I played checkers last night with each of my children in turn. They’re both a lot better than I expected. Delaney seems to have a decent understanding of the rules. She finally trapped herself without a move late in the game. It was partly my fault. She kept asking me if each move was safe and I didn’t see the lock-up until it was too late. Her last two pawns trapped her king at my edge of the board, while my pawn was still in starting position in the next space over. Ethan is very good at the game. If not for one crucial error in the game that allowed me to triple jump his three kings he’d have had me for sure. Ethan has been playing chess for some time, and he’s not bad considering he’s nine. Chess doesn’t have some of the interesting nuances that checkers can have, and he takes advantage of them much better than I do. Unfortunately he was so concentrated on trapping me that he got careless. I let him have one take-back that would have resulted in his loss of two pawns and given me a king, but the second time he made the wrong move he had me on the ropes. When he moved his third king into an L-shape to get position on my second king, he allowed me to triple jump all three with my first king. I need to play more checkers. I’ve always played chess instead any time I had the chance to play either, but I’ve always respected the game. It’s much more complicated than it first appears.

Everyone please keep Sarah and Calvin in your thoughts.

I backed in to my parking spot at home the other day while it was raining. I rolled the window down to get this shot.

I know the follwing is a little bit too stream-of-consciousness, but I think it's possible I have a fever right now.

My wife gave me her cold. I actually find that first stage of a cold kinda nice. I feel a little sleepy, and warm, and whimsical. Of course as I have to get up and blow my nose at various times throughout the night it’s a bit less pleasant. I normally have a very strong constitution. A couple years ago it was as if I was sick all the time, but I think that was just allergies. This year I’ve been very healthy, and even this cold seems to be of a light variety. It probably didn’t help that I mowed the yard yesterday and pretty much exhausted myself. It had gotten a little high with the two inches of rain we got in the last week. I meant mow it Saturday morning, but as you may remember, Saturday morning was very, very wet. When I had almost gotten done last night, the mower got clogged up with the tall wet grass for about the thirtieth time, and I decided to leave the last couple hundred square feet for this afternoon. I took a ride with the window down, letting the cool wind hit my face. Yesterday was the first pleasant day in a long while. I think the temperature at about 7:30 was down around seventy degrees. I thought about heading up through the gorge and back down the river, but I’ve been on that ride so much, and gas is so high, I decided instead to head up Cow Creek. When I got up to the top of the hill, I turned around and headed back. It’s amazing how the land looks completely different depending on whether you’re coming or going. On the way up, I noticed a “For Sale” sign at the property of an old man whose name escapes me. He died a while back. His old truck, with caper shell still intact, is sitting in his driveway, as if still just sitting there from the last time he drove himself home. I know of no reason it wouldn’t start right up and take off to this day. On the way back down the road, I noticed that the entire back part of his property had been turned into a huge retention pond for the rock quarry. I guess the division of water finally came down on them. I remember when I worked there I’d routinely use the high-pressure hose to blow the loose rock out from under the machines. There was a small pond where most of this water went, but I’m sure a lot of dust still ended up in the creek. At that time, I’d have probably traded away the life of every fish in the Red River to keep me from having to shovel that rock out instead. I did enough shoveling already. Some jobs are so hard that you like them because you know you can always tell people later on, “Well, you may think that’s bad, but let me tell you…” I have no doubt that I could not physically do the things I did then at nineteen. I’m almost tempted to go volunteer to help whoever the unlucky bastard is who does them now. If I could survive a week, I’m sure I’d be better off. When I quit the quarry I weighed 200 pounds even, down from about 245 or 250 when I started six weeks before. That seemed heavy in comparison to what I knew some of my friends weighed, but looking back, they were pretty skinny, and I was mostly all muscle. Don’t let anyone tell you shoveling rock is not hard work. The only enjoyable part of that job was the heights. It was my job to climb up on the conveyors after they were shut down and grease all the rollers. I hated greasing rollers but I loved climbing up the conveyors. Some were forty or fifty feet in the air, and at the top they’d enter the sorting house, or whatever it’s called. It’s like being in a little shed built on extremely tall stilts. At the bottom of the shed is a huge steel funnel, through which rocks can be loaded onto another conveyor or sometimes into a waiting truck. The middle has what I called a shaker. It’s essentially a big screen though which rocks of only a certain size can fall. Everything that falls through leaves in one direction, and everything that doesn’t leaves in another. Of course that’s all necessary because crushing rocks is an inexact process. Unlike in Asteroids, not all the chunks are the same size.

