When we moved to Medford, OR in August of 1990, Southern California became a place to visit and from where people came to visit us. Seven hundred or so miles, 10 or so hours of hard driving and the desire to bridge that gap separated Southern Oregon from Southern California. Another move took us to Washington State in 2009, adding another 500 miles and 8 hours to the distance that divided the familial landscape.
What goes up must come down...
Here we are, twenty-three years later, back where we started. Closer to family than we have been in nearly a quarter century, a December without the remotest posssibility of snow and blue skies instead of clouds...life is good.
We've been Medfordites and Bellinghamsters, Oregonians and Washingtonians. We proudly reclaim the demonym of Californians and add Santa Barbarians to the entire household.
Popular music today lacks vocal harmony. Take a look at the Top 20 for this week and let me know when you find a song with harmonies. I'll wait, no hurry.
Is this disappearing as a talent? Is it because much of the popular acts these days are solo and it is difficult to do harmony by yourself? Or is it because it is a lot of work?
A 2012 study by researchers at the
Spanish National Research Council indicated that contemporary popular music has grown loud, predictable, and simpler than ever. The study found that, since the 1950s, there has been a decrease in the diversity of chords in a given song and in the number of novel transitions, or musical pathways, between them. While it is true that pop songs tend to be far more limited in their harmonic vocabularies when compared to a classical symphony, past decades saw more inventive ways of linking their harmonies together than we hear now.
The Beatles and The Beach Boys knew how to harmonize, and did it well. The Eagles, especially in "Seven Bridges Road" where the vocals just jump out and grab you from the start. Fortunately, groups like The Civil Wars, The Rescues, Beirut, The Lumineers and Mumford & Sons are just a few that keep harmonies alive. How Alison Krauss managed to wrap her harmonies around Robert Plant's voice on the Raising Sand album still amazes me.
More harmony, less noise...isn't that what we all really want in our lives?
As of late I have been inexorably drawn to the television series "The Paper Chase". Perhaps it is because I know the next steps in our life will be difficult and I harken to, in retrospect at least, what was a simpler time. Those next steps (going to college) would, of course, be hard ones.
Taking classes in auditoriums filled with students made a high school class of twenty-five look like a study group. No one was looking over your shoulder to see how you were fairing, in some classes there were no familiar faces and your fellow classmates were likely among the best of the best; these things and many others caused me stay up late at night wondering what I had managed to get myself into. Tack on moving away from home and it still amazes me more of us didn't turn tail after the first week.
Looking back on those times from an aged and experienced point of view make them seem much more uncomplicated and easier. As the reality of our current situation continues to unfold, moving to a new location and starting a new job seem hard.
We've moved many times before and I have had numerous first days at work. Still, the future is always much more turbulent than the past, as we can gaze behind us to past events with experience and a sense of calm, knowing no matter how bleak things looked at that moment in time that things turn out the way they are going to, regardless of the amount of hand wringing or pacing or worrying we invested in the situation.
Some future version of myself will look back at this time and ask why I was even concerned. Until then I will work the "all shall be well" mantra and remember that one day I will be saying, "Hey look, we've come through..."
We had been living in Washington State for only a few weeks when we saw them. A doe and two fawns, slowly crossing our backyard, gracefully jumping over the four foot fence as if it were four inches. The dog didn't know what to make of them, and the cats, while intrigued that potential prey had come to them, were smart enough to give them a wide berth.
The deer continue to grace our presence, with forays into the field next door. We were headed to a garage sales the other day and drove past a few deer making themselves home in someone's front yard. They aren't the only animals to arrive on our doorstep. Brown and black squirrels use the fence line as a superhighway, moving from yard to yard in search of stores for winter. Rabbits have recently appeared, eating grasses and wild flowers in the adjacent open field.
