Category: Life

And by “you,” I mean “I.”

I burst through the airport doors and demanded of the uniformed police officer there, “Where’s the bomber?”

Okay, it didn’t go down exactly like that. I’d seen a couple short articles the beginning of the week about a B-17 coming to the Springfield airport, so of course I dragged my children to the passenger airport and asked, politely, where the B-17 was. The police officer, clued in perhaps by this article which has more details about the actual location, directed me to the proper place up by the air cargo carriers.

So we donated a couple bucks and got to walk through the plane. Which is to say, crawl through and scrunch through most of it. It’s amazing how basic and rudimentary this beast was. Not a lot of creature comforts in it. You climb up through the belly to get to the cockpit and then walk a catwalk through the bomb bay to the radio room where you have four plain seats and a couple of 50 caliber machine guns. To get to the tail gun, one had to crawl. To fire the belly gun, I guess you had to hang upside down.

The plane offered rides, but the prices were $425 to ride in the radio room or $850 to ride in the navigator’s chair. It would have made for an interesting story, but I don’t have that sort of story money lying around.

The best part was that my boys were interested in it, briefly. Although the oldest is in a “no pictures” phase (remember, he wouldn’t pose with Harley Quinn), so I’ll just have to remember the incident via blog post.

At the Cracker Barrel store in St. Charles, Missouri, this display:

It looks as though the Gadsden Flag materials are inappropriately grouped with the Democrat Party items.

However, if you look a little closer, you’ll see that it’s just a general political apparel grouping, but the Republican Party elephant t-shirts are almost sold out.

Note this Cracker Barrel is very close to the location of the former Noah’s Ark, which is where the St. Charles Pachyderm club used to meet back in the day.

And it’s a Cracker Barrel.

One would expect the GOP merchandise to move well there.

A week or so back, a Facebook friend, well, a 1980s BBS friend who I met once or twice thirty years ago, posted that he’d be at the St. Louis Comic Con in St. Charles, Missouri, this past weekend. A light bulb went off over my head: I could take my kids up there for the day and then come back for a quick treat that they’d remember for the rest of their lives. Also, the oldest from time to time draws little superhero things and announces he’d like to make comic books. How great would it be if I could introduce him to an actual comic artist in an actual comic book convention? It was the day before Father’s Day, and like a rotten kid being good the last week before Christmas, I needed to build up some good will if I was going to get a good gift.

So we lit out to the Saint Louis area on Friday morning. I didn’t tell them where we were going, instead letting them believe they were going to the normal summer camp thing. The younger was in the front seat, so he noticed right away. They were very excited about the prospect, although I’m not sure whether it was going to St. Louis or that they got to play on the Game Boy Advances we save for long car trips.

So we hit St. Louis late in the morning, five hours ahead of our hotel check-in time, so I took the long way in, through Jefferson County where I could show the boys a couple places where I lived. The house in the valley in House Springs looked pretty dilapidated; the garage door had been replaced with a worn piece of plywood. Sometime around the time I left, the gravel road had been paved, but it doesn’t look as though it had been maintained at all, which is worse than having never been paved at all. I showed the boys where the mobile home I’d lived in for four years had sat, but Siesta Manor Mobile Home Park had rearranged the layout of the pads over time, so there wasn’t a 106 Quintana any more. After taking some flowers to my mother’s plot in the cemetery at Jefferson Barracks, we drove slowly by the house in Old Trees–the only house I’m sad to have left–and saw the lilies I planted ten years ago are six feet tall. We stopped at Blackburn Park, where the oldest played when he was one year old, and were the only people in the park on a Friday afternoon.

Then we headed north. We drove by the house in Casinoport, which looked much the same as it had or better. Most of the time we lived there, it was white asbestos shingle, but we had siding put on right before we left, so it looked better as we left than most of the time we lived there. We got to St. Charles, and I showed the boys a house where I lived with my aunt and uncle–who I grew up thinking were well-to-do but it turns out they were just doing better than we were. We checked into the hotel and had dinner at the Cracker Barrel nearby, which was good as the area around the St. Charles Convention Center was all torn up.

