Teaching Fire Extinguisher Class totally looks like Getting Married at the Beach

---

Teehee.



Yeah, no idea what I'm doing in this second picture...

"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life,"

This doesn't make her a racist. I hate how ridiculous people have gotten with the word "racist". She didn't say anything inherently bad about white people, black people, brown, red, or yellow people. She didn't display hatred or anything else that looks either exclusionary or xenophobic.

The quote above does not indicate that Sotomayor is a racist. It shows that she's a bad judge. That quote says that instad of applying the law equally and evenly, she thinks that race, gender, and personal experience should play a substantial part in how judgement is rendered.

America was founded on the principle that it doesn't matter who you are, the law is applied evenly. How does that quote not exclude her from judgeship based on a thorough misunderstanding of the purpose of our legal system?

I'm now at my heaviest.
Tomorrow: gym
Oh, and better eating

Change of plans:
Lay around and be sick instead.

I went away to a 2-week long party where I ate rich, fried food, felt compelled to drink beer every day and night in order to empty a keg, and generally did whatever I want. I gained 2 pounds.

I came back to NoVA and tried to get back to my normal life. I'm now eating too much and trying to get back into a groove of some sort. This week I've gained 4 pounds.

I'm now at my heaviest.
Tomorrow: gym
Oh, and better eating

For the third installment of "What am I going to do with all this food before it goes bad?" (this is at least two more installments than I ever expected) I bring you Wolf Trap Summer Blast Off. The annual season kick-off at "America's National Park for the Performing Arts" is a free show from the Marine Corp Band, nicknamed The President's Own", with a set of Fireworks to follow.

This year I was driving the fire engine so I didn't take a bunch of pictures like last year (for which I can not find an old LJ post before I go out and do things today).

I do, however, have this one that I like:


As well as a picture of my engine crew that demonstrates clearly that firefighters get the best seats in the house.
(technically "sitting" is not a great idea since, while I was sitting about where that water can is, I had to jump up to get out of the way of one round that hit the tree just to the right of us and then exploded flaming fragments at us):


Anyway, after we got back to the station, one of my Lieutenants offered up his basement bar, saying that while they have bar-drinks, he had no bar food. So Lesley and I ran home and grabbed a huge bag of chips, a jar of salsa, a wedge of brie cheese and a box of crackers for the brie.

This afternoon we finally cut open the watermelon at a cookout which should be the last mention of wedding-food leftovers.

A quick mention of the Wednesday before the wedding when Lesley and I rode my motorcycle up to the Currituck Beach Light House. This was the first light house I have ever climbed. The closest I'd ever come was climbing the Tower of Pisa over 30 years ago.




It's not that tall, but the buildings below looked like little doll houses.



Ocean:


Soon-to-be-wife
(She'll probably be mad at me for posting a picture of her with motorcycle-helmet hair, but I think it's cute.)


Art:


Sunset that night back at the vacation house:

As I mentioned there was a lot of food here in the house that we wanted to use up instead of throwing away.

So last night (Thursday) we wanted to work on the two and a half dozen eggs. The easy answer was: Quiche.

But in a household where Lesley and I still drink out of our own glasses and eat with our own separate flatware, of course we had to make two quiches.



That's Lesley's on the left and mine on the right. It's lighter looking because of the order I added the ingredients.

• cooked spinach,
• carrots,
• caramelized onion,
• bell pepper,
• cilantro,
• smoked salmon,
• sharp cheddar, and
• feta

plus the standard eggs and heavy cream. Lesley added more onion and also squash.


We then had the last little mini wedding cake for desert. We thought about trying to freeze it, but on the one hand we had no good way to protect it in the freezer and on the other... well again we wanted to eat it while it was still the most yummy.