As I sat at the desk in our home office late one night, I heard a noise at the pet door. Without my glasses I could see a greyish figure through the glass door and figured it was one of our cats on the way back in for the night. The pet door opened all the way and the dining room light illuminated what was the face of a raccoon. I surprised it as much as it surprised me, and it retreated to the safety of the yard. As I arose from the desk to get a better view, the raccoon also stood on its hind legs and waved its arms in the air, making itself appear larger and trying to scare me off. Safely behind the glass door, I stood my ground, letting the raccoon know it didn't scare me (as long as it stayed on the other side of the door, of course).
I will not miss the 168 days a year with precipitation, nor will I shed a tear for the 208 days with cloud cover. And while both contribute to the shadowy forest dripping with moss and ferns and the almost ever-present green of the area, it is the few weeks of perfect summer weather and the menagerie of wildlife that was right outside our door that will tip the scales of my memory in favor of living here.
I can't remember
the last time I saw rain. It hasn't been years, or even months at this point. When you live in a place where three days in a row without rain is the exception to the rule, you tend to expect precipitation; when it doesn't materialize, one day melds into the next, time stands still and the last time you needed an umbrella is a fading memory.
In what are unusual times here in the Great North Wet, days without rain are certainly welcome. A lack of sprinklers means that most lawns go from green to gold. If you are trying to sell your house (as we are), you water the lawn by hand to keep the lush verdant appearance. The flowers are thriving in the relative warmth, the trees increase their height and the roses bloom and bloom again, all the recipients of long days of sunshine.
The azure sky is book-ended by the pastel colors of dawn and dusk. Too soon it will rain and the normal rotation of clouds with small glimpses of blue sky will return. As the year continues, we will pack away summer for another rotation around the sun. For the moment, we enjoy it being here, making vitamin D and taking in all that summer can supply.
The future seems far away for so long, and then it hits you like a dope slap.
My last full day with Sargento was June 10. I made a few trips into the office during that week, including a goodbye lunch for the Plant Manager, so that stretched it until June 14. I was paid through the end of the month, so (in my mind, anyway) maybe my official last day was June 30. In early July I still had corporate e-mail access, making it easy to continue to believe I was still tied to my friends and associates in WI and elsewhere.
It was going to happen eventually, and it came sooner than later. Earlier this week my access was revoked and I could no longer sign on to the external portal. I continued to deny my true separation from what, with little doubt, was the best company I have ever had the privilege to work for.
There is no denying it anymore. The electronic thread, tenuous at best, was finally broken.
Time will fly, each week/month/year moving faster than the last. We might stay in touch, but it far is more likely we will move on, the tide of life drifting us apart both in distance and time.
A while back I wrote that an era is truly known only when it is over. This period of time, marked by its distinctive characters and events, may not make the history books, but it was significant nevertheless for those of us who lived it.
The future seems so far away for so long...
Yesterday
was Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year in the Northern
Hemisphere. In Bellingham, the sun rose at 5:07:06 am and set that
evening at 9:16:53 pm, for a grand total of 16hrs 09min 47sec of full
daylight. If you count civil twilight which begins at 4:24 am and ends
at 9:58 pm, the daylight hours stretch out to 17 hours 34 min.
As I have said before,
summer doesn't really start until the solstice parade in Santa Barbara
is complete. Then, and only then, is summer finally at our doorstep.
If
you are watching the parade, look for something that resembles giant
colon, or perhaps a wedge of cheese or maybe a cube...only they know for
sure. If you have an extra bottle of water, find the small slit in the
side about eye level and press the bottle through (they'll thank you
for it, trust me). Clap when they go by and tell them I love each and
every one of them.
I
dream of Santa Barbara, my family and friends who are there, the times
of my life spent there and the times yet to be. Where our next stop
will be is still unknown, but today, as with many days, my past meets my future, and I, much like the parade, will go with the flow.
In
the future I hope to travel further north and experience the
never-ending day associated with the far north. Until then, I relish in
the extra minutes of daylight and firmly plant those memories of in my
mind, waiting for a day with less light to remember them by.
