al's attic

starting over

2011-03-21T08:41:00.002-05:00

It's been almost six months since I last posted anything here, and that was an entry re-directing my regular readers to a journal I'm keeping about my wild ride through Medical Wonderland.

Does anybody keep blogs any more, or are we all using social media like Facebook? I don't know, but I think I'll resurrect this to give me a place to rant and rave about issues other than my medical situation and see who notices. I'll need to stay away from politics, though, to avoid giving myself a heart attack. At the moment, I'm looking forward to a trip to Boston to help celebrate a grandson's first birthday and our anniversary. Daughter Megan is also celebrating a birthday but she's in Seattle and we'll have to use Skype or extrasensory perception to get her involved in our party.

It's a sad commentary on the State of Florida that none of our kids are likely to move back to Florida, and our governor and state legislature are doing their best to make it all even worse. Oops, there I go on a political topic. Ugh. I can feel the bad taste in my mouth already. It's time to think positive thoughts, like maybe the prospect of seeing FSU win the NCAA basketball tournament. FSU went to the finals against UCLA on March 25, 1972, and lost by a close margin - a date that lives in our memory because it was our wedding night, and of course we had to stay up to see the conclusion of the game. Our marriage has had a much happier history than FSU's basketball program!

whoa, hoss, not so fast

2010-09-30T20:40:00.014-05:00

I'm going to keep this short. Today I learned that my lymphoma has reared its ugly head again. This will require two more chemo treatments in October, then more vital organ testing in November, and admission to Moffitt Cancer Center in mid-December if all goes well, not on November 9.

My heart surgery delayed my admission in August, as initially planned, but that surgery was necessary. Some good news is that (if all goes well) I will be back home in five weeks, not ten weeks as I understood earlier.

This my last use of this blog to post updates about my medical situation. Go to http://www.caringbridge.com/visit/al_galbraith for the rest of the story. That's an easier place for people to interact by leaving messages, and I'd love to hear from you.

Recovered, more or less

2010-09-25T10:32:00.002-05:00

It's been six and a half weeks since my by-pass surgery and I'm mostly healed, thank God. It ony hurts when I sneeze. I've started cardio exercises where they connect me to a wireless EKG and monitor my heart rate as I "work out," for lack of a better term. The last session included twelve minutes on a treadmill (boring), twelve minutes on a stationary bicycle (even more boring), and some very limited exercises with four-pound (!) dumbells, followed by some stretching. There's a man who brings a CD with hit songs from the Fifties that they play on the sound system, the stuff they'd play for slow waltzes at a sock hop. (I wonder if kids today know what a "sock hop" was?) I'm going to make a CD with some rock and roll suitable for exercising by old guys like me. One of the nurses begged me to do so, so I will.

Last week, the highlight for me was a "procedure" by a urologist to try and save what's left of my left kidney. I will spare you the details, gentle reader, but if you Google "kidney" and "stent," you'll get the idea. I spent last weekend cursing the urologist and swore that I'd call him on Monday to demand it be removed, but by Monday it had settled down from agonizing to merely irritating and now it's tolerable, even without pain pills. I just hope it works.

Next week I'll go to Moffitt in Tampa for three days of testing. In early November I'll check into their facility for the serious stuff. I will keep you posted!

Recovering, slowly (cont'd)

2010-08-30T16:49:00.002-05:00

I spent six days in the hospital after my surgery, each day marking a very slow return to "normal." The first few days were marked by little signs of progress - getting out of bed and into a chair, inhaling through an "incentive spirometer" to re-inflate the lungs, going for a short walk, going for a longer walk, and so on. I noticed that some of the nurses are very pretty, which I take as a good sign. I'm getting very tired of being awakened every hour for checking of vital signs and being rousted out of bed at 4:30 a.m. to be weighed.

I got home on Sunday, Aug. 15, thanking God and the magical mysteries of modern medical science and several excellent doctors! Had to sleep upright in an easy chair for nearly two weeks. Sleep is interrupted by having to get up and pee every 1.5 hours, thanks in part to doc's instructions to drink two liters of water a day. I'm getting steadier on my feet and quit using the walker several days ago. I saw my cardiologist last Friday and got an "attaboy" and a "sounds good." If he's happy, I'm delirious.

Watching the Rays play baseball lately is NOT good for a heart patient; they've been losing or winning by a single run in games that go down to the wire.

I am grateful for Facebook, where I've reconnected with friends going all the way back to elementary school. Many of them have been very supportive for the past three weeks and I love them all.

Recovering, slowly

2010-08-29T18:03:00.003-05:00

My trip to the hospital, three weeks ago, left me feeling like I'd been run over by a cement mixer, but beginning the second day after the surgery, every day has been just a little better than the day before.

The night of the surgery I was in La-La Land thanks to heavy-duty anesthetics and pain killers, but I was conscious enough to know I'd had five by-passes. The next night was a trip through hell because of the drainage tubes in my chest that prevented me from lying comfortably, and a rapid and irregular heartbeat (atrial fibrillation). I just knew I was lying across a two-by-four and that was causing the a-fib. I finally got to sleep some time after 3:30 a.m.

The next day, the second day after surgery, they removed the drainage tubes and things got much, much better. In fact, every day since has been better than the day before! I started walking while in the hospital and practiced inhaling through a gizmo with a blue "float" to expand my lungs back to normal and avoid pneumonia.

TO BE CONTINUED . . .

surprise

2010-08-08T12:32:00.002-05:00

Well, I came in Thursday for an angioplasty and maybe a stent. But, no stent. Instead, they said I need bypass surgery. So I've been cooling my heels in a private room in the cardiac surgery unit, which will be my recovery room after the operation tomorrow, playing with my laptop, iPod Touch, cell phone, and Kindle, thinking positive thoughts. My friends on Facebook, which include more than a hundred real friends and relatives, have sent me all sorts of positive vibes.

When my father was the same age I am now, he had bypass surgery in the same hospital where I am now. That was in 1978. He did well and he lived another 17 years after that, to see his granchildren grow from infants to soccer players. I'll never forget the night before his surgery. I was scared to death but he was as calm as he could be. He didn't fear death and he had utmost confidence in the doctors. The doctors know even more today than they did then, and this hospital is rated among the top 100 in the country for heart surgery. I don't fear death, I also have confidence in the doctors, and all I really want is to get it over with!

finally, a little progress

2010-08-03T07:06:00.002-05:00

I got word yesterday that my "procedure" (angioplasty, balloon, stent, Roto Rooter, whatever) is scheduled for Thursday, two weeks later than it would have happened if I didn't have to wait so long for my platelets to come back up AND if my cardiologist hadn't been out of town. That's good. I saw the light at the end of the tunnel six months ago but it was only a 40-watt light bulb and somebody's moved it several times. You've heard the expression, "waiting for the other shoe to drop?" I've heard two or three shoes drop and I'm waiting for the next one. In theory, I don't like the idea of what they are about to do to me, but in reality I'm just going to take a couple of books and maybe my laptop and ride it out. In Thursday, home Friday, seems to be the plan. More later . . .

another week ticks by

2010-07-18T21:12:00.002-05:00

This week has been a waiting week, and a test of my patience. I was supposed to go to Moffitt for testing on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I did go on Monday, but after arriving I was told they'd postponed the testing until my platelets come back up. I wasted half a day on that trip. I raced back to Clearwater to have blood work done and was told I need another platelet tranfusion (where DO those little buggers go?) - but the clinic where I get the transfusion closes at 1:00 on Mondays (where do THOSE buggers go on Monday afternoons?). Got a transfusion on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the platelets were still low, but no more transfusions. Tomorrow I go in for blood work again. My angioplasty and stent is tentatively (very tentatively) scheduled for Thursday, depending on the platelet count being high enough. Believe it when you see it. If I get a "go" for Thursday, I'll update this blog again to let you know.

time flies

2010-07-10T13:02:00.006-05:00

This has been a busy week for me, reminding me that time flies whether you are having fun or not. My platelet count was low on Tuesday so I got a platelet transfusion. An i.v. bag of platelets looks look a bag of oatmeal, not pretty, but platelets are "transfused" faster than blood. I also had atrial fibrillation and low blood pressure, so I went to the ER and spent Tuesday night and too much of Wednesday in the hospital.

On Friday, my cardiologist told me that a nuclear stress test I had a week ago shows that I have an 80-90 percent blockage in an artery close to the heart. He knows I'm going to Moffitt for testing this coming week. The following week, he will put me in the hospital for angioplasty and a stent. This will be an overnight stay, and I probably won't care that the hospital's TV system does not include the network that carries Rays games.

To his credit, he didn't call the procedure routine, but he did call it a treatable condition. That's been my magic word for nearly a year. If it's treatable, I believe in better living through chemistry. But, I'm beginning to feel like the guy who took his old car in for an oil change and ended up with new tires, shocks, and a rebuilt carburetor.

My blood work on Friday showed some improvement in white cells - 2.0 compared with 0.6 on Tuesday. My platelet count on Friday was even lower than it was on Tuesday, so I went back for another platelet transfusion. I believe Moffitt will do more blood work Monday morning, so we will see if any of those platelets stuck around long enough to be counted.

Thinking ahead to my long stay in Tampa in September-October after leaving Moffitt, I have an idea for a project to keep me busy. A story in today's paper described how a woman scanned all her old photographs - or, rather, sent them off to be scanned. I'd rather scan the negatives than the prints, because the negatives have more information than the prints, the prints are mostly fair or worse, and the scanned images will look a lot better if made from the negatives. I could have the negatives scanned at 39 cents per frame, but a rough estimate tells me that could easily cost me $1,000 or more. However, if I had five weeks to spare with nothing else to do, and if my scanner will work connected to my laptop, and if I round up all my old negatives and take them with me . . . I'll be $1,000 or more ahead and will have a time-consuming hobby to take my mind off of other things. I (almost) can't wait!

here we go, part 2

2010-06-29T19:38:00.004-05:00

Well, I promised my faithful readers I would update this more often than I have in the past, but a month has gone by and I'm way overdue for an update. The second cycle of chemo treatments that were scheduled for mid-June was postponed a week because of a low platelet count, and postponed another week due to low white cells. Those little buggers finally got themselves aligned with "normal" and I started the second cycle on Monday. That was an all-day deal, eight hours, followed by four hours today and four tomorrow.

So far, no nausea and no obvious (to me) impairment as a result, except having to get up every hour during the night and having to recover from Benadryl, which knocks me out for a couple of hours when the session starts. I still have my appetite, which is good. I lost a lot of weight last Fall when all this started and the idea of food didn't sound good to me. I think the loss of appetite was a psychological problem. For the first several weeks, I was in (but fighting) the "woe-is-me" mode, struggling to accept the fact I had cancer, the Big C, the death sentence, and then realizing that, no, it is treatable. A wonderful word, treatable. A life-saving word.

The oncology clinic is a wi-fi zone, and I can take my lap-top and my iPod Touch. I can also take my brand-new Kindle, a surprise gift from my in-laws, who decided I'd much rather take a Kindle that weighs mere ounces instead of a dozen or more heavy books to read when I go into captivity - I mean, the hospital - in August. It was a wonderful gift. I have wonderful in-laws. I've mailed them old-fashioned written thank-you notes stuffed with photos of our three grandkids.

So now I'll have a couple of weeks to recuperate, and in mid-July I'll go to Moffitt Cancer Hospital in Tampa for three days of testing of my vital organs. Barring any ugly surprises, I'll enter Moffitt in mid-August.

And I promise to keep you up to date more often than I have.

here we go again

2010-06-02T19:40:00.005-05:00

My half dozen regular readers already know this story, but I'm overdue in updating my optimistic report about my cancer treatments. It seems I was overly optimistic.

So now it's back to Square Two in my fight against lymphoma. I had a cycle of chemo treatments in Clearwater on May 26-28, and will have another cycle on June 16-18. Then, testing at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa to see if my vital organs can withstand what I'll call the Neutron Bomb treatment. If so, they'll harvest stem cells from my blood stream and I will get that treatment at Moffitt in early to mid August. I will be in the hospital at Moffitt for one to three weeks while the stem cells work on repopulating the bone marrow, then must find a place to live in seclusion within 15 minutes of Moffitt, with a live-in companion, for another 30 days or so. When I get home, I must avoid the office and people for another month or so, which brings me down to October before life will begin getting back to normal. I may be susceptible to infections for months afterwards, so if you find yourselves asking "who was that masked man?" - it might have been me.

All of this seems to have coincided with baseball season and the Rays are doing exceptionally well, so I am looking forward to watching the Rays becoming the Boys of October and winning the World Series this time. I am very happy to have gotten my travel "bug" adjusted, having seen all of my beautiful children and grandchildren at least once over the past three months.