I think tomorrow night I'll take this watermelon to the fire department and share it with the people working at bingo.

uhhh,

I just heard a radio commercial for Survival Seed Bank dot com which (I swear to God) started off talking about the rich elitists that are storing non-genetically modified seeds above the arctic circle and how all natural, non-modified, naturally pollinated seeds are going to soon be worth more than gold.

While technically, part of that is true the implication here is that you need your own batch of archival-quality seeds for when the shit hits the fan. They have to be non-genetically modified, naturally pollinated, and come in air-tight, water-tight, vacuum-packed containers so that you can hide the by burying them in the yard so that the... I don't know... evil government food-seed, jack-booted, nazi... I got nothing.

• If you yourself have your own rotating seed-stock set aside for tough economic times then I wish you only good fortune and point out that I am not making fun of you.
• If, however, your seeds are part of a post apocalypticsurvival kit that you have buried as a secret cache in order to hide it from the government confiscators... Well, I'll just remind you not to spend all your money on that since the kooks without land are just stocking up on bullets.

---

OOhhhhhhh, Now I get it.
Having done a little searching I see from the people at Survivalist Seeds dot com that the reason you need to bury and hide your seeds is that the government is going to outlaw growing your own garden with HR 875 in order to make slaves of us all.

I'm glad I kept reading because at this second site I found a list of reasons to use them instead of the other guys. These include

• We sell by count
  
• They sell by gram to cloud the facts
  
• We sell 100% heirloom seeds
  
• They focus on open pollinated- not always the same
  
• We give you 6,000 seeds, 20 varieties, 4 pounds of seed total
  
• They sell less than 2 pounds
  
• We are owned by a famous patriot
  
• Who are they, CIA?
  
• We created this bulk heirloom seed market for patriots
  
• They are merely copycats
  
• We give you a 100 year time capsule container
  
• They give you fancy packaging

There is seriously so much you can learn on a Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend when there is almost no one in the office...

So, I had to put up that last post as an intro. Mainly because of the yellow shirt below.

We have not unpacked from the trip. There are boxes everywhere. Plus there is additional food laying around that we brought back: crackers, chips, cheese, squash, mangos, watermelon.

So tonight I helped with a little of it.




This is apparently a Red Drum (or Channel Bass) thought it doesn't look red to me. This is what you catch right off the dock with worms.

Tonight Lesley and I made a delicious mango salsa (to use up the mangos) and grilled up the fish fillets (to get those out of the fridge). Yummy.



































Oh yeah, it was windy most of the days...
:^)

I actually had a request today for wedding pictures that was entirely unexpected. While I'm unprepared to put up pictures of the ceremony itself I can begin the process of telling the story of my vacation.

We rented for two weeks the same house we vacationed in last October. I took my motorcycle and Lesley drove her mom down in the Jetta. (Her mom had flown to VA from KS on Friday night.)
Hmmm, I started trying to explain this part of the story and decided against it. Here's a graph instead. This shows a mark for each person for each portion of a day they were in OBX.



You'll notice that the only time there were only 2 people around were the last 2 days of the trip, so, yes, we invited all those people on our honeymoon.


In the pictures that will be forthcoming you'll see folks in bright yellow T-shirts. I had them made up for all the guests so that we could get pictures of them doing different things around the OBX. It didn't work all that well since we were awfully busy to be running around after guests to take their pictures. In fact in the entire two weeks Lesley and I never set foot on the beach.
Anyway, the shirts have the follow designs on them. Lesley drew the stick figures and Carrie Simpson Toreno drew the back for us.

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEE

HOLY CRAP! I'M GETTING MARRIED IN TWO DAYS.



For those of you who won't be here for it, here's the view at about eight p.m.

I've just been sitting on the deck at the vacation house where I will be married on Saturday. The wind has been blowing all day out of the SSW at about 20 mph. Then it started to rain.

So I sat there watching a rainstorm, a very large hawk, and a pelican while drinking a nip of my favourite scotch: a Speyside; double cask aged Aberlour. Along with it I indulged in a mid-dark Trinidad Maduro cigar while reading a book.
After a little bout of silly, pointless stress, pleasures like this that remind me what an unreasonably fortunate man I am.

