I'm getting ready to take the truck in. Lord help me. I'm not sure all the household charms and well-wishing are going to do any good, seeing as we used up our luck last weekend with the unexpectedly good weather we had for the party. I need to get the brakes serviced. Should be about a couple hundred, right? I'll bring some extra checks and credit cards.

[Hold on-- in an attempt to get my attention, the resident two-year-old just pushed my wife's office chair down the stairs...]

IT'S THE FIRST DAY OF SPRING! Or maybe it's tomorrow. Must make all necessary corrections to blog and garden. My Ronald Reagan calendar is not specific on this, but it does inform me that Grover Cleveland's birthday was the day before yesterday. (And you all clicked here looking for the Grover Cleveland Essay, didn't you? Here's the only interesting fact I have on Grover Cleveland: We had a president named "Grover". Isn't that enough?)

So it's Spring, more or less. I knew I shouldn't have just put the seeds in the garden beds like I did. The local birds and bugs just pick the helpless little things off before they even have a chance. So I'm going to have to do it again, this time in protected trays. Then there will be more waiting, while the baby plants get strong enough to go out on their own. I don't know how real farmers do it, to be honest.

I come from a long line of farmers, but I'm not one of these people who claims to have a green thumb. I don't believe in "green thumbs", or any wonder-digits for that matter. My garden is fraught with successive failures. Any success I may have growing things outside is some odd construct of hapless diligence. One thing I do have in my blood is a love of the earth. There's an Anoine de Saint-Exupery (The Little Prince) quote that goes "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." That's about right.

On my father's side are merchant marines and sailors from the United Kingdom. On my mother's side is FARMERS. Farms as far as the ancestral eye can see, to pre-revolutionary days. Not sure how my family survived, truth be told. My dad once boasted that his grandfather was on three sinking ships, and with my inability to grow a few simple seeds in the backyard, well, the New World might be better off without the Ditchmans.

There is life around here, however. I might save typing about it for another day. Gotta take the truck in. Horrors await. Best not to delay the pain, and confront it head-on.


(That's my grandfather on the Iowa farm. Third kid back in the middle, crouched down, adjusting his hat. Two mighty good crops of what, exactly? Can anyone guess what they're growing there? Click pic to embiggen.)

~

Yes, Mrs. Ditchman made a "Rocket" cake for the Little Ditchman's Big Party last weekend. I was duly impressed. Some things you don't learn about your spouse until well into marriage. Like, for example, that your wife has a knack for making cakes in the shape of rockets. Anyway, it's quite a talent!

The party was a rousing success, with all manner of friends, family and neighbors arriving to indulge in the new sandbox and play in the cooler full of hearty Irish brew I provided. (These Little Ditchman parties always seem to take on the sub-theme of St. Patrick's Day, oddly.) We buried an assortment of goodies in the sandbox and the chillun went manic a'digging for them. And, no, the neighborhood cats did not get around to burying their assortment of goodies in the new sandbox before the party (but if anyone has any pointers on this potential problem, TMST would love to hear them.)

The hellions really made a mess of things, though (as expected.) Garden plants were uprooted, buckets of sand emptied into the pond, and bits of cake and candy crammed into every nook and crack of the playhouse. At one point, a strange kid ran past me carrying my garage utility hammer. There was no explaining it.

Monday and Tuesday were spent trying to catch up on last week's unfinished business, among other, ahem, family duties. It's been a circus around here, but that's how March is for the Ditchmans. It's like a second December. There's all of our birthdays and the anniversary and Easter, which is our holiday, so with every group that leaves the abode, another one is arriving. We enjoy it all, of course, but there's been an unexpected amount of stress this year. Still, there's St. Patrick's Day, which brings with it a certain, shall we say, relief effort.

To the child who gave the Little Ditchman a cold for her birthday: we already have plenty and would like the gift receipt.

The nicest thing about the party time is that since I go full bore on the Spring Cleaning & Planting, when everyone gets around to exiting there's a nice post-party glow to the yard with all the recently planted flowers and mowed lawn. Also, there's all that leftover beer!

We splurged and got a couch cover. This may sound insignificant, but NO! Our old red couch was a stained, rank dismay that gave our living room that found-in-the-alley college frathouse appeal that we do not desire. Target was having a sale, and after a few trips to multiple stores for the matching sizes and styles, and then a good few hours of wrestling the fabric around the things, the home suddenly looked clean. I don't know what possessed us to get a red couch to begin with. The novelty faded out (literally) a few months after the purchase and though the thing is super-comfy, we've been tolerating it ever since. Kids and animals are always cruel to a couch, so we've held off on a replacement. Also, there's the minor detail of the cost, but when you consider how you use the thing EVERY DAY OF YOUR LIFE, you really can spare no expense. The couch and the TV. The couch and the TV and the car. The day may come when we break down and purchase a new couch. May it come sooner than later.


~

What's the significance of this day, you wonder? Andrew Jackson's birthday? Why, no, silly, that would be tomorrow. It's the Little Ditchman's birthday, of course! She's two, though she still says "One!" when you ask her. No concept of time, these kids. Mommy's got all sorts of things planned for the day: Easter egg hunt, petting zoo, all the buddies. Me, there are mounds of molded aluminum that need tending to.

The ten day forecast shows nine days with suns and one with a thunderhead and a lightning bolt blasting out of it. That would be the day we had planned for the little kid's party. (What? You mean we could have gone camping?!) It figures, poor Little Ditchman. I anticipate the day when she's in her pre-teens and arrives home from school, clothes torn and covered in mud or some such ordure, and she comes in sobbing. I'll sympathetically sit her down, hold her close, and explain... "You're a Ditchman, honey." There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. She'll paint her fingernails black and doors will slam.

But that's ten years from now! Today we have a vibrant two-year-old with as much to gain from the world has she has to lend it! Anticipating her birthday, she got up an hour early, excited about the prospects (or it may have been the DST.) She opened a few gifts and played with all of them at once. Like a forest squirrel, she never dropped a single one -which is funny when you consider the toys: plastic fruits and vegetables (for her Little Kitchen), a new duck-shaped ice-pack (can't have enough of those around here), and a towel. Somehow, she made it work. Such is the imagination of a two-year-old.

To say they grow like weeds is an understatement and an insult. The weeds you remove from the garden. The kids grow like you want the flowers to grow, and given the choice I prefer the kids to the flowers. Gardens often can thrive on neglect, whereas a family takes infinitely more patience and attention. No MiracleGro needed, as it's a miracle all in itself. A bit back I postured that life goes through all the seasons in succession, but if you have a family you get all the seasons at once. We're still in winter here in SoCal, with a rainy day on the horizon, and I may be headed toward the autumn of my life, but listening to her playing in the other room with that little singsong voice and happy dance, it's a bright, bloom-filled spring day.

A year ago:


This morning:



~

I'm a slow waker. I could stay up all night for a pittance, but couldn't be roused in the morning if the four horsemen of the apocalypse were watering their steeds on my lawn. I fought it for years, wanting to be a fast waker, but alas, I am not. Some nights I wake in the middle of it and it's like nothing happened at all. Full awareness. But most mornings I have sunk so deep in the mattress, there is no small hope of bestirring me. That last hour of sleep between, say, six and seven AM, I am on a distant frontier of dreamland, and it's a long haul back.

When I finally make it downstairs I need my pot of coffee and the couch to get the day going. I like to have the news on, the one lasting effect of 9/11, but today there was nothing. Lead story: middle age man and wife go missing in South Carolina, their cel phones remain unanswered. It might be a big story, but they might just want to be left alone. When my wife and I go on vacation, it's to get away from those phones!

So I got my news from the Internet this morning:

Lead Story/International I consider this to be good news, as a few paragraphs down is mentioned how many suicide attacks were pulled off in Afghanistan last year. 160. 160! 160 suicide bombers blew themselves up last year! In one country and in one year alone! That's a lot of crazies. Who brainwashes them and why? Seriously? Let me know when you find out. Meanwhile, international forces will do their level best to blow them away before they all, uh, blow themselves away.

