Tag Archives: Life

Wheels Are Turning, In Her Head

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Anne walked home from school one day this week. It was one of those balmy, at least for February, days. While she walked, with her iPhone, she was taking pictures of the wheel covers and hub caps of cars that were parked along the way. She had taken several photographs in a row, when a man approached her and asked her what she was doing. He had been watching TV, in his living room, and saw her taking a picture of his car and several more and he wanted to know what she was doing. Anne explained that she was researching a quilt project. She found the patterns in automobile wheel covers interesting. So to gather some data for this quilt project, she was taking pictures of them. Hearing her explanation, he asked her to email him the photo of his car. Anne emailed it on the spot. This seemed to mollify the man. I think that he just wanted to get her email address, in case there was trouble later. Anne didn’t take any more pictures, during the rest of her walk home.

This story didn’t come as news to me. For weeks now, Anne has been counting the spokes on the wheels of cars. When we walk together, she’ll call out her counts. This one has six spokes that one has ten and this one has sixteen. I found it interesting, at first. It has gone on long enough though that it is beginning to get annoying and shows some signs of OCD behavior. Don’t get me wrong. I love my wife and enjoy our walks together. I just wish that she would get her mind out of the gutter. I had to crop the three wheel photos with this post to cut out the adjoining curb and the gutter in-between. What is wrong with automotive hood ornaments?

America loves its cars. Cars are as American as mom, apple pie and dogs. One politician thinks that dogs riding on top of cars is also an American value. I must admit that I still love my new Prius. I am certainly spending a lot more time in it than before I took the job in St. Chuck. My longer highway commute does increase the MPG of my Prius, with the associated bragging rights, but with the recent rise in gas prices, it is more expensive. Some people have car fetishes that cost thousands of dollars. Anne’s interest in cars is no more costly than being featured as blog fodder. She is a good sport for putting up with my ribbing. Luv ya, Babes!

Read This Post, My Little Pretties!

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Read This Post, My Little Pretties!

First, let’s dispense with some particulars. I bought these gloves at Mardi Gras. I know that this is no excuse, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Anne is the hand model. I am in her debt for playing along on this photo shoot. The postcard is from Heifer, one of our charities. And yes, this is the grodiest, still functioning keyboard, known to man. Do you really think that you can write a scary post with a clean computer? Queue the evil laughter now …

Here are a few scary thoughts, in no particular order:

On the first day of his administration, President Rick Santorum announced that he would …

Vice President Newt Gingrich called for the unilateral bombing of North Korea, Iran and Cuba. When President Santorum informed Gingrich that he wasn’t in charge, the Vice President then threw a really big hissy fit, filed for his third divorce, fourth marriage and then announced another book tour, “Newt Gingrich – President of Vice”.

Ron Paul escaped from the asylum for the politically insane and announced his 2016 presidential campaign.

Mitt Romney continued his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, this time in the state of denial.

Tea Party elected officials, called for new laws to aid the prosecution of witchcraft. In response, Nancy Pelosi turned all these Tea Party officials into newts. All of their spouses then divorced them and got the better of them.

Now here is a scary thought for the other half of America:

Announcing that he had received his opponent’s concession phone call, President Obama was met with thunderous cheers from the gathered supporters, who began to chant, “Four more years! Four more years!”

A scary thought that strikes closer to home, involves the word, osculable. I used it a couple of posts ago and in case you didn’t know, it means kissable. I used it in the context that Anne is oscuable, which she is, at least by me. This morning, I asked Anne if she knew what the word meant, she did. Oscuable is the adverb form of the verb, osculate, which most commonly means to kiss.

Anne also knew the less popular mathematical definition of this verb. Here is the Google definition: (of a curve or surface) Touch (another curve or surface) so as to have a common tangent at the point of contact. She then proceeded to demonstrate her point, using different shaped kitchen strainers. I was left with the thought, “Honey, one too many Algebra classes this week”, but I then did get a kiss on my way out the door.