Now that the lightening has stopped, I see that the storm has moved most of the wind out as well. I think I'll go enjoy my kayak for while until I get too cold from the rain and need to come in for some warming up.

I have a kayak. My mother... Well technically I bought it for myself and my mother gave me the money for it (and the life jackets) as a wedding present. My friend Brian gave me a roof rack for the Jetta so that's even better.
The kayak is the same one that Lesley and I rented last year on vacation and that I talked about buying in this post (which I know needs an updated picture).

Anyway. We bought it. One day we went to Lake Accotink to paddle around the lake and up the creek.



There were geese and deer, birds and turtles, beaver-downed trees, and this weird out of focus crane.







Oh, and ducks.




And luckily for me, my buddy Mark is letting me keep it under his house, cause a 13.5' kayak may not sound big, but it takes up parts of two rooms (and at least one doorway) in a two bedroom apartment.

Here's a great reminder of why we're so lucky to live in America and so indebted to those who established over 200 years ago a government whose steady forthrightness and basic fairness, still to this day, is a little difficult to fathom and fully appreciate.

Here's a story where Castro tries to stick his thumb in Obama's eye over international relations and expectations that Cuba will reform.

In This story we see that Hugo Chavez is doing the same thing by trying to get the next Summit of the Americas meeting held in Cuba, a country that isn't even a member since they have no democratically elected government.

In that same story we learn that the president of Bolivia has been on a hunger strike over a law that would let him run for another term. A Hunger strike? (that lasted 5 days, btw) You're the freakin president.

And finally, from the King of the Kooks, we learn that North Korea, after threatening the South over the weekend by reminding them that Seoul is well within artillery range, now claims that South Korea has moved one of the border markers. This guy is a two year old. Seriously, a freaking two year old with an army; complaining that the other kid moved the line. Seriously? This is the country that spends so much money on a military that it can't feed it's people without food given to them for free by the "warmongers" (his pet-name for South Korea), but remains determined to avoid progress at any cost. And, apparently, avoid reality as well.

So, no matter who's President here, how great is it to be an American?

Last weekend I had a 2-day class in Loudoun County: Airport Rescue Fire Fighting for Structural Fire Fighters. It was mostly classroom with a one afternoon spend out on the tarmac lookign at small planes, medivac helicopters, and fuel trucks. There was no fire. However, we were invited to the instructor's airport in September to get in the airplane fire simulator, fight fuel-spill fires, and play with the airport crash truck.
I am ALL about that.



I was forced to drive my motorcycle so I looked for new roads and new ways to get there. I was hoping to get a few more miles on my bike before it's first birthday, but it looks like I might be able to hit the 8000 mile mark.

I also think I should start a list of music that I'm not allowed to listen to on my motorcycle. When I bought my last bike I banned myself from listening to anything by the Chemical Brothers. Last month I decided that The Information Society album "Hack" should probably be included for the same reason: you start enjoying the ride, you start enjoying the music, and all of a sudden you realize that you're... well, that you should probably slow down a bit. Other songs for the list:

• Days Go By, Dirty Vegas
• Couchemal, C.C. Adcock

But really, if I ban all of the upbeat music then what do I do? I don't want to listen to music that's going to put me to sleep...
Maybe I'll have to listen to This American Life podcasts.

---

EDIT**
I remembered the other song that I had been trying to think of. I would never have guessed it until it came on again. It doesn't SEEM like a problem

• Sinnerman, Nina Simone

That music just makes me go.

I don't want to sell them short. I want to recognize, though, Tavis, that they may come up short. Pretending people can do something they can't do is no favor for them.
- Barney Frank

Seriously?
Apparently he doesn't even listen to himself.