Politics This answers the age-old question: What if we held an election and no one turned out to vote? Answer: your fate is decided by others. No one seems to care that their neighborhood will now be annexed. I love how if just one person turned out to vote, it would have decided the contest.

Science and Technology Work on the space robot, DEXTRE, continues. The astronauts are described as performing "demanding construction work". Yeah, pushing a wheelbarrow in zero gravity must be exhausting. You have to go to the last paragraph to get to the more significant news item, that the Japanese orbiting closet, KIBO, is in a temporary location until other pieces of it are hauled up in May. That's interesting. Have you ever heard of a remodel that didn't encounter shipping delays? Me neither. Kibo, by the way, is Japanese for "hope", so I guess it's a big, expensive, outer space hope chest.

Nature Anthropomorphization of the dolphins continues around the globe as they perform their moral obligation for all the humans to see. Could it be that they just looked like they were guiding the whales out to sea? And perhaps merely swimming alongside? Don't get me wrong, the bottlenose dolphin is a graceful and beautiful creature, but a "great capacity for altruistic activities"? You never hear all the stories about the dolphins great capacity for humping the swimmers in the petting pools in Hawaii, Australia, and the Caribbean. Seriously, it's true.

And finally...

Local This item confirms what my own neighborhood street has established. I spied some workers out there yesterday, just standing around chatting with the residents. Nothing was accomplished. The neighbor closest, the old man who decided not to run his garage as a polling place this year, has been circulating an email. In it, he refers to a "water eruption" and "underground water streams" which I find fascinating. I look forward to the excavation and propose we bottle the spring water. Also, he demanded that something be done about his water-stained sidewalk.

I'm not sure why, but it always makes me laugh when I hear people say, "Seriously! I demand something be done about this!" It implies that they are not being taken seriously, that their demands are not being met, that we're all unwitting victims, and so forth.

It's what the news is made of.


~

We can all stop pounding vodka, my emails are no longer in Russian. Unfortunately, my dictionary still is. The problem seems to lie within the Baskerville font this time around, though I still can't say why. I was up all night trying to fix it, and I went to bed with that sick feeling in my stomach like I'd just wasted more time in this precious life. But the garbage men hauled off some large trash items I had placed out there, just as a test, so they saved me some time I would have blown on removing them myself. Perhaps it's all finding its own equilibrium. God bless the garbage men! I'll say it again, these guys have done more for world health than anyone in the last 150 years.

Not that my aluma-garbage poses a threat to world health.

I've been barking and whining about the DST change, but Matt reminded me how great it really is. He's right, of course. I want to wake up with the sun and get home from work before it goes down so I don't feel like the day is done and gone, all spent on bacon-fetching. I prefer taking out the garbage cans in the daylight, instead of dragging them down the driveway in the dark, with the silhouetted neighbors peering through the windows at me, scowling at the ruckus. Taking that first sip of coffee and seeing the morning sunlight casting a shadow of the blinds on the hardwood floor always warms my soul from the inside and revs up the day. Just the sight of it takes me back to some good moments: living the artist's life in that bungalow in Pasadena, waking up in the cottage on the coconut plantation during my honeymoon. I could sit and sip coffee all morning, just watching the shadow slide across the floor. And I have, at times prayerfully.

A moment from my honeymoon, best vacation of my life, nearly five years ago:


So DST is great, if only for the sunlight. And it's becoming easier. When the baby comes, you spend weeks begging the little bugger into a routine, and then she gets a cold and won't sleep through the night, throwing off any schedule you may have mastered, or at least mustered. You finally get her feedings synched with your timetable so you can fit in the rest of life -work, making dinner, doing the dishes- and then DST rolls around. Everyone adapts to the new time just fine, except the child, who is now waking up an hour earlier, needs a nap an hour earlier, is hungry an hour earlier. You'll get her whipped into shape and then she'll get sick again, or you'll go away on vacation and she'll be up late in the hotel, with her sleeping off hours in the car. Then you notice on the calendar that DST is going to roll around again in a couple weeks and you either give up entirely or force the issue -which is all nonsense to a child.

Children have a unique sense of time, alien to us. They understand God's sun and moon and the pangs of hunger and sleep. Clocks were invented by man as if to best God, See? I can measure your daylight! And then we go ahead and change them every six months without admitting their imperfection. To children, the clocks are merely a novel way to display numbers, with the meaningless flipping of symbols, and a way to measure only what they can and can't have right now.

This is why teaching patience is so important, and if you haven't learned it your child will teach you (and it will be a painful experience.) But if this life is a gift, then patience should be more than just tolerating the passing of time with a long wait. Without patience, life is an intolerable succession of inaccessible moments that makes joy fleeting. With patience, comes the moment to be able to reflect on past and current joys and the hope of them to come. It is here that the beautiful details of life reveal themselves to be the once and forever hiding place of God.


~

The Bitchin Factor at work. (Also, your tax dollars.)

Yes, we can launch a shuttle into space in the middle of the night to build robots on the space station but we can't fix the hole in my street!

No sooner did I finish plinking out yesterday's notes did I drive off to work and notice some effort had begun on The Neighborhood Problem. By "effort" I mean that someone came along and spray painted a bunch of lines and letters on the asphalt. This happened once before, but this time the lines and arrows are bigger and the words more descriptive. Is something being planned? Some kind of removal or excavation or... or... well, it could just as easily have been a creative graffiti artist, some frustrated mom with time on her hands after the kids are off to school.

The shuttle launched at 2:30AM last night. Mrs. Ditchman asked if they sleep on the way up there, which I thought was funny, but it's a fair question. It takes about two days for the shuttle to get to the space station, even though it's only a few miles up, and once they're there the sun rises and sets on the station like every 20 minutes. So if my DST lag is getting to me, I'll just think about the poor astronauts.

In addition to the 200 million dollar Canadian robot they're going to build at the International Space Station, they're also going to install a closet. I guess they need somewhere to put the tools. The Japanese Space Agency designed the closet. If that sounds funny, just imagine your closet in zero gravity, so, yes, we're going to have to put the Space Agency in charge for that one. (I imagine a real poofta in his pink NASA jumpsuit, prancing around the space lab in zero G, holding up color swatches and draperies.)

It's a good thing I got most of the complaining in this past week because the inspector signed off on the big job. Yes! I am very grateful to be able to put it behind me. Over budget and overdue by a few grand and a few months. Chalk it all up to experience, that one. On to the next set of headaches. (Note to self: increase contingency dollar amounts.)

I would have posted it to the Alumablog, but I downloaded a suitcase of some wonderful new fonts into my 'puter and somehow my Helvetica got replaced with the Cyrillic alphabet in the process. It wouldn't have ordinarily been a problem except that Helvetica is the font that EVERY APPLICATION USES. All my emails and address books are now in Russian. I can't work on the website. All other projects are on hold. Damn Macs! Curses to these infernal things! They're worthless! Save yourself the brain-in-a-vice pain of Mac OS and buy a PC!

(Just kidding.)

So here's the big beautiful aluminum bastard in case you were wondering what all the fuss was about:


Dasvidania!


~

Again, more days where I just can't seem to get anything done. But it was a fine weekend, with godly weather and friendly people. We attended a birthday party yesterday morning for a friend of the Little Ditchman. Hullabaloo was there! My kid saw him come in and ran over and sat down. He said he recognized her, but all the stars do that. (People calling in to talk shows all the time: "You probably don't remember me, Dennis. I called a few years ago? I was the guy with the friend who..." Dennis: "Oh sure! I remember you!") But she woke up that morning announcing that Hullabaloo was going to be at Zach's house, and sure enough, when you wish upon a star dreams really do come true. She's a Hullabaloo groupie! There's two Hullabaloo guys, but I've only seen the one (which, I guess makes him "Hulla") as, if you want both guys, you've got to shuck out double the shekels. They do something like 350 shows a year! Man. Do the math and it sounds like a good living, playing music and making kids happy. I was thinking I could save money and be my own Hullabaloo at the Little DItchman's party, a la Steve Martin in Parenthood. I mean, how hard is it to play "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain" on guitar? I would grow a goatee and call myself "Ballyhoo".