As I said to a friend from high school who is going back for treatment for prostate cancer to see if it spread elsewhere in his body, getting old is not as much fun as they said it would be!

happy Hazel

2010-04-20T22:03:00.001-05:00

happy
Originally uploaded by megang

proud parents

2010-04-06T07:50:00.001-05:00

proud parents
Originally uploaded by megang

Emmet, born 28 March 2010 @9.46am to proud parents Allison & Greg. After one week he gained 9 ounces over his birth weight. Nice work, Mom and Dad!

our newest family member

2010-03-30T07:20:00.001-05:00

DSC00532
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

Welcomed to the world in Cambridge, MA, on Sunday, March 28, 2010. Mother and son are doing fine, and so is his admiring grandmother!

finally, back to normal, whatever that was!

2010-03-15T06:58:00.002-05:00

I'm proud to say that my last chemo therapy treatment for lymphoma occurred on February 2, 2010, and that I'm still here to tell you about my experience, for which I thank God.

I'm a skinnier version of my old self and I lost most of what little hair I had, but the weight loss is not regrettable and the hair is beginning to come back.

I'm back at work on a full-time basis. I'm glad to have a job to go back to, doing work I enjoy with people I enjoy working with.

I still have an issue with a kidney but it is not terribly serious and I will spare you the details.

I notice that every sentence in this blog entry begins with "I." I'm not that self-centered. I'll go back to my old form, taking shots at politicians and rooting for the Rays baseball team, beginning with the next entry.

finally - one more to go

2010-01-26T23:54:00.003-05:00

This time next week I'll undergo the LAST treatment for lymphoma. Thank God.

The first five didn't bother me much, physically. Looking back, it was the emotional reaction to my whole experience - the diagnosis, the initial treatments - that got me down. Physically, it wasn't so bad except for the four days I spent in the hospital because of three degrees of fever. Four days in a hospital for any reason is a nightmare, and it made me paranoid about getting infections when my white cell count was down.

The last two have begun to beat me down. I still get around, and I'm less of a couch potato than I was earlier, but I'm much more tired at the end of the day than I was.

What's remarkable is that they found blood clots in my left leg, behind the knee and in the ankle, and for that reason the swelling still hasn't gone down despite taking Coumadin and getting shots of Arixtra daily for nearly two weeks. The swelling was the original symptom that lead to all this. The active cancer cells are long gone, but not the swelling. The nurse at the clinic who deals with blood chemistry problems is mystified. She says they'll likely refer me to a cardiologist to deal with the blood clots.

So, if I can get through next week, and if a cardiologist can perform a miracle to get the swelling down, I can begin getting back to normal.

what a difference ten years make

2009-12-30T17:19:00.004-05:00

Here we are, looking at the end of another decade (although, technically, it doesn't end for another year, but explaining why isn't worth the energy).

Ten years ago, I was feeling good because it appeared that world peace was about to break out. The Soviet Union was gone, the Berlin Wall was down, the Pope had visited Cuba, and the Parliament of Scotland opened for the first time since 1707. Well, OK, that last item wasn't all that relevant to my false sense that the world was in very good shape, but it helped.

Wow, what a fool I was for being so naive and misinformed. The news media will be full of stories over the next few days detailing all that went wrong in the past decade, ranging from the disputed presidential election in Florida in 2000 to the disasters of September 11, 2001, and downhill from there.

However, on a personal level, this decade has been good to us. Our children finished undergraduate school, and two earned master's degrees. They are all gainfully employed except our son, who's in the third year of dental school. My wife is a ten-year breast cancer survivor, and she's still employed despite budget cuts where she works. I am on the verge of being declared a lymphoma survivor. Better yet, we've been given two beautiful and healthy grandchildren, with a third due in April.

I hit the ripe old age of 65 this year, which is remarkable because a lot of us children of the Cold War never really believed we'd live this long. I've now worked for my employer longer than the three other cities I've worked for in the past and plan to stay on for a few more years if they'll have me. I can't retire soon; I need to pay for my wife's new kitchen and my new Corvette!

To my faithful few regular readers, and the occasional random reader, I wish you nothing but good in 2010 and every year afterwards. May God have mercy on us all.

Five down, THREE to go

2009-12-18T11:51:00.003-05:00

Well, nuts. I've been counting down the chemo treatments from the beginning and, according to the schedule, next Tuesday should be my sixth and final treatment.

Not so fast.

Yesterday, the doctor apologized for not telling me the last time we met that I should have eight, not six, treatments. He is concerned because the "pet" scan showed a minute trace of cancer cell activity in the bone marrow - so minute that it wasn't detected when the lab first saw the scan results, but did show up when they were testing a more sophisticated and sensitive machine.

So, instead of being done by Christmas, I'll be done on (or about) February 1.

Meanwhile, I feel fine despite having low white cell and red cell counts during the first 10 - 14 days after each treatment. I'm confident I will feel a helluva lot better when my body finally rids itself of the chemicals but I'm grateful that the chemicals rid my body of active cancer cells.

Stayed tuned . . .

Thanksgiving in Seattle

2009-12-01T15:57:00.002-05:00

DSC_1624
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

Two cousins, our first grandchildren, got to share space and toys for the first time last week.

four down, two to go

2009-11-13T12:59:00.003-05:00

I'm now four down and two to go with the chemo treatments for lymphoma, and the good news for me is that my "pet" scan shows no active cancer cell activity. A "pet" scan is not like an X-ray. It traces a radioactive glucose solution that runs through your body starting about an hour before the scan. Because the cancer cells gobble up the glucose faster than normal cells, they "light up" on the scan so the doctor can see where they are located.

The scan showed some enlarged tissues but the doctor said they are scar tissue or dead tissue that will be absorbed by the body.

The most obvious sign, for me, is that my swollen left foot and leg have gone down dramatically in the past few days. Today I wore shoes, not sandals, for the first time since this whole thing started back in August.

Light at the end of the tunnel!

Lymphoma, cont'd

2009-11-02T12:41:00.003-05:00

I'm way overdue to update this blog with the status of my treatment for lymphoma. My half dozen regular readers already know my status, but I've promised to update this, so here it is:

I'm now three down, three to go, with the chemo treatments. I got the first three treatments every two weeks, not the standard three weeks, because trial work in Germany for my kind of lymphoma and the treatment I'm getting indicates some marginal benefit for getting them every two weeks - plus, I should be done before Christmas. I'm now on a once every three weeks schedule to allow me to travel to Seattle to see my first granddaughter at Thanksgiving . . . and I'll still finish before Christmas.

Remarkably, I've experienced no nausea. Fatigue, if any, has been marginal but they say it will build up. The main problem has been the low white cell count that occurs after each treatment. I get a follow-up shot the day after treatment to prod the bone marrow into generating more white cells, but that takes ten to fourteen days to kick in. During that time I have to be very careful about exposure to viruses or bacteria of any kind. After my second treatment, I wasn't so careful. I developed a three-degree fever that resulted in my being hospitalized for four days while they waited for blood cultures to come back. They were negative, which means it could have been anything. If they had come back positive, they would have replaced my port.

Another remarkable thing is that I still have most of what little hair I had left, although my doctor says the hair loss occurs slowly.

A bigger issue for me is that the swelling in my left ankle and leg is reduced but has not gone away. My oncologist reminded me how bad it was when he first saw me, and says his objective is to get the swelling reduced one hundred percent.

So, here I am at the halfway point, trying to stay out of harm's way while swine flu and other nasty bugs are in the air (and on door handles, and escalator hand rails, and other things we touch). I'm also waiting to see if I get "chemo brain," or a befuddlement that sets in as you near the end of the treatments. Since I'm befuddled more often than not anyway, it might be hard to know if that becomes an issue.

Stay tuned . . .

going public about Lymphoma

2009-09-25T09:04:00.002-05:00

Four weeks ago tomorrow, my left ankle swelled to the size of a softball, with no pain or other symptoms. I'd spent the day cleaning my pool, painting the front door, and other such Saturday tasks, and decided to mow the front lawn before it got dark. I noticed my ankle for the first time when I sat down to put on socks and shoes.

Two weeks ago today, I went to see my doctor for the third time. By now, the swelling was all the way up my left leg but still without any other symptoms of illness - no fever, no weight loss - only a rash on the back of the leg. She'd theorized it was an infection, or a blood clot, or shingles. She sent me back over to the imaging center to recheck for a blood clot and ordered a cat scan of my abdomen. When she saw the bigger picture, she put me in the hospital to be seen by specialists and be prepared for a biopsy.

A mass behind the kidney suggested Lymphoma or kidney cancer, the former being preferable if you have a choice. After more testing, probing and scanning, the verdict came in: Lymphoma. Large B-cell Lymphoma, to be more specific, which is treatable.

The oncologist who saw me at the hospital prescribed chemo treatment, and I've already undergone the first one. I suffered none of the dreaded side effects of chemo but they tell me I will lose my hair, or what's left of it. After watching it go slowly for about 40 years, I can deal with that!

Why am I telling you all this? Mainly, to raise your awareness of Lymphoma, a strange disease. The disease can be asymptomatic or the symptoms can be very subtle, such as a swelling of lymph nodes. Seeing your doctor is very important if you feel little lumps in your neck, under your armpit, or other places where there usually are no lumps. The symptoms are often associated with other diseases. There are no identified causes. The disease strikes people of all ages. There are many varieties of Lymphoma, and treatments vary according to type. I'm being given a treatment that has come into wide use in the past two years with very good results.

The lymph system itself is a mystery to most people. You can visualize a heart or a stomach, but the lymph system sounds like one of the "humors" that medieval physicians believed existed in the body. It runs through the body and performs a variety of necessary jobs like sending armies of white cells out to fight infection.

Because the lymph system runs throughout the body, surgery is not a treatment option. Chemo treatments are. I may go into more detail on that later, but that's all for now. I might add that my left leg is still swollen and may not get back to normal for another couple of weeks, which is painful enough without also keeping me from getting into my new Corvette without crawling across the driveway and up under the steering wheel. As kids used to say, bummer!

random thoughts on a Friday

2009-09-11T06:55:00.002-05:00

A few random thoughts while waiting until it's time to leave for a doctor's appointment:

I've been driving my Corvette for a month, now, and it has changed my driving habits in a couple of respects.

The dashboard gives me a readout of my gas mileage, both average and "instantaneous." The instantaneous readout is very instructive. Everybody should have one. It teaches you to drive as if you have a raw egg between your foot and the accelerator pedal if you are concerned about getting good gas mileage. I've learned that fuel consumption is worst when you are starting from a dead stop, so no jack-rabbit starts for me. The rate improves, somewhat, driving on city streets. Once you are up to highway speed, it really gets much better. If I ease up on the pedal, the rate jumps to 55 mpg or greater. Because my overall average is about 20 mpg, driving a route that's part city streets and part Interstate Highway, that's impressive!

However, once I'm up to speed, I no longer appreciate being passed by fools driving clunkers or pick-up trucks with the pedal down unless I happen to be driving slow and cool on purpose. I especially do not appreciate being passed on the right by somebody "slalom-skiing" down the highway, or being boxed in by truckers and slow-pokes. If there's empty space between me and the car in front, it is there for a reason and I don't appreciate someone trying to fill it. I used to tolerate such behavior on the road, but now it is comforting to know I can leave such fools behind in a cloud of dust by goosing the gas pedal. In fact, I've done it, and it is very satisfying!

Changing subjects:

When I heard that the Congressman who called President Obama a liar was a Republican from South Carolina, I was not surprised. He's now the poster boy for the Republican Party, which seems to have nothing constructive to say on any issue but simply stands about, arms folded, hoping our President fails. The GOP has been veering to the extreme far right, headed for the cliff, ever since President "Tricky Dick" ("I am not a crook") Nixon and his band of rogues.

About that doctor's appointment: I have had a swollen ankle, going all the way up the leg, with a rash on the back of the leg, for two weeks. My doctor at first thought it might be an infection or a blood clot, but ruled them out. Now, her diagnosis is shingles, but without the typical symptoms of shingles. I am going to see her today for another look and possibly a new diagnosis. I hope she can at least get the swelling down. I'm tired of sitting about with my leg up, or feeling guilty when I'm at work and can't sit that way. I'm grateful my Corvette has automatic transmission because I no longer need to work a clutch pedal with my left foot.

Enough of this; it's time to see the doc.

If you are what you drive, I'm a Corvette!

2009-08-11T07:07:00.002-05:00

After several years of driving a nice little Nissan that was paid for and got great gas mileage, I gave in to the impulse to buy a sexy car. If I tell you I bought a six-year-old Chevy, you'd not be impressed. I bought a 2003 Corvette that is in mint condition, pictured here.

This came after weeks of eyeballing other cars on the road, noting that most cars nowadays are pickup trucks, citified versions of pickup trucks called "SUVs," or generic cars that look like bars of soap with four wheels, designed in a wind tunnel with absolutely no sex appeal at all. Where are the great cars of yesteryear with the fins, the fenders, and distinctive design features that allowed kids like me to identify a car by make, model and year on first glance? (I almost said running boards, but they were way before my time.)

I was attracted to the Saturn Sky and actually visited a Saturn dealer for a closer look, but the Sky has no room for a duffel bag with the top down and barely room for one Scuba tank and nothing else with the top up. Then I drove across the street to a Jeep-Chrysler dealer and saw this beauty with a price I knew was right. The salesman wanted to sell, and gave me a huge trade-in on the old Nissan to make it hard to resist. My resistance collapsed because I knew, if I slept on it overnight, it would be gone.

