Dorkraiser

I think I resemble 'chatterbox' in this pic from my daughter. Course I'd be the dorkiest cenobite ever.

What's a cenobite you ask, or chatterbox? He's one of the badguys from the late 80s movie Hellraiser. "I have such sights to show you!" This was back when horror movies still had some shock value for me.

Fiction time

So I thought you should know. I am fairly certain there will be a cat1 or higher storm in the Gulf of Mexico round the 29th of Sept. I'm telling you now, so you can plan!

In other fronts, I finished my Andre Agassi book. As an 80s tennis fan, that book was a complete riot! One of my biggest idols, Ivan Lendl...now I know he liked to walk around butt naked in the locker room with just tennis shoes on. It's creepy and hilarious simultaneously. There are lots of great stories about other players. I remember a lot of the matches talked about and to know what was in his head during them is really eye opening. And yet with all the tennis stuff, the stories about his his brother, best friend, trainer Gil,and relationship with Brad Gilbert were excellent- touching and memorable. I could go on and on, but suffice to say I'm damn happy I read it, because I was so close to saying..meeeh do I really want to 'read' about tennis.

So again the search will be on for the next book. I'm becoming a full on book nerd. Here are the books I've read in the last year or so.

Nor Crystal Tears - Alan Dean Foster
Sentenced To Prism - Alan Dean Foster
Les Stroud's Survive - Les Stroud
Extreme Outdoor Adventures- Larry Mueller and Marguerite Reiss
Take This Job And Ship It - Byron L. Dorgan
Mountain Madness - Robert Birkby
Born To Run - Chistopher McDougall
Principles of Running - Amby Burfoot
The Shack - William P. Young
Animals In Translation - Temple Grandin
With The Old Breed - EB Sledge
The Brain That Changes Itself - Norman Doidge
The Power Of Serving Others - Gary Morsch and Dean Nelson
Where Men Win Glory - Jon Krakauer
Open - Andre Agassi

After reading Open, I really want to read Nelson Mandela's autobiography. But the one thing that is apparent in reviewing my book list is that only 3 books are fiction. Nor Crystal Tears was a book I read many years ago and through an old friend it found its way back to me. I actually had bought another copy a few years before since I didn't recall where my original book went. When I got it back , I had to read it again! So 3 times.

Sentenced To Prism is the first ADF book I ever read, and I think I bought it just because I liked the cover when I was young teen. I've read that book several times since. I will pass out if I ever see a preview for it in the theater, so long as it's got a good director.

I read The Shack since Liz had read it, and told me of the horrors of the book. Now that we have a young girl, the story of a 6 yr old girl being taken and killed by a stranger was hard to read about. The book's main character eventually has discussions with the Holy Trinity and comes to a greater understanding of how life works. I don't have a lot of hardline or preset beliefs about God, so I found the book's ideas to be quite fascinating. I often picture God as a loving Aunt Jemima now after reading this book.

So I think it's time to read another fiction book. I'm pretty sure what book I'm going to get also.
The key word for this book is dystopian which means -

a society characterized by human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding

But when Sarah Silverman's newest book comes out on paperback, it's on! Here are some book covers. I love the old sci fi art!


A snippet from Prism: Do you have an individuality or are you just part of a composite?

I beg your pardon? I mean , I don't understand.

Among my kind each individual is identified by a descriptive term appropriate to the individual alone. I, for example, am A Surface of Fine Azure-Tinted Reflection With Pyroxin Dendritic Inclusions.



A snippet from Tears : and it did not take long to figure out that they employed air from their lungs, or at least from inside their bodies. Modulation probably came from movements of their flexible mandibles and the peculiar fleshy organ soft creatures sometimes possessed inside their mouths. They did not communicate by making word tones with their mandibles.



A snippet from The Shack : The colors moving within Sarayu were darkening as she spoke, blacks and greys merging and shadowing the rainbow hues. "And if there is no reality of good that is absolute, then you have lost any basis for judging. It is just language, and one might as well exchange the word good for the word evil."

Birthday time

The last few days have been a blur with Asa turning the big 4. It's so much easier now for her to hold up 4 fingers. One of her birthday gifts was a kid's digital camera. Turns out I can actually download them too. Here are some of her first pics!

Her new pillow pet


Our street


A classic bush pic


and I really like this one of Finley

Open

I found myself reading one of those small 5x5 paper magazine pamphlets the other day like a Readers Digest only with Christian inspired stories. One story was about a woman who had to take wheat out of her diet to combat her migraine headaches. The story had some recipes too. I am so glad I have allergy issues over migraine headaches btw. The next story was about a family who bought a tugboat and would sail around up to Alaska with their three kids. They made soup with lentils, onions, carrots, celery and sausage. They all loved it and called it tugboat soup. One day all that sausage caught up with the dad though and he needed a triple bypass. I have pretty much stopped all eating of sausage btw. So now they make a healthy version of the soup. This story came with recipes too.