Two thirds of the way through the show she bailed out on her own. Went outside and looked at the stuff on the patio. Too much of a good thing, I guess, but of course, I've always said that a short attention span was a sign of higher intelligence.

Also, there is this:


It cannot be explained. Months ago we all noticed an "upwelling" in the center of our street. It was the damnedest thing! It started as something of a curiosity, evolved into "local item of interest", but has since been elevated to "object of concern". Upon close inspection, it looks as if something is erupting out of the street, like one of those bitter man-eating tripods from Spielberg's War of the Worlds. The asphalt started to crack, and then there was another upwelling adjacent to it, and then we noticed that the street never dried. Someone went out and put an old caution horse to it, and calls to The City were made. I heard someone came out and did tests. Evidently nothing can be done about it. No really, that's what they said: "Nothing can be done about it!" Some say it is a natural spring, and with groundwater levels higher from the recent rains, well, we should have all seen it coming.

I'm glad I sealed my foundation before I laid the hardwood floors, is all I can say. Some are worried because they've watched local residences slide down hills without precedent. Some are worried that the street will open up into a sinkhole the size of the Everglades. And still some are concerned about the state of affairs with the city officials and the local Dept. of Works. That's me. The local train stop just opened up last weekend. It was 10 years late and 150 million over budget, and I'm still waiting on a final building inspection of a little shade structure and the deletion of "Roberto's Taco Shop" from my city account.

Add this to the woes of Daylight Savings Time, and suburban living plods on endlessly. DST is tough on a kid, and somewhat worse on the parents. Why, the party yesterday was at 10:30AM, meaning it was really 9:30AM! Earliest birthday party I've ever been to, I can tell you, but at least the Dad served good hearty morning brews out of the fridge in his garage and naptime came after, which is how one schedules these things, (and all of life.) I try not to lose any sleep over it, but it's DST so I did lose sleep over it. Literally. An hour to be exact.


~

Last night at dinner the Little Ditchman refused to clean her plate. Actually, she refused to eat most everything that was on it, for some reason. We have her trained to ask, "May I be dismissed pleased?" when she's done so she doesn't just slide down and roll around under the dining room table while everyone's still eating. Anyway, she asked to be dismissed to which Mom and Dad simultaneously replied, "No!" She cried and whined, wearing us down at the end of the day -when she knows full well we're already worn down past the tread- and yelled "I wanna be dismissed please!" Mom said, "Eat one more green bean and then you can be dismissed."

The Little Ditchman immediately grabbed one bean, jammed it in her mouth, made a face, and climbed down off her chair.

She's not even two years old yet! I was amazed, since I thought this was five-year-old behavior. This kid understands everything you say, notices everything going on around her, and fills her empty memory with it all. Mrs. Ditchman, less impressed. "I'm with her all day," she commented. She talks like a two-year-old, so it's easy to assume she doesn't know much. (Not my wife, the child.)

And yesterday, the little one commented out of nowhere from the back seat, "Daddy loves tools!" We don't know where she got this. We're not even sure she knows what "tools" are, exactly.

Who knows what else she's got in the little person brain of hers. Probably best to keep a better eye on myself. I said "damn" the other day, only to have it repeated back to me by the toddler. (Whoops.) And another thing, kid, I don't necessarily love tools. I just have a lot of them because of the job. Now shut up and go potty train yourself.

Speaking of "damn" and "tools", this work week is finally coming to a close. The Big Commercial Job is mostly behind us, and we're just waiting on the Dreaded Final Inspection. I'm losing sleep over this because the architect drew up the plans with a two foot front overhang on one section and it's clearly been built at three feet. But I didn't have a choice! The post would have been on the fence line! The inspector is the type of guy who noticed last week that the middle hole was an inch off. And then there's the bureaucrats of the city building and planning departments sending us bills for all those fire inspections we ordered for Roberto's Taco Shop. Now I like mexican food, but we've never done any work with any "Roberto's Taco Shop". I don't believe I've ever even eaten at any "Roberto's Taco Shop", but try and tell that to the people behind the desk under the fluorescent lights. It's torture. "This is your receipt... And this is my receipt for your receipt." Administrative officials really are like terrorists: False sense of power and authority, inability to hear the other side of the issue, their paperwork as effective of a weapon as a a dirty bomb. And as messy. "Mistake? Heh, heh. We don't make mistakes." At least with bureaucrats and paperwork, people don't die. (Just people's dignity.)

So we're waiting on the final inspection. I'm holding my breath. It may come today and it may come next week -since they're closed every alternate Friday, and Jeebus knows what Friday this is. I'm sure there's another Brazil reference for that one. Brazil is one of the greatest films ever made, by the way. Brilliant. Prophetic. Hilarious. Depressing. There's not a government building in the world that I haven't walked into where lines of dialogue from the film haven't echoed in my head. I'd tell you the whole story of pulling the permits for this patio cover at the retirement community, but it'd be easier if you just netflixed Brazil. It's the story of my life. (Before I got married and lived happily ever after.)

"They've gone back to metric without telling us!"

Tell you what: we're closed this Friday, too. Have a nice weekend!


~

Some mornings this life is like tactical wrestling. It's grabbing you by the heels and trying to flip you upside while you're looking for an advantage, all the while fending off that ever-present foe, Gravity itself.

The Little Ditchman won't eat her grapes this morning. Won't eat grapes! She also refuses the bagel and cream cheese and pours her cup of water over it. She will only have nuts. Nuts! Nuts, I say. Nuts. Also, I went to get her out of the PJs and into some proper daytime clothes and had her in a shirt that was at least a size too small. Well, we're all older today.

Had a fine birthday, if you were wondering. Spent it building an aluminum patio cover all day and then had dinner with the in-laws. It wasn't the sunset martini cocktails on the beach I had imagined for myself, but you can't have everything. Birthdays are kind of a funny thing for me, as I've kinda been partial to Christmas and Halloween. There were a lot of birthdays in my family, half of them forgotten. My dad's birthday is just a few days after mine, so ours was always kind of celebrated together. Do you like German Chocolate cake? My dad did. So that's what kind of cake I always had on my birthday. Perhaps that's why I've never been particularly impressed by cake.

The best part of yesterday was all of the phone calls and emails I received. Thank you! Thank you, all! I got a call from almost everyone in my wedding party (you know who you are) and a call from almost everyone in my family (you know who you are). I have five siblings and six nieces and nephews, so these family holidays get spread over the calendar rather thinly. Anyway, it was never really a wow-bang day growing up. My dad: "Isn't it your birthday? How old are you again?" Nearly every year.

I admit I'm often the sibling-out on the birthday well-wishing. I don't know what it is, really. I hereby resolve to change! I am going to make my own calendars with everyone's birthday and anniversary on it! From here on out it will be impossible for me to neglect! (Oh, brother.)


~

It's my birthday! No use beating around the bush about it. But it does always kind of spring up on me. I guess that's what happens when your birthday is near the beginning of the month. Oh, it's March! Already? What happened to February? Whoa, hey, it's my birthday! And suddenly I'm older.

And wouldn't that be odd? If you just aged a year in a day, instead of gradually over the course of time? Then there would be no hiding it at all, and an entertainment for everyone else. Oh, look at that poor sap. Must be his birthday today. He looks at least a year older than yesterday.

I'm 38, in case you were wondering. 38. 38! Ah, well. I guess I feel about 38. Actually, now that I think about it, I feel more like 36, but I always was slower to mature. In any case, it's good to be 38. It doesn't really bother me. I'm in better shape than ever, ran three marathons in the past nine months, the weather's good, and I'm finally getting some plants repotted.

Every year I do it. The cold passes and you look out to see all the plants faded and stuffed, their roots clearly strangling themselves in undersized containers. The leaves have gone yellow from too much rain. The buds of spring flowers are stunted from lack of fertilizer. So I re-pot.