So, goodbye to the Buick station wagons, four-door family sedans, and fuel-efficient cars with no power in the top end gear that I've been driving. The two cars I most enjoyed were the big old Chevy Impala I bought when I came home from the Army, and a Pontiac Catalina we used to bring the twins home from the hospital. The rest have been sedate cars that a father of four is supposed to drive. I'm now a Chevy man again, and I love it.

this old house

2009-07-01T20:08:00.002-05:00

Fixing something in an old house is like replacing a part on an old car. Once you get started, one thing leads to another and you have that '56 '57 '58 '59 Chevy that somebody wrote the song about.

We replaced our kitchen, which sorely needed replacement. That included the kitchen window, the ceiling, the floor all the way down the hall to the bathroom, the shelves and cabinets, the a/c ducts over the kitchen, and most of the appliances. And a new electrical panel to replace a panel with those funky old glass fuses.

Then we replaced the front door with a door that should withstand a hurricane.

Then the garage door began to disassemble itself after one of the two big springs went sproinggg, so now we have a new Miami-Dade rated hurricane resistant garage door.

Then the air conditioner died, after 18 years of faithful service. We could have just replaced the a/c unit but there's a nice tax credit if you replace the cooling and heating system with an energy efficient system. That meant taking out an oil furnace, new six years ago, and putting in a heat pump. With the tax credit, the cost difference was less than a thousand bucks. We lived without the a/c for ten days which reminded me how much fun it was to grow up in Florida without air conditioning. I didn't mind it then because we all got sweaty and we all smelled alike, but now I thoroughly dislike the high humidity.

All of this should make the house easier to sell someday if we (or our children) put the house on the market.

This gives new meaning to the expression, "I'm out spending my children's inheritence," but in this case it's all borrowed money. They might get most of it back whenever the house sells - which we sincerely hope will not happen for the next 20 or 40 years!

major and minor marvels

2009-06-17T17:46:00.003-05:00

Yesterday evening I was thinking of two marvels, one major and one minor, but not unimportant.

The major marvel is that my opthamologist zapped my bionic right eye with a laser, cutting a square hole in a cloudy membrane behind the artificial lens that was installed last summer, and making my world look clearer. It seems that getting a cloudy membrane behind an artificial lens is a side effect that occurs in some cases. The good - no, amazing - news is that the problem can be fixed with a laser beam that cuts a hole in the membrane, cutting out a little tiny squarish piece that becomes a "floater." The doctor says the floater will become less obvious with time; in fact, should sink out of sight (so to speak) in a week or so. Even if it does not sink out of sight, it is so minor and the improvement to my visual acuity is so great that I don't care!

(My next appointment with the eye doctor is to have X-ray vision installed. Just kidding, but wait a few years. It might become possible some day.)

The minor marvel is my obtaining a . . . (drum roll) . . . meat thermometer, one of the instant-read kinds with a digital dial, of course. I used it last night on a nice piece of salmon. I waited for it to get to 145 degrees and it was perfect. No more stabbing with a fork, trying to decide if it's done enough, no more bringing it inside to be told it isn't done enough. I've always had the hardest time with salmon because I don't want to burn it or overcook it, and it looks pretty much the same to me whether it's done or only half-way done. No more of that! All I need to do now is replace all the working parts of my grill and I'll be set to grill with the best of them.

Speaking of marvels, the Rays are on a roll. They have discovered that the thin air of Denver seems to allow baseballs to fly out of the stadium easier than at sea level. Or, that's my theory for today.

Saturday

2009-06-13T12:22:00.004-05:00

I'm "celebrating" today (Saturday) in my favorite manner: Slept in late, but not too late; enjoyed reading the paper and drinking coffee in bed with my best friend in the whole wide world; fiddled with the computer long enough to transfer photos from my camera into it; got out of the house long enough to clean the pool filter and then sweep the pool manually with a new-fangled brush; trimmed back two bushes that were threatening to take over a wall; came in for lunch with my BFITWWW after doing her the favor of taking a quick shower; and now I'm fiddling with the computer again, thinking about how HOT it is outside.

I'm overdue with the task of sending photos to people. My friends can find me in Flickr, where I will upload some photos of grand-nieces taken in Naples last weekend. I also need to add new photos of our grandson, Quentin, to our iPods. I need to run up to the library to get another book by Randy Wayne White, an author from Ft. Myers who writes adventure/ mystery stories that remind me of the Travis McGee stories written by John D. MacDonald, a Sarasota writer. White's main character, Doc Ford, is like Travis McGee only smarter and tougher. The stories are page-turners and I feel like I've been there, like I could drive down to Sanibel Island and find Doc Ford in his house/lab or on his boat.

I'd take my bike to the library but I also need to go pick up more chlorine for the pool. The house next door has been gutted, right down to the masonry walls, and we've had dust blowing around the neighborhood and into the pool for weeks. Today, the filter wasn't green with algae as usual; it was brown with dirt. That new-fangled pool brush has a big flap that forces the brush into firm contact with the pool wall and bottom, making the job easier. I seldom brush the pool manually but, today, it was overdue.

I need to get back from the pool store in time to get ready to go out for dinner and a movie, bringing this Saturday to a perfectly suitable end.

Before I go, let me digress: The last time I was in Tarpon Springs I drove out to find the house where we lived when I was a kid, in the early 50's. Couldn't find it. I've now figured out where it is and why I didn't recognize it. The city acquired the lot next door, then ran a new street back into what used to be piney woods. Those woods, which used to have old brick streets left over from Florida's boom days of the 1920's, are now full of houses. Progress, Florida style. Disgusting.

I'm going to miss Pontiac

2009-04-24T16:08:00.002-05:00

The news is that GM is going to drop the Pontiac model in its entirety.

I'm going to miss it. As a kid, the Pontiac was a step up from the Chevrolets my parents drove. The distinctive Indian head logo you'd see in a garage needed no words of explanation.

I owned only one Pontiac, a Catalina. Our neighbor said they weren't as good as they used to be, but we got good service out of it. I used it to drive our twins home from the hospital, and we took it to Boca Raton when we moved from Tallahassee.

The Pontiac GTO was the first muscle car, with an 8-cylinder engine. The Beach Boys sang about their "little GTO." So did a group named Ronny and the Daytonas.

I'll miss it, but considering I haven't bought one since 1975, I'm not shocked they are closing their doors for good.

Facebook and the slow death of blogs

2009-04-17T07:01:00.003-05:00

OK, so I'm one of the millions of old folks who have discovered Facebook. The young folks who jumped into Facebook earlier need not worry (too much) about their parents wanting to snoop over their shoulders. We are having too much fun re-discovering people we haven't seen since our time in the Army, college, high school, and even elementary school.

I have noticed that the bloggers in my family (including me) don't "blog" as much as we used to. Our limited time for such stuff is being consumed by Facebook, where you can make editorial comments like this one knowing who your audience will be.

Writing on a blog reminds me of the classic poem, "I sneezed a sneeze into the air. It fell to Earth I knew not where, but hard and cold were the looks of those in whose vicinity I snoze." I don't know who will read this - if anyone - but I know my "friends" in Facebook will see my little status updates and photos I put in my album, and I'll see theirs.

So, I'm not saying goodbye here, but if I seem to be doing this even less frequently than usual, you'll know why. If you want to keep up with me more often, you'll have to join Facebook and become my "friend."

oh, shut up

2009-03-03T20:14:00.003-05:00

I have a very low tolerance for "talking heads" on TV, but there are a few in particular I would like to single out, if for no other reason than to vent my spleen.

("Vent my spleen" is from a medieval notion that the spleen was the source of a hot temper, and by "venting" it, one would be letting loose of one's anger. Think of it as primitive anger management. Now, you are smarter than you were 30 seconds ago!)

The people I would like to hear nothing from again include:

Nancy Grace. How can a woman so beautiful and so smart be so utterly obnoxious? I'll bet she uses commercial breaks to change into dry panties. I cannot watch her on our big TV any more because, if I hear the phrase "tot mom" one more time, I will throw something at it. Is there any other case in the country going on besides the Caylee Anthony case?

Jim Cramer: This guy is CNBC's resident expert on the stock market. He appears to be off his meds, hopping and jumping around, while the TV cameras roll from left to right, zooming in and out. It's enough to induce an epileptic fit in a healthy person. If I could hear him on the radio I might pay attention, but I fear he'll have a heart attack one of these days.

Lou Dobbs: Before the last election, Dobbs' main agenda item consisted of illegal immigrants. That's basically all he talked about. Now, he ranting about anything "liberal," including the liberal media, who won't cover the stories he thinks important. One of these days he will vomit green bile, right in front of the camera.

Newt Gingrich: This blowhard brought us the "Contract On America" in 1994. Now, the liberal media keeping bringing him back for sound bites. I frankly don't care what the man says.

Rush Limbaugh: Need I say more? The guy is stark-raving bananas. He was the featured speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference, misquoting the Preamble to the Constitution and otherwise raving like a loon. Now conservatives are amazed that Democrats are trying to make him look like the new face of the Republican Party. If he isn't, who is? Perhaps one of the governors who want to turn down federal money?

I could go on, but I think I'll shut up myself and go to bed.

random thoughts for January - er, February already?

2009-02-04T08:01:00.003-05:00

A few random thoughts before heading off for work:

Our lives are marked by little pieces of paper we collect along the way, beginning with birth certificates, then high school and college diplomas, honorable discharge certificates from the Army, professional licenses to practice, and so forth. I got a horrible one in the mail yesterday - a Medicare card with my name on it. I have my parents' cards around here somewhere, but this one is mine. Holy cow. Most guys my age, who grew up during the Cold War, never thought we'd live so long. I'm tempted to ask, "God, can I really be old enough for this?" But God's answer would be, "Yes, dummy, and you know it. Now leave me alone so I can worry about 300-pound athletes who think I'm supposed to protect them from injury while they run over each other at 30 miles per hour."

Changing subjects: If the feds want to pump money into infrastructure to get the economy going, why not give it to state and local governments that build and maintain the roads, bridges, sewer treatment plants, and so forth? God knows how many of Florida's bridges are ready to crumble.

By infrastructure, I do not mean Clearwater's proposed new marina. The waiting list at the marina on the beach is so long they expected a huge demand for the new marina but only three or four people have paid deposits for slips. Give that idea up, commissioners. Put that money where it will do more good.

I also do not mean those miniature traffic circles I see under construction, so small they fit within street intersections. Those things are traffic hazards and a waste of money.

I can understand why several of President Obama's appointees have serious income tax problems. When you see federal tax money going to the banks so they can spend millions to redecorate their offices, pay huge bonuses to the "good people" who ran them into the ditch, and plan getaways in Las Vegas, you wish you could get away with not paying, too. Those appointees are powerful, successful, big-time politicians; you wonder how many smaller fish simply haven't been caught yet.

Isn't it refreshing to see our president look at a TV camera and admit that he screwed up? The American people can forgive someone who 'fesses up and does not play the duck-and-cover drill we are accustomed to seeing.

My children haven't "blogged" for weeks. I wonder whether FaceBook has taken the place of blogging? The kids went to FaceBook and now us old folks have, too. I've contacted several high school friends I haven't seen since graduation. I suppose that means the kids will abandon FaceBook and find another place where they can hang out, electronically, without us old folks looking over their shoulder.

More later -

death of Google? maybe not yet, but -

2009-01-31T09:48:00.005-05:00

Earlier today it seemed that Google, the source of nearly everything I know, had shot itself in the head. For awhile, if you went into Google and entered any search, no matter what for, you got this message: "warning - visiting this web site may harm your computer."

As a test, I searched for the two major daily newspapers in the Tampa Bay area and then searched for "mapquest," and got the same result. For fun, when I searched for "google.com" using Google, it appeared there, too!

The main problem was that you couldn't go forward and take your chances. You had to go back and try again, which failed for the same reason. You had to wonder if someone had hacked Google and caused this to happen.

I don't know who Google's competitors are, but they just got a major boost. This may have been a temporary glitch, but I'm looking for a good alternative.

counting down the hours

2009-01-15T17:32:00.002-05:00

George W. Bush has four more days plus a few hours to occupy the office of President of the United States. I'd be happy if he would hit the road for Texas tomorrow and be done with it. The following web site is counting down the hours, minutes and seconds until high noon on January 20, at which time his term of office ends and the term of Barack Obama begins:

http://inaugurationday2009.com/schedule.html

To my friend(s) from high school and in-law(s) who have been sending me bad jokes about Barack Obama, please understand that I am deleting them faster than you are forwarding them. (Why are none of them ever original to the sender?). They are not funny and I am not amused, or would not be amused if I bothered to look at them. You may as well just relax and see what happens over the next four years. Mr. Obama won. Get over it. To paraphrase what our British cousins say when the royal crown passes to another head, the President is gone to Texas, long live the President.

almost finally done

2009-01-08T23:12:00.002-05:00

DSC_0706
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

The topless island got its top installed, and now the kitchen looks done except for a few odd jobs by the electrician. Finally!

