection of mine. I'll be wasting most of this space talking about things that matter to me. Astronomy. The environment. Hockey. Idiots in Washington and elsewhere, generally lumped into the category of Republicans (I was once one myself until my wife wrested me from the Dark Side).

As Mark Twain once said, "The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right." Wise man, that Mark...

Cheers,

StarryEyeGuy