The Mrs. is now gainfully employed again, working as an SLP for SJUSD. I say ‘gainfully’ because taking care of children isn’t real work, which is why you don’t get paid for it. (That’s a joke people).
The Alpha child and the Professor are now in 2nd grade and kindergarten, respectively. ME and LJ are also attending school and very happy about it. At least I think LJ is. She seems happy if she can just cram her foot in her mouth.
I continue with my CFA studies and am happy with my progress. Now that the kids are in school I am hoping that I can write more and attend to all those little things I don’t have much time to do anymore. Like drinking and bloging.
Now, on with the show….
I tag all of my posts with some standards, lolcats being one of them. There is no single tag that brings more traffic to my blog than lolcats. Sadly, I don’t feature many cats because they are incredibly stupid, sophomoric and inane. That being said, they should be right at home here.
Being a man of delicate conscious, I feel that I owe my loyal random readers a few lolcats. Just to add to the legitimacy of using those tags. Of course, I also use Hanna Montana and Miley Cyrus and I have no intention of blog about that. I also use porn and its cousin pron and I certainly will never blog ab0ut that, expect to talk about how demeaning it is.
I am using a lazy format to post pictures. I don’t know if I like it, so I probably won’t use it agian. And now, to fulfill my inconsistent conscious, lolcats:
And so it goes.
f
p.s. One of these cats is not like the other. Can you tell which one?
MS SUNBM seems to have taken a vacation. Perhaps a summer vacation.
Over the last few weeks, I have had three vehicle related markers to look for in the morning. The first was at 7:08(ish) when a school bus would drive past the house Northbound. Then at 7:15(ish) MS SUNBM would honk. Finally, at about 7:25(ish), the Northbound school bus had completed its route and would pass the house Southbound. This past week marked the end of the summer school season and, as you may expect, the buses stopped running. And apparently so has MS SUNBM. I’ve been keeping an eye out for her, and she is conspicuous by her absence.
So now I have a working theory that she is an employee of the school district. I’ll post a follow up after the school year starts to see how accurate my observation is.
And so it goes.
f
p.s. The road that she drives by on is on the West side of house.
I think this message by Dave Carroll is extremely charitable and I commend him for it. He mentions that Ms. Irlwig, the customer service rep, is being treated unfairly in some places on the interweb and that she should be given a break. My favorite part comes near the end when he says, ‘Aboot’. You crazy canucks!
For me, this protest as been the best kind. There is no anger or malice, just frustration. Anger and malice lead you to a place you do not want to go. I’d like to offer Dave’s example to all my ‘angry’ friends out there.
Now, if anyone needs me, I’ll be in the angry dome…
Today marks the 64th anniversary of the start of the atomic age. At 05:29 on July 16, 1945, the very first atomic weapon was detonated in the Jornada del Muerto in New Mexico under the code name Trinity.
I have always been fascinated by this event. Several years ago I started to learn what I could about the origin, development, testing and use of nuclear technology. I collected videos and articles from the very scientists who developed the methods that made nuclear fission possible. It was clear from their writings that they both loved and hated what they were doing. The end result of their labor could only have one possible outcome, yet they pressed on. From some, it was the thrill of finding the answer first. For others it was a very strong feeling that this secret was going to be cracked sooner or later. Better it be ‘us’ than ‘them’.
The single most fascinating item I learned was that this whole race was essentially kicked off in Germany, where scientists there had split a Uranium atom. The implications of that discovery were obvious to a few key scientists. Given the aggression of Germany, they felt that action needed to be taken in order defeat Germany before they created the weapon above. In the long run, it was discovered that Germany was nowhere near developing a bomb. Where have I heard that before?
The single most frightening thing I learned was just how easy it is to build a bomb like the one featured above, at least on a conceptual level. Given enough time and enough leeway, any country could develop the technology and means to produce a crude atomic weapon. The plutonium implosion weapon featured above would be considered highly primitive and it still has the explosive power of twenty thousand tons of TNT. (Just to put that size into perspective, the largest weapon detonated by the US was Castle-Bravo. It came in at fifteen megatons, or fifteen million tons of TNT.)
There is a family story about my Pop, my maternal grandfather, who owned a saw mill in northern Kentucky. During the War, materials were very scare and he needed some parts to keep his mill operational. A friend of his told him to go do the dealer and tell him the parts were for the Manhanttan Project. The next day he had the parts.
I withhold judgement on whether or not the United States should have gone down the nuclear path. I leave that question for people far smarter that myself. It is of little difference to me what we did or did not do. The history of the development and use of this weapon is far, far more complex than most people realize. The players who brought this scene to life were both egotistical and humble, both madmen and saints. I do not envy the leaders who were faced with the decisions leading up to this event. I can only say that I hope that I am never in a place where I would be faced with such a terrible choice.
The title of this post is from the Hindu scriptures, the Bhagavad Gita. Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific leader of the Manhattan project, later said during an interview that this quote went through his head as the bomb detonated. The director of the Trinity test, Kenneth Bainbridge, had a more colorful remark: ‘Now we are all sons of bitches’.
Well, tonight we say good-bye to a rather tumultuous year, at least for our clan. We saw the loss of a job, an unanticipated move, the gain of a job, the blessing of a better place to live and the great blessing of another child. There were also the incidental victories. I got my second Bag ‘o Crap from Woot and I and won my fantasy football league.
Looking back at the year, I feel the same way a forest must feel after a fire. The fire hurt, but now there is room for growth and renewal. In 2009 Sammy will start kindergarten and Mary will start pre-school. I will continue (God willing) in my new job and Casey’s Speech-Pathology practice serving the Catholic Schools will grow. We will wrap up the year with our first Christmas in Boise and our first Christmas in Idaho since Casey and I were married.
We lost our dog, Cassie this year. She was a good dog. A good dog. Noelle started wearing an eye patch to help with her Anisometropic Amblyopia. For each day she wears her patch, she gets a gold dollar to use to buy a hamster. The hamster won’t live as long as the dog (at least I hope not. I don’t want a 16 year old hamster).
We are going to strive to cut our current garbage output from four bags a week to three bags. We have cloth diapers for Leela and Mary will be potty-trained this year. We tried last year, but it just didn’t take. Too much going on.
We replaced our dinner table one that will allow us to seat all six people and keep food on the table. That may not sound like much, but it is really a huge deal to us. Ralphie and Steve were nice enough to provide the table.
Ralphie was able to spend a month with us while Leela finished cooking. The kids loved having Grandma Ralphie around for so long. So did we. Mary is still asking, ‘Where did Ralphie go?’.
This year my blog enters its third year and I will pass the 100 post mark. I don’t know if that is really a big deal, but hey, I am running out things to say.
I hope all of you have a wonderful 2009 and that it is full of the Lord’s blessings.
It’s funny. The Internet has spawned all sorts of weirdness. You can download a picture of just about anything you want. No matter how scary and wrong.
And that brings me to tonight’s post. LOL Cats. LOL is short for Laughing Out Loud. And Cats is short for Cats. There are people who seem to like to take picture so their cats and add ‘funny’ captions. Really, some are quite funny, others not. I first learned about this phenomenon on Woot!. (Which was the word of the year for 2007, I might add). So this phlog goes out to all the people who have nothing better to do…
And there it is. I hope this has disturbed you as much as it has me.