Here's a different kind of wedding picture.

The Amvets Texas Hold’em Tournament is this Saturday. I believe in the past it’s been requested that participants try to be there by six o’clock. Unfortunately it’s on the very same night as Robert’s Rockstar party. I’d still encourage everyone who can make it and afford it to go. Due to economic and competition factors beyond their control, Amvets recently decided to discontinue bingo. Because they engage in numerous philanthropic activities, including maintaining the Powell County Veterans Cemetery, paying for numerous scholarships, purchasing equipment for Powell County Ambulance Service, and other very costly good deeds, it’s important that they maintain a healthy cash flow. The tournament has been well advertised and should draw a large crowd, and with re-buys and add-ons promises a generous pay structure. At the last tournament, by agreement of the players, places 3-10 received $599 each, and 1^st and 2^nd received significantly more, while the tournament still made over three thousand dollars for a good cause.

Friday night finished up the annual Pub Crawl, that grand tournament of Lexington-area triviadom. Our nearest competition going in was “Dammit Castro, die already so we can get some Cuban cigars.” They were twenty-two points behind in the standings, and their low score was a 67. They needed a 77-point game and a 12-point bonus for winning in order to accumulate enough points to win. By the time the scores were announced before the 15-point final question I had drunk enough beer not to remember how I knew they had to have at least 62 points to have a shot, but I was still blissfully confident their 59 mathematically locked them out. I wandered to the restroom and was quietly congratulated by fellow pissers I didn’t know. In the end, we even managed to come up with the right answer and grab third place for the night, increasing our margin of victory by eight points or so. Go Skullz!

I’m taking a couple days off work. I want to get down and see my new nephew this weekend. I also want to do a little bit of pub-crawling this week. I feel like I’ve let my team down this year, having gone to only my regular Tuesday night game. We did post a rather impressive score, missing only three questions. For those of you who weren’t there, even though Area 51 is near Roswell, New Mexico, it’s actually in Nevada. We also failed to get the extra point conversion, by failing to name both books, one by Arthur C. Clarke and one by Robert Heinlein, that the 60’s counter-cultured identified with. Heinlein’s was Stranger in a Strange Land, which Kenny came up with after I managed to recount almost the entire plot and still couldn’t name the book. Clarke’s was Childhood’s End, which I think I read too long ago to have remembered it. Overall the questions were easier than I expected. Aparently Don’s no sci-fi buff. One of the other questions we missed was about, “What revolting Earth substance did the aliens in Alien Nation drink?” After we heard the answer I remembered seeing them drinking curdled milk, but nothing we came up was really fit for prime time. The remaining question we missed was apparently the hardest in the entire game, so hard in fact, I can’t even remember what it was.

I’ve been saying for a while now that technical colleges may offer a higher value as far as training for a career than traditional four year colleges. This article seems to bear that out.

Caleb Fisher Epperson was born today. He weighs 8 lb. 2oz. and is 20 1/2 inches long.

Here's a little something. I think you MUST click to enlarge to really get this one.

I passed an injury accident today. A truck had rear-ended a mini-van. Two men were standing in between them (not such a great idea). One of them was on the phone presumably reporting the accident. The other was standing there waiting, with blood running down his forehead. It was a pretty thick stream of blood. He was rather nonchalant about it, and since I was on my way to lunch, I was pretty nonchalant about it too.

It’s my hope that Sarah is safely back in Lexington today. I haven’t heard from her but it was my understanding she was returning about midnight last night. I hope her trip went as well as Cory’s Lollapalooza.

Ever since changing my start page in Internet Explorer to Google, I’ve felt slightly out of the loop concerning world news. The danger of this was illustrated to me yesterday. Cory told me about the terrorist situation in England. Since a large part of my job revolves around knowing what is going on in world events, especially in terrorism, I was embarrassed to learn I was hours behind such a development. Anyone know a good news ticker service?

