Irene Sunday Cyclone

Yesterday was a long day. Filled with excitement, concern, anticipation. Filled with dramatically bad weather. And dramatically good weather. Oddly our electric power stayed on through the cyclone's visit. So I was able to watch TV and look at the storm's progress on the computer. Until the down cable took those things away. The eye passed abeam our house at 2:45 AM yesterday morning. It was forty miles from us. I got a few hours sleep. I got up at dawn and went out in the high wind. Wind as strong as anything I'd seen leading up to the eye. Maybe worse. The eye at dawn was now 50 miles north of it's abeam latitude but the winds were not subsiding. But I now knew it would get no worse. I stayed out of the house and in the weather from dawn to dark. At nine AM the winds had not let up and I hung out in the pole shed/hangar/lean to. The rain had stopped. But the wind made "rain" as it blew water everywhere. The wind sock was standing straight out and shifting in all directions. At ten AM the windsock showed little signs of bending down and swinging less. By 11 AM the sock had steadied to a less gusty west wind. The eye was now 90 miles north. My wife was going back and forth to the barn and pointed out a narrow band of blue sky on the southwest horizon. I stared at that for a long time. I was soaking up the sea change. The natural feeling you get when you feel the weather and you've been in the pace of the system. The altimeter I had sitting on the kitchen table showed the air pressure had gone up another tenth of an inch but I knew what it was going to say before I read it. Hour by wonderful hour and minute by minute the weather got slowly and steadily better. And I watched it and felt it. I started to pick up limbs. And branches. And twigs. I filled the pick up truck and emptied it several times. The wind was still blowing but ever lessening. At about 4 PM even the thin high cirrus overcast was breaking apart and the sun was shining. I sat down in the hangar on the couch in the "man cave". I slept for an hour. I had had six hours sleep in the last forty eight. When I got up from my nap, the sky was clear except for a band of cumulus low on the horizon out toward Ocean City. A final band of Irene to remind me of her immense size. The wind was calm. The sun starting to set. I opened hangar doors. I got out mowers. I got out cars. I got out the golf cart. I got out the big trash can. I did some mowing and a lot more picking up of sticks. It was one of the prettiest days I had ever seen. Before it got dark I went down to the ditch that runs as a stream thru my property. The state calls it a "branch" as it connects to the Choptank River. In the morning after the eye had passed the water in the ditch was just barely below the footbridge. Now before dark the water had dropped to about a foot lower than the bridge. My farm is saturated but not flooded. If another storm comes anytime soon, I will be flooded.
Now today as I write, I can't wait to get back outside. Into the refreshed atmosphere, the sunshine, the light breezes. I'll walk the airstrip and see how soggy it may be.

My wife invented a dessert called "hurricane cake". It was fabulous and we finished it off quickly. She is now making another one. It's time for our second pot of coffee. There is so much more I could say about the troubles of big Irene. But I probably won't.

I hope all you fellow east coasters fared well.

LLITTY .. .. :::::+:::::

The Late Summerness Now.

Hihowareya. I love this time of the year. The late summer is just excellent. Yes, storms can be severe. And there are hurricanes down south. All our critters are a bit pumped up because it's easier to move around now that the heat waves are mostly over. Today is so pristine I may just sit on the deck and bask in the breeze.

I'm in a life transition. I'm adjusting to not having my companion "Jake the dog". I'm adjusting to not having my airman medical. I'm adjusting to changes in medications that will improve my blood sugar control from sub optimal to near optimal. That control doesn't come easy because it's not all about medication. I have to do the tedious work of testing, exercise, and diet. I am a believer in low carb as a diabetes treatment. Many "experts" think low carb is dangerous.

I walk through these adjustments and I watch summer end toward Labor Day. My strongest emotion now is thankfulness. I have some wonderful events coming up in the future and they are certainly worth looking forward to. In October, wife and I are going to California. We shall visit son. Wife shall do L.A. things. I shall sneak off for three days to do some sailplane flying.

But I'm not going to wait my life away thinking about the future. Because I learned from my dog Jake that "now" is where life is. Now is typing to you. Now is feeling better. Now is enjoying wife and friend in the house with me. Now is the blue unhazed sky which looks like fall except with green trees. Now is today and the now- future of the deck, a little mowing, working on cars for fun with friend, birthday dinner with wife.

It's therapy to be in the now. It's therapy to be thankful. I'm thankful for the now.

