mohead

When I was a kid,  flying saucers scared me.

No longer.

Look.  Some guy, or alien flew over Mt. Shasta, again.

This UFO thing is getting old. Nobody hides in a cloud any more.

Don’t aliens know about cloaking devices  in Star Trek?

Hiding right over Mt. Shasta in a cloud.  How pasé.

So me and probably 29,000 cars ignored it all day long. Not a cloud in the sky except this one.

Very poor taste I tell you. Devils tower would have been better.

But no. Just hiding in a cloud.

I drove on.

Here’s a video that brightened my day. John Cleese is so funny.

via John Cleese on Sarah Palin « What’s Going On

Staying in a hospital often is boring. You see the same nurses, doctors traipse through your room. They poke you with needles. They give you pills you know nothing about. They present you with strange devises and machines that measure things. Sometimes they hook you up to these devices in such a fashion thta your personal movement is inhibited by strange multicolored wires. But that’s fine. Machines don’t scare me.

But dumb nurses do.

Part of my hospital experience is sleeping. Well, rather attempting to sleep.

Part of the hospital structure is an assembly of busy body night nurses who feel the need to wake you up and do things to you every two hours. I’m not sure if its a job security thing. Maybe they are so horribly worried that I will kick the bucket, that stopping into my room will help. That is not scary. Everybody kicks the bucket. It’s just a matter of time.

What is scary is when you are sleeping the room is dark. At perhaps midnight, 2 or 4 a.m. a nurse will come in. She is alone. She turns on the small florescent light behind her so you only see her silhouette. She wears a badge you can’t read because its flipped over. You can’t tell if she is wearing a wig or not. That is scary. The first thing when she comes in the room she offers irrelevant questions and statements. She comes in and says, “You turned the light off”, expecting an answer. Truth is the lab people that were in just 30 seconds ago, took blood and turned if off. Then she says, “Your wife isn’t here yet.” This is not funny. Three or four people have suggested my wife was traveling from Salem. I called and verified with Terri that she wasn’t going anywhere. Perhaps being on the night crew she didn’t know of the change.

Then, “How did your treadmill test go?” My head head is spinning. “”There was no treadmill test. Was there supposed to be one?” No answer.

In a world where you no longer have control of what is happening to you, where and when you are going or show up to work on Monday….it’s actually not activities themselves that are stressful to cardiac patient.

It’s the questions.

You deal with them.

Then your bill comes. Oh well.

Today CNN reported that “Water with trace amounts of radioactivity may have leaked for months from a U.S. Navy nuclear-powered submarine as it traveled around the Pacific to ports in Guam, Japan and Hawaii, Navy officials told CNN on Friday.”

“The total amount leaked while the sub was in port in Guam, Japan and Hawaii was less than a half of a microcurie (0.0000005 curies), or less than what is found in a 50-pound bag of lawn and garden fertilizer, the officials said.”

Who can we trust here? I discovered online that the SSN Houston was supposed to be decommissioned around the year 2000.

Somebody in the goverment is sandbagging information away from the public.

Maybe it was cheaper just to sail the submarine to Japan and not worry the about it falling apart and having to absorb the cost of storing toxic waste? So how much will it cost the American public to float this thing back to San Diego?

We need to read between the lines I guess. CNN said the submarine may a have been leaking for months. How many 50 lbs bags for fertilizer radiation is that equivalent to over several months? Time to re-calculate. Something is missing here. News writers typically liken the amount radiation exposure to “so many hours of a ride in an airplane”, not a bag of fertilizer. Why the change?

Here’s a little know finding: according to the EPA Fertilizer is know to contain Uranium, plus decay product including Radium and Thorium

I can only believe that trace amounts of radiation going somewhere has to manifest some environmental impact.

Goverment Foul Up or Fear of Fertilizer?

Perhaps gardening with fertilizer qualifies as hazardous activity now? Corporations have historically used the word “trace” to minimize media response of quantities of toxic PCB’s in soil and nicotine presence in cigarettes. What does trace really mean? Reading the nutritional information on a bag of organic potato chips, an essential ingredient is often listed as “trace minerals sea salt.” Regardless of the amount, you can still taste trace sea salt. Do you want your grandchildren help you distribute trace radiation in the veggie garden? Want to eat a bag of potato chips that has submarine flavored sea salt? Something to think about anyway!

I’m going to be more careful when I’m in the garden now! My guess reason is they didn’t use the airplane trip analogy is because the truth is fertilizer may offer more radiation exposure than an airplane trip or an an Xray.

I think twice now before I plant my petunias, and eating organic sea salt potato chips. I think I’ll stick with Lays.

