But all the posts from August 2007 on have been deleted. I don’t know why or how. It’s probably something simple like just a blip at the server, but in my mind, I like to imagine that it was right wing terrorists, sending their blog-destroyer missiles in to delete everything they didn’t agree with. We can all just be thankful they didn’t turn my words into Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter quotes or continual streaming of “Climb, Climb Up Sunshine Mountain.”

So here we have more or less a blank blog, and that’s not so bad. Worse things have happened to my writing. Sophomore year of college, I was trying to install a desktop theme, but my computer didn’t have the folder it needed in order to run the programs, so not understanding jack about computers, I simply created the folder, put in the theme, and happily enjoyed Andy Griffith Show-themed email alerts, wallpapers, icons, screensavers, etc. And then, I started saving my work that I was doing for class. Writing class, mind you. Stories and papers and such. Lots of hours, many, many pages of work. And they’d disappear!

At the time, there wasn’t anyone who could really help me with this problem. The Comp-Cons didn’t know their disk drives from a hole in the ground, at my university, on anything other than how to get a computer on the network. My sister had not yet met Lorentz. Shane was either always in the research lab in Fisher Hall or filling in for a no-show at the Encore Cafe, so I was on my own in my misery. Finally, it hit me to delete the folder I’d created for the desktop theme, which fixed the problem, but I’d lost a week’s worth of writing assignments, that I had to re-do one sleepless weekend in the fall of 1997.

So I learned a valuable lesson about how just creating a folder in “My Computer” and naming it whatever the application you want to add says it should be named is NOT the same as actually having that folder in your computer to begin with, and trying to fool the computer leads to bad things happening (really, this lesson should have been learned the first or second time I saw 2001 a Space Odyssey, but I’m a slow learner sometimes). But the stuff I wrote during that frantic weekend of trying to catch up on my work? Worlds better than the crap I’d been writing and trying to save and the computer was eating. So disappearing blog posts, in this case, can only be a good thing. Here’s to blank slates and brighter tomorrows!

Just seeing if this post stays posted.

…Is very empty.  Thank goodness MSG is playing a Sabres game from last season every Monday night until hockey season starts in 2 months.  They condense the games to make them fit in the 8-10 p.m. time slot.  Last night’s game was the one against the Washington Capitals, the day after Christmas, where the Sabres kept firing the puck into the net during the first period.  I missed that game when it was originally played, but it was definitely a good one.

Next Monday’s game is the one against the Senators where there were over a hundred total penalty minutes and Marty Biron and Ray Emery both got ejected for fighting after the Sens enforcer blindsided Chris Drury and decomissioned him for a few games.  That was a great game the first time around, and I believe Marty Biron’s swan song as a Sabre, before he was traded to the Flyers.  I can’t wait to see it again.

It’s still sad to think that in this season coming up, Daniel Briere won’t be in Sabres Blue and Gold.  It seems like the more a player wants to be in Buffalo, the less interest management shows (see also Mike Peca).  It’s too bad.  I hope they’ve learned from their mistakes and that this coming season finds the Sabres in the running for the Stanley Cup.

One thing’s for sure, hearing Rick Jeanerette’s voice calling the play-by-play makes any day a lot better.

Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar of Arkansas recently welcomed their 17th child into the world, and they’d like to have more children.  They have 10 boys and 7 girls now, with this most recent addition.  Seventeen children!  Wow.  That’s almost their own hockey team.  If they keep going like they seem to want to, they’ll be able to roll four lines in a few years, once the littlest ones can lace up and skate.  And probably if they were in a more hockey-friendly area than Arkansas.  What’s the big sport in Arkansas?  Farming?  I really don’t know.

Inevitably, the question comes up about whether or not this is responsible behavior.  Who knows?  Both parents are there, the kids all seem to be cared for.  The real question is whether or not this family is supporting itself, without government aid.  If so, then by all means, they’re caring for their children, so if they want more, fine.  On the other hand, seventeen children…seventeen little people to feed, clothe, put braces on, take to the doctor, send off to college… Kids are expensive, and having them makes even a fabulous salary less stretchy.  This is only conjecture, but I’d think the Duggars’ finances are stretched pretty thin.  They don’t look like they have an enormous trust fund.  I would never advocate not taking of a child that’s already here on this planet.  But if they’re getting government help supporting those children that are already here, is it really responsible to think about intentionally bringing more children into the world, who would also need government support?

I don’t mean to sound like an evil, curmudgeonly person.  Again, if the Duggars can support their children all on their own, and they want to have another 3 or 8 kids, they should go for it.  If not, perhaps they should re-examine their desire to keep adding to their family.  Children aren’t Beanie Babies…the reward is in the quality, not the quantity of children you have.  How do they ever find the time to enjoy the people their older children are becoming when they’re constantly in the 3 a.m. feeding-constand diapering stage?

In any case, here’s to good luck and good judgment for the Duggars.

I got an email from Temple Alumni Association.  The newsletter includes items of interest to alumni and bits of news from campus.  According to this volume, the First-Year Summer Reading Project selected Lorene Cary’s autobiography Black Ice, which they suggest entering freshmen read before the start of the fall semester.

When I was a freshman in college in 1996-1997, I read that book second semester for Autobiography class.  Lorene Cary was the visiting writer that semester.  She’s an African-American woman from Philly who was one of the first women to go to Exeter, a prep school in New England.  In that climate in the 1970s, Cary would have had enough to prove as a woman, let alone an African-American woman from Philly.  She had to overcome a lot of obstacles, some placed by others, some due to the chip she carried on her shoulder.  She acknowledges carrying a chip on her shoulder, as well, so she isn’t making herself out to be a victim of sexism and racism.

