{"id":6179,"date":"2011-05-13T11:53:21","date_gmt":"2011-05-13T18:53:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=6179"},"modified":"2011-05-13T15:06:11","modified_gmt":"2011-05-13T22:06:11","slug":"friday-odds-ends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=6179","title":{"rendered":"Friday Odds & Ends"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"A friend lent me two hard science fiction novels, one sword & sorcery fantasy novel, and one Arthurian romance.<\/p>\n

I thought I’d enjoy the hard sci-fi (and I do) but her brand new paperbacks are in such perfect condition I’m afraid to open the pages wide enough to read because I’ll crease the books’ spines if I do.\u00a0 My solution is to buy and download the electronic versions to read on my Nook.<\/p>\n

I’m trying to get into the sword & sorcery novel, but it ain’t happening.\u00a0 Even though the author, Gene Wolfe, is often brilliant, the genre doesn’t appeal to me.\u00a0 So … returning unread, along with the two sci-fi paperbacks.\u00a0 I may as well fess up that Arthurian romance doesn’t interest me either, and just return all four books.\u00a0 But hey, I’m still reading two of the four she loaned me, even though not the actual copies.<\/p>\n

——————–<\/p>\n

My air museum<\/a> checkout is proceeding apace, whatever that means. I elected to be a walking tour docent, which is the job requiring the most knowledge and interaction with the public.\u00a0 I’ll be leading two 50-minute tours: the first will cover a general selection of aircraft from all eras of flight, grouped together in the museum’s largest hangar; the second will cover the museum’s selection of World War Two aircraft, spread out over two smaller hangars.<\/p>\n

I’m at the point now where I have to put together my own tour.\u00a0 Of course I have to know something about every aircraft in the three hangars, but I’ll be focusing on only a few.\u00a0 My plan for today is to ride out to the museum and pick the planes I want to talk about, then ride home and start putting together fact sheets and talking points.\u00a0 No, I won’t be able to read from those fact sheets when I’m leading tours; all that will have to be memorized.\u00a0 This is turning out to be a much bigger deal than I initially thought it would be, and just between you and me, I think that’s great … I needed something to do!<\/p>\n

——————–<\/p>\n

Speaking of things to do, I’m leading a bicycle hash<\/a> this Sunday.\u00a0 Yesterday morning I rode my mountain bike around the neighborhood and scouted out a trail.\u00a0 After Sunday’s event, our hashing schedule will slow down for the summer … not only is it too hot for us, it appears other hashers feel the same way, because we have the hardest time finding friends to hash with between the beginning of June and the end of September.<\/p>\n

——————–<\/p>\n

A friend is on a committee preparing a draft statement for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson.\u00a0 The statement, which will be read by the bishop himself, is meant to spell out the church’s position on illegal immigration and immigration policy.\u00a0 My friend thought the committee was wandering off the subject and asked me to take a look at the draft.<\/p>\n

Here’s the fun part: my friend is a Jew and I’m an atheist.\u00a0 So, anyway … the church is taking a humanitarian approach to the problem.\u00a0 The bishop doesn’t want to break up families in the name of immigration enforcement.\u00a0 Many illegal immigrants working on this side of the border have perfectly legal American families in Arizona.\u00a0 The church also recognizes that Arizona agriculture relies on cheap immigrant labor, and wants immigration reform to include a program for temporary farm workers. The church doesn’t think Arizona should have stricter immigration policies than the federal government, and doesn’t approve of state and local law enforcement getting involved in immigration enforcement.\u00a0 Hey for the church … that’s all stuff my friend and I can get behind!<\/p>\n

So I took a whack at the draft, my friend forwarded my revisions and comments to the committee, and now the committee wants me to work with them.\u00a0 I told my friend I’m a lousy team player, but he says we’re both critical to the effort … if the bishop says “Who wrote this crap?” the committee needs somebody to blame.\u00a0 Who better than a Jew and an atheist?<\/p>\n

——————–<\/p>\n

Donna made dinner last night and I took notes.\u00a0 The recipes (with photos yet!) for paprika schnitzel and fried potatoes & onions are up at Crouton’s Kitchen<\/a>!<\/p>\n

——————–<\/p>\n

And with that, dear friends, it’s off to the air museum.\u00a0 Have a great weekend!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A friend lent me two hard science fiction novels, one sword & sorcery fantasy novel, and one Arthurian romance. I thought I’d enjoy the hard sci-fi (and I do) but her brand new paperbacks are in such perfect condition I’m afraid to open the pages wide enough to read because I’ll crease the books’ spines […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,15,3,4,2,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bicycling","category-cooking","category-flying","category-hash-house-harriers","category-personal","category-words"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6179"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6182,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6179\/revisions\/6182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}