That 3rd Thing Not To Do

1. Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
2. Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line.
3. Never try a piggy back ride with a flying mount in the parking lot at Village Inn.

Thank you

First and most importantly, I'd just love to say congratulations to Mr. & Mrs. Matt & Vivian Johnson. Yes, I cried, what a big softie.

I was the emcee for the reception, an honor that I hope I did well with ... my main focus was to take the jitters and worries from the bride and groom, and help them to enjoy themselves. This is the kind of thing I love to do. Several people assisted me in this process, and that is what this note is about.

Merinda & Jenny for help in developing a schedule. Venche for fashion advice.

Micah for co-writing a song with me. Micah and Epp for singing it with me, recording it, and to the ever talented Erin for producing. Thanks to Mark for lending equipment, and being the roadie & sound guy, and to Omaha Jitterbugs and Nate for lending equipment. Also thanks to the forty or so people who knew about the song and kept it a secret from the bride and groom.

Thanks to Robin for running my camera. Thanks to Lisa for volunteering to run Matt's video camera, and to the many who took pictures with Matt's camera & the ones left on the table.

Thank you to Sarah Meade for tending to the injured so well and efficiently that the bride and groom probably don't know who got hurt.

To Keith and Micah for getting me a plate of food.

Special thanks to the best man, Nathan, and the maid of honor, Jenny who made things easy for me and helped move everything along ... and with them the entire wedding party.

I know everyone thinks their group of friends is the best around, but seriously, there were 15-20 who stayed until the end and helped clean up, no one had to ask, they self organized and pitched in. Too many to mention. *sigh* I love you all.

Thanks also to Troy, although it would be difficult to put exactly into words what he did/does, but his expectations are so high, it makes me do everything better.

The Good Old Days

When I was growing up, I (literally) had to listen to stories from my father, mother, aunts, uncles, and grandparents about how everything was cheaper in the past, how they could get a hamburger for a dime, a gallon of gas for fifteen cents, and a pair of shoes for a buck. The point of every one of these assaults on my pre-consumer-price-index-understanding brain was to illustrate just how spoiled myself, brothers, and cousins were.

Today, I went in to Best Buy and picked up a 2G SD card for my new camera, $22. I thought back and remembered that the very first time I bought computer memory in 1993, I spent over $100 for 256k, at those prices, 2G of RAM would have been in the $800,000 range. (I saved over 3/4 million dollars just by waiting 15 years).

This is what I realized, we will tell the opposite stories to our kids than the old folks told us. Our stories will about how much everything cost us, and how spoiled they are that they get so much more for so little.

Can't wait to be the crotchety old man ... "you kids and your 256 bit wide terraflop multiprocessors. When I was your age had 64k RAM and a 5 1/4 inch floppy drives and we were happy!"

Bonus (probably) unanswerable question: when I was born in 1964, was there 2G worth of volatile memory on the whole planet?

Making Lemonade

These intrepid adventurers laughed at the weather.

Last night was the the best lemonade I have had in years and years.

No one who was around me could have possibly missed that I was on call. To make my crankiness even more pronounced, it was over the first two weeks of Shakespeare on the Green and the College World Series. What's the point of living in Omaha if you can't attend either?

I knew that I was going to pretty much have one chance (maybe not so much) to go to Shakespeare on the Green, so I planned way ahead for this, setting up a Facebook event eight weeks in advance.

Stupid weather. Or more to the point stupid weather paranoia. I was really concerned about the weather all day, and sure enough in the mid afternoon it got bad, then better, and so on. I got there, found Keith already there, and we set up our little camp. The greenshow started on time, but as time for the play came to start, more and more of the VIP's were being shuffled off to places unknown. Then came word that show was canceled.

I feared this all day (several days), and here it was. I was not a happy camper, and wanted to just go home. But no one else moved, they wanted to regather somewhere else. I was the stick in the mud.

Then something interesting happened. About the thirtieth time Lisa said "let's unpack our food and eat", I agreed, and two minutes later we were all sitting at a lopsided picnic table (in the background of the above picture), my mood changed (and maybe others as well), and suddenly we were laughing, eating, talking, joking, and having a good time. Things got silly then, we started singing loudly, standing on tables, trying to perform plays out of our heads, quoting "Princess Bride", dancing on tables, getting yelled at by the stage crew, and taunting the remaining groups of people that we were going to be the last ones there. It all cumulated with the singing of "We Are The Champions" when last one packed up.

Here is what I said when I planned the event:

Some of my favorite moments in Omaha have come here..."

Guess what? I have another one to add to the list.

Does it seem wet to you?

No need to worry, the National Weather Service won't turn the alarms on.

On May 26, 2008, the official rainfall for the year in the Omaha area was .78 inches below normal. Not exactly a drought, but about 7% less than average.

Today, June 10, 2008, the official rainfall for the year in the Omaha area is now 3.98 inches above normal. That is about 32% above normal.

In the last 14 days here we have had 6.7 inches of rain. That's over four gallons of water per square foot of land. No wonder the rivers are all running high.

For those of you not from Omaha, the tornado we had on the ground here in the area was on the ground for between three and nine minutes (depending on your news source) before the tornado sirens went off. You can check out Daddy-K's thoughts on the NWS response times here (June 10th).