I’d brought a couple of things to read, but nothing I wanted to read, so I watched the St. Louis Cardinals Game while the boys watched cartoons.

Oh, yeah, and on Saturday, we went to the comic book convention.

This was my first comic book convention, oddly enough.

I understand that some other comic cons have sessions and panels and presentations, but this one looked to be more like a comic book flea market, nothing but tables with comics and collectibles and a number of comic artists (like my friend) with a table of their works. I think the con welcomed a professional cosplayer, but I think she was at a table in civilian clothing signing pictures of her in cosplay costumes.

There were some cosplayers, but we got their very early (at the opening time), so we didn’t see a bunch. Several Harley Quinns, of course, including one that looked to be a six foot husky male Harley Quinn. Undoubtedly from one of the alternate DC earths. There was a He-Man, a couple women in military uniforms, Captain America, and a Poison Ivy that I saw. Waldo and some kid in a dinosaur or Pokemon costume. I’d hoped the boys would see someone from Mortal Kombat since they’ve started playing that on the Super Nintendo, but no such luck. Also, they refused to take a picture with Harley Quinn, which is the only reason this is not a Rule 5 post. Sorry, guys.

I led them through most of the tables before we got to my friend the comic artist. He recognized me straight off, which was odd since I hadn’t seen him in a long time. It must be the fedora. We chatted for a while, but by that time, my children were squirrelly and unimpressed by their father knowing a comic book artist. So I bought enough material to cover half of his table fee, and he threw in a small drawing of his comic character Frik dressed in cosplay:

At any rate, to make a short story long, it was the first of my travels solo with the children, and they did not completely drive me nuts. Although the combination of cartoons, comics, and sugar made them a bit squirrelly at times. So we’ll probably take similar trips in the future.

As far as comic cons go, though, I prefer gaming conventions or Renaissance festivals. I accumulate comics more than collect them. For example, when I said the boys could get a couple of the two-for-a-dollar comics at one table, the youngest took so long in making his selections that I found issues 2-22 of the 1980s Marvel Battlestar Galactica title that I bought more comics for me than for them. But I prefer the theatrics of the Renaissance festival or the participation aspect of gaming to simply wandering around looking at stuff for sale.

Hopefully, I made a memory for my children, but although I try to set the framework of awesome adventures for them, it’s entirely possible that the thing they will remember most is playing checkers at the Cracker Barrel while my aunt and I talked. But that’s okay, too. Because I’ll remember more of it, particularly with the external aid of this blog post.

Although I wish I had more pictures of my nine-year-old and eight-year-old at the con, Harley Quinn or not.

The headline of today’s Greene County Commonwealth took me aback:

Briefly.

I knew the head of development over in Republic shared my last name, but she is no close relation, and we’ve never run into each other.

The paper is reporting above the fold that she left her job three weeks ago, but it certainly makes it out like there’s more to the story.

Hopefully, not enough that people will come banging on my door for anything.

This weekend, my beautiful wife and I attended the Springfield Contemporary Theatre presentation of Black Comedy.

In this comedy, a British sculptor named Miller is going to have a busy night: In addition to meeting a wealthy collector who can make his career, he’s also meeting the father of his fiance. To tony the place up, he’s borrowed some furniture from his antique collector neighbor. Before any of the important people arrive, however, the power goes out and his flat is left in darkness. His neighbor returns early and an ex-girlfriend show up, and a comedy occurs in the dark apartment.

As staged, the play took place in the blacked out apartment, but to the characters, it was darkness. At the beginning and end of the play, when there is light, the actors moved in darkness. This allowed the audience to see a lot of the slapstick tumbling and precise movement where the characters could not see anything. The performances were good, and the lead–Miller–was outstanding.

