December miscellaneous
1. I got a bum knee. I can walk but not run or dance. This is not good. I am gaining weight at roughly one pound per hour and if I don’t get it fixed I may never move again. The witch doctor thinks it is torn cartilage, will go in Friday to make a plan. Damn.
2. Full moon tonight, or technically tomorrow. Very impressive at moonrise, but it always is. People who can’t or don’t look up at night are seriously missing the boat. Quite a few years ago I was running on the sand roads in central Kansas about sunset. Going east, about 5 miles out and ready to turn around when I noticed the moon starting to come up. It was full and I was in the middle of one of those Kansas flat spots where the sky seems to reach the ground about 500 miles away. Decided to go a little further to watch the moonrise. Once it cleared the horizon and was fully visible, just sitting on the eastern rim of the world, looking bigger than I have ever seen the moon look, I turned around. There on the western horizon, was the sun, blood red, also sitting on the rim ready to start to set. I just about fell into the road ditch. I suppose you had to be there to understand, but I was so stunned at the spectacle that I will never forget it.
3. We got guineas around here. Cousin Jeff bought 20 of the wretched things and 5 survived to be adults. He is gone for a few days, so I have been feeding them, turning them out in the morning and shutting them up at night. They are ugly as sin, make an incredibly bad noise, and dart around as if they are insane. The chickens walk out of the coop in the morning with some dignity. The guineas jump out and take to the air to fly 30 or 40 feet, squawking as loud as they can manage, which is damned loud. I like them quite a lot.
4. To goat or not to goat? I have been fighting an obsession with goats lately, fanaticizing about fixing some fences and getting some goats. They seem about as ugly and irritating as guineas, so I don’t know what it’s all about. There is a goat auction next Saturday down by Chillicothe. I think I'm gonna go and soak up a little goat ambiance and see how it feels.
5. We got another gift from nature in the form of a short-legged dog. Looks like he is mostly of the Beagle persuasion. I guess he is going to stay. Unless some of you all are very lonely and need a faithful dog companion. Also another cat skulking around the place. People who dump animals should die, go to hell, and be beaten with a board all the way there.
6. It’s cold. It’s winter and supposed to be. Switched over to burning Hedge to get a little more heat out of the old stove. I think the long fire is officially burning now. Supposedly, that’s what some bunch of Indians called it when they started a fire and planned to keep it burning until spring. Tell me again why global warming is bad?
7. Speaking of that, I’m not excited about it. Back in the early 70’s, I got really excited about global cooling, which was attributed to the same things now causing global warming. In many cases, the very same people were hyping it. Excuse me if I’m a little harder to convince this time. Yeah, it gets cooler sometimes and warmer sometimes, but common sense tells me that given the scale of the planet and the scale of human activity, the latter is unlikely to cool or heat the former very much.
8. I am however much amused that the alleged foremost authority on the science of climatology (however you spell it) is a guy who flunked out of divinity school. (Naming no names, but his initials are Al Gore)
9. OK, I’ll shut up now. Not sure where all that came from.
2. Full moon tonight, or technically tomorrow. Very impressive at moonrise, but it always is. People who can’t or don’t look up at night are seriously missing the boat. Quite a few years ago I was running on the sand roads in central Kansas about sunset. Going east, about 5 miles out and ready to turn around when I noticed the moon starting to come up. It was full and I was in the middle of one of those Kansas flat spots where the sky seems to reach the ground about 500 miles away. Decided to go a little further to watch the moonrise. Once it cleared the horizon and was fully visible, just sitting on the eastern rim of the world, looking bigger than I have ever seen the moon look, I turned around. There on the western horizon, was the sun, blood red, also sitting on the rim ready to start to set. I just about fell into the road ditch. I suppose you had to be there to understand, but I was so stunned at the spectacle that I will never forget it.
3. We got guineas around here. Cousin Jeff bought 20 of the wretched things and 5 survived to be adults. He is gone for a few days, so I have been feeding them, turning them out in the morning and shutting them up at night. They are ugly as sin, make an incredibly bad noise, and dart around as if they are insane. The chickens walk out of the coop in the morning with some dignity. The guineas jump out and take to the air to fly 30 or 40 feet, squawking as loud as they can manage, which is damned loud. I like them quite a lot.
4. To goat or not to goat? I have been fighting an obsession with goats lately, fanaticizing about fixing some fences and getting some goats. They seem about as ugly and irritating as guineas, so I don’t know what it’s all about. There is a goat auction next Saturday down by Chillicothe. I think I'm gonna go and soak up a little goat ambiance and see how it feels.
5. We got another gift from nature in the form of a short-legged dog. Looks like he is mostly of the Beagle persuasion. I guess he is going to stay. Unless some of you all are very lonely and need a faithful dog companion. Also another cat skulking around the place. People who dump animals should die, go to hell, and be beaten with a board all the way there.
6. It’s cold. It’s winter and supposed to be. Switched over to burning Hedge to get a little more heat out of the old stove. I think the long fire is officially burning now. Supposedly, that’s what some bunch of Indians called it when they started a fire and planned to keep it burning until spring. Tell me again why global warming is bad?
7. Speaking of that, I’m not excited about it. Back in the early 70’s, I got really excited about global cooling, which was attributed to the same things now causing global warming. In many cases, the very same people were hyping it. Excuse me if I’m a little harder to convince this time. Yeah, it gets cooler sometimes and warmer sometimes, but common sense tells me that given the scale of the planet and the scale of human activity, the latter is unlikely to cool or heat the former very much.
8. I am however much amused that the alleged foremost authority on the science of climatology (however you spell it) is a guy who flunked out of divinity school. (Naming no names, but his initials are Al Gore)
9. OK, I’ll shut up now. Not sure where all that came from.
posted by tickmeister at 6:57 PM
6 Comments:
They say you die of your whole life, not any one part of it, and I think this is like that. I do a lot of stuff that is hard on knee joints and it looks like one rebelled. I expect it will be fixable.
Sorry to hear about your damned knee. I'd wager that it's a lesson from your body telling you that you went out a little too hard on the first of your last 10 good summers. But I also suspect that you will be back, good as new, and doing some other foolish and crazy thing next summer. I can't wait.
Your recent beagle arrival got me to missing my old dog. Wish I could take him off your hands. But Kim and I have made a promise to our elderly cat to make what remains of his last 10 summers dog-free. There will be other stupid people dumping dogs in your neighborhood I'm sure. Let us know when the next one comes by...
The wise man says I need knee surgery, but he will do it with one of those little roto-rooter things so it shouldn't be too traumatic. Will do it next Wednesday, hope to be back dancing by Free-State.
The beagle is a cool dog, not looking too hard to get rid of him. 2nd best dump dog we've had. Best was an old red German Shepherd cross, Hank. He looked really bad, half his ears chewed off. He could stop a UPS driver in his tracks with a single glance, but he was actually very good natured and likeable.
Well I got a very large, swollen knee with supposedly a bunch of stuff cleaned out of it. I will be on crutches until Dec. 28. Should be good to go after that, we shall see.
It's raining, and the knee feels at least as good as before they operated. Should be OK, but will have to abandon running. Will try to resume a bit of dancing. I'm sort of hoping that it will tell me when a banjo string is about to break. Don't much care when it's going to rain.
Knee is mostly healed, but will have to decide how to budget my remaining cartilege. May or may not run.
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