Direction of Flow

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The Three Rules of Plumbing

  1. Sh!t flows downhill
  2. Never chew your fingernails
  3. Payday’s on Friday

Direction of Flow

I’m not a Sanitary Engineer, like my Grandfather joked that he was, and I’m not a Hydrology Engineer, like my SIL [Anne's acronym], Jay, but I do believe that this sewer grate violates the first rule of plumbing. Maybe it doesn’t really matter, because you can see the river while standing on it. However, my wife, the former Environmental Engineer, might object having this sewer’s flow passing directly into the Mississippi. I’m guessing that her objection would broadly fall under the second rule of plumbing? Anyway, on Saturday, Anne kicked this decision over to her sister, my SIL. So Jay, which way is the correct direction of flow?

Like his father before him, my father is an engineer. My Dad graduated from Annapolis. He rebuilt aircraft carriers. He left military service with a PhD in Mechanical Engineering. He followed that up with a PhD in Biomedical Engineering. His study culminated in the patenting of a medical device, the third rule of plumbing realized.

Like my father before me, I am a Jedi engineer. I am a third generation engineer. I started out as a Computer Scientist, albeit in the school of engineering. I tried to become an Automotive Engineer, but found that line of work was not for me. I’ve ended up an Electrical Engineer, which in some engineering schools is a close cousin to Computer Science. I’ve always found this transition strange, but it works. 

One of my sons is an artist and one of my sons is an engineer. I feel like the father of renaissance men. Dave, is the fourth generation engineer in the family, another Biomedical Engineer. I hope that he doesn’t feel that the weight of history, or the first rule of plumbing weighs too heavily upon him. I know that I chew my fingernails way too much. All this engineer crap is in honor of National Engineers Week. So honor your own favorite engineer, turn on a light, turn on a faucet, turn on your iPhone, start your car, feel free to fly about the country, say thanks for your very life, say thanks to an engineer. We earn it every Friday.

This final item is offered up by way of a postscript. Today, Dave flies to San Diego to attend a research conference. Purdue is covering his expenses. He plans on having lunch with his Rochester advisor.

Fat Tuesday

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Beads

Today, is the official Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday, and today there was another Mardi Gras parade in Soulard. School and work, prevented Anne and I from attending this event, but I’m sure that Gary and Linda were there. Just like there are two Mardi Gras parades in town, next month, there will be two Saint Patrick’s Day parades, one on a Saturday and one on the actual date. As I’ve said before, Saint Louis loves its parades.

In the run up to Valentine’s Day, I was queued up for lunch in the café at work, and I entered into a conversation with a female colleague. I started to rattle on about my romance for Anne and mentioned that we had had a beach wedding. “Oh, you had a destination wedding”, she exclaimed. It certainly was a destination for some of our guests. My family had to travel clear across the country to attend, but I never thought of our wedding as a destination wedding. The other day, after Anne had jumped into a classroom infected with stomach flu, I didn’t mean to imply that she wasn’t still osculable, because she is.

We discovered that the bank had charged a $500 check to Dave’s checking account in error. The check is from an account that is only one digit off from his, so a human error could have accounted for it. Messages to the bank finally got the error corrected. The coincidental aspect of this bank error is that the check is from one of Dave’s high school classmates. Dave’s graduating class was less than a hundred, so the magnitude of this coincidence is pretty big. Dave’s summary comment about this incident was, “I never really did like [this person] in high school and now I have a reason.”

I’m sure you have all been wondering about what has been happening in the bicycle borne mileage horse race, between Anne and I. No? Well, I’ll tell you anyway. I am now officially in the lead, by one mile. I rode on Sunday and Anne did not. I won’t disclose our actual mileages, for fear of ridicule from some of our more bicycling active friends. I could claim age related grade inflation points, over some of these friends, but not Captain Don.

At work, I started a new project. The one thing that I can tell you about this project is that it is situated in Saint Chuck. Saint Charles is located across the wide Missouri from Saint Louis. It was the first state capital and is now a more rural and Republican county than Saint Louis, a self-proclaimed God’s country, home for real ‘merkins. It seems nice, except for doubling my commute. It is suppose to be a temporary assignment. We’ll see how long it lasts.