The Springfield Contemporary Theatre is celebrating its 22nd season, but I’d never really heard of it before. The venue is a very intimate little room downtown, with about a hundred seats. Maybe. We sat in the third row, and we could easily have shaken hands with the actors. A number of the theatre patrons knew each other, and it was the most intimate setting for drama that I’ve ever experienced. It was a smaller venue than the theatre company I volunteered with in the last century, where they played to church gyms which were cavernous by comparison.

Now that I’ve found this little theatre group, I’m going to have to attend it frequently.

Someone was cleaning out a computer room and gave me a little plastic box for 3.5″ floppy disks. Probably as a gag.

However, I have far more twenty-year-old disks that can fit in it.

I pretty much have all my old downloads from BBSes circa 1991 as well as driver disks for every component I bought from 1990 through, what, 2003 when CDs replaced the floppies.

So the little disk holder was cute, but someone really misunderestimated my pack rattery.

Every week, our church has a Children’s Bulletin with puzzles aligned with the message to preoccupy young people in the service.

This week, children were invited to help align the Stargate so Jesus could go free the Israelites from their slavery under the space-god Ra:

Well, that’s what it looks like to a certain kind of science fiction fan/fellow who always wanted to be more like James Spader.

I guess in reality, the children are supposed to skip to every something letter to spell out a bible verse.

Mr. Hill just celebrated 20 years of blogging. Me, I’ve only been at this stream for 13 years, but I’ve appeared online for almost twenty years myself.

Here are a couple of early bits elsewhere:

Role Playing Research in the newsletter of the Central Nebraska Writers Network.

Meeting Robert B. Parker at Bullets and Beer, a Spenser fan site from way back.

After almost 20 years of working on the Internet and blogging and whatnot, anyone who Googles me is going to find a lot of feldercarb out there.

Continue reading “THIS LAUNDRY TRICK WILL CATCH YOU BY SURPRISE EVERY TIME!” →

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On Thursday, Lileks bleated about a label he found in an antique store:

Antique? I used to work at Drug Package, Inc. What does that make me?

Back in 1996, I after a string of retail jobs, I answered a blind box ad in a newspaper for a warehouse shipping/receiving guy in O’Fallon, Missouri. I went to what might have been a poke-him interview, where a blue collar job poster wants to know why some college puke applied for it. The guy asked what I hoped for in the future, and I said I’d hoped to be promoted to printer.

So he hired me as a printer, and after a couple of weeks I was operating a Didde-Glaser 175 two-color Web offset printing press with a turn-over bar for two-sided print and perf wheels.

I was printing prescription blanks and forms; the labels came from lithographic presses elsewhere on the floor.

I worked that job for two years because I’d told the guy hiring me that he didn’t have to worry about me taking the training and going elsewhere right away (I promised to stay a couple years, so I did). The job was fortuitously placed; although it was forty-five miles from where I lived in South St. Louis County, it was a little less than half way to Columbia, Missouri, where the girl I was dating at the time lived (it was an hour home or an hour and a half to see her, which I often did). And that relationship worked out even though the job was not the longterm thing for me that it was for the others there (one fellow had worked there since the War, and the war was not Viet Nam or Korea).

At any rate, it would be odd to see things related to one’s adulthood coming up in antique stores. Although, as a frequent visitor to antique malls, I realize that the stuff one finds in them is often thrift store items with higher prices. Also, Drug Package has been in business for over 130 years, and the label Lileks found bears the St. Louis location on it, and from what I understand, Drug Package moved to O’Fallon in the 1960s or 1970s. So perhaps I’m not that old after all.

So Tuesday night and Wednesday morning were very windy down here in the Ozarks. It always gets pretty windy during the springtime, and this El Niño-inspired winter, it’s been springlike and windy. Tuesday night and Wednesday morning we had pretty solid blowing with some gusts prolly up to 40 miles an hour, and there’s not much on the west half of Nogglestead to slow them down. On Wednesday morning in the freezing twilight, I went out to my truck, parked in the driveway, to get my sunglasses; I’d left them in the pickup on Tuesday after having picked the children up for school.