Wisconsin is the home of Earth Day founder and US Senator Gaylord Nelson, Sierra Club founder John Muir, the Green Bay Packers, the Wisconsin Badgers, 29 methane digesters, the kringle (a butter-rich, tender-crusted Danish pastry filled with nuts or fruits, formed into giant ring and topped with a sugar glaze), and The Rock in the House. 
More importantly, it is the home of the brandy old-fashioned. Every bartender there knows the drill: a bar spoon of sugar, three dashes of Angostura bitters, a lightly muddled slice of orange, a slug of brandy, lots and lots of ice, a splash of soda and, of course, a bright red maraschino cherry. It is a pity more bartenders across the country don't know how to make a good old-fashioned.
Most importantly, it is the home of Sargento, a company that truly believes their most valuable asset is their employees. I was recently in Wisconsin for what will likely be my last visit as a Sargento employee. My time was split between the three plants, so I had the opportunity to see the facilities, the people that make them great, and the rolling countryside one more time.
My heartfelt thanks go out to Janet, Jim, Cory, Erika, Jane, Heather, Julie, Gary, Donna, Cheryl and everyone else in Quality Systems for making me feel at home. I hope our paths cross again.
The
month of May has come and gone. What looked like a long time in the
future, time enough at last to accomplish many things, is now the
past.
May lasted as long as it should have, from a calendar
sense of time, but it appeared to speed by, defying my wish that it
linger and allow me to embrace the boundless possibilities that existed.
Decommissioning
the plant was in front of us; now it is almost completely behind us. I
wanted more time to absorb those subtle images that will frame my
memories, allowing them to linger in my mind. Instead I find myself
fussing over the past and the future, pressing myself toward reality by
concentrating only on the present, wondering what will be next.
For months we waited, wondering when the final day of manufacturing would occur. We wanted the day to be fixed, to know when it was going to happen, to be able to move on with our lives.
The announcement of the date was met with sighs of relief and some cheers. No longer were we adrift on a sea of endless waiting...we knew when the ship would come into dock, when the voyage would end.
As days tend to do, the last day of manufacturing arrived with little fanfare or procession. Stories were shared, tears were shed, handshakes and hugs occurred again and again and again. Some were moving east, some were staying, others were going elsewhere...somewhere.
Those of us who are left will decommission the plant, removing items that signified our time here. Much like the ocean waves remodeling the sand and removing any sign of the castles that once graced the beach, when we are done there will be no physical sign we were ever there.
It has been said that an era is truly known only when it is over. As we pack up our emotions and memories, take another road to another place and write that next chapter, this finale is symbolic of how things change and evolve, how life goes on despite leaving things on the side of the road, how the future is now.
Space is the final frontier. NASA has assembled an inspirational video with the intent of getting more people interested in the subject matter. The clip speaks to the reasons why mankind explores and how we lay the foundation for future journeys by what we do now. You can view the 2:36 version at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7DEw70LVWs&feature=player_embedded.
As a federal agency, NASA cannot legally purchase broadcast time for this video. Mountains have not deterred climbers, oceans have not stopped sailors and gravity has not stopped astronauts.
Fans of "Veronica Mars" recently funded a movie version of the former TV series through a website called Kickstarter. To get the movie made, series creator Rob Thomas had to raise $2 million. That goal was reached in under 12 hours. When all was said and done, a total of 91,585 backers contributed $5,702,153. To make a movie. About a TV series. That was cancelled.
You can be part of a fundraising effort to place the NASA video "We Are The Explorers" as a trailer to the upcoming "Star Trek: Into Darkness" on as many screens as possible. I may not be a fan of the J.J. Abrams re-boot of my beloved Star Trek, but plenty of people are and will see the movie. What better way to inspire us to greatness by fanning the flames of space exploration with people who are already enticed by it?
The effort has been tremendously successful so far. "We Are The Explorers" will air on 50 screens across the nation for the first 8 weeks of the run of "Star Trek: Into Darkness" as an edited 30 second piece. The campaign is now working to hit a goal that will enable them to put the trailer in at least one theater in every state in the USA for two weeks.