Important Dates Coming Up:

Friday, August 11th (dark-thirty) – Nathan Johnson’s and Leslie Anderson’s combined birthday party at Casey Johnson’s. Take Virden Ridge, turn right at the Ralph Banks Ministry, keep going right until you get there.

Friday, August 11th )evening-ish to late night) – Matthew Gabbard’s bachelor party – various locations. Consult Anthony Gabbard.

Saturday, August 12th – 5:00 p.m. Matthew Gabbard’s wedding at some church on Maysville Road north of Mount Sterling (details to follow) – reception to follow at Ramada Inn, presumably BYOB.

Saturday, August 12th – Delaney’s birthday – to be celebrated on Sunday.

Saturday, August 12th – Trivia Pub Crawl begins at Campus Pub sometime around nine and continues for a week at various locations. Consult Cory Graham, Aaron Saylor, Chad Birch, or Don Willoughby.

Sunday, August 13th – Delaney’s birthday party at 1018 Cane Creek Road at 3:00 p.m.

Tuesday, August 15th – Brad’s second child (Caleb) is to be delivered by this date.

Thursday, August 16th - David Rogers' birthday.

Friday, August 18th – My mom’s birthday. Maybe I can take her to:

Friday, August 18th – Julius @ The Whiskey.
Saturday, August 26th – Robert’s “Dress Up Like a Rock Star” birthday party (drinking Rock Star energy drink is neither required nor encouraged).

Tuesday, September 19th - Be Your Own Pet @ Southgate

Wednesday, November 1st - Cory's Birthday

I always find interesting things buried deeply in my Statcounter statistics. Due to a spelling error in a comment from some time back, I was able to snag a page-view from someone whose interests (at least he tried to search Google for it) include gay wrestling. I’m glad that guy lives in Germany. Maybe gay wrestling is big over there. I have no idea. Speaking of Statcounter, I’ve also noticed my hit count drops significantly when certain people are out of town, or covered up with work.

I watched Talladega Nights over the weekend. I’ve seen some funny movies in my day, but if you don’t count Raw and Delirious, then this is the funniest movie ever made.

I reached Mike (Saylor) and Elaine’s family blog through Aaron’s Friends of the Devil page. It looks like Mike is doing very well in his new life as a Canuck. Global warming being what it is, I think Mike made the right move. His stepdaughter has a new website through which she’s trying to raise money to find cures for cancer (through the Canadian Cancer Society), and as Aaron recommended, I think everyone should try to give her a word of encouragement, a good idea or two, or maybe even a donation. She was inspired to do this by the death of her grandmother from cancer in 2004. It seems hard to believe it’s already been about twenty years since Mike lost his own grandmother to cancer, and I’m sure Kelsey’s efforts are especially meaningful for him as well.

I didn’t mention it in my post about Julius, but The Whiskey is a great bar. They have good sound, good location, cheap drinks, and attentive bartenders. The bouncer is a jerk, but if I looked like him I guess I’d lord it over people any chance I got too. There’s also plenty of room. It’s a much nice venue than The Dame, or Hooligans, or even Austin City, though it has less seating. It’s a shame they can’t attract bigger crowds. As Nathan said, we’ll just have to be sure we take the party with us.

I leave you with lyrics:

The name she gave
Was Caroline
Daughter of a miner
Her ways were free
It seemed to me
That sunshine walked beside her

She came from Spencer
Across the hill
She said her pa had sent her
Cause the coal was low
And soon the snow
Would turn the skies to winter

She said she’d come
To look for work
She was not seeking favors
And for a dime a day
And a place to stay
She’d turn those hands to labor

But the times were hard, lord,
The jobs were few
All through Tecumseh Valley
But she asked around
And a job she found
Tending bar at Gypsy Sally’s

She saved enough
to get back home
When spring replaced the winter
But her dreams were denied
Her pa had died
The word come down from Spencer

So she turned to whorin’
Out on the streets
With all the lust inside her
And it was many a man
Returned again
To lay himself beside her

They found her down
Beneath the stairs
That led to Gypsy Sally’s
In her hand when she died
Was a note that cried
Fare thee well... Tecumseh Valley

The name she gave
Was Caroline
Daughter of a miner
Her ways were free
It seemed to me
That sunshine walked beside her

~Townes Van Zandt

I was just playing around trying to teach the kids how to focus before shooting when I took this pic. I couldn't help but notice how the perspective almost makes everything look equidistant, so that the cars in the far distance look as if they're nearly as close as the one on the left, just much smaller.

