Letters to Holly

Friday, April 27

Last Night

So, yeah, I was in bed when you called but not fully asleep. I may have sounded odd when I answered because I thought three things all at the same time:
1) It's another prank call.
2) It's bad family news.
3) Your Sister, who sleeps next to the phone, isn't moving. The girl can apparently sleep through explosions.

Don't hesitate to call us when you wish. It was just the rare early night for both of us. Usually, yeah, I'm awake.

There are no grand plans for the weekend. She has to compile school information, and I find myself curiously, um, curious about the NFL Draft. That will last approximately 34 days starting tomorrow. I will also till the garden some more.

Picture/Geek Babble of the Day
Yet another comic-book movie is in the works. Robert Downey Jr. plays Iron Man, and these are the first decent pics we've seen from the set. The story from the comics is industrialist playboy Tony Stark was captured by guerrilla forces (originally Korean, then Vietnamese, now maybe Al Qaeda) to make high-tech weapons. In the capture, his heart was damaged, and he made a supertech pacemaker. Then he built a suit of armor around the gadget, fought the captors, escaped the wilderness, and returned home to run his billionaire empire and fight crime.


Here's what I spy with my geeky eye. First, Downey looks the part. Stark always had some type of facial hair, and his got the right age and complexion. Second, the boy is cut. I don't think I've ever seen him in such good shape. Third, that pacemaker design is nifty. I like that he can't fully disguise the device, unlike in comics where its subcutaneous. This makes him an obvious "iron man" even outside the armor. Iron Man is, essentially, Batman in armor. He's a sex mo-sheen with more money than God. Unfortunately, he drinks like a fish, and he gave up his armor to a sidekick while he dried out. But he's smart without being a geek, and he saves the world from such threats as the Mandarin (A Chinese tyrant with ten power rings), Crimson Dynamo (the Soviet/Russian Iron man), and a slew of c-level thugs with gadget-powered evil schemes. I loved the book when I was young but haven't picked up an issue in decades. The writers always seemed to overthink the premise, and it wasn't fun or engaging.

This appears to be the film version of the classic Iron Man armor. The design has radically changed over the years, but it started off in the early 1960s as what you see above: a bulky, gray boiler with limbs. He's an old-school Marvel character, working alongside Captain America and the Hulk.

Thursday, April 26

Digging for Mud

Working in the garden right now is a simple task. I'm just moving the soil. The upper row is the driest, and digging through that took some time. As I move closer to the compost bin, the soil is looser. And down the slight hill, the soil is fine. I used a shovel to churn the soil when I got home. Just me and the iPod and the shovel. I'm still finding a surprising amount of rocks. For a garden that appeared well tended when we bought the house, it should be clear of the quartz I'm finding. I found one rock, close to the surface that was almost two feet wide and 10 pounds heavy. How did they plant anything on top of that? It's not a decorative chunk, either, although I did find what appears to be a stake yesterday. It's developing into backyard archeology.

Your Sister pointed out that we have accidentally grown asparagus. I turned around, and there were the stalks, about a foot tall from the dirt. We'll let it grow a bit taller. When I finished, I had a 4 x 7 foot gouge in the ground, with fresh, moist clay piled atop of the pinkish topsoil. It looked like I just buried a body. I expect to do this to varying degrees in our delineated patch, but I can save some time by simply watering the dirt. I expected rain this week, but we've gotten nothing so far.

After that, I washed up, made dinner, and helped her look over school papers. Unfortunately, the digging had strained my wrist and I couldn't grasp the pen with my thumb. I hope she can read my notes.

Picture of the Day
This is a billboard for The Economist. It has a motion sensor, and when someone walks underneath it, the bulb lights up.

Wednesday, April 25

Space Veto

Did some floor exercises when I got home. Today, I plan to work the garden soil for a while to aerate it and work various muscles. Gardening is not a passive activity, I'm finding. Your Sister made a fantastic curry sirloin dish, and we threw back some wine with it. The end of the school semester is driving her crazy. Short deadlines, papers to grade, exams to prepare for -- this is the roughest patch of work this school year. I want to take her hiking, but I'm not sure we can spare the time. As it is, I'll be looking at papers with her tonight before "Lost" comes on.

Picture of the Day
Factory for WW2 bomber nose cones. If we were serious about waging a war, we'd ration resources and employ the citizenry in such activities.



In the News
This is the reason you don't have a presidential line item veto: Bush will either accept a withdrawal timeline or reject generous Iraq funding. The Democrats say they can outvote the veto, which will make the bill into law. That's pretty rare, but then Bush himself has rarely used his veto power.

