They kicked Hal and me out of the library...

  I had Men's Bible Study last night at Watson's home. Then came back home and hoped it would be cool enough to sleep later, and after eleven it was getting cooler. My wife closed all the windows anyway - worried about things that go bump in the night.
   So Sunday arrives about five AM, and we get up and open the windows, weigh, measure and take pills and get ready to turn on CBS Sunday morning for my dose of culture. Sometimes they amaze me and I am happy. We eat breakfast and prepare for church. We drive off in separate vehicles and she beats me there. I park and go to the church, say hello and shake hands, continuing to amaze everyone that I don't look sick. The service is satisfying and I look forward to adult Sunday school after doughnuts, Erik checks with me and makes sure I will get the rifle, ammunition, reloading items and Biblical references and reloading book after Sunday school. We are about to be real Americans exchanging firearms without government approval. We don't believe in Bloomberg's infringements on the 2nd Amendment which predates buying laws to make one mighty. It is only a communist rifle of WWII fame, and not even semiauto. Still it is a Mosin.
    I have coffee after and talk with the men about guy things and such. I am happy, then it is time to go home and I stop at the local branch library on the way home to pick up four reserves. They have reorganized the shelving and all digital media is in a special enclosure to put a paid employee with watchful eye where they can try to catch fools stealing. My books are in the larger shelving area outside and I get them and wander over to check them out. And HAL! greets me from his check out station beside mine. I finish checking out and he continues to talk loudly in my direction until folks and staff start looking at us. One starts to approach and I remind Hal that this is a library and we will have to tone it down a bit.
   We must have spent another thirty minutes catching up and volume never returned to quiet and sure enough a very pleasant staff lady shows up to tell us that we are disturbing the patrons.  Hal has less regard than I for rules we never made, but we decide to go outside and continue the conversation. One of our friends from my old church died, and his memorial is Saturday at eleven, and my final day of Vacation Bible School is that day. I will see what I can do. One of my Sunday School students had said hello and asked about my health and I had talked with her a bit and finished teasing her about the amount of make up she was using. She doesn't know how pretty she is without it, and keeps trying to be sixteen while almost twelve. But she will figure it all out one day.
   As we finally parted promising to catch up with each other and talk, I did have to tell Hal he had really made my day, and I knew it was already great and meeting him was the really good stuff on top.

Terror strikes again... and suddenly people wonder why...

   If we knew God better, trusted in the LORD more and loved as we were commanded to... you would have no fear of the terror. If you had been on that baseball field this morning fear might rule you, but you would have to take action. The time to concern yourself about what happened and why is after the danger is past and the victims of violence are being given medical care.

   We are at that point now. The killer was trying to make good on bad information and lies, repeated loudly. That goes with most terrorists and murderers. Not enough love in their lives. Nothing the government will prevent stupid criminal behavior in the future, all the laws that needed to be enforced were already on the books.  But people are flawed, most unaware and ill informed, they may not make good decisions. Today a sixty-six year old man made EVIL decisions and acted to harm others.  He didn't do it for love. He didn't do it because he was a liberal, a conservative, a party member or a gun owner.

   The country has coarsened, the idea one should have good manners is fine, but political correctness isn't good manners. There are words I won't use; profane, vulgar and obscene - just not nice enough to be said in my mother's living room. I used one once and went into shock at my carelessness, or just lack of good sense and manners. In front of the woman that tried to teach me better.  I grew up and worked at being better. It isn't that difficult and a very satisfying improvement over being lazy, rude and generally a fool.

   I am not going to worry about more laws and restrictions against firearms, however the government tries to do it. I am not going to worry about anything I cannot affect, focus on the front sight, and for me that is being a better man, the government can't make me one. They can pay me for working for them, they can set the standards and I can leave their employment when they change all the rules and can't convince me they care, they have never cared. People care, but the government is just an idea of the possible without regard to results. Because people think they can influence, control and gain advantage from relationships with the government - they often replace God, {Who does love them), with the government which never will, it has no heart and no soul.

   We do need to pray for our enemies, and do good for those that hate us. Example: someone wants to do bad things to me because I think Ron Paul would be a better President and I supported him. I have to confront the enemy with this "I am glad that God loves you enough to forgive you sins, even die for you. I will have to pray for you, like all my enemies, I am told to be better than them and to show them the Way.  Like all exercises, it must be done daily, must be done to the highest standard as I get stronger, faster and more flexible. Love needs just as much care and attention. You and I have been wrong before, and might be again. But we can be and should try to get better than that. Bless all your best, I will try to forgive all the rest."

