Saturday, August 02, 2003

Somehow at lunch today, my Dad’s dad came up in conversation. He died when I was 10, so I never really got a chance to know him since I had spent most of my childhood up to that point either on the west coast or in England. I have a few specific memories of him - he was a diehard Redskins fan, he loved ice cream, he was gruff but kind, he was quiet.

Over the years my Dad would occasionally talk about him. I learned that he was in the Navy during World War 2, he played baseball, he put himself through college. Today I learned some stuff I had never heard before and it was mind-boggling. So the following is a little history lesson on my family. Dad can correct any of my errors in retelling it in the comments.

1. His first job was at a papermill. I can’t explain his exact job quickly here, but the guy who worked across from him in the assembly line had lost the tips of his fingers in that job. My grandfather decided he wanted to keep his fingers and applied to the Richmond Police Academy.

WHAT? My grandfather was a cop?

2. Yep. He was accepted to the Richmond PD where he walked a beat and later drove a car. Apparently my grandfather (we called him Pop) was shot when he and his partner responded to a bank robbery. The bank was on the second floor. He went in the door and was on his way up the stairs when the robber started down. There was plate glass between them. When the robber saw Pop, he fired his double barrel shotgun. The shot shattered the glass and then hit Pop’s leather jacket. He didn’t have a scratch. Pop shot the robber, who died.

Dad also told of the baseball games the Richmond PD would play with the bootleggers (this was during the Depression). Whoever won the game, won a case of whiskey. Somehow the PD always won. Imagine that…

3. When Pop went into the Navy during WWII, he was a shore patrolman. I knew that. What I didn’t know was that he played craps and won enough money to buy my grandmother’s engagement ring.

4. After the war, Pop became a gate guard at CIA. WHAT? This was news to me...it gets even better. After a while, he was moved “inside” where he worked in a secure room with a phone, notepad, and pen. He was to answer the phone, write down whatever was said, and at the end of the day turn in whatever he had. Some days the phone would ring all day. Others it didn’t ring at all. I asked if he could read a book or something and Dad said no. I would have gone nuts! But it turns out Pop was most likely receiving coded messages from field operatives from around the world, so as boring as the actual work was, he was helping fight the Cold War. That’s pretty cool.

He was offered a top secret position somewhere else with CIA. All they could tell him was that he would be within 1500 miles of Washington, DC. So Pop got a globe and mapped out that 1500 mile radius around DC and decided there were enough places in that area that he didn’t want to go to and turned it down.

4.  Pop left the CIA to become a milkman. I knew this about him. He delivered milk while he was at CIA too and decided to get into the dairy industry full time.

5. Eventually, he got into Automated Data Processing (ADP) and worked at Health, Education & Welfare (HEW - what is now two agencies: Education and Health & Human Services). He retired from HEW, bought a farm in Drakes Branch, VA, where he died one summer day while building a bench around a tree.

He sounds like the kind of guy I would have loved to hang around with. I’m sad he didn’t live long enough for me to get to know him better. Thanks for sharing the history today, Dad.

Up next in the family history of Jen: my grandmother’s bootlegger father and uncles, the 50-foot yacht, and 9 daughters. Now this side of the family is something else!

I can’t believe it’s already 5pm! Sheesh. I had a very productive day:

1. Ran errands - managed to get everything I needed at two stores - Wal-Mart and Target. Yay!

2. Went to my parents to scope out my mother’s discarded stuff. I came home with three lamps and the Amish quilt that we drove up to Pennsylvania for about 20 years ago when we were getting ready to redecorate my room. It’s faded from the sun in places, but I love it and I’m very happy to have it. Thanks, Mom.

She showed me some stuff that she had bagged. Knick-knack stuff. So I opened one bag and in amidst the country stuff was something that didn’t go - a Rubik’s cube. It’s in very good condition. Dad snagged it with plans to Google the trick to solving it.

While I was there they had a Culligan water guy stop by to discuss a water softening system for their house. At one point, Spanky the cat made that weird noise that I had heard once before when she was visiting at my place for a week. I looked at Mom and we managed to communicate nonverbally:

ME: You want me to get her?

MOM: Yes, please!

So I ran to steer the cat to the basement where she yakked at the base of the stairs then flew up the stairs to cough up the hairball right there in the hallway. Nice. Some of you may remember my experience with Sympathetic Puker Reflex™. SPR™ immediately kicked in, with me praying fervently that I wouldn’t make horrible gagging sounds while the Culligan man was discussing chlorine and whatnot with my parents. God is good indeed, as I was able to clean up the mess with only one half-gag. *shudder*

Dad made it up to me by offering to buy lunch, so while Mom and I discussed some of her redecorating ideas, he went out to get lunch. After we ate I helped Dad take down the vertical blinds in their sunroom because their new blinds are being installed this week, I think.

Then Mom hooked me up with cookies from her freezer and I came home. Yay! Thanks again, Mom!

Friday, August 01, 2003

I was visiting Mrs. Cootiehog’s place and found a link to The Editing Room. What will you find? Parody scripts to current movies.

The Recruit is hilarious and completely nails it. ***spoiler and adult language warning***

AL PACINO
Everything is a test, Colin.
Nothing is what it seems in the CIA.  Especially the muffins - they’re all fat free.

Yes, I’m atill alive.

I know some of you were wondering.

Oh...you weren’t?

Then go on about your business.

OTB posts about the sad state of the Comics section these days. I don’t get the newspaper, so I haven’t read the comics in years, although I noticed a few weeks ago at my parents that the section has some stuff that I’ve never seen before and no longer has stuff that I used to like.