The Lorene Cary that read at Susquehanna in the Spring of 1997 was intelligent, engaging, bright.  She came to our class and discussed her book and it was the first time I’d ever been that close to a real, live author, except for Dr. Fincke, who still scared the crap out of me back then.  She was so normal.

So seeing the cover of that book in the Temple Alumni Association newsletter brought back memories of a decade ago, when I was a freshman at a school much different from Temple, only a little different from the prep school she wrote about.  And I was a person both worlds removed from Cary and astoundingly similar to her at the same time.  That’s why I think it’s such a good idea that the First Years take Temple up on this suggestion to read Black Ice before they get to school in a few weeks.  By listening to voices who are both wildly different yet strikingly like ours, we learn that we’re all here in the same boat, we’re all human after all.

I’m on assignment from the Potter County Historical Society, to write something about the house adn the people who built it and who lived here.  So far, pretty much everyone who lived in the house after Philip and Wilhelmina Lawrence were more active than the actual people who built it were, although there are times I wonder if Wilhelmina ever actually left the house after she passed away here in 1917.  We haven’t turned up anything about them besides their names and some genealogical information.  Philip was instrumental in incorporating the North Bingham Church and the cemetery, and his family had a sawmill that must have pre-dated Swetland and Walter’s mill.  In fact, Mills was once known as Lawrence Mills.

What I want to know is who the Lawrences really were: what they wore, what they did in their free time, what their daily life was like, why they built this big house on the hill when they did, as their children were practically grown in 1884, when they would have moved in.  I’ve exhausted the Lawrence and North Bingham folders at the Historical Society and feel like there must be more out there, just out of reach. 

This would be when a time machine would be useful.  Someone somewhere knew the answers to the questions I’m asking, but they’re gone now, and they took what they know with them.  In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t that long ago that they were here.  There should be more of a trail.

Two more flying lessons down, and I’m doing a lot better.  I *almost* have taxiing down, sort of.  It’s really frustrating to be a beginner, though.  I’m not used to having to work this hard to get good at something, but there’s no way I’m going to hang it up.  Someday, I’ll laugh about trying to taxi with the stick instead of the rudder pedals and sounding like a retard on the radio.  I’m just really glad I’m learning at a small airport and my instructor has a really good sense of humor.

Rozzie’s staying the weekend with my parents because we’re headed to Niagara Falls for Shane’s LASIK.  No matter where she’s staying, it’s always hard to say good-bye to her.  I miss her already.  It’s just for the weekend, but not having her around brings back not-so-swell memories of the week we had to leave her in Guelph, not knowing if we’d get to bring her home.

Sometimes she drives me nuts with the barking, or with just being a spazz in general, but then she’ll carry a toy over and want me to play with her, or she’ll just come over and put her head on my lap and look up at me with her big puppy eyes, and nothing else matters.  She’s my dog.  There’s nothing like her filling the house with the sounds of her squeak toys or having her fall asleep with me on the couch or seeing her tail already wagging, first thing in the morning.

She’s a great puppy.  I miss her already and can’t wait to see her again when we get back!

“Learnin’ to fly, but I ain’t got wings…Comin’ down is the hardest thing…” -Tom Petty

Well, I don’t know about comin’ down being the hardest thing about flying.  I would have to say taxiing out to the runway is pretty hard.  I couldn’t make the plane go in a straight line on the ground for very long.  You don’t use the yoke, you use your feet and steer it with the rudder.

Today was my introductory flying lesson, and it was a lot more hands-on than I thought it would be.  Besides the taxiing, I also got to throttle up the Piper Tomahawk and take off on the runway.  It was kind of choppy until we hit 4500 ft., where the wind wasn’t such a factor, and I pulled Gs on my first couple of turns.  Evidently I wasn’t supposed to do that until a few lessons later.  I’d told my instructor that I used to want to be an Air Force pilot, and after my steep turns he said “no wonder” and that I’m actually pretty good at those.  The gentle turns are more challenging.  You don’t want to pull back on the yoke, and that seems to be what I’m always wanting to do.  Just turn the yoke to the right or left, and the plane goes there.  If you go too far, turn it back the other way.

I’ve always had issues with straight lines, so it isn’t surprising that I had a hard time keeping the plane straight and level.  It took most of my first lesson to really get a feel for the plane, but my instructor said I did pretty well.  He talked me through lining up the plane with the runway, and then he brought us down for an “interesting” landing.  Hey, an “interesting” instructor landing is better than any attempt I could have made.

I’ve wanted to learn to fly planes since I was a little kid.  All through elementary school, I wanted to be an astronaut, and in junior high, I wanted to be an air force pilot.  A highlight of my summers was getting soaked and baked at the Wings of Eagles Airshows, because there were all kinds of warbirds flying, and always an appearance by the Thunderbirds or another elite flying team.  Now I have such a greater appreciation for how great those pilots really are, and how faboo their taxiing is!  So in 40 hours of in-flight and 40 hours of ground school I’ll be a licensed pilot.  Right now it’s a little hard to fathom, but practice makes perfect, and it looks like flying school is all about the practice.  I felt clumsy and awkward at the controls today, but the first time I did Turbo Jam I also felt clumsy and awkward and now I could do those workouts blindfolded in my sleep.  So with practice, I’ll be as slick behind the controls as my instructor is.