Tonight is for Crying

The sad end came for my beloved dog "Jake" tonight. He hid himself in a corner under the kitchen table and would not move. I crawled under there with him. He would not eat a dog treat. He would not eat tuna fish out of my hand. He would not drink water. His panting had turned to a kind of coughing. He looked at me and his eyes said he was tired and he was done. My wife called the vet's answering service and the doc called us back immediately. It was about 8PM. We took him to the vet's office. I had to carry him to the car. He had never let me pick him up before, except when he was a little puppy. I petted him and talked to him all the way to Easton. We put him on a stretcher at the office and carried him in. The Doc was very kind to us and to Jake. As Jake went to his final long sleep I petted him and talked to him the whole time. The doc said he was gone. I couldn't move or talk. I just kept petting him as my eyes filled with tears and my throat lumped closed. He was the only dog of my own I had ever had. He taught me love, devotion, and loyalty. I will never ever forget him. I've been grieving here for the last month because I knew he was dying so I am OK and I was prepared. But my heart is broken tonight. And maybe forever. Goodbye Jaker. I'll never again get to lie on my bed with you and watch tv. Or give you treats you love like McD's Mcdouble plain. Or walk with you on the airstrip while you wander across both sides following old scents and scaring up new ones. Or see you bark and darn near nip at every single person except wife, son, and me. Or see you on the back deck waiting for me for hours as I mow and when I finally come in you howl to scold me for leaving you so long. I tell you a treat will make it better and you wag your tail. You loved riding in the Subaru which you rode in tonight. But you loved the pickup even more. You would watch the road for bunnies and foxes, then lay down with your nose on my leg. No matter where I was, you were there. Always. Thanks for teaching me real love. Thanks for loving me when I was being a jerk and no one else would. From now on I will address my journal entries to you Jake. To keep you up to date on Daddy. You will never be really gone to me. Remember when you were a puppy Jake? I told you every day that mommy was going to get you all your shots, take you to the vets, give you your worm medicine, and fix it so you don't have to sleep under that ole trailer anymore.

Tycoons and Typhoons

I figure all of you, my little circle of friends, have read about the "new" concept of libertarian islands that are currently being started and funded by billionaires. They are going into international waters and putting up oil rig style platforms on which to live unencumbered by the rest of the unpleasant world and the unpleasant people in it. No one will be able to dictate restrictions to them. They will be "free". Free from taxes. Free from the FDA. They can make any miracle food or drug they want. No building codes. No pollution laws. No gun laws. No sex laws. No socialism. No poor people. Free. Rich and free. It sounds pretty good to me. It sounds good to all of us. If they get it going I want to visit there and see what it is like if I would be invited or allowed.


I know, I know. We are all already thinking of all the new problems that would crop up as the old problems go away. Typhoons, pirates, marauders, terrorists with air forces, jealous folks, the need to regulate within the new little family country.

I don't really want to talk about what a great concept it is. Nor do I want to tear the idea apart, which is fun and easy too.


I want to talk about this as being a new idea. It is so not a new idea. Remember in Star Trek that funny fat pirate guy was in several episodes. He had his own utopia on his own planet. He had an android replica of his ex wife that he could activate and listen to her whine just for the pleasure of saying "shut up" and deactivating. Ayn Rand's book "Atlas Shrugged" had all the best men in the world in a secret hideaway in a bowl of mountains in the Rockies or someplace where they could own their inventions without having to give them up to the government which would equally distribute the ideas to all companies to be "fair". This book was in the fifties. Who said "No Man is an Island" John Donne ? He knew centuries ago that you can't opt out. What about grizzly Adams? R. Redford. They had to beg him to come back sometimes to save the folks who couldn't get thru the pass. But if he got sick, or broke a leg he could die without help from the mean cruel civilization below. I remember a book from senior year high school. You could only read British authors for your book reports. It was James Hilton's "The Lost Horizon". The guy finds himself after a crash in "Shangri La", a mountain utopia. Even closer to home, there was a James Bond movie where the guy had an underwater world where he could plot his evil undisturbed.

So the media can tell me all about what these smart, rich, superlative men are doing in their off shore Xanadus. I'm highly interested in the tech and bio and sociology. But please don't tell me it is a new idea. And don't tell me it is happiness or freedom either. I challenge you to even imagine in a fantasy a perfect world. You may find it impossible.

I'm Gonna Miss My Best Friend

I wrote to you a while back about our dog Jack passing away. He was such a fine friend. All our animals really are my wife's. She feeds them and cleans up after them and takes them to the vet etc. But one dog is mine as far as the bond. I really didn't know what friendship and love were until I bonded with my dog "Jake". He was a dog my wife had rescued. He was a puppy who was "dropped" and left to starve or be run over by a car or truck. He was frightened and starved. I had never had my own dog before. This little guy was outside in a pen because my wife didn't want to mix him with the other dogs yet until he got shots and was fixed. At night he would howl a little cry and not go in the doghouse inside the pen. The first night I went into the pen with a chair and sat down and picked him up on my lap and held him and made him stay there. He stopped howling. I did this night after night and after he laid in my lap he would go into the doghouse and be quiet for the rest of the night. This went on for a week until he got his shots and his vet visit out of the way. For the next twelve years he was always at my side. Always. Even if I was mad at him for making a mess or running off, or too much barking. He never held a grudge or was mad at me. Unconditional love. A human can't do it.