Get on board at http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/we-are-the-explorers-a-movie-trailer-for-our-space-program.
NASA today, Starfleet tommorow. As Carl Sagan said, we are capable of greatness.
Barbecue. In the United States, the origins of barbecue trace back thousands of years to Native Americans cooking in buried pits, including the tribes of California. When the territory became Spanish Las Californias and then Mexican Alta California in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the Missions and ranchos of California had large cattle herds, primarily for hides and tallow. Large pit barbecues cooked the remaining meat when the culling and leather tanning season came to an end. The outdoor cooking tradition continued in the early days of California statehood for fiestas, becoming popular across the country in various shapes and forms.
Barbecue in my family meant chicken, pork ribs and/or beef tri-tip. With only one cut per side of beef, for decades the tri-tip found itself cut into cubes for soup meat or ground into hamburger. When butchers carved their own beef it didn't make sense to try and market one of something. With institutionalized beef packing, the tri-tip became a staple for the grill. Once an overlooked piece of meat , it is relatively inexpensive, flavorful and a favorite among those who have tried it.
For decades, the big draw for tri-tip was California. With expatriate Californians came the pull of the tri-tip, and now it can be found in many areas of the country. The tapered shape makes it an ideal cut of meat to produce a range of doneness from medium in the center to well done at the narrow tip.
Barbecue is the story of a social institution, acting as powerful social magnets, drawing people together. Cindy and I were in Santa Barbara last weekend to celebrate my sister's 50th birthday with family, friends and barbecue. The chicken and ribs were wonderful, but it was the tri-tip that drew me back to the serving table.
Spring has sprung here in the Great North Wet, and like the natives we have learned to take advantage of a sunny day. I snuck in some grilling yesterday, and yes, it was a tri-tip. While our family footprint here is smaller than in Southern California, we nevertheless gathered around the table, gave thanks for our meal and enjoyed each others company.
My sister gets the blame for many things that happened during our childhood. Better known as "The Agitator", it was her goal in life to get me in trouble. As previously discussed, she would agitate and aggravate and torment me to no end, until all that poking and prodding resulted in her having an imprint of my hand somewhere on her body, which would then result in me getting yelled at from the front seat by our parents, leaving a smirk on the face of Little Miss Innocent that required removal with another well-placed hand imprint and the cycle would replay itself over and over.
She continues in her ways to this day. Julie is completely and irrevocably to blame for getting me hooked on geocaching. Like a drug dealer, she told me about how fun it was. She even took me on one when I visited her recently; just the two of us, she found the geocache in short order and made it look sooooooo easy. She made it seem it was socially acceptable by taking me in a group to look for caches. It seemed okay...other people did it. I became hooked, and then she cut me off, told me I would have to get my own phone app and log my own finds.
Some of the puzzles are impossible to figure out. The other day I stood in the rain in a parking lot looking for a geocache, just trying to find one to satisfy my cravings. I leave work early or reschedule appointments to allow for geocaching, justifying that it helps me relax and provides exercise. I have even logged a cache when I really didn’t find it myself, just so I could run up my total count. I have been questioned by security patrols and received many strange looks from people around me as I stand and rock back and forth wondering what evil person hid a needle in a haystack.
I made Cindy go with me yesterday and talked Laura and Bryan into going today. I'll need another fix by tomorrow, so I'm scoping out possible finds right now. Now I survive by hanging out with other addicts, trading secrets and looking for that next big score.
I blame my sister. Perhaps I can learn to forgive her once I complete the Geocachers Anonymous program.
March 3 marks the birthday of Alexander Graham Bell in 1847, a scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator who is credited with inventing the first practical telephone. Bell's father, grandfather, and brother were associated with work on elocution and speech, and his mother and wife were deaf. Bell's work was influenced by his family, and his research on hearing and speech further led him to experiment with hearing devices, eventually culminating in Bell being awarded the first US patent for the telephone in 1876.