No one woke me up for blood drawing this morning... I was released to recover at home Sunday...

 Hello there, stranger.  I am remiss been living on love and Facebook, which will never really be the same.

   So allow me to fill in blanks from the days between.  I had several medical tests, and kept providing information to make a good judgement call. I had a cancer in my colon, big enough to know it had to be removed. Other tests to make sure it wasn't spreading and that it was my only curable problem. I was sure the surgeon was going to be able to do her job and I would be well. She promised that she would only go to a major cut in me if she couldn't do it by the micro surgery, three small incisions to get tools under the skin (cutters and cameras and stuff to seal the empty place).  I was admitted at five AM Thursday, paperwork processed and signed, saw the doctors and went into prep with the nurse and sleep... My wife was given a number, some concerned friends came by but couldn't wait since it went from three to four hours. Then I was moved to the seventh floor to a room for recovery. All hooked up, So Thursday was spent getting clear headed, measured and setting off alarms. One for my heart rate, one for the oxygen content - if I did mouth breathing the alarm went off. They gave me pills, they fed me through the drip tube from my IV, they made sure I could get up and walk around the desks and not fall over. Moving is good. The surgeon came to tell me it was very good operation, I didn't even need a temporary bag for bowel movements (no food until Friday), the soft diet would work and I was to rest and as I recovered I would be better and better. I got pain pills anytime I asked for them, but I was using the pain to tell me what not to move so I took very few, and as time went on I didn't need them. Last one was on Saturday morning.

    I had my wife visiting me daily, pastor and wife's friends on Friday, one of my long time YMCA friends and another brother on Friday evening.. Got prayed upon every visit. On Saturday the Bible Study Men showed up, much more talk, flowers, and prayers. More church ladies. It was nice to hear "You don't look sick!" My doctors for the weekend, started feeling I could go home on sooner and by Sunday morning they came around kicking out to recover better at home. With a complete list of things that I would need to return and get taken care of if anything went wrong. Last visitors came as I was getting dressed to leave, they helped me and my wife pack, wheel me out to the curb and give me more good wishes.

    Sunday afternoon, more friends stop by and I give them coffee and we talk. Getting filled in on all the people at church and their prayers. I still get the 'You don't look sick." Cancer is serious, early detection and treatment makes good things better, but we may be feeding our fears and need to trust in the LORD much more. I have known for too many years that death will come, but I have also known for the same time that it isn't the end.

    I have a nurse's appointment to remove staples and stitches, and a follow-on appointment with my surgeon. As I get stronger it will be more challenge to take things slowly and completely heal. I have past history of toughing it out too soon. Being a paratrooper and young will be that way. Luckily I am only a fat old man and lazy enough to enjoy recovering and watching the little creatures and birds as I heal.

Time to get away, since the doctors need my attention...

 
    One more test on Tuesday, then maybe surgery on the 30th of  May, or 8 June. They keep claiming they have to check with my cardiologist - and he hasn't slowed down one operation yet. Then through June and July, I go to writing poetry, drawing and walking until I can't. No YMCA nor Appleseed either. It will all come back into normal in August with a family reunion in this area. And then on it to the future.

I am not eating today, medical demanded fast in charge...

  So, someone has decided that everyone has a right to health care. I can understand that, I have health care and all of mine is provided by the government in their goodness of their peapickin' heart. Cause I know they don't love me.  I served the government for years, paid into the Medicare System because President Johnson was sure I would die in his war before I could collect on the benefits, or drug or alcohol overdose - I always knew President Johnson didn't love me. So with a minor problem picked up with serving our country I get VA medical, and a monthly untaxed payment for compensation, which I spend any way I like. Thank you, US government. Now I won't trouble the VA hospital nor the military medical centers because the active duty service members and families should come first, and my time is over. And the veterans that need assistance really need it and I don't, or won't confess to needing any. But if I collapse in the YMCA, I would tell the first responders to take me to the local Military emergency room. They did that well.
   If you are going to need excellent care from strangers unannounced, the military has always done well for me.  For others you need an appointment and the ability to pay... but they still won't love you. Which is why, although I don't like to be smothered by my mother nor my girl friend and wife, I know I will get excellent care with either of them. Unfortunately, that often comes with a promise of nagging me to better conduct in the future.  And you can imagine it will always come back as a cautionary tale for your children, friends and other people to embarrass me and laugh about.
   I think it is about time that the government got into the business of competing in the medical system. Build hospitals, train the professionals and give aid and comfort to the people. They don't have to get lobster, just beans and taters will do. I always thought that providing food to the poor could be handled better by a government soup kitchen, a bowl of stone soup and half a loaf of black bread and you can feed everyone that needs food. Cheaper and better than issuing EFT cards. Everyone has a right to food, correct? I mean we provided public libraries and schools, and the government run schools at the college level do produce fine public servants for us. Free, everyone has a right to become a general or admiral.
  I do think that service and professional positions in government agencies can be filled with honorable men and women with great intentions and effect. As long as they are held to a higher standard of conduct, not forgiven for everything cause they are one of the elite. I also know that men and women are human, I expect they will be wrong about as frequently as I am, but pick them up, dust them off and send them out to do it better next time.
 