No one was making me stay, so I ditched work early yesterday and went to Lowe's. I noticed they had finally got the water plants in so I got some of those for the pond. And then I got a new lime tree to replace the one I killed by having too much clay in the bottom of the pot. (Poor drainage contributed to an iron deficiency, I wager. Sad thing finally just gave up and quit growing.) Also got a nice orange Freesia and a few others. Went home and continued the repotting, busting my hump out back of my house instead of someone else's. That's the way it is. I complain all week about how tired I am, then spend the weekend digging holes and pushing wheelbarrows.

But I feel fit! And I'm beginning to get a tan, so that's nice. My hair is still turning gray, but I think the hairline has stopped its receding. I'm 38!

These are the happy years, I'm sure, the ones that just fly by. The ones where the kids grow like weeds and need repotting daily. You spend so much time with your hands thick in the soil of life that you barely notice the seasons changing. If life has its seasons, 38 is midsummer, with the children's laughter like the summer sun and your slightly graying hair like dry meadow grass missing the spring rains. The earth begins to crack in midsummer, but you don't notice -you're going full bore through life raising a family, building a home, running a business, getting things done. Everything's growing. Harvest is months away to worry about.

Being a kid is a magical time, with the curiosity of springtime and its new growth, bursts of life, and the ever-changing mood of weather, but being a 38-year-old adult is better than being a kid, at least, that's what I'm teaching mine. (If it's not, then what have they got to look forward to?) Adulthood brings freedom, at long last. Unrestrained, unhindered freedom! Independence from others deciding your fate! The full power of self-determination! Oh sure, all the old obligations are still around, but somehow in adulthood, there is joy found in fulfilling them. Freedom is what kids long for all Spring, but will only arrive come Summer.


~

When an avalanche falls on Mars, is anyone around to hear it?

Evidently our robot satellites are! I find it more fascinating that we have robot satellites circling Mars than I do that there was a ho-hum avalanche on the red planet. It's a neat photo, with its contribution to science close to nil. It's really all about the Bitchen Factor, which is why NASA exists to begin with. Why do we go to space? Cause we can. Cause it's bitchen! Is there scientific knowledge to be gathered? Sure. Also, it is bitchen. This is a big part of why Americans do things.

"We don't know what set off these landslides," said Patrick Russell of the University of Berne, Switzerland, a HiRISE team collaborator. "We plan to take more images of the site through the changing Martian seasons to see if this kind of avalanche happens all year or is restricted to early spring."

And this is important why?

"Our Mars program is the envy of the world," said Alan Stern, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. "We plan to launch a total of five more missions in the next decade, beginning with the Mars Science Lab rover next year and a Mars Aeronomy Scout mission in 2013."

See? Because it's bitchen.

Like the hard-at-work Martians, I spent my weekend moving mounds of dirt from one location to another, as if I didn't get enough of it at work last week, but this was my house and my dirt. Why did I do this? Because my daughter thinks it's bitchen. It is. I've been building a sandbox.

It puts me in the company of other great earth-movers of the world.

The weather is terrific today, as it was yesterday, making it so much easier to fulfill MY MORAL OBLIGATION TO BE HAPPY! It's amazing how weather can have such an effect on one's mood (or, at least, my own). It was cloudy and overcast last Saturday when I was moving mounds of dirt from location to location. I had so looked forward all week to working in the yard, only to have dreary weather on my Saturday afternoon. "What a drag," commented Mrs. Ditchman. Yes, it was a drag. And that, literally. With the wheelbarrow. Maybe I'm doing it wrong.

But today it's beautiful out, and it's work, work, and more work. A drag, yes, but somewhat less so than yesterday, which is why I missed a post.


~

Someone out there has a sense of humor and time on their hands.

Well, it's February 29th, which is something of a non-day by regular calendar standards. We move these numbers around the months all the time, but the days always stay the same. It's just Sunday through Saturday, over and over forever. Wouldn't it be great if we had one extra day of the week instead? Once a year we could have Bernsday or a Ferzday or something. I say we do it after the first Tuesday in March. We have a Lermday. And then we just go back to Wednesday. Banks could close or stay open, I don't care. You wouldn't have to go to work. No one would! It's Lermday! The calendar wouldn't miss it! I'd put my flag out!

But we'd all be a day older. That's the space-time continuum for you. It might be worth discussing if everyone was into LOST as I am. It's the only show I care about, since they started airing House on alternate Tuesdays and sometimes Fridays, with episodes from whatever season is handiest. I tried to explain the space-time continuum to my wife, who was either uninterested, unimpressed or both. It's also possible that I didn't know what I was talking about, as the Wikipedia entry on it explains it rather differently. Check it out, if you're bored. Of interest in the article is that Edgar Allan Poe was the first guy to conjure up the topic, which I found curious. Also, there's that fact that atomic clocks slow down on the space shuttle. I'd heard this years ago and found it amazing then as I do now, though I admit that I have no idea what it means.

Nor does anyone else, I wager, that is, outside of Poe. Edgar Allan Poe was quite a character, and an unearthly one altogether. He was found delirious in the streets of Baltimore wearing someone else's clothes and crying out stranger's names right before he mysteriously gave up the ghost. This is basically what happened to a few of the characters in LOST last night. Expect Poe to show up mid-season as one of the original "Others".

I was reading about Edgar Allan Poe recently when I heard that the mystery of the "Poe Toaster" had finally been revealed. It was such a disappointment of a revelation, right up there with the deathbed confessions of that faked Loch Ness pic and the bogus Bigfoot footage. Ah, well. If you missed those stories, they're here, here, and here. And don't even get me started on crop circles, the shroud of Turin, and Piltdown man. It's all too depressing.

I saw Edgar Allan Poe's original dorm room, of all things, when I was visiting the University of Virginia once. They had a sheet of plexiglass in the doorway and you could peer in at the 50 year-old display. I remember there was a taxidermic raven on the antique desk and I thought, such cheese. There was a button you could push for an aged audio recording that recounted Poe's time spent at UV. I remember that it claimed he had "pulled a few boners" during his time in college, which really got a fall-down hearty laugh out of me at the time. Actually, it still makes me chuckle.

I'd always thought a "boner" was a tall-tale, but the dicktionary (sic) says it means a "stupid mistake or blunder", among other things. (I should have known this, since I've been pulling boners all week!) I actually remember my grandfather using the term, which got raised eyebrows out of me and my brother at the time. A little Googling unearths this sweet find from comic book lore...







Now that's just the funniest thing I've seen all month. Oh, what I wouldn't give to read about the "Other Famous All-Time Boners"! (Square #1) Pretty sure that these comics are the genuine article. I take solace in the clear fact that history itself is far more entertaining than any hoax.

Have an excellent weekend. Don't get forced into any boners!

So! They laugh at my boner, will they?! I'll show them! I'll show them how many boners the Joker can make!


~

Still feeling fairly puffy today. (And too puffy to post a blog yesterday, evidently.) When I say I feel puffy, I actually mean PUFFY. I wake up feeling as if someone rolled an air compressor to the side of my bed overnight, and then jammed the hose into my mouth and turned the valve FULL ON. You can see it in my face in the morning. The inflated bags under my eyes, the swollen flesh around my cheekbones, and the general all-around subcutaneous padding as If I'd got up in the morning and pulled my skin on over my pajamas. Another side effect is the dry mouth from the hose.

I'm still sick I guess. Illnesses are just a side effect of life, when you think about it -which is kind of a funny thought. Children are a side effect of marriage, which is a side effect of life. Deafness in the part of the Dad is a side effect of the persistent wailing child in the background, which is a side effect of marriage, which is a... you get the idea. Everything is a side effect of something else, I guess. There's a label on the soul: THIS LIFE COULD RESULT IN YOU GETTING SICK AND EVENTUALLY DYING.

I suppose I could be more upbeat about it. But happiness is really only a side effect of itself, and not of circumstance, which is what can make it so hard. Anything that ordinarily I would list as making me happy (gardening, water skiing, beer, etc.) has a downside effect as well (filth, muscle pain, boat repair, expense, headache, etc.) I do believe that you can just choose to be happy, fake it even, and sooner or later find that you actually are happy. It's one of life's anomalies, I guess. Easier for some more than others.