About six weeks ago the vet told us Jake had cancer in addition to his severe heart arrhythmia. He would have about a month to live. He would be put down about the time of my fly-in party. The fly-in has come and gone. The vet revised his death sentence to two days to three weeks. If he stops eating, it's the end. So I have been given the wonderful blessing of having some more days to say goodbye. He is on the floor by me as I type now. Yesterday he ate watermelon pieces I threw to him. He caught in the air seven in a row. I'm sleeping on an air mattress now downstairs because he has trouble with the stairs and I want all the time with him I can get. When I went upstairs the other day, he battled his way up and surprised me by walking into my bedroom. I was touched by his devotion, but I don't want him on the steps. Wife took pictures of Jake and I. I say goodbye and I love you everyday to him. Readers I can't express how much I love this dog and how much I will miss him. Many of you are dog owners and you have understood this much longer than I have.

So Jake has lived and he will soon be put to sleep. Death is part of life. Jake will die and I will die and you will die. Jake seems to be hanging in there for now. But it can be anytime. So this, plus the other aspects of my life are one day at a time. Jake is still teaching me a better way to live.

LLITTY :::::+:::::

What was I Just Going To Do?

Last Saturday was the biggest party I ever threw. And it was the best. I thought last year would be unbeatable and all I wanted to do was just repeat it. And I would have been thrilled. We were worried about the weather through the entire event. But we didn't get rained out. The details of what we did and who was there will be in my other blog. I want to talk about being a geezer.

I started preparing for the party by fixing a big hole in the plaster in our dinning room which has turned into a kitchen annex. The room is too small to be a dining room anyway. The rooms in our 100 yr. old farmhouse are small and cut up with doors and windows. There are no closets except the ones I made and they take away from the rooms too. While I was patching the ceiling hole, my wife was deciding to paint the room and she snowballed the ceiling patch into carpet and other things. As we fooled with this room, time started clicking down on cleaning up the cluttered house before the party. And it was an outdoor party so the outside needed a lot of work too.

Here are some of the geezer things I did:

I would go upstairs to my bedroom and then not know what I was there for.

Every time I needed a marker on a project, a sharpie, a carpenter's pencil, anything to mark a line, I wouldn't be able to find one and had to go upstairs to my desk to get it. This went on for four days and 10 trips upstairs. I finally carried a handful of markers downstairs and put them on the kitchen table. And told my wife to buy me a ten pack of Sharpies. And every time I put my wallet in my pocket, or my phone I would put two markers in my pocket. Regardless of what I thought I was going to do.

I was always looking for tools that I had several copies of. The most common missing tools were
tape measure, utility knife, MARKERS, hammer. I got to the point that when I was working with my friend Eric I would call out to him and tell him where I was setting the tape measure so we would both know where it was, at least for that moment.

When you work with paint and drywall compound you pour or scoop out what you need then seal up the can again so your product stays clean and doesn't dry out. Well, I would pour it out and get to work and finish up and put away my working container. Then come back only to find that I never put the top back on the main container.

I was making a repair on our tiny garage building and I had set the electric drill on the back of the golf cart. I needed something elsewhere and I jumped on the golf cart to quickly go get it. My wife was walking by and yelled stop. I didn't want to stop because I was under the sprinkler's water spray. But I did stop and got wet and asked my wife what was so important that I had to stop. And I was kind of cross about it. She pointed to the area behind the golf cart where I had dragged a trail of tools, lumber, chords, lights, a boom box etc. The drill that I had forgotten was on the back of the golf cart and had gotten lodged and the cord was connected and wrapped around everything in the garage eventually yanking out the power strip and the plug. It was a mess, and I quit for the day and apologized to my wife for the next 24 hours.

I went to Nagal's hardware a few times during the last few weeks. It's a feed store, general store. They always have what we need to repair a house or barn or fence or shed. They cost a little more than Wal Mart, but it is more than worth it. One day I went up there for "liquid nails" , a kind of glue. I bought all kinds of things I needed. But after I was home and back at work I realized I didn't get the liquid nails. I had to wait to the next day to go back to Nagal's.

I was working on my hay wagon and had parked it in the shade. Then I had moved the tractor away. Later the shade had moved, I guess the sun had moved. I mean the Earth had rotated. I was in a hurry. I didn't want to go get the tractor. It was 100 degrees out. I put a strap on the hay wagon and tied it to the air conditioned pick up truck. I only wanted to move it about ten feet. There was a limb from a tree that I thought I could clear. I broke the strap and damaged the wagon. I was exhausted and hot and I said some bad words and went into the pool with my clothes on.

I had put that same tractor's battery on the charger. The tractor had been put away last season and was not expected to start. So I tried the key one day and the tractor jumped. I was excited that it had juice. So I went and hooked up cables to the truck, got some starting fluid into the intake, and got out the air hose to fill the front tires and blow off debris. When I saw a big hornet I reacted by spraying air at it. Bad idea. The next thing I knew my hand felt like somebody had stabbed it and I was howling and jumping and getting away from that tractor as fast as I could. I quit and headed for the pool. My wife thought this was amusing.

One morning before everyone was up I wanted to get an early start painting. I had about a half dozen little places that need to be painted with primer. So I went around with a can and a brush and got it all done. I was proud of myself and ahead on the day with projects. Then I realized that for the last hour I had been painting with my white exterior latex which was not primer at all. The cans looked similar. I went in and took a short nap hoping to start the day over again.

Happy mid summer everyone. LLITTY :::::+:::::