As I opened the truck door, a veritable whirlwind of Pokémon cards whipped up and out across the front lawn. The boys had left them in the truck after their trip the evening before, and the surging wind caught them and threw them across an acre of land. So I did slammed the door and chased the blowing cards. Gotta collect ’em all.

When all was said and done, I could barely close my frozen fingers around an inch and a half stack of the cards.

In the days in between, I’ve continued to find cards in the yard.

I’m trying to collect them before the children realize what happened to them. More importantly, before any blow into the farm road slightly ahead of a tunnel-visioned second grader and a septic pumper truck.

I’ve never played Pokémon. But I have lived it.

Concept for a movie. Okay, not a movie, but a great climactic chase scene:

The good guys and the bad guys are at a construction site. The bad guys try to flee in one of those tractor-trailers pulling an oversize load excavator. The good guys pursue in another of the same. After jockeying for position on the way out of the construction site, the bad guy climbs out of the cab and makes his way into the cab of the excavator and starts it up. As he starts trying to use the excavator to attack the other truck, good guy #2 (Mel Gibson as Martin Riggs again? One can hope!) climbs out of the cab of his truck and does the same, and we’ve got two excavators fighting from the back of trucks as they twist and turn on mountain roads. Box. Office. Gold.

I bet this is how Michael Bay works.

It’s funny how my brain sees things in patterns, detecting similar things and assigning significance to them. I’ve written a little before about Jeopardy! being the nexus of all human knowledge, but that was really an example of it. I’d see something on Jeopardy, and then my brain would flag it when I saw it again, usually soon thereafter.

Yesterday, I got a dose of this brain matchmaking.

I went to the library with my children, and there’s a Rubik’s Cube, something I hadn’t seen for a while. Then we go to the dojo, and one of the kids there is playing with a Rubik’s Cube. Have they become the thing again?

So I read the latest issue of St. Louis Magazine, and one article ("Selling Grant’s Farm") mentions the addax (an antelope with twisting horns). Then I read the latest Forbes magazine, and an article in that magazine ("In The Oil Bust, This Texas Tycoon Sees A Land Of Opportunity") also mentions the addax.

So not only did I see two things in different places, but I did it twice.

Perhaps there’s a Philip K. Dick-style novel in it somewhere.

Spotted at the Walmart:

The boxes on the top shelf contain 44 bags. The boxes on the middle shelf contain 36 bags. At the same price.

Yes, one has force-flex bags and the other has scented bags, but I saw the same thing for each corresponding type (that is, there were boxes of 36 scented bags for $6.98 and boxes of 44 force-flex for $6.98, but they weren’t together for a quick snap.

Perhaps it’s a tax on people who don’t look at the boxes and shelf prices carefully.

All I know is that it made me pause for longer than it should have when I was trying to just get some garbage bags. I looked like a discerning refuse containment customer as I looked very carefully to see what the heck was going on and why the different-sized boxes had the same price. And I couldn’t find an answer.

It’s probably that the smaller boxes will be replacing the larger at the same price, but they’ve got both slotted till they sell out of the larger quantity boxes. I think so because I’m cynical.

After a number of months away from the gym, I’ve returned this week Monday and Tuesday and coupled some weight lifting with martial arts classes at night.

Current status:

After a brief workout this morning at the YMCA, I grabbed a cup of coffee for the ride home. When I got into my truck, I realized that the normal small-sized Styrofoam cup did not fit exactly in the cup holder; there was a little space between the edges of the cup and the edges of the holder. Enough room for the cup to slide around and slosh the interior of the console and between the seats with house blend.

This was my ride home:

That’s from the film License to Drive, a 1988 film that was on Showtime, so I watched it a lot, especially since I didn’t have a license to drive and didn’t have anything else to do down the gravel road called Ruth Drive in House Springs but to watch the films on Showtime over and over again. I’m not saying it influenced me heavily, but I wrote a Commodore 64 program that simulated the computer written portion of the test in the film, and I was so smitten with the young Heather Graham that I married the first hot chick named Heather that I dated.