Especially given how puffy you may feel at present. Dennis Prager says we have a moral obligation to be happy, which reminds me of the old Monty Python line, "You are hereby sentenced to be hanged by the neck... until you cheer up!" Yes, he says, A MORAL OBLIGATION! which makes one feel responsible to grin and bear it for the sake of all humanity. Prager says that being happy makes other people happy, and being in a bad mood repels other people just as much as, if not more than, bad breath, body odor, or food in your teeth. I pretty much agree with him.

Of course, people call in all the time with, "Oh, woe is me. I have two kids in jail, my wife is an alcoholic, I lost my job because I'm in chronic pain from a back injury and I'm dehydrated from the diarrhea I get from taking the meds," and Dennis just tells them to find a way to be happy anyway. "You don't have a choice!" he says. And, "You're gonna have to fake it for a while." It's kind of funny, really.

I've always struggled with it, I admit. I have one of those expressionless moonfaces most of the time, with a downturned smile to boot. All my life: "What's wrong?" Me: "Nothing." But often there is, so I've been trying. Especially with the Little Ditchman around. God help her if she ends up like me, dreading the days of work ahead, whining about being puffy -even though she's the one who gave me the cold to begin with.

And with such nice weather!


~

I woke up this morning feeling so puffy. And I mean "puffy" and not "Puffy" in reference to last night's airing of the much ballyhooed miniseries of A Raisin in the Sun starring Sean Combs. I guess he's going legit, if only because he's not "Puffy" anymore. (Or "Puff Daddy" or "P. Diddy" or whatever.) I don't see what was wrong with his fine, strong name to begin with. Me, today I'm puffy.

I was sitting here trying to work out the daily conundrum when I paused and told Mrs. Ditchman, "I feel puffy," to which she responded, "You look puffy," which was not encouraging. She said I often look puffy when I'm sick, and I don't think she meant gold chains and thumpthumpthump, yo.

I had to read A Raisin in the Sun back in college and I don't really remember a thing about it except that it was one of those "important" plays about black people, starring black people, produced by black people, and so forth. (Sorry, black people.) I do remember one of my creative writing class discussions in which the word "puffy" was discussed, however. Someone had used "puffy" to describe clouds, as in, "puffy clouds". It was an ordinary phrase, some argued, and that it was over-used. "There are so many ways to describe clouds! and everybody uses 'puffy'!" So I try never to use "puffy" to describe clouds. I think I've mentioned it here before. Anyway, it made such an impression on me that I obsess over the word "puffy" to this day. A Raisin in the Sun, I have no idea about anymore.

Which just goes to show... something. Either my creative writing teacher was really good and my dramatic literature teacher was really lame, or there's just plain something broke in my mind. Probably both, either of which could explain why I never finished that last year of the university.

I thought I knew everything back then, and I've been trying to deflate my puffiness ever since. Anyway, gotta go! There is work. It's a beautiful day! Blue skies! Sunshine! And wispy, white, uh, you know... clouds!


~

And I didn't think I was going to make it through last week! But I did, albeit barely. I admit it was partially the fault of my own inflated ego that I ended the week draining my sinuses onto enough rolls of toilet paper to... to... wipe clean an elephant in an Ex-lax factory? Oh, I don't know... I just felt that I'd had enough colds in the past six months that I couldn't possibly catch another. And certainly not one teensy, weensy, wittle cold from the toddler in my house. But no. I felt as if I'd been broadsided by a whole school bus full of green-snotted kindergartners on their way to a research study at the CDC.

Came out of nowhere, it did. These things usually come at night where I wake up feeling sniffly and by morning am all scratchy and stuffed, but this one came midday. I had a little sneeze and blew my nose and figured, well, that was the extent of it -it's good to be an adult and not catch these things like the kiddies do every other week! And then WHAM! By the time the sun went down I was rummaging through the medicine cabinets, begging for mercy, pining for a hit of Zicam.

And now I'm not so sure I can make it through this week. Things were a bit put off from the rain of late, which giveth me twice as much work in the coming days -but at least good spring weather is forecast. 72 and sun! (Okay, 68.) There are vexing problems this week that I just don't have the answers to, however. I assume the answers are out there, like cold fusion, life on other planets, bigfoot -but these are answers I have to find! Which is a bummer. It'd be easier if I wasn't sick, but it could be worse. It could always be worse. Sometimes it is worse.

Dove into the NyQuil last night, which I am loathe to do. I'm not sure why exactly I am loathe to do this, but I always try and hold out as long as I can before I start hitting the heavy meds. I figure it's healthier in the long run, and that I might heal faster, though I have nothing to substantiate these notions. It doesn't matter, for I usually end up taking plenty anyway as the misery is so, well, miserable. I was smart enough to buy the NyQuil at Costco about six months ago. "Flu season's coming," I said. "Better stock up!" My wife pushed the cart right on past but I insisted, "No. Seriously." Flu season did come. She was pushing the cart forward because the NyQuil sold at Costco comes in the super-multi-jumbo-case. I swear, it may as well come in a liter bottle with a shot glass on top stacked up on pallets next to the Captain Morgan, if they're going to do it like that at all.

Anyway, it worked a little, but the stuff doesn't have the kick to it like it used to since they took the pseudoephedrine out of it. Anyone notice this besides me? They replaced it with something called "phenylephrine" which some studies say is as good for a cold as cat food and dandelion petals. I guess you can still get "NyQuil D", which is the old stuff, but not at Costco. Stores keep it behind the counter with the rest of the Sudafed so that the kids aren't buying it for the meth labs in their stepdad's darkroom. Dumb kids. What? NyQuil D not strong enough for you?

So I stocked up at Costco way back when because I hate going to the store when I'm sick to buy medicine. It's the fluorescent lights. (They clog up my sinuses when I'm not sick, for crying out loud -which is why I have a career outdoors.) I'm finally at the age where I have accepted the fact that I'm going to get sick again. When you're young, you never think about getting sick, (which I guess is part of the reason why you'd do meth) but at some point, sooner or later, you get sick and you can't remember what it was like to be healthy. That's when you think, man, if I ever get healthy, I don't ever want to be sick again. I know, I know, it sounds deppressing but... we're all gonna get sick again, dammit. And it'll suck.


~

"Bad seed is a robbery of the worst kind: for your pocket-book not only suffers by it, but your preparations are lost and a season passes away unimproved." -George Washington

I planted some bad seed in my garden about a month ago. I shouldn't have, I know, because Washington is right. It is backbreaking labor to till the soil, turn and amend it, and then to pray fervently for rain and lastly -here is the worst part- wait. You wait. It is a full pleasure to finally see the tiny shoots peering from the ground. You have done some, God himself has done the rest, but with bad seed, all is wasted and you wait forever.

Washington knew this as a farmer, and he would know that after that first month of waiting for the germination, things really start to move. After the initial shoot, there is the first set of two leaves, and then four, and then one day you will turn your back and the plant will burst forth with life. It is the same with the fruit: first one, then two, then ten, then a hundred, and the work turns suddenly to preserving the goods, as you have more than you can eat.

Washington: "Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth."

He believed wholeheartedly in the young constitution and dedicated his life to preserving it. And so much did he envision the success of the young country, that he was once quoted as boldly saying: "Some day, following the example of the United States of America, there will be a United States of Europe."

When I think about George Washington, the first thing that comes into my head is a question my dad asked me when I was in about the 5th grade: "Do you know what George Washington did for a living?" I did know. He was a surveyor. I remember my dad being particularly impressed that I knew this, but it was just by chance that it had been mentioned in class that day. George Washington came alive for me when I had heard it. My father was a surveyor, too.