I have to agree with James’ sentiment to unretire some talented and funny comic artists though.

How do you like that alliteration?

Wednesday afternoon and yesterday morning I was in a meeting to search for payroll codes that weren’t used and should have been. As we’re getting to the end of the fiscal year, we want to hunt down all of the money that’s to be reimbursed to our district that hasn’t been yet. So I have a rather large stack of folders that have a rainbow of sticky notes scattered through the pages indicating the timesheets I need to submit corrections for to our payroll center. Yay! That’s the busy part.

Late yesterday afternoon Kirby called to say he was passing through. So he crashed at my place again last night, which was fun, as usual. He helped me flip & rotate my mattress and the moved boxspring so I could vacuum under my bed. So now my room is nicely vacuumed - and he continued to vacuum the whole apartment while I fixed dinner and started laundry. I got quite a lot accomplished thanks to Kirby. Yay! That’s the otherwise occupied part (which is to explain why the minimal posting here yesterday).

I didn’t log on at all last night - but I did watch The Amazing Race, another good episode that ended as I thought it would. Kirby thinks Jon & Kelly won’t get married, David & Jeff are gay, and the Clowns are definitely not gay. He didn’t have much to say about Chip & Reichen. Heh. (Hi, Anthony!)

I no grand plans for the weekend. I was supposed to help Nikita Demosthenes move his blog to MT tomorrow, but he’s postponed that for a couple more weeks. My mother called me the other day to say she was going to get rid of some decorator items, did I want to come check them out on Saturday, so I will be raiding my mother’s cast offs. And that’s all I can think of for now.

Happy Friday!

Thursday, July 31, 2003

This makes me (and a lot of other people) very happy today. Others, not so happy, I’m sure.

RICHMOND, Va.—Jay Lentz will stay behind bars, for now.

[...]

The latest twist in the case happened Thursday morning when a three-judge panel sided with prosecutors, who asked that Lentz remain behind bars while prosecutors appeal the judge’s decision to overturn the conviction.

License plate seen on my lunch hour today:

BUNY-1E

What-ever.

It bugs me that when a news organization, such as Fox News Channel, talks about the Air Marshal program they run stock video of US Marshals in their raid jackets roaming the airports (usually Reagan National here in the DC area).

We’re not the same.

1. Air Marshals are part of the Department of Homeland Security.

2. US Marshals are part of the Department of Justice.

Wednesday, July 30, 2003

Brian Regan, spy, was one of ours too. We’re the spy district - comes with being in the Nation’s Capitol.

Turns out he buried a lot of the intelligence information that he stole and sold. And the Feds are now trying to locate it based on a map they found on Regan when he was arrested. This ought to be good.

[via adam at the blinding white light of the church of stupidity]

Responding to reader mail, LT Smash explains (again) why we went to war in Iraq.

UPDATE: Sgt. Hook has some similar thoughts.

There’s an irate fella at the window who apparently can’t get a new driver’s license because DMV won’t accept his Social Security card and California won’t give him a copy of his birth certificate.

How this is my problem is a mystery. I tried to explain that the Social Security Administration handles the card, etc. He went on about how he “just wants to do to the government what they’ve been doing to him.” OK…

When he asked to speak to “the highest person in this office” my first thought was “yeah, right!” I promptly went to get the acting ops supervisor, because this is way above my pay grade. The supervisor is “talking” with him now in the foyer area, so I can’t hear the conversation. I can’t wait to get his recap when he comes back in.

Somehow, because I’m not as diligent about checking the numbers in my stats counter rather than just checking who’s been visiting, I missed when I turned over the 15K mark. (I’m looking at the Sitemeter stats, not the pMachine ticker - sitemeter is the more accurate count because I can ban my own IP address to keep me from padding the numbers.) That’s pretty good for a year of blogging…

Which leads me to the second milestone missed - my blogaversary. I keep meaning to check my old blog archives to see what the exact date was of my first post. I can’t check at work because of my browser - the links for the archives don’t show on the page for some reason. I think it was July 27 or 28, 2002.

So to the many readers who’ve visited (and stayed) with me since those early days, many thanks - you’re real troopers. And to the newer readers, thanks to you as well. I hope to keep you entertained and informed for the next year as well.

UPDATE (8:35pm): I had the date wrong - July 24, 2002 was my first post. Click here to read that awkward inaugural attempt at blogging.

Tuesday, July 29, 2003

One last thing before I go to bed.

I was almost home when on my commute I noticed a spiffy little Honda in the left lane. The guy driving was wearing a baseball cap, but from what I could tell he looked to be in his mid to late 20s. As he pulled ahead a little I noticed his vanity license plate read “Jedi ***” (***=his name). Surrounding the plate was a plastic frame that read, “May The Force (on the top) Be With You (on the bottom).”

He’s proclaiming his Jedi-ness and blessing us at the same time. Is he a nerd or cool or both?

It just kind of amused me after a long day and drive.

Yesterday, LW and I went up to the Big Toe™ for sandwiches. At the door to the deli is a rack with various kinds of chips.

< commercial >

We noticed a guacamole flavored option from Lay’s - curious we bought a bag to share. They were really good, kind of barbeque-y with a hint of guacamole.

Then today, my boss came in with a loaded baked potato flavor, also by Lay’s - he offered us a sample. They were also really good. In one bite I got a hint of sour cream, then the next was cheesy with a little bacon. Very tasty. And when we went to The-Deli-in-the-Back™ (a deli in the building behind ours that has a real name, but that’s what we call it) to get better sandwiches, they had the loaded baked potato kind. So we shared a bag again.

If you like potato chips, give these flavors a try.

< /commercial >