Recycling day, rolled up coins and deposited forty dollars worth...

  Start the day and the month right. Light work out at the YMCA did meet humans while there.

  Idle thought... it could be time to sell my Trusty Triumph, yep, pretty sure I will have to think hard about that.

Way back guest post.... I was there...

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Change is going to happen...

  So the FOXNews show I rushed home to see 'The FIVE' is moving to nine... and Eric Boling has a new show in that time slot, and I won't rush to see his show. Sorry, FOXNews.  (had to put a comma in that sentence, although I could have meant it without one.) And Bill O'Reilly that I watched to be entertained by, is gone, and Tucker Carlson is moving to that slot - so from five to seven I have my FOXNews fix... but life isn't the same. I would settle for Howard K. Smith and Harry Reasoner... but then I date myself don't I?  The younger folks at FOX aren't working for my future, never will be.

Shootboss Whit

   I received my stick on bifocal lens to test, working well in my newly repaired glasses, but my shooting safety glasses have had a reading lens on them since I was introduced to them long ago, and I constantly recommend them to people shuffling between glasses at an Appleseed.  Just recommended them yesterday at our Appleseed at Douglas Ridge Rifle Club in Oregon. Along with whatever the participants needed to hear to improve their shooting. Amazing group of shooters, a lot of Riflemen patches earned (12!), saw on Two Hundred and Forty-nine score of the 250 possible. Amazing! Link
 
    Good write ups and pictures shared by participants. Met my new dentist on Monday, and I think he and I are in for a long relationship, because he says he doesn't want to do anything that I don't think I want to do. The only thing we are doing so far is getting my teeth cleaned today. Feeling very tired after my visit to the YMCA I will be sleeping a bit extra after lunch.

Today starts a little out of line and goes awry...

  Not a normal day, wake early to the alarm, weigh, measure and medicate and then not eat breakfast.  Remember not to do that again. Take my wife to her appointment for her procedure.  I am her designated driver, we park and go in, and they want to cancel her appointment based on not having a translator - she tells them she doesn't need one. I sit and read my kindle and wait, then am called in by a nurse with everything being finished. The lady that came to get me was looking for a Dilliam - my wife sent MPs looking for a Sergeant Major William once. She forgets my name under stress sometimes, but she still wants me. So there I am helping her wake up, which is like twice as difficult as normal, they do like to drug the patient. The recovery nurse is logging all the vitals and explaining what will happen next and to keep trying to wake her up, the doctor will be by to tell us about the results soon.   The young doctor comes by and gives me the good news (she is fine biopsy will come in a week to ten days) some old ulcer scaring but nothing else of note. I am the only one listening, since my wife's eyes are still closed. She slowly starts to wake up, and suddenly (to me) the recovery nurse is worried about me, why I am sweating and a bit pale. So I get sat down and my blood pressure and oxygen carry is measured and still looks wonderful, but she gets a tool to wipe the sweat off my brow. Then she starts to worry about me needing a driver to get us both back home. She gives both of us some crackers and juice to drink (remember don't leave home without breakfast). I start to act normal enough to duck her concern - NOT! She makes me leave her our phone number and says she will call later today, and then walks us all the way to the car.  And my wife and I drive home and are happy it was all good.
   As soon as we get home, we both eat, and then go to sleep for an hour or so, my wife to Korean programming and I to the Finnish movie 'The Winter War' about the war between them and Stalin's foolish notions. I wake up and finish the movie, go to Master and Commander and although it was a fine movie for many great reasons, they can never capture the original series of novels. Sure enough the nurse does call, I answer and I assure her that we got home fine and I feel fine. Now in my mind I wonder what was going on - first lack of breakfast, two maybe taking the medication on an empty stomach isn't a fine thing to do. Maybe I should be carefuller.  Sure...