It takes a certain kind of person to be one, actually. You have to have a love for the outdoors, an exacting mind with respect for numbers, a keen sense of direction, and also: good penmanship. I remember my dad in his boots, with his theodolite on his shoulder, making his way across a field, noting every tree and boulder. And then my dad in his office, with his maps and his calculators, his rulers and his insufferable attention to detail. My dad would show me the maps of various subdivisions and they looked like nonsense to me, just plain bad Spirograph, but he explained it as legal mathematics. I picture Washington somewhat similarly.

Washington gained a reputation as a surveyor who was fair, honest, and dependable. This was no small feat. Imagine mapping out rough country with no roads, no vehicles, with wealthy landowners breathing down your neck, not to mention Indians. It would be easy to cut corners on say, some hillside thicket. Evidently he didn't. To be a surveyor was akin to being a judge in those times, when property was everything, and the lines that divided them akin to lines on a check register. Landowners relied on them. Unreliable ones would be run out of town.

Washington became a wealthy landowner himself, eventually, and had many slaves as was the manner of the day. This kept Liberty on his mind, I figure. At the time of his death there were over 300 slaves at Mount Vernon. Slavery was a touchy subject and so he never brought it up publicly, but in his personal letters he wrote: "I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery." He wished to sell them all, but was legally bound to keep them as many came from the dowry of his wife. These intermingled with his own through the years, and as a result there were many slave families that Washington refused to break up. Washington would be the only prominent Founding Father to free his own slaves, which he had demanded in his will to be done upon his death.

And he was a warrior.


His knowledge of the land from his surveying was of great benefit to battle strategy, as was the discipline gained from his profession. "Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak, and esteem to all," he wrote. He fought in two wars, and was witness to the blood of the thousands of men that poured on the soil that would become America. Considering that, at the time, it was little more than a dream that they were fighting for, he must have been a man of immense faith.

There is argument and debate as to whether Washington was a Christian, but I suspect this is a fact that resides only between the man and God himself, as it does for all of us. He was baptized into the Church of England and even served on the lay council of the local church at one point in his life. There is no doubt religion was an important part of the man, as he claimed:

"It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible."

And:

"Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

But one thing is curious. He was known to have regularly received the sacrament before the revolution, but in his church attendance after the war it was noted by some that he would leave the service before Communion was offered. It was common in the day that, prior to communion, believers would be admonished to take stock of their spiritual lives and asked not to participate in the ceremony unless they found themselves in the Will of God. I imagine many Christians can identify with the moment in church when the sacrament comes around and you just feel unworthy. I've been there, and I suppose that for Washington, after years of nothing less than brutal bloodshed, the forgiveness of the Lord would be a challenge. Later in life, Washington would cease attending church on Communion Sundays altogether.

It follows that he believed man to be a flawed creature, an utterly biblical notion.

"Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government."

He was not one to pass judgement on religion. When hiring workmen for Mount Vernon, he wrote to his agent, "If they be good workmen, they may be from Asia, Africa, or Europe; they may be Mohammedans, Jews, or Christians of any sect, or they may be Atheists." And in 1790, he wrote a response to a letter from a synagogue that he was more concerned about them being good citizens than what manner of faith they had. The Jewish community had finally found a place in the world where they were both welcomed and free from intense prejudice. The Jewish nation has been an ally in democracy ever since.

There are all manner of stories and exploits, quotes and myths, regarding this man who happened to never sign the Declaration of Independence, but was the only president ever elected unanimously by the electoral college. Only one state is named after any American: Washington, and there is, of course, the nation's capital. He was called the "Father of Our Country" more than twenty years before his death. He is considered by many scholars to be our best president, and to have our best president as our first president, is Providence indeed.

After American independence was bravely fought and won, King George III asked an American, “What will George Washington do now?” He was told: “I expect he will go back to his farm.” The King replied: “If he does that, he will be the greatest man on earth.”

To the astonishment of all, this is what Washington did.

It's not too difficult to imagine, really. I had the good fortune to visit Mt. Vernon, and I can attest that it is a beautiful and serene place. Upon his death, Washington refused to lie in state beneath the cold capitol dome, where a crypt was built for him. Had he done this, the capitol of our nation would have become a mausoleum, and Washington something akin to a pharaoh -a dead god-king worshipped in his immortal pyramid. Instead, the man wished to be buried at home on his farm. Identifying himself in his will, he wrote merely: "George Washington, of Mount Vernon, a citizen of the United States." The United States; a place that didn't exist for most of his life, but exists today thanks to him. And to see the capitol dome today, one thinks not of any king nor conqueror, of president nor political party, but of the greatness of the United States of America itself.


Though he was revered and though he was noble, though he was bigger than life -tall, strong, with a full head of hair (contrary to myth he never wore a wig) he was able to stand down after the presidency with his dignity utterly intact, setting a precedent of extraordinary character. Even Napoleon recognized it on his deathbed when he moaned, "They wanted me to be another Washington," but powerful conqueror that he was, ambition was his foil. This was Washington's greatest achievement: to shed his ambition entirely.

Congressman Henry Lee, in his famous eulogy of the president, wrote:

"First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen, he was second to none in humble and enduring scenes of private life. Pious, just, humane, temperate, and sincere; uniform, dignified, and commanding; his example was as edifying to all around him as were the effects of that example lasting… Correct throughout, vice shuddered in his presence and virtue always felt his fostering hand. The purity of his private character gave effulgence to his public virtues… Such was the man for whom our nation mourns."


February 22, 1732: George Washington's birthday.

Many hard-working men tilled the New World.
George Washington was the good seed.
God did the rest.

Status of flag: Out.


~

Lunar eclipse! The clouds parted just in time for it, and you could see it straight out the window above my foyer, from the stairs. Sorry if you missed it: the next one won't be until December 20, 2010. I'll be forty.

That's the star Regulus, of the constellation Leo, on top, (can't you tell by its bluish hue?) and then Saturn itself in the lower left. Sorry you can't make out the rings. My Cannon PowerShot A85 only has so much power, evidently. I took a number of not-so-powerful shots on a little tripod out on the grass. This one was a 14 second exposure, which is a little too long for a good space photo, as the movement of the heavenly bodies themselves create a blur. A better lens and I might have captured an excellent shot of the Sea of Tranquility bathed in the orangish shadow of the earth, but alas. If I start another hobby right now, say, Astronomical Photography, Mrs. Ditchman will kill me. (She won't settle on the casual eye-roll that I can usually get away with.)

I am sure you're wondering, from whence does he gather such wisdom? Why, from the Starry Night widget on my computer screen, of course! It's a cool little thing. Free for the Mac (and even the iPhone!), but not sure about the PC. (One may have to shell out some cash for it.) Anyway, you just type in your zip code and which way you're facing and voila, all the stars in the sky are named. It's neat! The widget actually figures your time of day and shows you a picture of the exact sky you're currently looking at, only with labels. It's just the kind of thing the Internet was designed for. It even has a scrolling news bar at the bottom of the widget that reads out all current space-related news, which no decent, self-respecting star-worshipper can live without.

And yes, we shot it out of the sky. No, not the moon, the hydrazine-filled school bus that was in a descending orbit. Excellent work, men! I'm glad they did it, if only because we have the technology, but also because I just fertilized my lawn and the last thing I need is hydrazine overspray mucking it up. I had all manner of things to say about it, but as usual I was beat to the punch by Lileks, Overlord of the Blogosphere, who was piquant enough to be linked from here, two days in a row. Well done, Lileks. Serves me right for posting in the morning. Clearly, I'd never make it in the news reporting industries. (But he didn't get a picture of the eclipse!)

If you're interested in the more spectacular Total Solar Eclipse, there's one coming on August 1st this year. Go ahead and book your flight to Mongolia now.


~

It's raining out. Is it going to stop? Or is it going to get worse? Is it raining at the job site? These are questions that really press me right now. If I decide to forgo showing up at the job site this morning, it is almost certain to clear up -right about in the middle of whatever project I take on in the office. On the other hand, if I do go to the job site, it is certain to begin a real full-fledged, unremitting downpour like we had last week, but it will only ensue after I unpack the tools. It's a game I play with myself, really. I'd much rather just sit here at my desk with my feet up and drink coffee, checking weather reports. And my Seattle friends would laugh, "That's not rain! That's a life-affirming drizzle!"

