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.

They're back.... why me, Lord?

  So I ate a light supper at five, went to midweek services and I worked with the children. So it was a great evening. Going home and reminded my wife and self that I was going to only drink water the rest of the evening and go to bed early - doctors visit in the morning. So I read my book and listened to an old movie, kind of... Then went to bed earlier than my wife. Somewhere in the early sleep I started dreaming and woke myself up with answering the door and fighting off the people waiting out there. I was shouting something about"kill them, kill them" then I woke as I said it a third time and woke up feeling foolish and exposed. First, make sure I hadn't hurt my wife, nor woken her up - without turning on the light. I figured I had not bothered her. I resettled on my pillow and went to sleep until morning.

   Woke up early, showered and prepared for doctor visit and my workout at the YMCA. As my wife gave me my half of the morning apple, I said I would keep it to eat later as a morning snack.  Then she mentioned my bad dream and what I said word for word - I had not escaped her notice. I haven't had those type of nightmares and dreams since 1972-73. Was glad to leave them behind, and wondering why I am sliding back that direction. At least the dreams weren't about combat - just multiple bad guys that hate me. Should quit watching the news.

   At the doctors, the nurse asked me all the tough questions - what month is it? Count backwards from twenty, say the months in reverse from the last to the first. What was the address you were supposed to memorize (John Brown, 42 Main Street, Lakewood) no zip code provided? Silly folks, of course I didn't remember immediately it was March. I am thinking about April. Heart and blood pressure are fine, but my LDL and total Cholesterol are a little high. I am going to work on food and weight to bring it down, and more walking and maybe jogging one day. Still, I am concerned about the bad dreams.  My mind is too strong and magnification of everything is too easy, what does one do with too much imagination? Work it, baby, work it!