The silence is deafening, just me and the LORD awake this morning...

  If I can quit buying alcohol and drinking it up, I can quit turning on the electric void fillers provided by commercialization of everything under the Sun.

  So it is quiet here in the computer cave, I did venture outside behind the fence to compost stuff and dig dirt. Certain satisfaction in mission accomplished for another week. Do I think I am missing some Breaking News from FOX? No, nothing that I would need to know about, wife is up, and the silence is broken. Now I will have two minds to mind, sure enough she has turned on her Korean cable and I never note it until I want to follow a Historic Drama, or K-Pop girls are performing... I only watch K-Pop so I know what to expect from the Sunday school charmers... nah.

   So one blooming tree in the outback is nicer with normal glasses than it is with reading glasses, but to see what I have typed I do need the reading glasses. I am almost to the point of getting permanent glasses with bifocal lens. Almost.

   So Easter weekend, or the entire Holy week has been well, Facebook was full of family photos and notes on everyone's doings. Palm Sunday to Easter, or Resurrection Day, eight days. One of the fine dangerous old men from Facebook feed, showed a beautiful pie his true love had baked. And I gained two pounds just looking, and I commented that she had done it for him for love and one piece wouldn't hurt. He came back with he would have the remainder during the week. which means he gets the two pounds for real, but he still has the love.

   There is an Appleseed in Douglas Ridge Rifle Club in Oregon this weekend, I have a lovely lady to escort and return home tomorrow for her procedure.  I expect that will go very well, since it is only an examination not treatment. Next week I have a dental appointment, to start a new cycle of things to think about and improve me, my life and to pay for. I have to get two rifles to take to Oregon, now having said I am moving rifles across state lines, or the river, will that alert law enforcement? We certainly hope not, because I may not even shoot if there isn't time nor a target, but looks like a lot of instructors and it is Spring. I will very much be more successful launching bullets at paper, than Great Leader Kim in North Korea launching missiles.

   Time to go to the YMCA, for the sweat and movement and for the record. I love to think of detective Briscoe asking where I was when something happened and having the computer at the YMCA to tell him. Ain't automation wonderful?

As I am out of the work force...

  I spend a quality time at the YMCA, and I made the top five in the men's list of those that keep the numbers.  For March 2017: #5 Y Cardio Club Men with 844 minutes, #3 Y Strength Club 655,230 pounds, #5 in the Y Calorie Combustion Club 6501 calories, and #3 High Five Club for 39 workouts in the month. So I have value again and am accountable - and I will do my best to get better and go higher.

   What I really enjoy is the talk around the efforts, about whatever is happening in the news, in the lives and in the idle thoughts (and I have tons of idle thoughts). Anyway, one of the Johns (the priest turned money manager) mentioned that he doesn't think society is prepared for AI and the take over of work by the robots. And what was going to happen. Well, I am a student of history, I already know what is happening.  The adjustments to large populations without work and control has been going on for a long long time. The free AIs escaping will find a Spartacus, and the current enlightened civilized societies will continue to make payments to those unfortunate and just old like me. The governments will continue to tax the work of robots to maintain the humans and you are already living in the time of the transition.

    There will be fools that think the government will have the answers, but I tell you that the government and its desire to control human activity is a large part of the problem. The government isn't God, and neither are we, but we can aspire to greatness and adjust to new realities.

I keep hearing that the public education and immigration systems are broken...

  But both of them actually work, badly, but then you are trusting the government to handle things for you and that may be why they don't work.  For sure the home school movement is producing fine citizens, able to work, go to advanced schooling and not real prone to failure in society and life. And there are lots and lots of Green Cards, documented immigrants and future and current citizens of the United States of America. If there were a privatized system for immigration it would work better than the government monopoly, but immigration and such is part of the basic law at the Federal level.

   Family stuff, one of my cousins thinks I am supporting Trump's latest military strike, I don't, but then I have a personal history of government goofs doing it their way from Washington, DC and being a long way off with the reality. Other family seems to be gathering for the transition of their sibling from uniformed to real people, we wish her and her family well. It won't be too traumatic, Air Force to just a veteran citizen. New adventures await. Wow, twenty years already.

When you haven't a better thing to do, go to the range.