And rain is scheduled for every other day this week, which just messes with my mind -for whatever I start today, I won't be able to finish tomorrow, or vice-versa. And then there's the city officials I have to contend with. You see, I've got a job this week where I have to dig a few holes, and then the inspector has to come out twenty-four hours later and confirm that they are, in fact, proper holes. And then I have to get the holes filled with concrete. Also, the inspector will not come every other Friday. Today is Wednesday. Rain is scheduled for today, Friday, Sunday... see my problem?

Ah well, it's Southern California. Really the best place in the world to live, even if your property is worth $10,000 less than last month.

I usually avoid mentioning politics. I bring it up and all manner of typable blathering emits from the keyboard, and why take that risk when YouTube is only a -click- away? But this Obamamania is really striking. I mean, yes, wow, his speeches are good. They're inspiring! Change! But where is the there? It's astonishing, really, that he's able to sustain the hype for so long without getting into any specifics, but that's what good politicians do, I guess. Voting records show him to be among the furthest left politicians in the Senate, and interestingly, McCain has one of the most conservative voting records, and yet so many republicans are decrying him as "liberal!" Acchh, politicians... Anyway, I only brought it up because I thought Lileks was pretty funny on it today. (Half way down the page.)

Change? Yes, of course. That's what an election is, change.

"Politicians are like diapers. They both need changing regularly and for the same reason."

FYI it's still raining (drizzling) out. But I guess I'm not the only one who can't get things done today as a result of bad weather.


~

Yesterday was "Presidents Day", or "Presidents' Day", or even "President's Day" if you celebrate only George Washington's Birthday, which is Friday. Anyway, I looked all this up and have concluded what I originally suspected -this is a dumb day. 50 years ago every schoolkid in America could tell you when George Washington's birthday is, and Lincoln's too, but today we're all hard-pressed as to which president the day is all about, which is why it's a dumb day. I believe we should commemorate George Washington's birthday, and Lincoln's as well, but to glom them all together onto the third Monday of a month serves only to diminish the rich history of our nation, and from one generation to the next, we forget. This will only end badly.

And, yes, I admit it only all occurred to me as I was checking the mail. There was no mail. It was Presidents Day. I didn't put my flag out.

But I will put it out on Friday and I did put it out last Tuesday. I imagine my neighbors peer out their windows and think, There goes that Ditchman guy again. What country does he live in, anyway? And the customer that I have right now, when he heard I was planning on working Presidents Day, gave me some lip about it. He's a vet, so he's entitled. I shut up. I didn't mention I'd celebrated Lincoln's birthday last week on the actual day by writing an essay on the man, the American hero, and then posted it in a public forum. Best not to argue with the vets. They've been through enough, I gather. God bless 'em.

Finally watched Serenity, and there was much rejoicing. I would've viewed it sooner, but wanted to savor it at full volume, and had to wait for the moment to present itself. I'm glad I did! I'm also glad I'd seen the Firefly series first, as the film really pulled it all together in the end. I didn't think it was possible, really, but good storytellers know what they're doing, and generally should be trusted.

At first, I was hoping for a bit more production value, but knowing the story of Firefly -failed television series that somehow made it to the big screen- I was thankful to get anything at all. I noticed straight away that there were a lot more shadows in the film than I'm used to in the series, but such is the technique indulged when budget limitations abound. Still, it was a generously sweet flick and I have little more than this high praise to offer: A very satisfying movie.

Not for everyone, however. If you don't like snappy dialogue, overwritten archetypes, and crossover genre, you probably won't go for it. But hey, if you like guns and spaceships, one-liners, and good guys vs. bad guys stuff, and some easy-on-the-eyes ladies -you might just go for it. Also: no nudity, and no bad words. See Hollywood? It is possible! Now get back to work and figure it out. The strike is over. It cost the local L.A. economy over 3 billion dollars, I heard. Shall I persist in denigrating the whiny, overpaid scribblers of Tinseltown? I think not. As I mentioned, Firefly was canceled in its prime, so that's what talent will get you. Studio heads and producers can be blamed as well.

The blog will descend into a lawless source of diminishing returns, if I continue down that path. I'm trying to stay upbeat here. Positively! But currently the house is a hollow place, with my peoples out of town and only my lonely self echoing down the hall. Might as well get to work, this grey day. There's nothing for me here.


~

I've got another few days of this getting up early and going to work stuff. It's for the birds, man! Or, well, it would be for the birds if I worked in a seed factory. I don't, but it's still for the birds. (When you have your own business, you set your own hours but you end up working holidays. Go figure. I'm not the boss of me! Oh wait... yes, I am.)

REVIEWS:

The Weekend. Didn't get nearly as much accomplished as originally intended, as usual, though the weather was a picture of perfection -which often has something to do with it. Went out and ran around the field near my house, and climbed all the boulders. Yes, there are boulders in the vicinity of my house and I climb them from time to time. It's gratifying in the way that only local suburban boulder-climbing can be. I hope that they are never replaced by a housing development. Later, I was able to beg off church and drag Mrs. Ditchman out back to work in the garden, and she's been complaining about her sore back all morning. Welcome to my world, sweetheart.

Valentine's Day. It was swell, though all semblance of romance ever enjoyed previously is now burgled by small children (one, in particular.) Valentine's Day was the first time I said "I love you" to my significant other, and we have enjoyed King crab, Cabernet, and chocolate-covered strawberries ever since, although she would tell the story and it would sound somewhat different: how she was planning on breaking up with me and I only told her "I love you" out of desperation. In any case, it worked. Now we have a business and a house and a child and a Life together, and Valentine's day is hardly savored -unless you count snuggling on the couch and trying to stay awake for an episode of LOST.

LOST. It's getting better. We're finally figuring how Ben is getting his retribution for being beat up in every episode. And another one of the Oceanic 6 is revealed, as if we hadn't figured it out on our own. I'm glad they finally worked in the Ghostbusters references, as it fits like a glove with all the Star Wars references. I'm waiting for Doc Brown and Marty McFly to pop out of the space-time coptinuum, and in this show, it is entirely possible. The 80s Sci-fi trifecta is now in play.

AppleTV System Update. The long-awaited system update arrived on AppleTV with a hearty yawn. It's the same screensaver (how could they possibly improve on it?) but an all new interface. I can now purchase tunes and rent HD movies and TV shows from the luxury of my faded red couch at home. To test it out, I picked up the new Jack Johnson album and an episode of Little Einsteins -much to the soaring, squealing delight of the Little Ditchman. AppleTV seems to be a little quicker on the click now, which is nice, but all my own music, photos, and movies seem to have been relegated to the bottom of the list and the thing feels more like a Tower Records in my living room -which I do not desire and did not request. And still, the pop geniuses over at Mac have not made a category for Home Movies on the system, which is what I use it for. I have to click into the "TV Shows" folder to watch my own family, which depresses me. Hard as I try, I do not wish the Ditchmans to fall on the same viewing list as the Simpsons or those ugly Married With Children folk, et al. Get it together, Steve! Get a life! Where do your assistants show you your home movies? (In your actual, full-sized, THX-endowed Home Theater, I imagine.)

Sleep Through The Static, the new Jack Johnson album. Meh. Not good, not bad. Sounds like Jack Johnson. Like that sound and you'll like this album. It's obvious the waves were good the day he recorded it, but the studio was already rented and paid for so he had to go. We'll try not to sleep through it, Jack. I'll give it a chance to grow on me like I try to do with everything, everyone.

Pirates Treasure, the Little Einsteins episode I purchased. Artist: Paul Gaugin. Composer: Georges Bizet. Location visited: The Pacific Ocean. A good one! We've had the little read-along book of Pirates Treasure for some time, so when the Little Ditchman saw the episode, she was pleasantly surprised at how familiar everything was. We put her in bed last night and she wanted the book. I said "Pirates Treasure?" and she replied, "Arrrrgh." No, I am not kidding. She's not even two and already talking like a pirate. Raised eyebrows all around. Where's my bottle of grog?

