"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
In 1984 a KC-135 tanker squadron from the Tennessee Air National Guard deployed to Elmendorf AFB, Alaska. My F-15 squadron took full advantage of the visit, scheduling aerial refueling on every mission. The ANG tanker crews invited our wives to fly with them: that’s a photo my wife Donna took from the boomer’s compartment as […]
I was looking through iPhone photos in a break room at Pima Air & Space Museum, inside a metal-walled building that blocks cell phone reception, and realized I’d have to wait to post them until I got home. Since I couldn’t go online and catch up with my little Facebook friends either, I started looking through […]
We were to have a full house for Thanksgiving, so we started cleaning the dining and living room for company. By “we” I mean Donna, but I’m helping with furniture, moving it around while she tackles different sections of carpet with a shampooer. By “were” I mean Donna’s sister Georgianna and her husband Don have […]
My niece Rebecca takes National Novel Writing Month seriously. I think the world of her, so I’m taking it seriously too. She sent a Google Doc link to her work in progress. I reciprocated with a link to mine, a chapter of a planned memoir. I was happy with it when I finished it a couple of months ago, but am less […]
My sister Susan was born on the 4th of April, 1948, a year and a half after I came into the world. That’s us playing in the front yard of our grandparents’ home in Jackson, Missouri, some time in the early 1950s. That old photo illustrates our relationship as children: although we lived together, sometimes […]
This is our newest family member, Mr. B, riding home with us yesterday. Mr. B is a 9-year-old brindle dachshund. We think he’s a standard, somewhat on the smallish side but in any case considerably taller and longer than our mini, Maxie. We were gutted when Schatzi died, but after a while started thinking about […]
We have Throwback Thursdays and Follow Fridays, so why not Catch-Up Wednesdays? Gosh knows I have some catching up to do. Last week’s visitors, Terry and Judy, motored up to Phoenix for InterAmericas Hash and we had a quiet weekend to ourselves. Monday our friend Angie, also a hasher, came down after InterAmericas to spend a few […]
A year after 9/11, the Justice Department obtained video surveillance tapes suggesting terrorists were targeting Las Vegas casinos. Local authorities were informed, but no alert was issued because the casinos didn’t want tourists scared away. I blogged about it at the time, and wondered afterward why such an obvious target for terrorism had never been attacked.