Then Almitra spoke again and said, And what of Marriage, master?
And he answered saying:
You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

(Kahlil Gibran; The Prophet)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:41 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Here's what he looked like a few years ago shortly after he got his electric guitar.

Rock on.

Posted by: JohnL at 10:21 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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After 8:00 PM the doorbell rang. It was a guy in a red shirt and a badge named Steve and he said he was from our telephone company.

He wanted to sell me their fiber optic service. I said we weren't interested. My reply was: "I told the first salesman why I wasn't interested. I did not feel a need to repeat myself to the next four. I am not effing (to clean it up) interested in effing explaining it again."

I then slammed the door in his face. I should have let OldDog (Mark 2.0 and NewDog (Mark 4.0) out to "greet" him.

I then called his employer to ask why they had people ringing doorbells after 8:00 PM. Maybe it's time for a new telephone company.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:47 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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My wife just called to tell me that NewDog (Mark 4.0) pulled a leather-bound copy of The History of the Peloponnesian War (by Thucydides) off the shelf and proceeded to chow down on the leather cover. It was not in its usual place, I was referring to it as I read Donald Kagan's The Peloponnesian War (his one-volume "popular" treatment of his four-volume opus).

"...the first page of Thucydides is, in my opinion, the commencement of real history. All preceding narrations are so intermixed with fable, that philosophers ought to abandon them, to the embellishments of poets and orators." (David Hume)

With this, she has joined a very exclusive club. OldDog (Mark 2.0, readers may recall that OldDog, Mark 3.0 passed away last may) chewed up a omnibus edition of The Lord of the Rings when she was roughly the same age.

I know I can get another copy, heck, I can get it for free from Project Gutenberg. But I had this one for about twenty-five years. Ah, NewDog, you're trying my patience!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 01:28 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Marinate some ribs, slap them on the grill, sit back with a gin and tonic...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:08 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I'm sure you could make one look neater, but this is one of the odder uses of duct tape that I've seen.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:01 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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It was hot. Africa hot. Even Tarzan would have found it hot.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:12 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Plush microbes (or disease carriers) and plush sub-atomic particles. Can you imagine the conversation between a mother and father?

"Dear, I've given our daughter the clap."

"WHAT????"

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:11 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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A house with a two-story outhouse? How is such a thing possible?

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 06:17 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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So many books, so little time, so many ex-lovers to bury!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:00 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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It. Has. Arrived.

WE ARE EVERYWHERE. You know sf has conquered the world when a net pundit announces that 'Barack Obama is the Democratic Party's Kwisatz Haderach.' (SnarkyBastards.com) [LP]

Wot? Still no mention of the SF fandom marriage of the century? Wot?

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 03:41 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I don't know how my mother does it.

I've been at my parent's house this weekend. I've been "dad sitting" several times, most of yesterday, a couple of hours today, so that my mother can get out. more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:31 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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In Grand Cayman, we avoided the overpriced ship-scheduled shore excursions and chartered a small-group catamaran snorkeling tour with Captain Bryan's:

Our boat and group (only $35 per person):

The typical cruise-ship offering (more than $75 per person):

Kissing a stingray (7 years' good luck!):

More pictures in the extended entry... more...

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Before too much more time passes, I figure I ought to finish the photoblog of my wife's and my Caribbean Cruise. On our fourth day (September 6), our ship docked at Ocho Rios, Jamaica.

We took a bus deep into the jungle at the top of the mountain range:

And put on our safety equipment:

So that we could "zip" three miles down the mountain through the jungle canopy on zip lines, fifty feet or more in the air:

The last traverse was 600 feet long:

After getting a few souvenirs we returned to the ship and enjoyed a gorgeous, lazy sunset as we set sail yet again:

Next stop: Grand Cayman.

Previous entries: Part 1, Part 2.

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Our second and third days of the cruise (September 4 and 5) were spent at sea, where we saw flying fish (click for larger):

... And enjoyed the natural beauty:

More beauty:

And our room steward made these cool origami towel-animals each night:

Coming tomorrow soon: zipping through the Jamaican rainforest, swimming with stingrays and eels in Grand Cayman, and comida autentica mexicana in Cozumel...