On occasion when my office day lags for my break I will saunter into the Circulation Department at work, by stealth snipe a piece of chocolate from Claudia’s desk bowl and a get a laugh or two. Today’s diversionary conversations were largely about life’s disappointments such as her empty chocolates bowl, various uses of hard licorice, and eventually to what was growning on her farm.

“We have corn, seed and beans,” said Claudia.

“You are bona fide Farmers then! I don’t imagine the seed tastes very good though.” I said joking.

“We grow lawn seed.” she said.

“Hmm. Then you must be kind of like dentists with white teeth. You must have a perfect lawn!”

“No,” said Claudia. “Our lawn is a nightmare of weeds. Didn’t you know the cobbler’s children never have shoes?”

“Hmm. What a disappointment. I thought for sure a lawn seed farmer would have an immaculate personal lawn.”

“My husband is too busy to keep the lawn perfect, and right now, he would be just mowing the Dandelions.”

I grimaced in disappointment that I without a doubt will leave the office today without a helpful hint to keep my lawn more perfect than the neighbor’s across the street. We Oregonians are very proud of our lawns. It’s like war. An attitude that is healthy for the lawn fertilizer industry.

Time to change the subject in order to get another piece of licorice:

“Claudia, tell me about the your corn. Do you ever see baseball players in it?”

“No. I do go walking in the corn. No baseball players like the movie Field of Dreams. I did see some coyote droppings and a bunny.”

I thought to myself, maybe farming isn’t all its cracked up to be. Weeds, dandelions and coyote poop. I decided not to ask about the beans.

Waterfall has been playing acoustic music together for roughly 15 years now.

We’ve played all kinds of coffee houses, weddings, funerals and have done some busking on the pier in Newport, Oregon. Some of our most exciting performance experiences have happened when we play for free.

Casey Applen, Mandolin, Harmonica Bodran. Louie Hubbard, vocals and guitar.

Listen to Louie and I play music here

For several years Louie and I theorized jokingly that it would be great fun to crash a family reunion by providing musical entertainment. The concept was simple enough. Every family desperately wants to believe there is somebody in a family that is talented.

Besides, families are so fragmented these days that quite often they hardly really know each other. This is especially true with second-time-around blended familiy reunions.

We laughed about serveral hilarious senarios about embedding ourselves into an unsuspecting family reunion. The goal would be to get some free food, and gain a fresh set of new friends; hopefully without being found to be merely musicians. We laughed for years about the concept. It came to a point where we dared each other to try it out.

Method

First thing you have to do is find the Key Event Organizer.

Every family reunion has a person who is organized, looks a bit over-tired and probably one hell of a diplomat to get all these people together. This is because often with family reunions, (much like Thanksgiving) there are many among the party who really don’t want to be there.

Introduce yourself to the organizer. Offer to play some music. Reason: this is the probably the person who knows everybody who is at the reunion. If you don’t introduce yourself the whole idea could crash and burn. These people live for organization and structure, but even more importantly, participation.

Talking to People You Really Don’t Know

While theorizing on hilarious conversation scenarios we decided there are certain things you can say at family reunions without being established as a party crasher:

• “How’s the knee?” To be used on older persons. If they don’t have a problem with it now..chances are excellent they did at some point, if that doesn’t spur a conversation, then say “or was that your ankle you had a problem with a while back?” This is much safer than asking or declaring somebody had surgery which gets too personal. Joint problems or aches are almost always a hit with the veterans.
• “Last time I saw you…you were about yeah big!” This is to be used on younger folk. Chances are they will believe they were too young to remember you.
• “Let’s see…aren’t you related to, ..John?” (John is the most common name in the English language. Worst case scenario: you can feign confusion with another part of the family. Or use somebody’s name you have already discovered. People love at the very least to be remembered.
• “I’m a friend of the family” Often renunion attendees will bring a close friend to introduce around. This is a good default if family tree questions come up.
• “I wonder if somebody brought potato salad?” More often than not, somebody did. With big reunions, chances are extraordinarily good that too many people did. Those that brought Potato Salad will be relieved to hear that you are interested in the dish, and hungry for their makings.

After daring each other for several years…this is a stunt we actually pulled off!

We decided to pull off the stunt in Oregon’s number one spot for family reunions: Champoeg State Park. We picked a family that was most likely to have been “blended” over time. Also we picked a group that seemd to have sufficient number of geographically distant visiting members, which would allow us to become seemingly homogeneous attendees. We were actually invited to join the family in dinner.

We knew we had won our goal when we heard…”You guys have been playing so long,..you better get someting to eat!”

By the day’s end we felt like part of another family. We exchanged email address with the Key Event Organizer, as they wanted to make sure we came back next year!

Waterfall is now booking events for Christmas.