I told myself I needed to go get a book the other day or I would continue to read that crazy little pamphlet. So after much deliberation, I almost picked Into The Wild again by Krakuer, but read one review on Amazon that just sealed the deal for this book.


The first chapter confirmed my hopes of choosing this book as it was just awesome. The opening scene is with Agassi laying on the floor in a fetal ball unable to get up, body full of pain and discomfort, mind full of confusion and anxiety. It reminded me of a story from RW I had read about Meb Keflezighi who won the 2009 NYC marathon. That was a big deal for American marathoners. Meb has been struggling with success and failure a lot the last few years as well. In 2007, he finished the NYC marathon in a massive crash of pain learning that his close friend, Ryan Shay had died during the race. Meb was laid up for days in a hotel. This man that professionally runs could barely crawl those few days. He just dragged himself on the floor across the room. I'm not a professional anything these days, but sometimes I wonder if I'm living too comfortably.

Pat Tillman

I finished Where Men Win Glory , a 400 page book in 9 days. That has to be a record for me. Usually takes me a month to read a book of that length. After a good movie or book, I like to try and process it for a bit ... look up reviews, background information, and commentary online. Evidenced by how fast I read the book, it really sunk its teeth into me. I've spent a good bit of time, trying to process my feelings about all of it.

I'm not going to write a review about the book because there's just so much to cover, but I'll just say my life is richer from reading about Pat Tillman.

I found this picture online. Right before Tillman was killed, he and his fellow Ranger Bryan O'Neal were under heavy fire from their fellow Rangers and O'Neal was hunkered into the ground praying. Tillman says to him, why are you doing that? How is that going to help you?

Tillman's atheist component doesn't detract from all the solid virtue that truly defines him, but I thought it was a fascinating item. That's his brother Kevin on the right.

New Challengers

I took Asa to her school orientation today. I thought it was kinda funny that I was a bit nervous about it all. I met with her teacher Mrs. Kim and some of the other mothers of the boys in the class. There was one dad there that reminded me of Ray Liotta. He just had this whole tilt and scowl to him that said , "You want some of me?!!" I stayed away from him.

Anyway, lots of new dad experiences for me. It will be strange, sad, and a relief all at the same time to have her in school 3 full days a week. When kids have birthdays at the school, instead of doing a birthday, they do a 'spotlight' day. They get to bring in a show n tell item and their parent/s. I may get to read a story to the class! That will be a little weird for me.

Here's the school's shield!!



"What are you going to do with all your free time?" Yah that's the running jab I hear lately. Some believe I will just come home and sleep. You may be right. I will certainly take a nap every now and then, but I have plenty to do. One of those things is putting more consistent time into my trumpet practice.

I've had a couple of lessons so far from a elderly gent named Gary. He played in the Navy band some 20 years ago. He comes to my house and charges me 25 bucks for an hour lesson. He's pretty funny too. As much as I want to learn trumpet skills, I really enjoy just talking music with him and hearing about his wild music days.

The hardest thing for me so far in playing is hitting the higher notes. The are 31 notes on my beginners chromatic scale. Note number 23 is an E which is open meaning no valves pushed down. It's so freeking hard for me to play right now. I feel like my lips are just going to implode. Today was the first day that I really played it solid for a good 5 seconds and then was able to repeat without my lips just puckering out. A lot of my practice right now is really boring, it's simply playing notes over and holding them to work out my lips and lungs. It's pretty fun though.
Here's a pic of my Ambassador Olds Cornet I bought off of ebay from another polish Marc who lived in Kissimmee, FL.

LV Teethers

Asa had a dentist appointment today. I chose this dentist based on the recommendation from our family doc on base. This dentist doesn't specialize in children like the one we had in Nebraskie. Despite not having a farm mural and lots of super cool kid things ( I mean come on man, the x ray gown was turd brown) it was actually kinda nice. It was just laid back and simple. The dentist was this nice and calm asain-american guy round my age wearing scrubs. Granted he had some techy head gear on, but it didn't go too far.

The good news is that Asa's chompers got a big thumbs up! Oh thank goodness I say.

They had this big brown super shag carpet in the waiting room. Asa kept saying how much she loved that rug. She would lay down and swim on it laughing. You want them to be relaxed and have fun, but at the same time...it's like okkkaay that's enough! She did really well though and I was proud of her. I think I'll prolly make myself an appointment at this same dentist when it's time.