Posted by: JohnL at 09:38 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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We departed Galveston, Texas on Royal Caribbean's Rhapsody of the Seas at 5:00 PM on Sunday, September 3, 2006. A few hours later, we were well into the Gulf of Mexico and enjoying the first of many lovely sunsets (click for larger):

More to follow in the coming days...

Posted by: JohnL at 10:26 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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One of the benefits of moving from time to time is the opportunity to go through old boxes of stuff. Last year's move unearthed an old box of pictures that I took with my first camera, a Kodak Instamatic 44. I had great fun going through the old pictures with my kids, including showing them some pictures of places that still exist (the Dinosaur statues in Glen Rose, for example, which they have seen in person several times).

Tonight I scanned the first few of what I expect to be many. I'll do a bigger post on the camera itself someday (I also have pictures taken with a Kodak Disc camera -- a film disc, not a digital disc and my mom's old Kodak Retina).

Your humble author, making himself the center of attention even then:

A successful fishing trip at Lake Lavon:

Colorful Colorado:

Posted by: JohnL at 04:36 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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On Sunday, I gave my wife some quiet time for Mother's Day by taking the kids down to our neighborhood pool. It's a nonprofit, open-membership community pool, and I've been on its Board of Directors for 2 years now (we were members for several years before that). It happens to be called The Texas Pool on the Creek. Can you guess why? (Click for larger).

Board membership entails lots of maintenance work, especially as the opening of swim season approaches (we open May 27). One of the benefits of board membership is free access to the pool throughout the year. We drained the pool this week for some maintenance work, and began refilling it on Sunday. The kids have a great time running and sliding down the deep end slope into the slowly rising waters:

And tormenting each other (humorously):

It was a very good day.

(Do the pictures look too blue? I haven't mastered Photoshop Elements yet).

If you live in the Dallas/Plano area, we still have plenty of memberships available, and you can register online. Check it out.

Posted by: JohnL at 09:13 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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You know how that rabbit feels
Going under your speeding wheels
Bright images flashing by
Like windshields towards a fly
Frozen in the fatal climb
But the wheels of time
Just pass you by

-- From "Between the Wheels" by RUSH on Grace Under Pressure

It's a recurrent theme around here: how quickly time passes us by.

I can't believe it has been almost two weeks since my last posting. My silence last week resulted from a much-needed vacation in the one other place as close to my heart as Texas: Colorado.

We traveled with some good family friends and went skiing at Wolf Creek, renting a nice house in Pagosa Springs. During the first two days, we enjoyed temperatures in the high 40s to low 50s, with well-groomed snow -- a bit slushy, but otherwise perfect for some fast skiing. Our second two days we received 40 inches of new snow, and had a cold but fun time plowing through the untouched powder.

We got back late Friday, but I didn't feel like touching the blog over the weekend. So here I am, rested and presumably ready to dive back in. But I remain strangely unmotivated. Where is my muse? In Colorado:

Posted by: JohnL at 09:20 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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According to this report, men in their 50s are more satisfied with their sex lives than at any other time in their lives except their 20s. On a scale of zero to four, men reported satisfaction as follows:

20s - 2.79
30s - 2.55
40s - 2.72
50s - 2.77
60s - 2.46
70s - 2.14

After giving this just a moment's thought, I realized that one little word explains this: kids.

Seriously. Most people start their families in their late 20s or 30s. Before a guy in his 20s settles down, there's likely some fun on the dating scene. But once you find "the one," nothing tops the excitement of the courtship, honeymoon, and early years together without kids.

After the children appear, you find that both of you are a bit more tired, a bit less attentive to looks or clothing, a bit more prone to headaches and irritability, and less likely to enjoy the less-frequent sex. As the kids get older and more independent, they continue to invade your space and their schedules become more demanding.

Once the kids leave the nest, it seems that one of two things happens: (1) husband and wife fall in love all over again and experience some really great time together, going at it like newlyweds, or (2) husband, now financially successful and confident, dumps the old bag for a trophy wife 20 years his junior. (Two of the four commenters over at Science Blog tend to confirm this latter point). In either case, the man is likely to be more satisfied with sex than at any time since before he had kids.

[THWACK]

Ouch! That was my wife taking a swipe at me for the "old bag" comment. For the record: she in no way resembles any sort of bag (unless it's one that's sleek and fashionable and will never go out of style...)

(Hat tip: Instapundit).

Posted by: JohnL at 09:39 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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