( This is merely a speech I want to keep somewhere that I can find it. )

I'm regularly brought to tears of awe and gratitude at tellings of the actions of the few men to whom the world owes thanks for the existence of America and her embodiment of the ideals of Liberty, Equality, and Freedom.

On the other hand, I'm a real "bright-side"er, so I should point out that I went into this process looking for an interesting, unique, masculine design to match Lesley's rings.

I did get that. Or, I should be able to get it someday.
Will try to dwell on that part.







It is pretty, or would be if it was made with quality. Maybe I should just take it to someone else to be copied.

I'm usually a pretty even keeled guy. When somebody asks how I'm doing the answer rarely varies far from "Super" or "Outstanding". Today though I'm pissed.
Lets just say it was a long long time ago that I first contacted a jeweler in Chattanooga about designing me a ring. After I had had time to be frustrated about delays a few times already, we got the ring designed on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. December first I emailed asking how to pay for it, telling him I wanted him to go ahead and make it for me, and included reminders for him of our conversations.

It took until TODAY to finally get the thing to me. They finally gave me a price and charged me 6 weeks ago and anytime they answer the phone since then they say, "Oh I'm so sorry. It's right here and I need to put it in the mail." I had been working toward this ring for months and months so that it would be right and done well before the wedding date. In fact I wouldn't even tell them when the wedding was and instead used the phrase "early spring" so they wouldn't screw me like this.

I spent 5 weeks checking the mail every day with excitement about finally having this last detail of the wedding taken care of and showing it to Lesley. Eventually I ran out of excitement. I ended up telling them that if they couldn't put it in the mail that day I'd just have someone come pick it up.
FINALLY I got it today. AND THE DAMN THING IS WRONG!!!.

1. The worst thing is that I need about a size nine. This was so big that I could shake it off my finger without much effort. I went to a jewelry store up here and it's a size 10.
2. Of lesser importance you can see that the inside of the band is not solid. That is something I specifically told him I needed. Several times.
3. Also, in each of these pictures you can see that the black enamel was not kept "inside the lines". There are 4-5 places where it's obviously sloppy.

It's something I wanted to wear for the rest of my life. I put in a lot of time and effort to design and get a ring that would match the ones Lesley will wear. I even told the guy that I wanted to give him additional business by buying a couple of additional versions of this in different metals (for use at different times like a version for work/fire department and a nice one for dress wear since the silver one will get beaten up pretty easily.)

I wish he'd just told me last year that he wouldn't have time to fool with me and I could have had it done any number of other places. My problem was that I wanted to spend the money in Chattanooga. Apparently that was stupid. Now I leave for my wedding in less than 4 weeks. The jewelry shop isn't open again until Tuesday and I have a ring that doesn't fit.
I haven't mentioned names because I still hope he makes this right, but I have zero confidence that he will. Despite how long I tried to work to make this happen, I think I'm going to end up getting married with a make believe ring; a prop that will just be melted down later and replaced. Holy Hell I want to scream and curse about this.

In addition to going to work everyday:

• Sunday (previous) - shopping (for fire department stuff) and cleaning up the extra bedroom which has had boxes piled on top of everything since I moved in.
• Monday night - coffee with a friend to be supportive then a half-annum reunion from my last job.
• Tuesday night - Teaching someone to drive an ambulance.
• Wednesday night - Mom and Jeff came here (from Norfolk) for dinner and spent the night (hence the bedroom cleaning).
• Thursday night - More ambulance driving lessons then bingo inventory.
• Friday night - Movie night at the Van Dykes' basement fireman bar.
• Saturday - Driving a fire engine.
• Saturday night - a pre-wedding dinner with friends.
• Sunday - Brunch, then shooting (or mani/pedis, I'm not sure).
• I feel like there's something Monday night next week, but I can't remember. Maybe I blocked it out.

I like being busy, having things to do, and having people to spend time with. But at some point I'm going to have to take a little time to do laundry.
:^D