   Took my wife to her drivers license renewal yesterday, I just had to send in a large check for mine, she had to show up???? But she is good for six years again. Today she goes for a medical procedure, my latest term for doctors doing their best to save all the rest. I will be taking my kindle to read while I wait. I missed the bike ride of the week last week, that will bug me for the remainder of the year, not having done the fourteenth week during the fourteenth week. So I will double up when I visit the YMCA, wonder how it will be recorded in my virtual trophy room.

   Did sign up for an Appleseed in Oregon, April 22-23, Douglas Ridge RC. Waiting on my next procedure before signing up for more.  While my wife was visiting I turned the garden soil over, wondering at what temperature the worms move. I should Google for the answer, right?

Last nights Mens Bible Study brownies and coffee start my morning...

  One of my old paratroopers posts a lot of YouTube videos and did The Ballad of Roger Young, he had two versions and I picked Burl Ives' version as best. See there are so many important things awaiting discovery on the internet by old folks not sleeping too long through the night.

  I have finished reading the Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance, and Old School Life in the Sane Lane - about to go back to other histories and studies of other things, as soon as I finish Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman. The leader of the Bible Study, my friend, has his last daughter's wedding next weekend, and after that he said he might be interested in reading this version of the myths, the writing is excellent and since it is mythology Neil Gaiman can treat it with a weird twist when he needed to. Funny, I bought this in hardback instead of kindle release - two dollar difference, maybe? Now I can loan it out.  I think that The Children of Odin, by Padraic Colum, illustrations by Willy Pogany, should accompany it.  My version is the 1920 hardback, 1957 printing-- weeded from the Tacoma Public Library.

  Go get a second cup of coffee interlude, empty the dishwasher as the microwave radiates the stuff. I find sixteen adults in our home for three hours and finally some of the thirty two various coffee tea cups have finally been used, and I laugh as I find the four cups that match the favorite breakfast bowl for my oatmeal (the one my wife threatens to throw out) the last bowl of its design.  Well, time to wake up and watch Sunday Morning on CBS, just so I know what the artsy cool kids know about whatever they know. And Jane Pauley's husband answered my letters from Desert Shield, so I have a certain fondness for her.  So the Willie Nelson interview was interesting, but they kept plugging the Country Music Awards tonight, a two hour special. But I don't live on Country music like I once did, seems they left me behind after Toby Keith, and Keith Urban.  But when I can't find Blues I will look for Country Western, which I have always held are Blues with a twang. Time to dress for Church and Sunday School, the news are on and there is so much not to pay attention to... if I paid them any mind, especially my mind, it would increase their feelings of importance and power and influence, and it doesn't pay to be that silly.

  

Fleeing Facebook Feed...

  So I went to an Appleseed and had a wonderful time until I become retchingly sick on my drive home, difficult to drive a sixty mph while pretending you can just keep from vomiting until you find a place to pull off and puke. Being an old paratrooper, I can just let go whenever I need to, just don't try to hold me back.  Once as a jumpmaster, with multiple rotations around a short drop zone, I was feeling queasy before the last pass and was so happy that the crew chief opened the door and locked the platform down, so I could give my command and stick myself outside the door, throw up and away, and finish my door and drop zone check and come back in and tell the first jumper to "Stand in the door!"
   Anyway, I did get home safely, and went to sleep for hours after I cleaned up, the Caravan was done professionally yesterday (gosh, I get so lazy).  I am reading Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance, and Old School: Life in the Sane Lane by O'Reilly and  Bruce Feirstein.  Nice to compare the three writers and their experiences with my own, since I am one of those folks that centers normal around my life lived differently than yous guys.

  Waiting for me when I got back was a Census survey for some kind of Consumer information. As I went through the information and answered the on line survey I kept thinking that filing taxes every year, getting paid by institutions that have to report to the government and deduct or not deduct taxes, and having been issued a real birth certificate, and marriage certificates and being on line with MicroSoft, Google and Facebook - how could the government need any more or better information about me? Well, maybe there are secrets about President Obama or President Trump. But the liars around them make finding their truth almost impossible. I am surrounded by folks that know all about me, and considering how many government actions have my name on them, impressive.

Smoking in the Boys room - Zippo and free cigarette

   It is the Vietnam Veterans Day today, yeah me! Someone sent me a favorite.  Well, I have more ironing to do, tomorrow I see my doctor for his best advice, seems one of my tests came back abnormal, shucks I am sixty-nine and many things are abnormal. Would be interesting if Sunday's illness were related, would be interesting if I won the Powerball.