Colin and Sarah and ___

2009-01-08T01:10:00.002-05:00

Colin and Sarah and ___
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

Three months away, more or less . . .

looking almost finished

2009-01-02T22:21:00.002-05:00

looking almost finished
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

The kitchen, functional and nearly finished.

Christmas Eve

2008-12-28T14:46:00.003-05:00

Christmas Eve
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

All I wanted for Christmas was our kids together with us at the same time, which is getting harder and harder as time goes by. Here we are at First Methodist of Clearwater on Christmas Eve. Glorious!

kitchen update, revised (again)

2008-12-19T22:37:00.000-05:00

Here's an update as of tonight (Friday): The plumber came in (two of them) and they installed the kitchen sink and connected the line to the ice maker. The new kitchen window is now installed. We now have the flooring installed, the cabinets installed (still missing a couple of doors), the granite countertops installed, all the tiles for the backsplash installed (still needs grout), and all of the appliances except the oven and microwave. The electrician still has a few odd jobs. The island in the middle of the kitchen and the window sill will be installed Monday. I replaced the rack in the hall closet. Tomorrow (Saturday) or Sunday I will put a second coat of paint in the dining area and parts of the kitchen, hang a shelf back on the wall, attach a new duct to the clothes dryer, and replace a shower head, and then I may as well mow the front and back yards. THEN I'm going to sit back and eat grapes while my wife moves everything that was in the kitchen back in the kitchen.

To appreciate how far this project has gone since it started, scroll down to see earlier photos. At the bottom, click on "older posts."

small detail

2008-12-19T00:24:00.004-05:00

small detail
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

I'd said I might slip in a small detail from time to time, so here's a small detail.

Phase 6

2008-12-13T16:59:00.003-05:00

Phase 6
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

Starting today, this is the last photo I'm going to upload until our kids come home and see the final project completed, although I might slip in a small detail here or there. I mean, we have to save something to surprise them for Christmas!

light at the end of the tunnel

2008-12-12T19:03:00.002-05:00

Phase 6
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

The cabinet man began installing the cabinets today. He is a perfectionist. I like perfectionists!

Phase 6 begins

2008-12-11T21:34:00.002-05:00

Phase 6 begins
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

The cabinets have arrived! With any luck they will be installed on Friday, or at least the lower cabinets will be, so the counter man can get started.

making haste slowly

2008-12-08T20:37:00.005-05:00

Phase 5
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

You have to look sharp to see the differences since last Thursday.

more progress

2008-12-04T18:37:00.002-05:00

Phase 5
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

The progress may seem slow judging from this photo, but we now have a ceiling and walls with the gaps filled in.

Phase 5 begins

2008-12-03T22:17:00.004-05:00

Phase 5 begins
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

New ceiling, in rough form, now that there isn't much left to tear out!

the demo phase continues!

2008-12-02T23:03:00.004-05:00

Phase 4
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

Slo-o-o-o-w progress. What's hard to see here is the new ductwork for the heating and air-conditioning, and the electrician's wiring, outlets, and "cans" for the overhead lighting.

end of the demo phase

2008-11-21T17:00:00.005-05:00

end of Phase 3
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

What was once a kitchen is now just empty space, waiting for the electrician, the HVAC man, and the guys to install the flooring, the cabinets, the counters, the appliances . . . not to mention the ceiling . . .

it's time for a new kitchen

2008-11-18T22:15:00.002-05:00

Phase 3
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

Our kitchen is just plain worn out. Time for a new one! Here, the demolition crew merrily attacks the shelving.

well, one more

2008-11-17T12:24:00.002-05:00

I know I said I'd stop writing political entries for the rest of this year, but I can't help myself.

Senator John McCain, appearing on Jay Leno's show, said he has been "sleeping like a baby" since the election: " . . . out for two hours . . . wake up, cry . . . out for two hours . . . wake up, cry . . ."

Memo to the Republican Party: Fire the vicious meatheads who have been orchestrating your campaigns lately, and let your candidates be themselves. With a little more humor like Senator McCain is capable of demonstrating, and with the kind of class and dignity he exhibited in his concession speech, he could be the President-Elect today.

I know you won't do that, and as a Democrat it pleases me to know you will continue to run the sort of no-class hatchet jobs you've been running, but as an American I deplore the divisive, cutthroat campaigns that play into the hands of certain talk show hosts but otherwise prevent us from uniting to solve problems.

Speaking of divisiveness, consider this: A Catholic priest in South Carolina has told his parishioners that, if they voted for Obama, they should repent or stay away from communion. Do we need any more evidence as to why certain branches of organized religion, and in particular the Roman Catholic Church, have become not only irrelevant but counterproductive to the needs of the world?

notice to all you Red states

2008-11-10T15:28:00.007-05:00

This will probably be my last political entry for the remainder of the year. It is not original with me but, now that I live in a Blue state, I just had to "borrow" it. This required some major modifications, notably because it was written before the election and the author expected another Republican victory. (Note to the humor-impaired: The statistics are probably flawed but they illustrate the point pretty well.)

Dear Red States:

We were afraid you would steal this election, too, and we seriously considered forming our own country. It still seems like a good idea now, particularly in view of the ugliness and hatred expressed during the long and nasty campaign.

We intend to form our own country, to be known as Neuvo California, and we're taking the other Blue States with us. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and all the slave states. We get stem cell research, the best beaches, and most of the good ski resorts. We get the Statue of Liberty and the Golden Gate Bridge; you get Dollywood. We get M.I.T. and Harvard; you get Ole' Miss. We get 85% of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs; you get Alabama. We get two-thirds of the tax revenues; you get to make the Red states pay their fair share. Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22% lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.

Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals and your hockey moms. They have kids they're apparently willing to send overseas for no good purpose, and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq , and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we're not willing to spend any more of our resources in what began as a hunt for Osama bin Laden. (Whatever happened to him? How can a 6'4" man with poor health be hiding in the mountains for so long?)

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80% of the country's fresh water, 90% of the pineapple and lettuce, 90% of the nation's fresh fruit, 95% of America's quality wines, 90% of all cheese, 90% of the high tech industry, 95% of the corn and soybeans (thanks Iowa!), most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus Stanford and Cal Tech, and all of the service academies. With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 65% of all old and obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), nearly 100% of the tornadoes, 80% of hurricanes that make landfall, and 65% of all the alligators and mosquitos. You get 80% of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100% of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia. We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

Additionally, 38% of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale; 62% believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the war, the death penalty, or gun laws; 44% say that evolution is only a theory; 53% that Saddam was involved in 9/11; and 61% of you crazy nuts believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.

Finally, we're taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico

Peace out,

Blue States

a new day, for better or for worse

2008-11-07T21:56:00.003-05:00

The election of the first black President this week is historic for many reasons, not the least of which is that the occupant of the White House will be an articulate man of substantial intelligence who wants to do right by the American people.

I commend Senator McCain for his classy, dignified concession speech. I wish his followers would pay heed to it.

I would like to say I am disheartened that so many of his followers, in venting their outrage at the results of the election, are demonstrating that their hostility towards Barack Obama is due to the color of his skin. I would like to say I am disheartened, but frankly I expected it. Their bigoted motives are illustrated by the first "joke" I heard after the results were announced. I won't repeat it, but the punch line included a reference to watermelons and collard greens. This came from someone I respected, and my wife heard the same "joke" from a woman who thought it was the "Christian thing to do" to oppose Obama.

I expected this reaction for several reasons, one of which is that racism is very much alive in this country. It is alive in the older generation more so than the younger generation, which is an optimistic sign, but it is alive. I can now say that racism was a huge factor among the McCain supporters without being accused of playing the race card. I have seen the race card, and it is the joker.

Another reason has less to due with Obama than it does with the history of the Democratic Party in the civil rights movement of the 1960's. It was President Eisenhower who federalized the National Guard in Arkansas in 1957, but it was JFK and LBJ who put the weight of the federal government behind the civil rights movement. It was LBJ who pushed the the Civil Rights Act through Congress in 1964. The Democratic Party has been at the forefront on human rights issues. This has alienated Republicans and Southern Democrats, who drifted away from the party. When I registered to vote in Tallahassee, you either registered Democratic or you had no party primary to vote in. Now the South is a two-party system, and Democratic candidates for every office have to defend themselves against negative campaigns from people opposed to the human rights positions that the Democratic Party is identified with.

Barack Obama represents one of the ultimate objectives of the civil rights movement, and he embodies a core belief of Democrats that a man, or woman, should be elected based upon merit and not race or religion. To illustrate how far we've come, remember that people died during the civil rights movement. Now we have the son of a black father and a white mother preparing to move into the White House.

The man has a daunting challenge ahead of him. He will be hounded every step of the way by the naysayers. I have confidence in him. To the McCain supporters who didn't hear the Senator's concession speech, I'll just paraphrase what the Republicans have been saying for eight years: Obama won. Get over it.

election night lunacy

2008-11-04T20:08:00.010-05:00

And now . . . the envelope, please.

No, before that, we have sit through several hours of blathering and lunacy by the talking heads. My regular readers should know I have an extraordinarily low opinion of talking heads.

It is a few minutes after 8 p.m. Eastern time as I begin typing this, and CNN insists that Florida is one of the states whose polls just closed. Wrong. Except for a few counties in the Panhandle, which are on Central time, they closed at 7 p.m., the ballots are being fed through the computers, and ABC and other networks are carrying the early results.

Carl Rove, pontificating about politics in Florida, just told us that St. Petersburg is in Hillsborough County. Wrong. He must have been watching Rays baseball all summer. St. Petersburg is in Pinellas County. Tampa is in Hillsborough County. There are huge differences between the counties, politically. Pinellas has always been a Republican stronghold. Hillsborough County always seems like it should be the subject of a grand jury investigation.

Some of the networks are predicting outcomes in states based on exit polls. At least one network tells us righteously that they won't do that if the outcome appears close. Meanwhile, voters in the Pacific time zone have until 8 p.m., Pacific time, to go to the polls and vote. How are those predictions affecting those voters?

I think I'll pop open a Sam Adams beer (made in Massachussets, which this year is Obama country), get out the peanuts, and see what happens next. I may update this later in the evening as the frivolity unfolds.

UPDATE: After switching back and forth among the networks, I give CBS the "Hurl" Award. The visual appearance of CBS, with flashing graphics and a swirling background, is the one most likely to cause viewers to lose their dinner. I like ABC's appearance. I think I would like Fox's, but the local affiliate keeps hogging about 50 percent of the screen with an update of local races that dominates the bottom and right side of the picture.

Of all the graphics they can show us, give me the old map of the U.S. with the states color coded. Everything else requires the eye to move all around the screen and then the data changes before you get a chance to take it all in.

I'm hearing a discussion of the Pennsylvania results to the effect that Sarah Palin made a difference for John McCain, but a negative difference. She apparently didn't hurt him in the states he was expected to win but, in the "battleground" states, her initial attractiveness lasted maybe two weeks and then she lost it.

SECOND UPDATE: At almost the precise moment the polls closed in the Pacific time zone states, CNN projected Obama the winner. You folks out West could have just gone out for dinner, saving yourselves the trouble of voting. Meanwhile, the CBS web page was showing only 206 Electoral College votes for Obama, 64 short of the number needed to win. Ooops, it just changed. With 0 percent of the votes counted in California and Washington and 6 percent counted in Oregon, CBS is projecting all three states as Obama states.

FINAL UPDATE FOR THE NIGHT: No network has called Florida, which is still close. At 10:57 p.m., the state's web site is reporting the vote count as pro-Obama by a difference of 143,383 votes out of a total of 7,296,451 votes cast (not counting a few votes for 12, yes 12, third-party candidates). However, this year, it makes absolutely no difference which way Florida goes. There will be no disputed ballots worth the trouble of fighting for. I could have stayed away from the polls, gone out for a dinner, gone to a movie, and come home in time to see the outcome.

I was about to turn the TV off and hit the sack when I heard John McCain's concession speech. I believe his speech is the classiest speech I've heard from any politician. I wish his campaign had been run by the people who helped write that speech. If you missed it, you should find the full text of it and read it, and send it on to people you know who have been feeding you a continuous line of lies and baloney about Barack Obama all summer long.

p.s.: They just called Florida for Obama, but at this point, who cares?

thank God it's almost over

2008-11-03T17:19:00.002-05:00

After 20-plus months of campaigning, the presidential election will be over and done with tomorrow, thank God.

I know why so many Americans voted early. After voting, they can believe that the campaigns are finished and they can turn their attention elsewhere, immune from all of the lies and bull manure that has been slung during the campaign. I didn't vote early. I didn't want to allow them more time to lose my ballot. I'll be in line tomorrow morning, and it should be a short line. But as far as I'm concerned, the campaign ended weeks ago. It's all over but the shouting.

No matter who wins, here's the best part: George W. Bush has 77 days left in office. That's eleven weeks. I think he should pack up and move back to Texas the day after the election.

And here's another good part: No matter who wins, the winner will be able to move into the White House on schedule. Unlike other parts of the world, we don't have armies staging coups.

