Compendium

Meals on Wheels

I counted, and I delivered 83 meals today.  Monday is always a big day because we deliver boxes of 7 or 14 frozen meals at the start of the week.  Today I delivered 83.  I drove 14 miles to do that, and I'll get $6.23 in reimbursement for that route.  The cost for delivering that food was 7.5 cents each.  I'd say that's quite a bargain.  That involved about 16 stops.

Silver Wedding Anniversary

Last night we hosted a dinner party to celebrate the silver wedding anniversary of some of our best friends.  Ironically, they had forgotten it was their wedding anniversary, never mind that it was their 25th.  That's what aging does to you.

Obituary

My wife has had a long-standing interest in funny wedding write-ups and obituaries, some of which are unintentionally funny. She's collected quite a few over the years, and she and her "sister," Addie, claim to want to write a book about these some day.  We had an interesting obituary yesterday for one Billy Harold Jones, age 74.  It started, "Billy loved vanilla ice cream./ He was real, and he loved real people.  He could spot a phony a mile away."  He sounds a bit like Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye.  The rest of the obituary was fairly normal, but the part I like best is, "I lieu of flowers, please send fried chicken."  Billy Harold Jones, I salute you, Bubba.  He sounds like he was a great guy, and I hope my obituary will make people laugh, too.

83 meals in an hour and a half.  That's a lot of food.

ED

Water on the Moon

I got an email this morning from a friend and former student who's a professor of Geo-chemistry at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH.  He and two colleagues found water on the moon.  The man is James VanOrmand, Ph.D., and here's a link to the audio he sent me:  Moon Water.  I'm sure that's a major scientific breakthrough, and I'm proud of Jim for having been a part of that study.  I just made Beth listen to it--she also taught him--and she wanted me to congratulate him for her, which I hereby do.  She also said for me to tell Jim that she understood about 1/100th of what it was about.  That's not really true, and I think I understand exactly what he's talking about.  But, I've listened to it six times.

What's ironic here is that, while I'm proud of Jim for discovering water on the moon, I'm almost prouder of him for being on NPR.  Most of what I know about what's going on in the world I get from NPR, the New York Times via their on-line news alerts, and MSNBC.  Oh, and my friend Jim M. who sends me many emails every day, mostly about Catholic issues.

I used to tell my students--especially my Advanced Placement students--that I will be their friend for the rest of my life, whether they like it or not.  I have enough doctors among my former students to create a pretty comprehensive hospital, enough lawyers to form a huge law firm to defend my doctors against malpractice suits, and enough scientists to form a pretty impressive science department in a university.  I've got playwrights and novelists, too, of course, and they can write about my doctors, lawyers, and scientists.  I have a few professional mathematicians to work out the numbers, and I have more than my share of accountants to help the rest keep the money straight.  Oh, and I've got enough engineers to actually build safe levees in New Orleans.

I was richly blessed in my career as a high school teacher by having the best and the brightest.  Now, twenty years later, they're discovering water on the moon.

ED

Darwin Award Rejects

The Darwin Awards are given every year to people who die doing really stupid things.  The premise is these people actually improve the human gene pool by dying because they're so stupid.

Here's a video of people who did stupid thing, but they were rejected for the Darwin Award.

Thanks to my friend Jim M. for sharing this with me.

ED

"Soldier's Girl"

I just watched the 2003 Showtime movie Soldier's Girl, and it impressed me as being an indictment of the United States military in a great many ways.  The movie was based on the true story of Barry Winchell, an Infantry PFC who was brutally murdered in his sleep with a baseball bat by a homophobic fellow soldier because Barry was in love with a transsexual woman.  The boy who killed him was 17 years old, and he was portrayed as quite obviously crazy.  The boy got life in prison for the murder.  Barry's roommate, who was sentenced to 12 years in jail for his role in the killing, was a self-described ADHD 20 year old with OCD who had been married and who had a 2 year old son.  The roommate took a veritable handful of pills every day for his various psychiatric conditions, and he drank like a fish.

We've heard quite a few reports about the military's relaxation of recruiting criteria to accept societal misfits and, even, convicted felons, and, of course, Don't Ask, Don't Tell is a big issue among many in the GLBT community.  This film brings much of that together.  Soldier's Girl is a powerful piece of work.

ED

Freecycle

My friend James commented on my last post about the Freecycle program.  This was news to me, and I joined my local group (It already had over two thousand members, and there are actually two groups in my county.).

Essentially, Freecycle is a way to get rid of stuff you don't want--or to get stuff you do want--for free.  There is a national network, and you can find one in your area at Freecycle.  This is a great way to help yourself, to help others, and to help the environment by recycling things you'd ordinarily throw away.  Thanks for the heads-up, James.

ED