I’m currently reading the companion to Ken Burns’ new PBS series, The Vietnam War. It’s a huge book, and goes into excellent detail on the origins, details, and consequences of the conflict. Burns wrote an article for the Atlantic about how it was the beginning of America’s break in trust with its President, from Kennedy’s doubts to Johnson’s secret bombing to Nixon’s paranoid ranting. It’s eye-opening and sobering. Here’s an excellent review of the series from Vulture.
Via CNN Money, here’s some helpful info on what to do about the Equifax hack. It’s appalling that something this big happened to so many people and the company responsible is so callous about the fallout. Mom, this one is for you.
Our weekend was full of activities, starting with Finn’s first soccer game of the season. They’ve had a total of one practice since the season started, rain having washed out all of the scheduled meetings, but her coaches did a good job herding the cats and getting the girls to remember how the game is played, where they should go, and what the rules are. Finn did really well on defense, but got winded on offense pretty easily. Her team has several very good players who carried the team early, and the Fireballs won the game.
From there we picked up a friend of hers for a playdate in the Scout, stopped for a celebratory donut, and then I got to work bagging up 1/2 of the acoustical tiles in the attic, which had finally succumbed to repeated cycles of heat, moisture, and cold and dropped all over our stored baby gear. In four hours, I had it all bagged, the contents of the attic vacuumed, and everything rearranged. Jen offered all of Finn’s old clothing to Christi and Glenn for Ruby, so this week she’s going to go up and sort through the piles to see what goes and what gets sold. I also used our $10 handcart to bump the A/C unit down from the attic and stick it in the back of the Scout.
That evening we had friends come for dinner, and stayed up late eating, drinking, and sitting in front of a roaring fire to roast marshmallows. Sunday morning revealed a house destroyed by the girls, a kitchen destroyed by dinner, and two sizable hangovers. The girls went to church and I continued working around the house until the afternoon, when we had another family come and join us for dinner.
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I got an email last week asking if I’d like to teach a class next spring, which sounds really good. While it’s not a senior-level class (I think the full-time faculty claimed those for themselves) it’s one Jen and I have taught before, so I won’t have to worry about developing a syllabus while I’m down for the count.
We’re also building a list of stuff that has to get done before I can’t get up off the couch; This includes stuff like pulling all of the air conditioners from the windows, stocking up our inside wood supply, putting the hardtop back on the Scout, and kegging a batch of beer. I’m sure there are more that I’m not thinking of, but I know it’s going to get longer.
As usual I shot a ton of pictures on our vacation. The lion’s share were taken with the Fuji, although I did bring the Nikon out to the beach one day. The runner-up was a Canon Powershot a540, an 11-year-old point and shoot that I inherited from work with a waterproof dive case. Proving the adage the best camera is the one you’ve got, I took this into the ocean with us every day and just kept pushing the button whenever I saw something. Almost every shot taken from the water was with this camera, and I don’t care if they’re only 6MP; they’re all good.
I played around a lot with a cheap egg timer/photo turntable while we were at the beach, and had some mixed results. In short, I can see why it only got three of five stars on Amazon; what was supposed to revolve 360˚ only made it to 180˚ before crapping out. Still, what I got with a GoPro set to 5MP normal, and stitched together with a little app called Time Lapse Assembler wasn’t bad. I’m toying with the idea of taking it apart to see if I can wind the spring up tighter to make it work better; for a $14 investment I’m not too upset. Besides, the GoPro I’ve got isn’t good enough to really get excellent stills–I’d love to set it up for nighttime timelapses of the stars moving but the camera isn’t sensitive enough.
I definitely brought too many fucking cameras and spent too much time trying to organize gear. Next year I’m going to pare back and replace the two camera bags I lugged there with one good backpack. I’ve narrowed the field down to the LowePro ProTactic 350, which will carry two bodies, a couple of lenses, and a 13″ laptop with more room for gear than the model I’ve got at work. I’ll leave the Nikon at home and bring take the Fuji kit with me, as well as whatever manual gear I’m fucking with at the time. I did shoot two rolls of 35mm and one roll of 120 film, so I’m going to try and finish the 120 off this weekend and send it out for processing.
This is Chewbacca as they dragged her out of Brian’s garage. God, what a sad sight.
The local Scout guys are getting together next week to catch up, which will be great–I haven’t seen anyone in over a year. I’m hoping a few of the guys I haven’t met yet will show up. There’s Dwight, who lives right near the train station I use, who has a pretty green Terra. I’m going to send another email to the guy with the diesel Traveler I saw last month. And, there’s another new Scout in our neighborhood, under a tarp by the high school. I’ve stopped over there a couple of times but it’s always under cover. I’m going to ring the doorbell this weekend and see if the owner is home and likes beer.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
Scout Ride from idiotking on Vimeo.
From the weekend; stay tuned for a 360 video (you can see the Gear360 over Finn’s head in this clip).