March 3 also marks the day in 1885 when Bell established the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, which we know today as AT&T Corporation. This company maintained what they referred to as a natural monopoly on telephone service in the United States; this meant one firm could better serve the public than two or more. For much of its history, AT&T and its Bell System functioned as a legally sanctioned, regulated monopoly. The fundamental principle, formulated by AT&T president Theodore Vail in 1907, was the nature of the technology would operate most efficiently as a monopoly providing universal service. Classic examples of regulated monopolies include the utility industry and the telecommunications industry, which are subject to governmental price control.
It has been said that nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky, and such was the fate for Ma Bell. In 1974 the U.S. Department of Justice brought an antitrust lawsuit against AT&T, which eventually led to the 1982 breakup of the Bell system into the regional holding companies, or Baby Bells. Those have come and gone, changed names and been folded and reshaped numerous times.
What does remain, however, is our attachment to the telephone. Whether it is corded or cordless, comes through copper wire, cables or microwaves, we want to be connected. Was I walking around with a personal cell phone 20 years ago? Nope. Can I imagine not having one now? Yes, but why would I want that, as the benefits definitely outweigh the costs. According to Pew Research Center surveys, cellphone ownership among American adults is around 88%.
Numerous other inventions marked Bell's later life, including groundbreaking work in optical telecommunications, hydrofoils and aeronautics. He became one of the founding members of the National Geographic Society in 1888, and has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history. Still, in retrospect, Bell considered the telephone, easily his most famous invention, an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study. He knew then, as we try to remember today, that eliminating distraction is the best way to complete our work.
But enough of this...time to get back to the approximately 3,000 advertisements I will see today, not to mention the 5,000 distractions caused by constantly checking messages from phones, emails, IM’s, wall posts, tweets and more. This is progress, right?
Today marks the end of Random Acts of Kindness Week (February 11 – 17). According to the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation, RAK Week encourages people to go above and beyond to make others feel special.
I would argue that we should not need a special week to be reminded to do acts of kindness. Still, a nudge every now and then can't hurt. Today, we'll concentrate on smiling.
Smiles are contagious. Smile at someone and they tend to smile too, effectively passing all of the benefits of a smile to the other person. The gift that keeps on giving, a smile is an amazing thing. Other people feel good when they see you smile, and studies have shown that smiling on a regular basis can reduce stress, boost your mood, reduce blood pressure and improve your overall well-being. There is a fascinating TED Talks presentation by Ron Gutman on the power of smiling. According to Gutman, one smile produces the equivalent brain stimulation as eating 2,000 bars of chocolate, or receiving $25,000 in cash.
Premeditated acts of meanness just aren't good for anyone; smile and make a difference.
"It was already snowing at Minneapolis, and the general forecast for the area along the intended route indicated deteriorating weather conditions." So begins the Civil Aeronautics Board investigators report six months after the crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, J.P. "the Big Bopper" Richardson and pilot Roger Peterson in the early hours of February 3, 1959.
On February 2, 1959, the Winter Dance Party tour was eleven days into a scheduled twenty-four performances. The distance between events had not been fully considered when scheduling the performances, so many hours were spent on a bus not properly equipped for the weather. The heating system broke down shortly after the tour began, flu spread rapidly among the rest of the performers and Holly's drummer suffered severely frostbitten feet.
Holly chartered a plane for his band to fly to Moorhead, MN, the next stop on the tour. Richardson, who had the flu, convinced Waylon Jennings to give up his seat, and Ritchie Valens won a coin toss for another seat on the plane. The rest, as they say, is history.
Paradise Lost by John Milton and The Inferno by Dante Alighieri both speak to innocence lost. Don McLean's 1971 single "American Pie" expresses another metaphor for the loss of innocence, turning the death of Buddy Holly and the plane crash into moment when the United States lost its last bit of innocence.