+ + +

The news that a possible inhabitable planet has been discovered means very little to me. I support deep-space exploration, but we're not employing enough development or budgets to consider it seriously. And by the time we're able to look at this second earth with any reliable technology, we'll see something that throws our theories into chaos. It's inevitable with space research. We're still learning about the sun, and it's literally 1 million times closer to us than the new planet. Our sun is 8 light minutes away; the planet is 20 light years distant. It would take you 20 years to get there if you traveled at the speed of light.

Tuesday, April 24

The Running Cycle

I follow the same running route because the sidewalk follows the road so I'm not out of public view in case something goes wrong, but I'm not in the road either. It does cause some problems. The traffic drafting is tough if the construction vehicles belch thick smoke at me, and the route is peppered with intersections, so I have to watch out for people turning in front of me. Also, this route is all hills, and if I can manage that, I can manage the flatter sections of a 5k race.

I walk from the house to the start of the next road and start to run when I get to the speed sign. This is all downhill to the main road. I turn onto that road, and start a slow uphill, and this is where my shins start to hurt. Every time, regardless of stretching or eating habits. The downhill also curtails my stride, and the uphill combines with that to give me the first big lung hurt. Before I go half a mile, I'm already huffing. The sidewalk breaks in front of the school, and I have to run on the uneven grass. This does not help the shins. When the sidewalk starts again, so does a stronger incline. The cemetery is the halfway point. If I can pass that, I can make it to the first big intersection. This is one mile from the house. But I'm always hurting by then. It becomes a test of will, really, and the iPod helps a lot. If I get a good song to crescendo here, I can push myself.

Yesterday I made myself push pass the intersection and run a bit further. (Right before the last race, I was able to run for another mile before turning around.) I walked around the library park, turned around, and started walking back home. Before I got to the cemetery, I made myself run. My shins were killing me. I tried different walking patterns to shut them up. They calmed down a bit as I started to run, and I made myself run back to the first school entrance. I walked another 200 yards, and then made myself run all the way back to that speed sign. That's the sharpest incline of my possible run route. It's even harder than the notorious downtown hill. I'm gonna start making myself run this house hill every time, sometimes more than once. I want to be able to attack that downtown hill in a race, and I want to beat my time from the first race.

Sometimes I have to look down to avoid staring at my running benchmarks. Sometimes I imagine people I detest mocking me. Sometimes I imagine I'm in a musical montage like in a Rocky movie. Whatever makes me keep it up.

Picture of the Day
Every picture tells a story.

Monday, April 23

Fast Breaks and Shirtless Gardening

I got home Friday to learn that I was allowed to play in the faculty vs. seniors basketball game. I learned this 30 minutes before gametime. We talked on the phone briefly, and then I changed and ran all the way to the school. I had about 15 minutes of shoot-around time and introductions before we started. It was a loose game. Set up as a fundraiser, there were maybe 50 people watching in the gym as the nice weather kept everyone away. Each team had to play two women at all times, and I worked the game as a back-up. Two volleyball girls refereed, and neither knew the rules all that well. Also the scorekeeper was constantly confused as to which team was which, and another student gave play-by-play over the PA for the whole game. A tad distracting. I was happy with the time I had on the court, but it had abeen a while since I had even touched a basketball, so I didn't expect to hit all-star numbers. Didn't make a shot, mad a few bad passes, but I did block well (always my specialty), and I made a fast break or two. I was referred to by the announcer as Your Sister's Husband for the game. We won on a last-second shot. The team was carried by the basketball coach, who was throwing down threes all game. After, the faculty went to the pub for beers. I was sore. Your Sister stayed on the court for much longer and played hard. I was impressed with her effort. She did good. I wish more students were there to see that.

On Saturday, we took Your Parents out for lunch and to visit downtown. They like the new car, and we had a good time with them. After some coffee at Malaprops, we bought them some snacks at the Chocolate Fetish. It was oddly warm, and we got home early enough for me to attack the weeds and garden, and, per her request, without a shirt. I never do this, but a husband has to keep the missus happy. I also got to work our some of the soreness for the previous night's game. I have to say that I'm shedding the winter shapelessness, and I'm toning up a bit. I hope to run today to get over the last of the basketball soreness. I picked up a to-go order in the new car and discovered that driving it at night is like being in the Red October. It's black and silver and red and very, very cool. We filled up the car with gas for the first time since buying the car, and we got something like 425 miles on one tank. If we had decent gas prices, this would be quite a bargain.

We had lunch with Kathy, Travis, and their baby on Sunday. She's a good child, attentive, and happy. This led to a short conversation about us having kids, and we're both of the same mind: No. The good weather continued, and she declared I would grill steaks for supper. And I did. Again, happy missus upkeep.

Picture of the Day
I'm sure this says something about his ego.