My wish is this, and I know my four regular readers don't need to be told this because their mother taught them better: I wish all Americans would accept the results of the election and move on, vowing to try again in four years if their candidate lost, and not engage in the acidic, venomous, hateful criticism that has passed for political discussion in the post-Reagan era.

That's my wish, for whatever it's worth.

we love Halloween!

2008-10-30T19:38:00.002-05:00

Halloween - 1984 (?)
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

winners: steadfast Rays fans

2008-10-29T07:37:00.002-05:00

We got tickets at the last minute to see Game 7 against the Red Sox in the American League Championship Series, and I've gotta tell you, it was the most exciting and nerve-wracking game I've even seen in any sport. Having blown a seven-run lead to lose Game 5, and then having lost Game 6, and then letting the Red Sox load the bases in the top of the eighth inning, the Rays looked like they were history. But no! They came back to win Game 7, rewarding fans at the Trop who stood for most of the game, ringing cowbells, blowing horns, and making one helluva racket.

Of course they would. Rays fans have learned to expect the unexpected. Now they are down three games to one in the World Series, going against Philadelphia tonight for the remainder of a game that was suspended when the puddles on the field threatened to become ice slicks. The Phillies took an early lead, of course. Facing one of the toughest pitchers in MLB, the Rays' batting order came alive, tying the game at two all. How bad were the Rays' batters? Pena and Longoria were hitless in the World Series until Monday night. Pena got a hit; Longoria drove him in. Upton got a hit; Pena drove him in. Score tied. Game suspended on account of rain (first time in World Series history).

If you don't watch baseball, you are missing high drama. Watch tonight. If the Rays bring the series back to the Trop, it will be a totally fitting end to the Rays' season if Game 7 is played on Halloween night inside a dome that ought to be painted orange.

losers: fickle Fenway fans

2008-10-16T23:27:00.003-05:00

Tonight, with the Rays ahead of the Red Sox 7 - 0 in the top of the 7th inning, we were treated to the sorry spectacle of "fans" leaving Fenway. I was shouting at the TV set: "The Red Sox are only down by seven! They can do this!"

They did it, all right, winning 8 - 7 in the bottom of the ninth. Aaargh!

I can say two things: (1) I like and respect the Sox too much to see them lose the way they were losing, and I'm glad they did it. (2) I hope the "fans" who bailed out early are still kicking themselves in the rear for missing one of the most exciting comebacks in baseball history. Never, ever, leave a game early unless you are pregnant and your labor pains have started.

Next game: Saturday, the 18th, in St. Petersburg (not in Tampa, as the announcers said). They will be back in the much-maligned Trop, where the Rays have done well, and I'm still predicting the Rays will be the next AL champions.

what Mr. McCain can learn from Mr. Sears and Mr. Roebuck

2008-10-15T23:29:00.004-05:00

When I was in college, I spent two summers working at the Sears store in Clearwater. I was on the "flying squad," filling in when people went on their vacation . . . two weeks in sporting goods, two weeks in building materials, two weeks in shoes, and so on, everywhere but ladies' clothing and the sewing machine department.

One of the department managers gave me an important lesson in salesmanship, which is, "Don't knock the competition. You won't sell anything by saying how bad the other guy's products are." If a customer is in Sears, holding a shirt, you won't sell it by saying how terrible Montgomery Ward shirts are. The customer may just walk out, empty-handed, and check out the shirts at Penney's instead.

Sears products are in three grades - Good, Better, and Best. The good products are perfectly good, for the money. For a few dollars more you can get a better one, and for a few more dollars, the best one.

I wish Senator McCain would learn the lesson I learned from the Sears department manager. There were reasons why I might have wanted to vote for him, months ago, but I've forgotten what they were. All I've heard lately is how bad the competition is. Unfortunately, we don't get to go to Penney's for a third choice. The other choice is Senator Obama, and he is looking better the more McCain tries to slime him. McCain should merchandise himself like Sears, by saying Obama is good but I'm better. Instead, we see him with this smirk on his face. Senator McCain, a smirk does not become you. It makes you look like a man with an intestinal disorder.

I am particularly tired of this silly nonsense about the 1960's radical, William Ayers. Young people may be unaware of this, but there were a lot of people in the 1960's who thought they were radicals or wished they could be radicals. We each had a different definition of what a "radical" was. The revolution we predicted failed before it started. We got our hair cut, we got jobs and families and mortgages, and now we are looking at AARP membership application forms, asking ourselves where the old guy we see in the mirror came from.

Not everybody wanted to be a radical; some became Republicans. In college, at places like USC and the U. of Florida, they became student politicians. There they learned the tactics of campaign dirty tricks called (please pardon my French) ratfucking, which they put to good use when they went to work for the Nixon campaign.

It seems clear to me that ratfucking is alive and well among the supporters of the McCain campaign, judging from the number of emails I get from people trying to tell me how bad Obama is. Try this: Go to Snopes.com and search for "Obama." You will be amazed at the lies being told about the man. I am deleting these emails as fast as they come in. They will not change my mind. My doctor told me something the other day I've never heard before, which is that I have high blood pressure. She gave me three months to bring it down, or she will prescribe pills. To combat high blood pressure I am tuning out the presidential campaign. For the rest of this month, all I will care about is whether the Rays can win the American League pennant and then win the World Series. Doctor's orders.

Green Monstah subdued

2008-10-14T21:27:00.003-05:00

upton
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

If you've been inside Fenway Park, you may admire but don't really appreciate the size of the Green Monster until you see it from the players' perspective. (Note the size of the left fielder.) In Game 3, B.J. Upton drives the ball over the wall, heading for the Charles River. Five innings later, Rocco Baldelli bounced one off of the Sports Authority sign. (Photo credit: Brian Cassella, St. Petersburg Times)

Rays - Red Sox tonight

2008-10-10T15:59:00.003-05:00

swing and a miss
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

Even if you don't watch baseball all year, you've gotta watch the Red Sox playing the Rays here in St. Petersburg, beginning tonight. I believe this will be, for all practical purposes, the World Series because only the Red Sox can keep the Rays from going all the way.

how to lie with statistics

2008-10-10T08:39:00.008-05:00

dow_graph
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

One of the most valuable books I've ever read was "How to Lie with Statistics," by Darrell Huff. His main point is that statistics don't lie, if the numbers are accurate to begin with, but they can be used to distort reality.

Consider this chart, which depicts yesterday's drop in the Dow Jones Industrials average. You might think the Dow dropped to near zero. This is a perfect example of what Huff calls a "gee whiz graph," because the Y-axis (the vertical axis) does not start at zero. It starts at 8,500 and goes to 9,500 (or maybe less), which exaggerates the graph line tremendously. The Dow fell big-time yesterday, but it did not go all the way to the bottom. It fell 7.33 percent. (This is a very common graph, such as you will find in virtually every publication with news of the stock market. There's no intent to mislead or deceive, but it definitely produces a "gee whiz" reaction.)

Now, if you have faith in this country and faith in the innate ability of Americans to overcome adversity, you ought to agree that this is not time to press the panic button. What goes down will go up, maybe not quickly and possibly not all the way back to the top, but the stock market will not form a crater upon impact with the bottom.

Happy anniversary!

2008-10-06T21:13:00.002-05:00

Megan and Conor
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

. . . and best wishes for many more to come from all your family and friends.

Evan Longoria

2008-10-04T16:40:00.003-05:00

Evan Longoria
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

If there's one player who represents the new face of the Rays this year, it is Evan Longoria, who made it to the All Star team and who hit two home runs in the opening game of the American League division playoffs. This photo was taken on September 19, when the Twins were in town.

keeping priorities straight

2008-10-02T22:49:00.002-05:00

After the Rays won their very first post-season playoff game this afternoon, I had a choice: The Cubs were playing the Dodgers, the University of South Florida Bulls were playing Pitt, and Joe Biden was "debating" a woman who looked, and sounded, like she was reading speeches from a Teleprompter. Gee, what should I do?

(I put "debating" in quote marks because these "debates" are not debates. I took the debate course in high school and I've been a judge at debate contests among law students. Those were debates.)

I promised not to watch the "debate" but the Cubs were losing and so were the Bulls, so I switched to the "debate" in hopes that I'd miss a dramatic comeback while I was gone. No such luck. Instead, I watched Sarah Palin give one of those performances that only a practiced politician can put on, which is to recite short speeches from memory while smiling constantly and giving the thousand-yard stare as if reading a script posted on the back wall of the auditorium. If a spontaneous, original thought came out of her mouth, I missed it.

George W. Bush has 108 days left in office but for all practical purposes he has left the building. The meltdown of banks, lenders and Wall Street forced him to come out into the sunlight to give a short rah-rah speech and then hustle back into the White House without taking any questions. He needn't have bothered. In fact, he could spend the next 108 days in the White House, watching movies and sending out for pizza, and nobody would notice or care.

That brings me back to the point I wanted to make, which is that the thought of Sarah Palin being a heartbeat away from the Presidency gives me the heebie-jeebies. Baseball has been my escape hatch all summer. What I considered to be the grand rhetoric of the nominating conventions has become the irritating pestilence of the 15-second sound bite, which is all the average journalist knows how to deal with. I know who I'm going to vote for, but that's in November. Between now and then we have the glorious month of October, in which division playoffs, league playoffs, and the World Series will all be played. The Cubs will have to come from behind a two-game loss to stay in competition but the Rays are going to go all the way.

joy in Mudville

2008-09-23T21:19:00.003-05:00

The lowly Rays, doormat of major league baseball for ten years, have come up a big-time winner this year. They will become the Boys of October when the regular season ends, entering the American League divison championship games against the White Sox, with the winner playing the Red Sox or the Angels. Over in the National League, the championship games will probably be Cubs versus the Phillies. This is exciting stuff! I haven't really cared about a baseball team since high school, although I was becoming a Red Sox fan until this year. It is hard to avoid becoming an avid fan of your hometown team.

A couple of minor points that even professional sports writers still can't keep straight: (1) It is no longer the Devil Rays, just the Tampa Bay Rays. And,

(2) It is not the Tampa Rays, the Tampa franchise, or the Tampa team. They are not in Tampa Bay, either. Tampa Bay is a large body of water separating Tampa from St. Petersburg, home of the Rays. Tampa has the Bucs and the Lightning, and used to have the Rowdies. Tampa is also home of the University of South Florida although we are actually in central Florida.

No, to see the Rays you come to Tropicana Field, in St. Petersburg. They play under a big dome, which some people don't like, but they have a huge winning record at home and they never get a rain delay.

Right now, even as we speak, the Rays are winning in Baltimore in typical Rays fashion: Two out in the top of the 8th, and they scored four runs to go ahead of the Orioles by two. Joe Maddon has taken a bunch of unknowns, second choices, kids fresh out of college, kids fresh up from the minors, and a few veterans, and they have blended into a team that wins even with key players on the disabled list. It almost doesn't matter who's sitting on the bench or which positions the guys in the field are playing. They believe in each other and they back each other up.

I made this prediction on this blog on May 28: The World Series will be the Cubs versus the Rays. That sounded good on May 28 and it sounds even more likely now.

no longer the king

2008-09-03T22:05:00.002-05:00

If the one-eyed is king in the land of the blind, my royal status lasted exactly two weeks.

Yesterday, my ophthamologist replaced the lens in my right eye. The experience was, again, painless and brief. The dilation wore off in about 24 hours, and today I drove myself to work. I can't say I rejoined the ranks of the blind, not literally, but I rejoined the ranks of those who don't need corrective lenses to see.

Oh, I'll need reading glasses but I've been using them for years. I'm not clearly seeing the words on my computer monitor as I type this, about 20 inches from my face, but I suspect that will get better with the passage of time. I can read street signs and traffic signals and turn signals, and I can see pedestrians and small animals in the roadway, and I am not a threat to traffic when I drive. I can read the dial on the alarm clock on the other side of the room in the middle of the night for the first time ever.

I will be able to open my eyes in a swimming pool, clear my mask while scuba diving, and crash headfirst down a slope while skiing without fear of losing contact lenses. I can see the score when the Rays are on TV, which has been a sad thing to see the past two nights as the Yankees prove that they've been loafing all season but are waking up in time for the run-up to the post-season.

Some call this operation a miracle. Some call it science fiction, but it isn't fiction. Some just call it wonderful.

Speaking of miracles, when I was about 12 I decided to test my faith by praying that my eyesight would get normal. It didn't, at least not during the next 52 years. I didn't give up on faith, but neither am I calling this experience an answered prayer. It is more of a demonstration that the ability of scientists to learn about the body and how to repair it is a gift of God, and anybody who interferes with science in the name of religion is an ignorant fool.

political rhetoric

2008-08-28T23:51:00.002-05:00

I've been watching the Democratic National Convention every night, and I'm full to the ears with political rhetoric.

I love it.

In undergraduate school at FSU I majored in Government, or what other universities call political science. I was in perhaps the last class to study the great themes and principles of American government, straight from the best political minds of the last 200-plus years. Within a year or two the department was taken over by the statisticians, the poll-takers, the bean-counters, people who believed there was nothing to believe if it wasn't backed up by an opinion survey. They began learning how to write questions and how to tally the answers. They dismissed the various writings I'd been reading as mere rhetoric.