Still, it was not, as McLean wrote, the Day the Music Died. Britain devoured Holly records faster than the record company could produce them. Demo tapes, previously unreleased recording sessions, whatever Decca had to sell, all shot up the British charts and turned Holly into one of the forefathers of the British Invasion that would strike America five years later. John Lennon and George Harrison learned to play guitar in part by listening to Buddy Holly records. Holly presented the model for many bands that came after: write your own songs, two guitars, a bass and drums. The fledgling Beatles, as the Quarry Men, recorded Holly’s “That’ll Be the Day” as their first official tune before renaming themselves with a nod to Holly’s band, the Crickets. The first Rolling Stones' single released in the US was cover of Holly's "Not Fade Away."
In 1959, not even the musical pioneers themselves were certain that rock ’n’ roll would survive much into the 1960s, whether before or after the Day the Music Died. Seems silly today, as we look back across the years, to have doubted the insistent beat of the music would sustained a global movement. The beat does go on.
It is a story as old as time. You meet, slightly wary of the unknown, but the uneasiness wears off and you are hooked. You are inseparable, spend all your available time together, and think about the experience when you are alone. Life goes on, things change, your interest diverges, and in the blink of an eye a quarter of a century has passed. Then one day, you stumble upon your old friend, and it is as if no time has passed whatsoever.
This may not so easy for those of us with greying hair or a few extra wrinkles. It is, however, much simpler for a computer program, because, well, no time has passed.
That's right. It is pitch dark and I am likely to be eaten by a grue.
One of the items that came with my Associated Student fees at UC Davis (go Ags!) was access to the mainframe computer. Each quarter provided a certain number of hours of computer time. Keep in mind this was in the days of punch cards, CRTs and Commodore 64, so mainframe access was the 1983 version of leading edge gaming computers like the CyberPower Black Pearl or the Velocity Raptor Signature Edition. Just without graphics, sound, a mouse or a few dozen other things.
At that time, UCD had Unix machines in a cluster. Each was named after one of the Marx Brothers: Chico, Groucho, Harpo and Zeppo (Gummo and Mannie were apparently less computer savvy). Logging onto Groucho (or one of his brothers) would take us to a games area, filled with the wonders of interactive typing.
The first game we found was Zork, one of the earliest interactive fiction computer games. The authors were members of the MIT Dynamic Modelling Group, the forebears of a company named Infocom that brought forth numerous games before being bought up by Activision. Zork was a single player game, so it was just you and the challenge of the dungeon.
Zork created a wondrous, magical realm, a feast for the imagination. You have stumbled upon the ancient ruins of a vast empire lying far underground. There are strange rooms to explore, a temple where some prayers are answered, a coal mine, a river with a waterfall and the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
And all through typing, much like this:
The Troll Room
This is a small room with passages to the east and south and a forbidding hole leading west. Bloodstains and deep scratches (perhaps made by an axe) mar the walls. A nasty-looking troll, brandishing a bloody axe, blocks all passages out of the room.
Your sword has begun to glow very brightly.
The troll swings his axe, but it misses.
>swing sword
Whoosh!
The troll swings, you parry, but the force of his blow knocks your sword away.
>get sword
Taken.
The troll hits you with a glancing blow, and you are momentarily stunned.
>kill troll with sword
You charge, but the troll jumps nimbly aside.
The axe gets you right in the side. Ouch!
>kill troll with sword
The troll is staggered, and drops to his knees.
The troll slowly regains his feet.
>kill troll with sword
The fatal blow strikes the troll square in the heart: He dies.
Almost as soon as the troll breathes his last breath, a cloud of sinister black fog envelops him, and when the fog lifts, the carcass has disappeared. Your sword is no longer glowing.
In the days before graphics, computer games enticed players with a well-turned phrase, delighting players with clever writing and tearing their hair out with difficult puzzles. Rightly so, the creators of Zork will be honored this February with a Pioneer Award at the D.I.C.E. (Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain) Summit, an annual multi-day gathering of video game executives. Perhaps by then I will have remembered how to enter the crypt and finish the game.