The Right Stuff

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Army WW II Biplane Trainer

It has been fifty years since the first American, John Glenn, orbited the earth. His spaceship, Friendship 7, was built here in Saint Louis. When I first moved to Saint Louis, I was a still wet behind the ears, young pup. Merle, one of the older engineers at that time, took me under his wing and showed me the ropes. Merle enjoyed our social interaction, not to put too fine a point on it, he liked to talk. One of the things that he loved to talk about most was his involvement in the space program, in particular, the Mercury space program. His face would always light up, when he spoke of the day when President Kennedy came to visit the plant. There is an old photo from that day that shows old Mac, the company president, driving Kennedy around, the sense of pride self-evident upon his face. Merle worked in flight simulation, so he worked shoulder-to-shoulder with the astronauts, training them for their space flights. He never said anything bad about any of the Mercury astronauts, but you could tell that he had his favorites and those that he didn’t really care for. One that he always spoke highly of was John Glenn.

The genesis of this post has been mulling in my brain for several weeks now. It all started with a biopic that I saw on Netflix, “The Legend of Pancho Barnes”. In the movie and book, “The Right Stuff”, the character of Pancho Barnes and her Happy Bottom Riding Club make a cameo debut. They appear as part of the Edwards, breaking the sound barrier, prelude to the history of the Mercury space program. Pancho Barnes, born Florence Barnes, was a pioneer aviatrix, one of the original amazons on the air. She raced Amelia Earhart, flew for Howard Hughes in his movie “Hells Angels”, then organized the rest of the pilots, for more pay and had a mouth on her that would make a Marine sergeant blanch. Pancho Barnes once asked, “Why use a 5 letter word, when a 4 letter one will do?” She got the nickname Pancho, because she once ran away from her husband, to Mexico. A revolution broke out, and she got stuck there for a while. She eventually obtained a divorce from her minister husband, by riding Lady Godiva style, bareback, into his Sunday service. When she retired from flying, she opened Happy Bottom. Never a beauty herself, she hired the prettiest waitresses, “sugar to catch flyboys”.

What really brought this post home, was a retirement party, at work today. John, also-known-as “The Bogs”, retired after 42+ years. So you might call this post, a Bogs post, instead of a blog post. I haven’t worked with John for over ten years, but I treasure the opportunity that I had to work with him and I appreciate the way he treated me. He kept in touch over the years, sometimes asking be about things that I had not worked on for decades. A recent chapter in his life involved the illness and death of his wife. He spoke movingly about this and reminded me of my father and mother’s similar struggle. John is trying to move on from his wife’s death and made light of some of the antics that he has encountered, as he tries to live his life now, day-by-day.

Saint Louis Mardi Gras

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Lent is the part of the Ecclesiastical calendar that begins on Ash Wednesday, next Wednesday, and ends on Easter Sunday, some forty days hence. Lent is a time for penance and fasting. It also coincides with that season of the year that in our agrarian past was when winter larders began to give out and before spring’s new growth could be realized. I suspect that in year’s past, there was an element of making virtue out of necessity, when it came to giving up things for Lent. Immediately preceding Ash Wednesday and Lent, comes Fat Tuesday, or in French, Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras has traditionally been an opportunity for one more chance to revel and feast before Lent closes in. Ground zero for Mardi Gras, at least in this country, has always been New Orleans, but Mardi Gras celebrations in Saint Louis have risen to number two in size. Two cities that are linked by river and by French heritage form the axis of festivity for this informal holiday. Saint Louis’ Mardi Gras centers around Soulard, a neighborhood founded by and named for a refugee from the French Revolution. Once dilapidated, its 19th century row houses were rehabbed in the 1980s. One such is the home of our friends, Gary and Linda.