Balderdash.

Without that rhetoric, you forget where you came from and why you are going where you are going. Without the rhetoric, you lose your way in the forest. You get to the grocery store and can't remember whether you need a dozen eggs and a loaf of bread, or two six-packs and a bag of potato chips.

The speakers at the DNC unloaded some of the finest rhetoric I've heard all year. Pomp and fury. Very serious profundities. Hilarious one-liners. Sound bites galore.

Now the Republicans will have their turn. I'm not going to watch, because I've been hearing their rhetoric for years. They will rail against tax-and-spend liberals. (They prefer no taxes, but spend like drunken sailors.) They will get righteously indignant over abortion, gay rights (or same-sex marriages, which seems easier for them to say), and their version of family values. They will explain that things are going so well in Iraq that we need to keep our troops there. They will talk about experience, although some of the great presidents had no more experience than Senator Obama has. They will remind themselves where they've been and why they are going where they think they are going.

If they are smart, they will keep George W. Bush behind the curtains and off the stage for as long as they can. Dubya has 20 weeks and 3 days left in office. That's 20 weeks and 2 days too long.

through a glass, not quite so darkly

2008-08-20T21:30:00.002-05:00

I want to report to my small handful of faithful readers that my eye surgery yesterday "appears" to have been quite successful.

After seeing the world through glasses (1st grade) and contact lenses (10th grade), my left eye now sees through a crystalens® implant. The crystalens® is a synthetic lens that flexes and "accommodates" like a natural lens. (Note that ® symbol - I wouldn't have bothered but it was just too easy to cut it and paste it.)

It was painless, absolutely painless. The only hard part was waiting longer than I wanted to wait before being wheeled into the operating room. They gave me a sort of "twilight" anaesthetic that relaxed me and let me see and hear everything, and talk. I might have preferred a couple of shots of Scotch and a stick to bite on, but what they gave me was much better. All I could see were a few lights overhead. I knew things were happening with my eye but there wasn't much to do but look at the lights. It was over in a matter of minutes.

Last night I was feeling anxiety because what I could see was blurry. They said to expect blurriness, halos around lights, and double vision for awhile. I was seeing triple vision while watching the Rays beat the Angels. Outside, the street light gave off rays of light. A photographer knows what a star lens does - I was seeing stars. My eye was dilated and it took more than 36 hours for my iris to begin getting back to normal.

Today, the blurriness has cleared up somewhat. I'm still getting some double vision. Looking at letters on the computer monitor, I see a ghost image behind and below the letters, which contributes to the blurriness. I think the dilation contributes to that, and I'm expecting the dilation to be gone tomorrow. Tonight, the street lights no longer look like stars. They still have halos, sort of like seeing them through a light fog, but nothing at all like last night.

I am amazed, grateful, happy. . .and not nearly as anxious. I think this is going to turn out just fine. I may need reading glasses to read with, but if that's the only problem, I can definitely live with that!

Fay, Fay, go away

2008-08-18T18:44:00.004-05:00

You know you are in Florida when your eye surgery is scheduled on a Tuesday and the sixth named tropical storm of the season boils up, threatening to force a postponement. I never ask much from poor Cuba but I am happy to report that the Cuban mountains have rearranged Hurricane Fay, breaking up its eye and sending most of the bad weather off on a tangent. Fay, Fay, just go away. Tomorrow may be a blustery day in our corner of Paradise but not enough to postpone my surgery.

You know you are in Florida when your Key Lime tree begins producing ripe limes, although it is early in the season and the first ripe ones are about the size of marbles.

You know you are in Florida when your swimming pool turns green and remains green after you've cleaned the filter and added four jugs of liquid chlorine. I'm going to have to get serious about chemical warfare on the algae right after the storm blows by.

Speaking of chemical warfare, my lawn is not as green as my swimming pool, and it ought to be green after all the rain we've had. The lawn is showing signs of being eaten by something. I sprayed it with a heavy dose of Dursban, and if that doesn't do the trick, I will have to search through my stash of chemicals and try something else.

Back to that eye surgery: I reminded the folks at work of the adage that, "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed is King." The doctor is doing my left eye tomorrow, and when I return to work I expect to be treated like royalty!

Rays (2008) and Mets (1969)

2008-08-14T23:27:00.002-05:00

One of the things I love about baseball is its historical lore.

The following was stolen from the St. Petersburg Times, which stole it from ESPN.com, thanks to the labors of reseacher Mark Simon who came up with parallels between the '69 Mets and the '08 Rays:

How are the 2008 Rays similar to the 1969 Mets?

The ace starter for the Mets was 24-year-old Tom Seaver.
The ace starter for the Rays is 24-year-old Scott Kazmir.

The 1969 Mets had a 61-101 record 2 years before winning the World Series.
The 2008 Rays had a 61-101 record 2 years ago.

The 1969 Mets had a closer, Ron Taylor, who had won a World Series (1964).
The 2008 Rays have a closer, Troy Percival, who has won a World Series (2002).

The 1969 Mets were 53-39 at the All-Star break.
The 2008 Rays were 55-39 at the All-Star break.

The Mets manager had a 3-letter first name (Gil) and a 6-letter last name (Hodges).
The Rays manager has a 3-letter first name (Joe) and a 6-letter last name (Maddon).

The 1969 Mets had a rookie as their primary third baseman (Wayne Garrett).
The 2008 Rays have a rookie as their primary third baseman (Evan Longoria).

And did we mention that the Mets won the World Series in 1969?
You gotta believe that the winner of the World Series in 2008 will be the Rays.

Five Weeks without contact lenses

2008-08-02T14:59:00.004-05:00

This is Day 33 in glasses, i.e., without my old contacts lenses. I've gotten used to the glasses, somewhat, but not to the point of being able (or at least willing) to drive a car. I probably could if I had to, but I don't trust my ability to deal with heavy traffic.

I've gotten used to our bus system, as crazy as it is, but don't let me start on that again.

The Rays are now officially better than any Rays team in history, having won more games already than the old teams won in any complete season before this year. They are for real. They are going out on the field with good players on the bench due to injuries but the guys on the field are backing each other up and looking like champs. Joe Madden can shift them around to fill in the gaps but wherever he puts them, they perform like they belong in that position. They are truly fun to watch.

And when I'm not watching baseball, there's the Olympics, which is turning out to be the greatest show on Earth, literally. In fact, there's swimming going on even as I type this so it's time to bail outta here and go watch the swimmers. Adios!

Day Eight without glasses

2008-07-16T19:53:00.002-05:00

This is the end of Day Eight without glasses or, rather, without contact lenses. I've worn contacts since tenth grade, but I stopped wearing them last week to let my eyes get adjusted to "normal" in preparation for cataract surgery.

I'm wearing glasses made for my extreme myopia. They make everthing look small. Hold up a magnifying glass and look through it, and you'll see what I mean. Everything looks farther away than normal. My legs are longer, my feet are smaller. Crossing a street (on foot), I pay close attention to approaching cars. Women look about two sizes smaller, which is not a bad thing. I don't dare drive a car any time soon. In this traffic, I'd have a rear-ender before getting downtown.

Everything seems to be paying me special deference. The vertical lines of a door frame bow out as I walk through it. In a library, the ends of book shelves curve away from me as I approach. Looking down, curbs and steps seem to flatten out. None of this is good.

It is good that I'm a touch typist, but if I don't go back and correct my typos it would look like my spell checker went berserk and tried to convert my writing into a foreign language. I considered leaving my typos uncorrected here, just for laughs, but I'd look totally illiterate.

My optometrist said my brain would adjust to these glasses. I'm not sure I want it to. I should have the eye surgery in August and then I can send these glasses where I'll send my old contact lenses -- off to the land fill. There are organizations that collect old specs but I seriously doubt anybody could wear mine. On second thought, maybe I should donate them in case there's another poor soul out there with eyes as bad as mine.

Another good thing is that our county's bus system, as bad as it is, will let me get to and from my eye doctor's office in a reasonable time. This is remarkable because our bus system won't let me get to work in less than an hour and a half, for a trip that takes 25 to 30 minutes to drive. The bus system's routes make no sense. My kids will remember where the Bayside Bridge is. When constructed, it became the missing link in a major north-south artery. There is not one county bus that crosses that bridge. Not one. The bridge carries thousands of drivers daily, some of whom would rather ride a bus than pay four bucks a gallon for gas, but you can't get there from here.

How did I get onto that rant about the bus system? It distracts me from my current situation, stumbling around like Mr. Magoo. His problem was that he refused to wear his glasses. Mine is that they only "sort of" work. But this, too, shall pass.

One more good thing (hey, that's the third good thing here) is that I've rediscovered walking. The Safety Harbor Library is a 45-minute walk and I could probably do it faster. I've been there twice in a week. I plug my iPod into my ears and bop along, hoping for no rain.

That's all the good stuff I can stomach for this epistle. Tomorrow I'm going back to work for the first time in a week -- not that I really want to, but I don't want them to think they can get along fine without me.

dem amazin' Rays

2008-06-30T20:06:00.003-05:00

I've had a love-boredom relationship with baseball all my life. Growing up in Clearwater, the Spring Training home of the Phillies, I tried hard to be a Phillies fan. I saw Robin Roberts pitch. I got a cap with a funny-looking P glued to the front. The P eventually peeled off and so did my interest in baseball.

Fast-foward a long, long time. When our kids were little they started collecting baseball cards, featuring players I'd never heard of. We started watching games on TV, and when a player I never heard of came to bat, we all checked to see if we had his card. My interest in baseball began to perk up.

I bought a history of the rules of baseball and learned that the game goes 'way back. If you could resurrect your great-grandfathers and take them to a game, the game would look to them a lot like it did back when. Soldiers played baseball during the Civil War. The National League was started in 1876, the year Custer and the Seventh Cavalry were wiped out by the Indians.

I decided the history of baseball was more interesting than current events starring the Phillies and our hometown team, the Tampa Bay Rays. The Rays' franchise is going into its eleventh year and for ten years, they never had a winning season.

Until this year. Boy, this year! At the moment, they are the winningest team in Major League Baseball. If they hold on to their lead tonight against the Red Sox (5-2, top of the ninth), they will be 1 1/2 games ahead of the Red Sox.

Can the Rays make it to post-season play? Sure they can. Even a blind old hog can find an acorn now and then. But this year they have the talent to surprise everybody.

stormy Monday, and Tuesday, and . . .

2008-06-25T06:54:00.003-05:00

Driving to work on Monday, I started thinking about the lyrics to "Call it Stormy Monday:"

They call it stormy Monday, but Tuesday's just as bad.
Wednesday's worse, . . .

I couldn't remember the line about Thursday (which is, "Thursday's also sad") and it was too far from Friday to see the eagle getting ready to fly.

The summer weather pattern has started up in Florida and we are having stormy Mondays every day of the week, which is fine by me except I ought to mow the lawn twice a week to keep up.

Some miscellaneous gripes before heading down the River of Steel to work:

Our governor's honeymoon is over. Now that he's a semi-serious V.P. candidate, the nature of his political whoreness has become painfully obvious. He's advocating drilling for oil in the Gulf, off the Florida coastline, which nobody here wants to see. Yesterday he announced a Big Deal with U.S. Sugar to buy lots of swampland for a couple billion dollars, which is being touted (or pimped) as a conservation measure. The state is laying off workers, crimping on its criminal justice system, and cutting back on vital social services, but it seems we have a water management district that is rolling in cash and doesn't know where else to spend it.

Locally, we have a Big Business (no, not the Rays, yet) that is threatening to leave town if the city and county don't come up with a bag of economic incentives. There's a secret deal cooking. This will be another exercise in government subsidies by people who otherwise call themselves "conservatives."

Further south, a young man lost his left arm to an 11-foot alligator in a canal. He survived because he's strong enough to keep hold of a cable despite the alligator's subjecting him to four or five "death rolls." On national TV this morning, he said he's grown up with alligators and they've never bothered him before, but he's noticed they have become more competitive, that is to say, more aggressive and more likely to become man-eaters, in the last few years because Florida is up to its ass in alligators. We have a surplus of the slithery reptiles because the animal rights advocates have been buying up about two-thirds of the annual permits for 'gator catching and not using them. So, we have more of the protected critters occupying a smaller and smaller habitat, and they've lost their fear of humans.

I could go on, but somebody might miss me at work. I don't want to miss seeing the eagle fly on schedule.

Father's Day

2008-06-15T17:10:00.003-05:00

Milton, circa 1952
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

When Shakespeare wrote that "the good [that men do] is oft interred with their bones," he never met my father. Dad left a good name that was remembered long after his death, even back in the small Kentucky town he came from. When I wish I had someone to talk to about a problem, I can think of him and what I believe he would tell me, and I'm comforted.

a whole new view of things is coming up

2008-06-11T20:34:00.003-05:00

In about four weeks, daily living will get very interesting for me.