The pic below is from the Julius show at The Whiskey on August 4, in case you didn't figure that out. Shooting moving subjects with a small amount of light is tough, but I think through a steady hand, careful timing, and a few post-shot digital enhancements it worked out alright.

I found out fairly late in the evening yesterday that there was to be no school this morning. My aunt volunteered to keep the kids from noon on, so I was forced to take a few hours off this morning. I suppose I’ll just have to grin and bear it. It’s a pleasant morning when you can sleep until almost ten, read the newspaper, eat a couple peanut butter and tomato sandwiches, and generally get ready for work at leisure.

In reading the paper I was delighted to discover that there’s a new comic by Berkley Breathed entitled Opus. I noticed the subject matter and animation style before I even caught the name. For those of us who look fondly back to the days of Bloom County this is quite a treat. As a footnote, it appears that Opus has been around for three years now, and perhaps I’ve just been too hung-over most Sundays to catch it.

I also saw a column in the paper about the changing attitudes of the rich and the middle class. It posited that the definitions of value (work versus intellectualism) were reversed from what has always been tradition. While I think this column was written with a fairly good-sized chunk of tongue in the cheek it definitely made some good points. I do know many middle-aged people who value themselves not for what they do career-wise but by the loftiness of their ideas, whereas many of the rich value the almighty dollar and the means to achieve it more and more. It’s no secret that while the middle class in this country generally work from thirty-five to fifty-five hours a week, many of the richest folks work in ranges twice that. In the distant past it was the rich who lived lives of leisure (think English and French aristocracy) and the middle class who did all the work, including even the managing of corporate pursuits. Of course the industrial revolution probably brought about a change. The fall of the aristocracy as THE economic force pushed what had been the middle class into a new position as creators of their own financial empire. The second half of the equation, the creation of the new leisure class, is probably the result of organized labor and the creation of service-period and financial-accrual pension plans, as opposed to those that guaranteed a check after the age of sixty-five. There are many more healthy retired people these days and fewer of us are thinking of retirement as a milestone to be savored near the end of our lives. We in the middle class expect to retire when we are, by the health standards of our day, still somewhat young. A career military man can cash in at the ripe old age of thirty-eight, if he’s lucky enough to make it that long. There are many people in much less dangerous fields on twenty-seven year retirement plans who started at twenty-two. They’ll celebrate their fiftieth year already drawing a pension. It’s no surprise that with this trend the members of the middle class no longer define themselves by what one does for a living. There is so much more to life. It isn’t the work ethic that has declined, though that may be an unfortunate side effect of the process; it’s the outlook toward work as a means to an end, and not an end in itself.

I caught Julius at The Whiskey in Richmond last night. That's the name of Robert Overbee and Matt Foster's band, named of course for Julius Kessler. They're a fine band and named after a fine whiskey, and both get better as the night wears on. When I was a kid, Kessler was the cheapest whiskey one could buy, and as such was often seen in the hands of all the problem drinkers, especially around election time. I was always fascinated with it, mostly because the portrait of Mr. Kessler on the bottle and the tax stamp that went over the top of the lid. The stamp served as a makeshift seal. Most of the ones I saw were already broken. Kessler was my first small sip of whiskey, administered when I was young to scar me away from it at least until I'd had time to get past my teen years. It burned my tongue something terrible, and I knew that I didn't want any part of it. Of course that eventually changed as I got older and I heard tales of all the good times others had while drinking. My friends and I weren't really into it, but we did view it as sort of a rite of passage. My first experience with drunkeness wasn't until I was eighteen, which of course is about three years before the law allows, but for around here seems almost embarassingly late. We sent some brave soul to the bootlegger with enough cash for three half-pints of Kessler, one apiece. We climbed into the pop up camper out at the end of my house, away from the prying eyes of parents and younger siblings. We chickened out and wo of us ended up splitting one bottle of the stuff, and it still tasted nearly as bad as that first sip. I got an interesting sensation of feeling my head move slightly before my view shifted, and I got just a tad giggly, and I thought I'd discovered what the whole drinking thing was all about. Over the years my drinking has ebbed and flowed, from almost non-existent at times (I drank no alcohol between my ninteenth and twentieth bithdays for instance) to every few days at others. I've changed brands several times. I finally got off the Kessler when experience taught me that liquor that sweet causes some of the sickest sick moments. I've been a fan of vodka at times, and I even had a moonshine faze when there was some pretty good stuff around. I switched to Jack early in this decade, until Michael Dell made me find something a little cheaper. I'm currently a fan of the Old Fitz. It has Kessler's price tag with a taste close enough to Jack for me to be comfortable. Still, I hold a special place in my heart for Kessler. Even though I don't much drink it anymore, it was the face of whiskey when whiskey meant nothing else, and every now and then I still take a pull off Robert's and Matt's jug. Julius has some more dates in the near future, and I encourage everyone to come out and catch a show.