Yo ho ho and off to work!


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A Saturday Morning post! Well, big deal. Evidently, I missed a few days there, which I don't believe has happened since I was in Hawaii running a marathon in the rain (that is, last month's marathon in the rain.) It's too bad, too, as I had all manner of sense and nonsense to report...

I like to ease into my mornings, lest I tire myself out too soon before the day is out. I get up, have some coffee with the family, catch some Zoboomafoo or Curious George, maybe a little Sunrise Earth, and then I'll get a run in, post to the blog while the other Ditchmans are at Jazzercise, get a little office work done, and head out after the traffic starts moving again. That's my typical routine, which makes me happy. It's a great life. Especially the part where I come home and have a beer and tickle the kid.

This week we had a good customer, ex-military, who demanded I show up early. All these ex-military types, getting up and getting to work before dawn, I can't argue with them -so the routine was out the window for a while. Not that I'm blaming the military, mind you, (if they sleep, the enemy arrives at night!) there were other, extenuating circumstances.

I had to cut some concrete and pour a few footings, and though we are the Ditchmans, I'm trying to put my ditch-digging behind me, so I hired Jose. Jose is my neighbor and our daughters are just about best friends. He's an American, if you're curious, and specializes in all things hard: concrete, rock, stone, pavement, etc. Jose gets started early; a crack-of-dawn type, who leans out the door at 4:30AM to check for rain. He's a good man, too. They all brought me up to their level. I would bring them down to my level, and they would appreciate it and perhaps get more joy out of life, but they would be dragged kicking and screaming, and who wants to hear that at five AM? Besides, this week's early morning noise was scheduled to be the concrete cutter. If you hear that screeching chalkboard sound rattling you out of bed and shattering your fillings, blame Jose. I wanted to start later.

And then it rained, which screws up everything, of course. And it was a cold, hard unexpected rain that felt like the gods had taken a sack of pennies out of the icebox and were pelting you with them for sport. Trees were being felled and glass was breaking all around us in this sudden storm. Jose and his men labored merrily through it all. I fumbled high and out of the way on another part of the project. I won't bore you with it, but it involved magnets.

No one knew the storm was coming! All the forecasters: "Surprise storm!" which just goes to confirm that they do all their meteorological research out at the track with a band of chimps. I'd been checking the weather all week, and there was nothing on the map. And then it slams the southland and there's snow and sleet everywhere. It's beautiful, now, and I see snow-capped peaks from my office window. It feels as if we live at the foot of the Sierras, which is nice, and I'll spend some of today outside with the Little Ditchman, digging some ditches of our own in the backyard, hoping for a sunset the likes of which we had the other day after the storm. All the realm of digital photography swoons:


And at night: croaking frogs!

My apologies to all those people with whom I have favors to address. Ever had one of those days where you get home for work and check yourself in the mirror and see the sleep still in your eyes? Happened to me the other day. (Why didn't anyone tell me?) I believe there's been only one day so far this year that was unencumbered by work or some sort of unmissable social event. I suppose we've been toiling overtime to make up for the calamities at the end of the year last. Anyway, I'll get right on it, and then Mrs. Ditchman will head off to work and hand me the little one who bleats, "Color with Daddy! Color with Daddy!" Life is swell. This year: no more favors. I just can't handle the pressure and I've got too much coloring to do.


(The view from our suburbs.)


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The most photographed man in America when this, the last photograph of Lincoln, was taken April 10th, 1865.

Four days later he would be shot in the back of the head at point blank range, with his wife sitting beside him, while they were laughing. The murderer chose the funniest line in the play, hoping the laughter would muffle the sound of the gunshot. You can imagine the scene, with the First Lady screaming in horror, Major Henry Rathbone grappling with the attacker before being knifed, and the audience finishing the laughter, looking up toward the commotion. The round slug lodged six inches inside the president's brain. His wife held him as he bled and slipped into a coma, dying nine hours later, across the street.

This is my favorite photo of Lincoln, with that satisfied smile that replaces the dour look in so many of the other photos of him. He had reason to smile: the Civil War had been ended and won, but he also had reason to be dour. It was a brutal war, with 3 percent of the population of the country dying as a result. In the South, it killed one in five males. To be a leader in wartime presents challenges few men face and could handle courageously, but a war such as this is unimaginable in this day and age.

Abraham Lincoln is known for freeing the slaves, of course, but his principle intent was to hold the country together. He was quoted as saying:

"I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be 'the Union as it was.' My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."

He would do both. After he signed the Emancipation Proclamation to free the slaves, he said:

"I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right, than I do in signing this paper."

And in a letter to a friend wrote:

"If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong."

America today is often known for its history of slavery, but it is America that fought and died to free slaves. America led the world in ending slavery, where no country would. I expect Lincoln knew this, and he knew that if the Union could not be saved, there would be little hope of ever ending slavery, among other things, which is why he put saving the country ahead of ending slavery. It would be repeated over the next 150 years, that America would shed its blood for what is noble and right, and in this case, at the dangerous cost of risking the whole Union. Lincoln was a man who had his principles lined up in order of importance.

He kept the country together in its darkest hour, and getting people to work together was one of the things Lincoln did best. He was famous for hiring his opponents on in cabinet positions, so they could argue it out in his company and be forced to cooperate -instead of taking potshots from afar. I believe he had a secret to this success, and it was grace. His last official act as president was signing a pardon for a man who had thrice been convicted of espionage for the Confederates and was sentenced to die. That was Lincoln's intent for the South: forgiveness. Once, when a general asked Lincoln how the defeated Confederates should be treated, Lincoln replied, "Let 'em up easy." He signed the pardon, and it made him late for the play.

Lincoln and the First Lady went in to the booth at the theater and, though the play was paused to announce the president's arrival, the crowd cheered and applauded. They sat next to Major Henry Rathbone and his fiance, Clara Harris, who were the only people to accept the Lincoln's invitation. As the play went on, Mrs. Lincoln snuggled up to her husband and they held hands. She whispered, "What will Miss Harris think of my hanging on to you so?" The president replied, "She won't think anything about it." Those were his last words.

It's surprising to see Lincoln smiling at all in that photo. On the day of his assassination, Lincoln had told his wife that they must be more cheerful, as "between the war and the loss of our darling Willie, we have both been very miserable."

In February, 1862, two of the four Lincoln boys became ill with typhoid fever, possibly from drinking polluted water in the White House. While Tad recovered, Willie gradually declined, and died a few weeks later at age 11. His death devastated his parents. Lincoln was especially fond of Willie, who he felt had a mind like his own. Those who knew the boy considered him intelligent, generous, and kind-hearted. He also had a mischievous streak, which Lincoln was known to have encouraged. During Lincoln's train ride to Washington in February of 1861, Willie would ask visitors, "Do you want to see Old Abe?" and point to someone else.

After Willie's death, Mary Lincoln could not bring herself to attend his funeral, remained bedridden for three weeks, and would not emerge in public for months afterwards. Lincoln, who had stayed at Willie's side through his illness, shut himself in his bedroom in the White House after his son's funeral to weep. He often had dreams of spending time with his son and he never fully recovered from the loss. He was so distraught over Willie dying, that he had Willie's coffin exhumed twice so he could look at and hold him again.

Lincoln was no stranger to loss and heartache. Willie had been born about ten months after his brother Eddie died on February 1, 1850 at the age of 3.

And Lincoln knew failure. Back in 1832, at the start of his career, Abraham Lincoln lost his job and was defeated for the Illinois state legislature. The following year, his business failed. When he was finally elected to the state legislature, his first sweetheart died and he had a nervous breakdown. He was then defeated for the position of House Speaker and then ran for Congress, but lost again. He was elected the second time he ran, but then lost the renomination. He ran for U.S. Senate after that, but lost, and then even lost a second time when he ran for Senate again four years later.

He is considered by many historians to be our greatest president. He was born on this day, 199 years ago. I put the flag out.


"I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me."





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