Between now and then we have one Rays game to go to (if not more), a mini-trip back to Palm Beach County to see sights we haven't seen in years, and a trip to Boston for the Fourth of July, the birthdays of two people close to our hearts, and a Red Sox game at Fenway Park.

When we get back, it will get really interesting. I will take out the contact lenses I have worn since tenth grade -- well, not the exact same lenses, of course -- which replaced glasses I began wearing in the first grade. I may as well flush the contact lenses down the toilet because I don't plan to wear them ever again. Instead, I will allow my eyes at least three weeks to get accustomed to their normal (lousy) shape, and then I'll go in for cataract surgery.

Yep, that's the kind of surgery for old people, and for people like me who develop cataracts. I've been expecting this for eight or nine years, ever since my ophthalmologist told me I was beginning to develop cataracts, but I figured it would happen in five or ten more years -- you know, when I become an old guy. That good doctor has since passed on to his reward but another doctor in his office has told me that I am now a candidate for the procedure. (That's a code word that means the insurance will pay for it.)

My optometrist put it to me bluntly: One eye is 20-40, the other is 20-70, and he can't make lenses that will do any better for me. The cloudiness in my left eye? That's not caused by a dirty, oily, greasy contact lens, which was my theory. It's caused by a cataract which will do nothing with the passage of time but get worse.

The clincher was this: Since I know I'm going to have it done sooner or later AND I know I will be able to see better afterwards . . . why wait?

I had no good answer. Back to see my ophthalmologist again. Now we are serious. I had several questions, one of which was (and I don't want to insult you, doctor, but) can it be done over if something goes wrong, such as putting the wrong artificial lens in the wrong eye, or I'm seeing 20-100 when I come out of it? Answer: Yes, there are several possible ways to deal with such problems, one of which is replacing the bad lens. Another could be Lasik surgery to fine-tune the results.

So, I'm sold. I'd do it tomorrow if we could. Instead, I'm to wear eyeglasses to get around for a week, then see him again, then see him again two weeks after that. He does surgeries on Mondays so it could be the first or second Monday in August when he does the left eye, and another two weeks before the right eye. Meanwhile, I'm Mr. Magoo without the glasses and a guy looking through binoculars, turned the wrong way, with the specs on.

Assuming all goes well, I should be "normal" before Labor Day, whatever that means. My eyes haven't been normal since I was in kindergarten.

Charlie Chan

2008-06-10T21:58:00.003-05:00

I've been hanging around with a low grade fever and a touch of bronchitis for a couple of days. I went to work today and will go tomorrow on the theory that spreading the germs will allow them to leave me sooner. Meanwhile, I've been watching Charlie Chan movies.

Charlie Chan had a aphorism for every situation, whether it was his honorable son-in-law calling from the hospital to report on the status of Charlie's about to become a grandfather, or advice to his Number One or Number Two sons, or a retort to a police officer who wanted to move too hastily.

Naturally, using Google, you can find them all. Here are a few of my favorite Charlie Chan aphorisms from the two movies I saw tonight and a couple I want to see:

Magnifying female charms very ancient optical illusion. (Charlie Chan at the Circus, to his Number One son)

One ounce of experience worth ton of detective books. (Charlie Chan at the Circus, to his son)

Ancient ancestor once say, "As mind is fed with silent thought, so should body absorb its food." (Charlie Chan in Honolulu)

Opinion like tea leaf in hot water - both need time for brewing. (Charlie Chan in Honolulu)

Waiting for tomorrow waste of today. (Charlie Chan in Egypt)

swing and a miss

2008-06-06T07:45:00.002-05:00

swing and a miss
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

Rays pitcher James Shields takes a swing at Coco Crisp after Crisp was hit by a pitch and charged the mound. June 5, 2008, in Boston. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

Rays, again

2008-06-06T07:28:00.002-05:00

When I foolishly predicted the Cubs and the Rays would meet in the World Series this year, I said the Red Sox were the only team to keep the Rays out of it.

The Rays just finished a series in Boston and got swept, again. The team that beat the Red Sox at home can't keep it together at Fenway, although they do seem able to hold their own in brawling. (Note to coaches: Please teach the Rays how to connect with their punches).

Meanwhile, the Cubs still look good. They are 9-1 in their last ten games.

New prediction: Cubs and Red Sox in the World Series. One team with a curse, one with a broken curse. This will be the Series that should have occurred in 2003.

more Rays, Cubs

2008-06-03T07:06:00.004-05:00

Further evidence that nobody reads this blog: A few days ago I predicted that the Rays and the Cubs will be in the World Series this year, for the first time since 1945 (Cubs) or since forever (Rays). Nobody has responded (such as by saying, "are you nuts, or what?").

Of particular interest, the Cubs and Rays continue their winning ways, proving that this blog does not have the effect that Sports Illustrated covers have had on athletes' careers.

As of this morning, the two teams in MLB with the best win-loss percentages are the Cubs and the Rays. Only two teams have won 8 of their last 10 games - the Cubs and the Rays.

This happy dream could end over the next three days, when the Rays play the Red Sox. They are 3-3 against each other. They each swept the other in their home stadiums (stadia?).

In two weeks, the Cubs come to St. Petersburg for three interleague games. You can guess where I'll be for at least one of those nights.

Speaking of Sports Illustrated, does anyone out there have the issue with the comic-book cover, showing a Rays player swinging a Yankees player around over his head? If so . . . how much do you want for it? I might be interested . . . at our local Borders book store they sold out within 45 minutes of that issue's hitting the stand.

post-script

2008-05-29T21:14:00.003-05:00

Having set myself up for lifetime ridicule (see below: Rays and Cubs in the World Series this year - is he serious?), I had to check on the Cubs last night to see if they could keep up with the Rays. They were behind the Dodgers 1-0 until the bottom of the ninth when they tied it up, and then they won in the tenth inning. Very impressive, guys! That left the win-loss percentage for the Cubs and the Rays tied at the top among all MLB teams. It was good to see Lou Piniella win although it was a tough loss for the Dodgers.

Naturally, the Rays dropped their game with the White Sox tonight. I'll have to check tomorrow's paper to see who's standing where after today's games.

It's a long season. We shall see . . .

almost spoke too soon, and a modest prediction

2008-05-28T16:40:00.004-05:00

Even as I was saying how good the Rays are this year, they were getting bombed by the Texas Rangers. I got home late, turned the game on, and the score was 7-4 Texas. Then it became 8-5 Texas. Then a Texan hit a grand-slam homer and it was 12-5 Texas. Ouch.

Even with that loss, the Rays were tied with the Cubs for the best winning percentage in major league baseball as of this morning. The Cubs!

But this afternoon the Rays came back and won, 5-3. Their percentage is back up to .604 with 32 wins and 21 losses. The Cubs, with 31 wins and 21 losses, play tonight.

The Rays! The Cubs!

The Cubs have not won the World Series since 1908 (yes, folks, exacly one century ago) and have not appeared in the World Series since 1945. I might have heard that game on the radio but I wasn't old enough to walk.

The Rays have been around for ten seasons plus this one, and for ten seasons they have smelled like really old fish. They've never finished a season with a winning record.

You might remember how, in 2003, there was a brief moment when it looked like the Cubs and the Red Sox could have gone to the World Series. That would have been good for baseball, and good for the country. It never happened. The Red Sox had to wait another year. Cubs fans are still dying from old age while waiting.

Prediction: In 2008, the World Series will be between the Rays and the Cubs. You read it here first. Only the Red Sox have the ability to keep the Rays from going that far.

who ARE these guys?

2008-05-27T18:48:00.002-05:00

Long-suffering fans of the Tampa Bay Rays - or at least those who haven't been to a game this season - are reading but having trouble understanding this morning's news: The Rays are number one in the American League East. They are also number one in major league baseball, with the highest win-loss ratio of all MLB teams - or, they are as I type this.

I'm still a Red Sox fan but these guys, barely ahead of the Red Sox (but way ahead of the Yankees) have captured my attention. They are fun to watch, too.

Traditionally, the Rays have faded quickly after the All Star break. We'll see how good they look in August.

odds and ends

2008-05-21T17:38:00.004-05:00

I haven't done this lately. Here are odds and ends not worth an entry by themselves:

I got a "survey" in the mail from Howard Dean, the Democratic National Party chairman. It's all made up to look official, with "registered" something-or-other in three places on the envelope and a cover letter from Dean asking for money. They were beginning to teach public opinion surveying when I was a government major at FSU, and I remember enough to recognize a bogus survey when I see it. I'm sending it in, though. I'm telling them what I think about the DNC's not seating the Florida delegates and the Democratic candidates ignoring Florida except to come in for fund-raisers. I'm proud to have omitted obscenities and profanities. They won't read it anyway, after seeing no check fall out of the envelope.

Obama and Hillarious are in Florida today. I wish them well but where have they been all during this campaign? I'm a Democrat the same way Will Rogers was a Democrat ("I don't belong to an organized political party. . ."). I'll hold my nose and vote Democratic in November because nobody can afford to pay me enough to vote for John McBush II.

Speaking of Bush, the man Garrison Keillor calls the "Current Occupant" now has 243 days left in office, or a little less than 35 weeks. Most babies conceived in the past two to seven weeks will be born with a Democrat in the White House.

On a somewhat brighter note, they've autopsied a man whose body was being guarded by a gator and concluded that he drowned with no assistance from the gator. This came too late to save the gator, however. You can read about it here:
http://www.baynews9.com/content/36/2008/5/18/349430.html

This news came a couple of weeks after a professional golfball retriever was attacked by a gator at a golf course but fended him off, after gouging him (the gator) in the eye and telling him Bobby Bowden was on the next green with a couple of FSU football players carrying gigs and a big rope. Just kidding about Bowden and the FSU players. The golfball retriever wears a wet suit and a Scuba tank, which makes the job somewhat harder for the gator.

Sometime this summer I will be undergoing eye surgery -- cataract surgery. I've worn glasses since the first grade and contact lenses since tenth grade, but my vision in one eye is getting cloudy and the acuity in both eyes is not good. At some point I will have to take the contacts out and wear glasses for several weeks. I haven't worn glasses since I went to ROTC summer camp 40-plus years ago. My new glasses resemble the bottom of the glass I'm drinking out of as I type this. Wearing them is going to require a lot of time to get used to them, because everything looks a mile away. I'll keep you posted.

gas tax pandering

2008-05-05T22:00:00.002-05:00

The politicians who advocate a federal gas tax holiday can't be serious - can they? Does Hillary really believe the gas companies won't turn around and raise the price of gas if they have to pay another tax? How do you spell "pandering?"

The federal gas tax is 18.4 cents per gallon. If you are paying $3.50/gallon, that's 5.25% of the total, and as prices go up, the percentage drops. That would short-change the federal government by some $9 billion, which wouldn't normally break my heart except this money is supposed to go to road and bridge maintenance and replacement. Did you know that the U.S. national debt is already 9.35 TRILLION dollars? Check this out: http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

5.25 percent is chump change. How'd you like to save about 15 percent without crippling the federal budget, and without worrying about the "holiday" coming to an end?

Saving 15 percent (or 52.5 cents/gallon if you are paying $3.50/gallon) is easy.

S. L. O. W. -- D. O. W. N.

I don't mean become a slowpoke, and I don't mean become the guy who crawls along while traffic backs up and road rage mounts. I do mean, don't speed. No jack-rabbit starts. Take it easy. Keep the passing lane open, but stick to the speed limit or a little less. Let all those SUV's and pick-up trucks go by.

If you drive 10 mph faster, your fuel consumption drops 4 mpg. Or, slow down by 10 mpg and your mileage will get 4 mpg better. If you are getting 24 mpg driving fast, getting 28 mpg is a 16.7 percent improvement.

Those are test results and "results may vary," but you get the point. My car was getting 33 or 34 mpg until the last fill-up, and then it was only 31.94 mpg. I think I've spent too much time driving with the hammer down, and I'm going to be more conscientious about my speed. Better mileage means stopping for gas less often and spending less on fuel over the long term. That would beat this silly gas tax holiday idea.

Dioner Navarro tags one

2008-05-04T15:20:00.002-05:00

Dioner Navarro
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

A week ago, the Rays looked great against the Red Sox. They aren't looking so hot this weekend at Fenway. C'est la guerre. I took this from the upper deck.

catching up

2008-05-01T22:22:00.005-05:00

A few notes to catch up on some odd topics:

OK, so Hillary won in Pennsylvania, despite my prognostication to the contrary. She was ten points ahead going in and ten points ahead at the end, and all that sound and fury didn't signify much. She's still treading water. If Obama can shake loose from that lunatic minister who appears devoted to sinking Obama's candidacy, he will win.

I think it would be only fair for a lunatic NOW leader to resurrect the Equal Rights Amendment over the next few weeks. By lunatic I mean strident and obnoxious, the kind who would love Hillary to death by conjuring up all the old Uppity Women fears that some people still have. My wife was a NOW member and we were disappointed the Florida Legislature wouldn't ratify the ERA, but that was 30+ years ago. It is time to trot out those ERA demons again, like the fear of unisex bathrooms. Believe it or not, that was an actual "talking point" by ERA opponents. If that were to happen now, Hillary would hate it.