A more morose side of Lexington Cemetery.

Link to the article referenced below.

As an addendum to my last post, the duality of the common soldier was of course addressed in Full Metal Jacket. Joker wore a peace sign pin on his helmet, and painted the helmet with the words “BORN TO KILL.” When questioned by his colonel, he answered that he was trying to say something about the “duality of man, the Jungian thing.” Who can blame the colonel for trying to quash this sentiment? “Son, all I've ever asked of my marines is that they obey my orders as they would the word of God.” That’s what war is about. As Hattori Hanzo narrates in Kill Bill, “For those regarded as warriors, when engaged in combat the vanquishing of thine enemy can be the warrior's only concern. Suppress all human emotion and compassion. Kill whoever stands in thy way, even if that be Lord God, or Buddha himself. This truth lies at the heart of the art of combat.”

To anonymous, a lot of those comments were just muckraking anyway.

I saw something in the paper a couple days ago that I still haven’t been able to get right in my mind. It was a story on a marine sniper who had twenty confirmed kills and a great number of probable kills. In one part of the story, it recounts how he once killed four gunmen on a rooftop from several hundred yards away, and caused the fifth to leap from the rooftop, all within six seconds. That’s an amazing feat to be sure, and I certainly hope that I never make that gentleman angry. What bothers me is I’m just not sure how I feel about it. I support our troops wholeheartedly. Wherever they are sent on a mission, they have little to do with it themselves. Thanks to superior training and discipline, they even have little to do with how they feel about it themselves. A soldier’s job is to follow orders, and there’s no way I can second-guess what a lance corporal does when he’s following orders. What bothers me is that it’s necessary in order to protect their own lives for our soldiers to use rules of engagement that seem so against the grain of what we civilians think of as honor and a fair fight. I don’t blame him for shooting people from hundreds of yards away on the basis that they have a rifle in their possession. I don’t even blame the sergeant that told him he was supposed to do that. I blame the very concept that we must use that kind of force to protect our own when we should never have exposed our own in the first place. Most everyone knows I am against the war, and I’m primarily against the war because it puts American lives in harm’s way on a daily basis; but I’m also against the war on the basis that it was my first exposure to the idea that America is not always right. Not only that, sometimes the people who pull the stings don’t even try to be right. The Iraq war is one case in which the United States has intentionally stepped over what was right and good on a pretense so that they could accomplish longer term goals that have a lot more to do with the global marketplace than they do with American safety or the cause of right and good. The thing that bothers me is that by celebrating one soldier’s efficiency at killing soldiers of the other side, from hundreds of yards away, and yet on a personal basis, what do we create in him should he realize one of these days that maybe he should never have been there at all? I can certainly reconcile in my mind how a soldier can be both right enough for morality’s sake in one sense and still be on the wrong side, but for the common soldier, who I picture as a man of faith who maybe has more skill with a rifle than he does with philosophy, how does he reconcile himself with this essential duality? I feel sorry for him on the one hand, and hope he never has deal with the anguish that awareness might cause, but at the same time, I hope that all our soldiers will eventually see the way in which their very lives were used improperly, so that we need never commit the same mistakes again. In short, I’m still confused about what I should think.

I’m so disappointed that a Google search of the terms “Jeopardy” and “Krista” failed to produce meaningful results.