I threw up only once, but like any good hangover, it helped a lot. That was after I was on my feet and getting dressed in the recovery room. My anesthesiologist, a lovely woman named Bonnie, brought me a cup of coffee, which I sipped gingerly, but that, a can of ginger ale, and about half of the IV bag came up into the wastebasket right after I put my socks on. The anesthesia they gave me was enough to keep me awake but not moving, until I tried to scratch my nose a couple of times during the procedure–where they had me in the middle of a CAT donut with a needle in my stomach. Bonnie had to up my dose a bit. I blame that and the raging caffeine migraine I was suffering through for my fluttery stomach. The procedure itself went well, and apparently they’ll be able to tell us something within 3-4 days. Jen drove me back home, and I crawled into bed and slept for about two hours before dinner. Jen and Finn brought Pho home and I devoured a bowl and a half of that before heading back upstairs.
Walter Becker, one half of Steely Dan, is dead at 67. Fuck you if you think Steely Dan is lame.
I’m writing from an uncomfortable IKEA couch in the living room of our rental, which is only steps from the beach and is thus the most awesome IKEA couch in Delaware. It’s day 13 of our two-week vacation and I’m trying not to accept the reality of our impending drive home on Saturday; we’ve got one half-day on the sand left and then we are slaves to a typewritten sheet of directions on the fridge: make the beds, vacuum the floors, lock the windows, set the AC to 77˚.
Our stay has been lazy and carefree and unstructured as possible, which is exactly the way we planned it. Slow mornings to rise, gather some breakfast together, form coherent thoughts, and begin organizing for the beach. Make some sandwiches, pack a cooler with water and alcohol, grab some cheesy-poofs and find a dry suit to wear. Grab a towel, drop clean clothes off at the outdoor shower, and assemble downstairs at the beach buggy.
We have experienced the luxury of a beachside house twice. It is the difference between carrying everything for a five hour stay out to the sand or just grabbing a chair and a cold beer. This house is perched between the road and the edge of the barrier channel between Delaware and the bay; the public access path is steps from the driveway across the road. It’s only just on the other side of the road, but it means we must pack like the Joads heading to California every day. The buggy carries our chairs, the tent, the umbrella, all the toys, the cooler(s), a couple of floats, and the kite. Wide wheels make it easy to pull over the sand, and it collapses into a packable unit. After a couple of days we got the assembly of our beach camp down to a science, and learned what had to come with us and what we could leave behind. I also learned that the Coleman half-tent I got on sale at Amazon was worth less than what I paid for it.
The first week we shared with Karean and Zachary, and it was good for the five of us even though there was a giant empty space where Rob should have been. Karean brought a picture of the four of us, which we’ve kept on the shelf since we got here, and I find myself looking at it multiple times a day. For the first few days Zachary obsessed over Minecraft until the iPad mysteriously disappeared but once he’d forgotten about it he and Finn settled in to an easy working relationship. Our days were relaxed and the weather was excellent; the first few days the water was balmy and mild. We took a break from the sun on Wednesday to hit Rehobeth for some games and fun, and had some dinner in town to break things up.
On their final day, Karean and I walked out to the beach to scatter some of Rob’s ashes in the water. I stayed several steps behind and tried not to intrude, terrified I would say something/the wrong thing. I watched her from the tide line until she beckoned me down into the water. She gave me a handful, which I gripped in one hand as I said a prayer to the ocean, and I let the wind take it from me.
Rob and Karis joined us for our second week, and we’ve integrated them into our loose routine. We got chased from the beach on Monday by high winds and Tuesday was nothing but driving rain. Wednesday cleared up, but the wind was still strong and the surf powerful. Thursday the water was placid, and Rob got Barrett slowly over his fear of the water by early afternoon.
Finn was lucky to find a friend a few houses up the beach, named Jenna, and they quickly went off together to collect horseshoe crabs, spin cartwheels, and jump in the surf. I walked over and chatted up her parents, who seem like lovely people, and Jen and I breathed a sigh of relief to know she’d have a playmate her age for our second week. On Wednesday they were nice enough to invite Finn back to their house, so we paid it back by taking her into Milton for some ice cream.
Harvey kicked the shit out of Houston but seems to have affected us only slightly; apart from Wednesday’s storm and the rough surf on the days before and after, we’ve enjoyed warm, calm weather with only a few overcast days. Overall, it’s been an ideal two weeks, and we’re already making plans for next year.
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Since hosting my parents earlier this year, I’ve been working on a recipe for Manhattans so that I could prove to my father they don’t need to taste like turpentine. I followed some recommendations from Esquire and wound up with a midlevel rye whiskey and vermouth, which made a middling Manhattan. When Matt came into town, he gave me some advice on better quality ingredients. When we hit the liquor store upon arriving in Milton I picked up some Bulleit rye whisky and a bottle of the only sweet vermouth I could find. This made a shitty Manhattan. Later I was able to get a bottle of Dolan vermouth and this made all the difference in the world. I’m now at the end of the Bulleit but will be looking for some Blantons when I get home.