I'm glad she's still a contender. I think the party ought to make its decision at the convention, not months ahead of time. This infuriates the former "news" media, which should now be called the entertainment media, because they want their talking-head pontificators to preside over the selection process. I don't smoke but I'm not a delegate either, so I say, let 'em decide in smoke-filled rooms like they have for two hundred years.

Changing subjects: My daughter in California is now paying $3.999999 cents a gallon for gasoline. It's no mere coincidence that the gas prices are going up just as the federal tax rebate checks are going out in the mail. How clever that the U.S. oil cabal, who have friends in high places in Washington, jacked up the prices in time to siphon off the tax rebate checks. This is clumsier than a direct subsidy from Washington but just as effective, and it is better than having those federal rebate checks going to the Chinese suppliers of goods at Wal-Mart. (My check will go back to the bank account from which I paid my income tax this year. You can't get more patriotic than that.) Prediction: Gas prices will stabilize and come down after the rebate checks have been spent to pay off gasoline credit cards.

Changing subjects again: I just dropped a bundle on a new Nikon digital single-lens reflex camera, and a telephoto lens. The telephoto has an image stabilization feature that works nicely. From the upper deck at the Tropicana Dome, I shot some pictures of various Rays and Red Sox pitchers and batters . . . available light, hand-held telephoto . . . and stopped not only the batters but the ball in mid-flight. In one shot, I got the ball as it made contact with the bat, or vice versa. I'll post that photo here, later.

Speaking of the Rays: They now have a winning season going for them, which they've never had so "late" in the season during their miserable franchise history. They swept the Red Sox 3-0 here, then took the Orioles 2-1 in Baltimore. Now they face the Red Sox again, in Bahston, and we'll see what kind of team they really are. I think they are a VERY good team this year. Their infield is near-perfect, their batters score when they need to, and the pitching staff finally has the talent to win.

I'm happy to see the Rays beat the Red Sox because it happens so seldom. Just as long as the Red Sox stay ahead of the Yankees.

election day in Pennsylvania, thank God

2008-04-21T20:12:00.004-05:00

Tomorrow is election day in Pennsylvania. I really look forward to seeing the results.

I have much more confidence in the voters of Pennsylvania than I have in any of the political talking heads of the "news" media. All they've talked about for weeks is the significance of comments about people who "cling" to their religious beliefs, their guns, and their disdain for people not like them.

What does it mean to "cling?" If you wake up in the morning and thank God for allowing you to make it through another night, if you pray a dozen times a day for minor miracles such as an open parking space in front of the courthouse when you are about to be late for a hearing, or for a safe flight to North Carolna and return, you are clinging to a religious belief.

Is there anything wrong with that? No. Absolutely not.

The same can be said for "clinging" to the belief that you can defend yourself with a gun. If you believe that you can find it when you need it, load it, put a round in the chamber, release the safety, aim it, and not shoot yourself in the foot or shoot a neighbor or a family member while trying to shoot a bad guy. . .go ahead. Believe what you want. Cling to that belief. It's as American as the coonskin cap and the Kentucky long rifle.

The disdain for people not like you is human nature. Just remember that we have a Constitution that is predicated on the idea that all men, and women, are created equal, and don't actually do anything stupid. Others have likely looked upon you with disdain, too.

Back to Pennsylvania. I was at dinner with fellow book club refugees, five of us, and I was the only one predicting that Obama will edge Hillary out tomorrow. My guess was, by five percent.

We shall see. I can hardly wait.

baseball season

2008-04-13T17:01:00.004-05:00

I love the beginning of baseball season. Spring training is the surest sign that Spring is in the air, and once the season starts you can count on a newspaper headline such as the following:

"NY Yankees unearth buried Red Sox jersey from new stadium"

You can see the whole story below, but the gist of the story is that a construction worker buried a Red Sox jersey in a service corridor in the new Yankees Stadium, and they had to use a jackhammer to get it out from under two feet of concrete. It was a #34 jersey for David "Big Papi" Ortiz.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ap-yankees-cursefoiled&prov=ap&type=lgns

Happy Birthday, Megan!

2008-03-24T18:48:00.001-05:00

Megan, age 2
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

She was two when this was taken but we won't say how long ago that was. . .

Baptist church, Louisville, circa 1950

2008-03-03T22:02:00.002-05:00

Baptist church in Louisville, 1950
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

In an earlier phase of my life I was a Southern Baptist. In this photo, I was attending Vacation Bible School at the tender age of 6, more or less. I thought I knew the name of the church but, as it turns out, I was wrong. I'll post this here in hopes that somebody, somewhere, might recognize it. The architecture is unusual for a Baptist church but you have to admire the window.

9 trillion is a BIG number

2008-03-02T23:22:00.002-05:00

A few days ago I said the national debt is $9 trillion. That's $9,000,000,000, I said.

It occurred to me this morning that I was off by a factor of one thousand. $9,000,000,000 is a mere nine billion dollars.

Nine trillion of anything is actually 9,000,000,000,000, and an alert reader pointed that out (see below).

I wish I could claim to have done that just to see if anybody is actually reading this blog. I'm glad to see somebody is.

Sadie Hawkins Day

2008-02-29T23:17:00.003-05:00

I wasn't kidding about Sadie Hawkins Day (see below). It always puzzled me that Al Capp didn't associate it with Leap Day or Leap Year, but it worked.

Sadie Hawkins Day
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

Leap Day!

2008-02-29T08:21:00.002-05:00

This is a "free day" we get once every four years, so make the best of it! It ought to be a national holiday so we could sleep in, or get up early to go fishing or skiing, or wait for something magical to happen, like the one day every hundred years when the Scottish village of Brigadoon reappears.

But, no. It will be just another day at work for most of us, an imperfect way to make the calendar coincide with the time required for the Earth to encircle the Sun.

Consider this: We have presidential elections every Leap Year. We have the Summer Olympics every Leap Year. I was born in a Leap Year but, thankfully, not on Leap Day, or else I'd have had a lifetime of confusion and joking about when to celebrate my birthday (the correct answer should be: every Saturday night).

One quaint custom associated with Leap Day is that this is when a woman may propose marriage, and a variation is that she may do so on any day of a Leap Year. This reminds me of Sadie Hawkins Day, which became a feature of Al Capp's "Li'l Abner," and if you don't know who that was, just look up Sadie Hawkins in Wikipedia. In Tarpon Springs, FL, where we once lived, they celebrated Sadie Hawkins Day with a street dance downtown. For boys like me, Sadie Hawkins Day was a scary thought. Now that I'm older and somewhat wiser, I think it should be revived.

federal tax refund blues

2008-02-25T22:27:00.002-05:00

One of these days I'll be getting one of those federal tax refunds. According to Prez Bush, who has only 47 weeks left in office, we are supposed to give the national economy a big shot in the arm by. . . uh, rushing out to spend it. Yes, we can all go to Wal-Mart or one of the other big chain retailers and load up our shopping carts with more products made in China.

Yessiree, that will do the old economy a lot of good.

My first thought was to put it in the savings account, the one from which I withdrew money last year to pay my federal income tax bill. That will give my personal economy a small shot in the arm.

My second thought was to use it to pay my dentist, my dermatologist, and the plastic surgeon who removed a couple of "skin tags" from my face. (Never let a dermatologist get near you with a scalpel in hand.) I might have money left over to apply towards a new pair of contact lenses. None of those good doctors are Chinese. On the other hand, they might rush out and spend my money at Wal-Mart, or to repair their Mercedes or BMWs.

No, I am going to search diligently for American-made products sold by Americans. I almost had a heart attack a few months ago when I found an American-made pruning tool on sale at Sears. And, I just bought a new blazer, made in Chicago by Hart Schaeffner and Marx, the oldest American clothing maker. (Never mind those German-sounding names.)

You can see that I'm already well down the road to giving the American economy a shot in the arm.

What I cannot figure out is, how can we spend six gazillion dollars a month on an overseas war, send refund checks to taxpayers, and promise "no new taxes?" Oh, right. It's an election year, time for the politicians to perform sleight of hand behind blue smoke.

p.s. The national debt is now $9 trillion. That's $9,000,000,000. Enjoy that refund check.

aaahh, the weekend

2008-02-22T21:01:00.003-05:00

Let's hear it for weekends. Over the past few weeks I have labored over the defense of a code enforcement board decision, the defense of the denial of a high-rise hotel, and a response to a motion to dismiss our complaint against a cable company. I will spare you the details, but there was a point early in January when everything appeared to be due at the same time and I was feeling borderline panic. Then I saw that it was not that bad - one item was due two weeks ago and it got done on time. The others were due the end of this week but another lawyer did nearly all the work on one of them, leaving me time to work on the other. By noon today I was ready to put my feet on my desk and, if I was allowed to keep a bottle of Scotch in my office, pour myself one. Now I will look good, bad or indifferent depending upon the whim of a judge who may have come to work after a bad breakfast and a fight with his or her spouse.

I'm looking at a weekend that is unseasonably warm. To my children and relatives-in-law in Boston and Philadelphia, eat your hearts out. There are only two times a year when I feel motivated to do gardening work, and the Spring gardening bug has bit me . . . in February, when they are still digging bodies out of the snow in other parts of the country. Tomorrow I will get out and do a little gardening work, unless it rains. [Pause while praying for rain.]

We have a critter living in the walls of our house. It left calling cards in a bathroom closet, so we (that is, I) cleaned out the stuff that was stored on the floor of the closet and our exterminator put down two traps. We (that is, I) also put back in place the board that covers the opening where a plumber can access the bathtub fixtures. This morning, something was making a big racket inside the closet but it wasn't a critter stuck to the traps. The board was still in place. Whatever it was had to be bigger than your average mouse or rat to make so much noise trying to dislodge the board, like maybe a possum or a 'coon. I'm afraid I may have to get my father's old .380 automatic and shoot the beast. The last time he used it, he shot a pocket gopher that was tearing up his front yard. I'm not sure I want to use it inside the house, though. It will make a helluva mess. If I could rent an anaconda or a rat snake, I'd turn it loose inside the walls of the house but if I do that, I will be living alone.

Apparently it is part of a man's job description to deal with rodents, from trapping or poisoning them to removing their carcasses. Women don't do this. They may deliver babies but they don't exterminate rodents. That's an overgeneralization - old farm women may do it, and grizzled old Marine Corps sergeants of the female variety may do it, but not your average housewife.

Aaahh, Spring in Florida. Hurricane season is just around the corner. It doesn't get any better than this.

Happy Chinese New Year!

2008-02-07T09:01:00.001-05:00

San Francisco
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

Taken in San Francisco, not China, and taken in October, not this month - but happy new year anyway!

"TSA tester slips mock bomb past airport security"

2008-01-28T22:27:00.000-05:00

Just when I thought it was safe to fly again. This happened at MY AIRPORT, the one my wife and I use, the one my children use whenever they come home for a visit:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/01/28/tsa.bombtest/index.html

In memory of Bobby Fischer

2008-01-27T23:02:00.001-05:00

spassky-fischer
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

It's hard to remember nowadays how much attention the world paid to a chess tournament in 1972, when a kid from Brooklyn went up against the chess champion of the USSR and won. The cold war was still "hot" and the US was still in Viet Nam. Americans, who mostly don't play chess, got caught up in a 21-game tournament that ran for two months, with Fischer making demands for more money and the removal of a TV camera, and engaging in what Spassky complained was "psychological" warfare. That's Fischer on the right in this photo. Spassky, on the left, was the product of a Soviet system that groomed championship chess players and rewarded them well.

Sadly, Fischer went 'round the bend as he got older, dying of kidney failure on January 17. I'd rather not remember him as the anti-Semitic, anti-American recluse that he became. I'd rather remember him as the kid who took on the USSR and beat them at the chessboard.

Obama wins -- in South Carolina!

2008-01-27T00:02:00.000-05:00

A new day is dawning in American politics.

You'll see that worn-out cliche more and more between now and November, but this is one cliche that happens to be true.

Barack Obama pulled in 55 percent of the vote, routing Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. This is big news, but not because he is from Illinois, and not because South Carolina people still tell stories about Sherman's infamous march to the sea as if it happened last year.

This is huge because he is the first black candidate for President to be taken seriously. Yes, we aren't supposed to vote for or against a candidate because of the candidate's race, or gender, or religion. But many voters do. You would have expected many South Carolinians to have voted for John Edwards because he is a photogenic white guy who was born in South Carolina . . . but Edwards placed a poor third with 18 percent, winning only his home county.

Obama inspires a lot of people but don't take my word for it. Believe Caroline Kennedy, who wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece: "I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them . . . But for the first time, I believe I have found a man who could be that president - and not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans."

farewell to the "A-Train"

2008-01-24T21:05:00.001-05:00

Mike Alstott, the "A-Train"
Originally uploaded by galbr8th

Mike Alstott, a six-time Pro Bowl player and a big favorite with Bucs fans for eleven seasons, announced his retirement from the game this week. Those of us who thought he was underutilized by Jon Gruden even before his neck injury are sad to see him go.