Gary and Linda live, breath and revel in Mardi Gras. As Gary told me, “If I lived a block off of Times Square in NYC, New Year’s Eve would be my big holiday. Since I live here, it’s Mardi Gras.” This is the second year that we have been invited to their Mardi Gras party. This year we decided to bicycle to their place, because last year, parking was so tough. On the way over, we got caught up in the Mardi Gras traffic, which at times seemed a bit hairy, but as it turns out the toughest part, was the last fifty feet. Getting through the security cordon required sneaking around a fence. What we worried about most, the return run, with all of the drunks about, turned out to be a non-event. We got 20 miles, but I digress. Gary is the master of Mardi Gras. He has a portable grandstand that eliminates the need to queue up for a spot to see the parade. This year’s innovation were giant rake like claws, perfect for snagging tossed beads. Saturday’s parade began at Busch Stadium and ended at the brewery. This route underscores one of, if not the main activity at Mardi Gras, drinking. Gary and Linda were not remiss in this department either. As if coffee and Bailey’s was insufficient to the occasion, they had alcohol infused whip cream to top things off with. This year, as opposed to past years, I concentrated on photographing the crowd, rather than the parade. All of the people pictured were willing subjects and some were maybe a little too willing. We launched from our house after nine and didn’t recover until after four. After a quick turnaround, we drove to our second Mardi Gras party, Rodney and Michelle’s. This was a work related function and was more family friendly, than the Soulard affair. The food was to-die-for good.

Pina

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Wim Wenders’s “Pina” is a tribute to Pina Bausch, the German dancer and choreographer who died unexpectedly in 2009. Along with fellow German doc jock Werner Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams”, “Pina” is nominated for this year’s feature length documentary Oscar. Also like Herzog’s movie, Wenders’s was filmed in 3D.

Rekindling our movie dating past, Friday night being date night, I took Anne out to the movies. Back in high school, almost every Friday night was date night. Date night meaning a movie. Way back then, in the small, but cosmopolitan, Midwestern town of Ann Arbor, the number of movies being shown was somewhat limited. Most of the movie theaters only had one screen back then . Only the mall, Briarwood, had multiple screens. With fewer screens per capita, Hollywood made fewer movies. So in the slow seasons of the movie industry, we would easily run through all of the good movies and occasionally see some really bad ones. Tonight’s movie, does not fall in that category.

This movie was suggested to me by my former walking buddy, Barbara. I lost her to noon time walks of the tarmac, when she raptured, I mean retired, last year. I pray that I too may be so-called one day.

I mainly found the 3D aspect of the film annoying. I found the 3D images about as realistic as those of the old toy View-Master stereoscope images. The dancers in each scene appeared as moving 2D cutouts, between background and foreground scenery. And yes, after a while, I got that ache between the eyes. The retrofitting of past movies to 3D, like “Titanic” that were promoted in the coming attractions, was even more cartoonish. Speaking of “Titanic”, what white star decided that the movie should reopen on April 6th, when the great ship went down on the 15th? One redeeming quality of the 3D effect, was that even with my strong eye, weak eye vision, I could easily read the title credits. Usually after the end of a long day, I am too blurry eyed to see them.

Finally now, on to the dance, the movie deployed four main tent poles of Bausch’s work. “Rite of Spring”, based upon Stravinsky’s music, “Café Müller”, what I took to be her signature piece, “Meeting Hall” and “Full Moon”. Anyone of these pieces, danced end-to-end, could have made the centerpiece of the movie, but heavy editing, chopped them all to pieces and then fit them into the movie’s 104 minute timeline. It was the vignettes, the gap fillers that really made this movie for me. The strength segment of the trailer, gives you a hint of some of her humor. I liked what she did with water, but I loved what she did with dirt.

Her best last testament comes not from her dances, but from her dancers. Using voiceovers, subtitles or just being mute, her dancers appear as thinking heads, instead of talking heads. The love and respect that they display is evident throughout the movie. Pina’s love for her dancers seemed most apparent by their longevity. Broadway dancers can measure their careers on one hand, most others, maybe two, her troupe counted participants with twenty to thirty years with the company. That’s not just love, that’s family.