"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
What’s going on in my life
I started learning and collecting bawdy songs when I was in the Air Force; every fighter squadron I flew with had an unofficial songbook (that’s one of my old squadron songbooks on the left). Midway through my USAF career I started running with the Hash House Harriers, who, like rugby players and fighter pilots, share a love […]
I wrote, on one of my other blogs, about the time my wife and I knew John Wayne Bobbitt: The Story of Stitch. Parts of it may be NSFW, but at least there aren’t any dirty pictures.
The Nut Tree was a landmark of my younger days in California. In my last year of high school and first year of college, my friends and I expressed our newly-found independence and adulthood by driving from Sacramento to San Francisco on weekends. The Nut Tree, just off the freeway south of Sacramento, was a mandatory coffee stop. That […]
If I have the story right, when Franklin Roosevelt first told the American people about the Doolittle Raid, information on how we got our bombers close enough to Japan to attack some of its major cities was still classified, so he reported that the planes had launched from “Shangri La.” Details of this week’s road trip were similarly classified. […]
Donna and I leave tomorrow on a road trip to a for-now classified destination. If we don’t have internet access where we’re going, you’ll hear from us later next week, when we get back. Meanwhile, those of you who suffer my rants on Facebook will enjoy a few days of peace. I try not to […]
I think of myself as progressive, at least when it comes to politics and public policy. Socially, I’m an embarrassment to the cause. Social progressives reject certain thoughts as seditious. One such thought is that some people “choose” to be gay. Based on all I know and have observed, sexual orientation is not a choice. We are what we are, gay or straight; most […]
May I speak frankly? We have a elderly out-of-town friend who comes to visit two weekends a year. He can barely walk, he has a constant wet cough, and lately he’s taken up belching (we think he has an esophageal obstruction of some kind). We’ve had to take him to the emergency room more than once. […]
The dogs had their teeth cleaned Tuesday. You who do not have dogs might not know what a big deal this is. Antibiotics and anesthesia, and in Maxie’s case more antibiotics after, because in addition to the cleaning she had to have a couple of rotten teeth extracted. The girls were just coming out of anesthesia when […]