At any rate, I didn’t spill a drop of the coffee, either.

So, elsewhere than Dustbury, Charles said:

"So this is 'over capacity'. How wonderful!" ~ nobody, ever

— Charles G Hill (@dustbury) January 18, 2016

Immediately, I thought of this exception:

1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Although, to be honest, it’s not directly “”So this is ‘over capacity’. How wonderful!” But it’s close.

Not cited: All those business people and MBAs who think that too much traffic is a good thing because that’s a lot of customers and brand loyalty who won’t immediately abandon you for TheOtherGuyzWidgetz.com which is still operational. Also, their solution to the problem is to tell someone else to solve the problem, and that seems rather easy. Especially when they say that and try to convince the underlings that that moisture they feel is not rain, but anointing oil.

So I noticed one night that one of the tail lights on our Toyota Highlander was out, and it’s due for licensing this month, so I figured I’d better replace it pronto. One of the license plate lights was out, too, and the auto service center offered to fix it for me for elebenty billion dollars.

I stopped at the local Pep Boys and picked up replacement bulbs, no problem, although they’re sold in two packs. So I quipped to the clerk that I wouldn’t own the vehicle long enough to need the second bulb. Hah. Events would prove otherwise.

You see, aside from the recent experience I had wherein I managed to shear off a bolt while changing a tire, turning a simple procedure into a tow-and-repair situation, I figured it would be no problem in replacing the bulbs. Why, the vehicle has a little hatch in the cargo area that gives the user easy access to the lights. Listen, son, I’ve replaced a bunch of parts on cars with few problems, including batteries, head lights, tail lights, a radiator, a starter, brake pads…. Although I don’t pretend to know what I’m doing, sometimes I’ve fumbled the pieces into place right and only a few times have made ghastly but fortunately not deadly errors.

So, in the comfort of my garage, I popped open the little hatch, and:

That’s almost what it looks like except the hatch that gives you access to the light bulbs is far smaller, so you have to work with fingertips at awkward angles and no strength. The individual lights are in little sockets that screw into the assembly. To replace it, you unscrew the socket, pop the old bulb out, pop the new bulb in, and screw the socket back into the assembly. Done!

Well, it’s a lot easier to explain it after you’ve done it successfully or even watched a YouTube video on it. I’m sure I looked like a thoughtful monkey as I stroked my chin and tried to suss it out without breaking anything.

Eventually, after the monolith appeared and Strauss echoed in the garage, I got the new bulb in, put the socket in, gave it a little turn, and put the head lights on, and…. Nothing. Well, not nothing, but no tail light.

So I gave it a little turn and started to pull it out, when….

The light bulb, which I hadn’t completely popped into the socket, dropped into the tail light assembly, between the lens and the thing you see above with only a small hole a little bigger than the light bulb at its narrowest. I thought about I could try to get it out: I used to have a computer part tweezer that had long pinchers; I could put some tape or adhesive on a stick; I could try to vacuum it out with a shop vac. Or, heaven forbid, I could take the whole tail light assembly off and take the lens off to get it out.

Or I could do the Brian J. thing.

So I put the second, what I thought was superfluous, light bulb in the socket very tightly (hey, it snaps when it’s all the way in! how clever!) and then recognize that the socket is keyed with two smaller notches to ensure you can only fit it in the right way to make the electrical connection when you screw it in, screwed the socket in correctly, and tried the head lights. The new tail light worked.

I figure the small bulb is not large enough to damage the inserted bulb, the assembly, or the lens itself. The real question is whether the rattle will drive me nuts, proclaiming my vehicular maintenance ability deficiency for everyone to hear (or at least for me alone to hear like the narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart").

My beautiful wife was the first to drive it, and she said she didn’t hear anything.

But the next morning, I heard it. The rattling of the Tell-Tale bulb!

So far, though, it’s not enough to make me want to tear apart the tail light assembly completely.

Instead, I’ll just turn the music up.