Life is filled with choices. We are aware that every choice we make will have a consequence, even if we don't know what it is. We use our past experiences as a guide. We prepare for every consequence as they happen, and as a result our lives take shape, even though we are uncertain what the outcome will be. It is the unknown that drives us, our monkey curiosity always exploring and looking to the future.
There are times where our past does not help prepare us for what happens, where the future sneaks up behind us. We are taken aback, lose our way, can't focus. We are unprepared for certain consequences, no matter how much we think we have prepared for them. Life becomes jumbled, tumultuous, turbulent, and we long for order, peace and calm.
Life does not return to normal, for we have been changed by the experience, whatever it may be. We adapt, adjust and reconcile ourselves to the new normal. We live, we move along, we spend our time, energy and everything else. We again make choices, cognizant of what we have learned, experienced, survived.
It has been said that we make choices, but in the end our choices make us, that show what we truly are. Let those choices make for a better life.
As I sat at the desk in our home office late one night, I heard a noise at the pet door. Without my glasses I could see a greyish figure through the glass door and figured it was one of our cats on the way back in for the night. The pet door opened all the way and the dining room light illuminated what was the face of a raccoon. I surprised it as much as it surprised me, and it retreated to the safety of the yard. As I arose from the desk to get a better view, the raccoon also stood on its hind legs and waved its arms in the air, making itself appear larger and trying to scare me off. Safely behind the glass door, I stood my ground, letting the raccoon know it didn't scare me (as long as it stayed on the other side of the door, of course).
In what are unusual times here in the Great North Wet, days without rain are certainly welcome. A lack of sprinklers means that most lawns go from green to gold. If you are trying to sell your house (as we are), you water the lawn by hand to keep the lush verdant appearance. The flowers are thriving in the relative warmth, the trees increase their height and the roses bloom and bloom again, all the recipients of long days of sunshine.
As I have said before,
summer doesn't really start until the solstice parade in Santa Barbara
is complete. Then, and only then, is summer finally at our doorstep.
She continues in her ways to this day. Julie is completely and irrevocably to blame for getting me hooked on geocaching. Like a drug dealer, she told me about how fun it was. She even took me on one when I visited her recently; just the two of us, she found the geocache in short order and made it look sooooooo easy. She made it seem it was socially acceptable by taking me in a group to look for caches. It seemed okay...other people did it. I became hooked, and then she cut me off, told me I would have to get my own phone app and log my own finds.
March 3 also marks the day in 1885 when Bell established the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, which we know today as AT&T Corporation. This company maintained what they referred to as a natural monopoly on telephone service in the United States; this meant one firm could better serve the public than two or more. For much of its history, AT&T and its Bell System functioned as a legally sanctioned, regulated monopoly. The fundamental principle, formulated by AT&T president Theodore Vail in 1907, was the nature of the technology would operate most efficiently as a monopoly providing universal service. Classic examples of regulated monopolies include the utility industry and the telecommunications industry, which are subject to governmental price control.
Paradise Lost by John Milton and The Inferno by Dante Alighieri both speak to innocence lost. Don McLean's 1971 single "American Pie" expresses another metaphor for the loss of innocence, turning the death of Buddy Holly and the plane crash into moment when the United States lost its last bit of innocence. 
At that time, UCD had Unix machines in a cluster. Each was named after one of the Marx Brothers: Chico, Groucho, Harpo and Zeppo (Gummo and Mannie were apparently less computer savvy). Logging onto Groucho (or one of his brothers) would take us to a games area, filled with the wonders of interactive typing.
Life is filled with choices. We are aware that every choice we make will have a consequence, even if we don't know what it is. We use our past experiences as a guide. We prepare for every consequence as they happen, and as a result our lives take shape, even though we are uncertain what the outcome will be. It is the unknown that drives us, our monkey curiosity always exploring and looking to the future. 