Mike Ball

We’re about to take off for Death Valley, which should be interesting. We’re renting an RV, which we pick up today, then heading out tomorrow morning. I’m going to be interested in how well I tolerate such a large vehicle. I’m also wondering about how the cat is going to take it, since we are planning to take her along with us. Flo’s sister takes their cat along in their RV all the time. I’m not so sure about ours, who’s getting a bit old and set in her ways. I’m looking forward to the getaway. I’ll be completely cut off from all communications, or at least that’s what I intend to claim.

A bit earlier this week, we went to a concert by the UCI wind ensemble. It was pretty good, but seemed a bit short. That’s not really a problem, but it was close to three hours there and back for a concert that was a little over an hour. Still, it was nice to get out and do something different for change.

Kevin and Tali came down Friday night, and spent yesterday at a dance competition at UCSD. We watched it in the afternoon, but didn’t stay for the evening events. The seating was all bleachers, and our bottoms just aren’t up to sitting on bleachers for hours at a time. It was fun to watch, but for me it starts looking pretty repetitious after a while. I like watching Kevin and Tali dance, but I lose interest in watching all of the others.

It’s been a long time since my last post, and the only excuse I have to offer is that I’ve been recovering from one of the more exhausting weeks I’ve ever spent. I sort of left you hanging, assuming that someone is listening

We tried to recover our position when we gave the summary on Wednesday morning. It partly worked. We passed this milestone with good marks, but now we have to write the actual proposal for the final phase. The amount of that contract is somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion, so it’s no small thing even for a large company like Sun. We had a followup meeting on Thursday (just Sun) and I’ve never seen the group looking that tired. Everyone there looked exhausted.

Since then, I came home, slept a lot that first weekend, and tried to get back into things last week. I’m still having a bit of trouble developing a realistic sense of urgency.

I came home last night after playing D&D, and discovered that the road home was fogged in. For those who haven’t been there, our road curves around the side of a hill (mountain to you Easterners), and it doesn’t have much use for things like curbs or sidewalks. In fact, it doesn’t have much use for lanes, and there’s always a bit of negotiation when you meet someone coming the other way. Mostly you use available driveways or wide spots, but that’s a different story. Turning off the main road is always an act of faith, because the road plunges downwards and you can’t really see that there’s a road there until you make the turn. Last night, there wasn’t a road there, just a wall of white. I navigated (very slowly) by keeping track of the right edge, which is the uphill side, until I discovered the problem with that strategy. Driveways. I was well down somebodies drive when I realized that I really shouldn’t be going downhill quite that much. Slowly, very slowly, I backed on to the main(?) road and tried again. There was a driveway to the right, so my “right edge” strategy didn’t work. It took plowing ahead until I found the right edge again before I got going. In fact, at one point I started down that same driveway again! If I’d had a flashlight in the car I would have gotten out and checked on foot. After today I’ll have one. The one good thing was the total lack of other vehicles. Actually, as I come to think of it, the road could have been covered with other vehicles and I’d never have known.

Once I got home, the view outside our windows, which is normally filled with lights from the valley, was totally black. This morning, the fog had settled in the valley and it looked as though you could walk to the mountains on it. In an hour, it was gone. Bright and clear again.

For those with a more mundane bent, this sort of thing happens fairly frequently here. There’s an inversion layer over the Pacific that moves inland at night, bringing our normal nightly overcast. Sometimes it starts dropping, and the overcast layer becomes fog as it sweeps down from the mountains to the valleys. I just happened to be coming home when it was around the 1000 foot level. The situation is not uncommon. My being out in it was.

Well, the last batch of hummingbirds may have disappeared, but we seem to have a new batch that just arrived. We’ve been having a warm spell that last two days, and I was out on the deck using the phone to attend a presentation. The hummingbirds were out on the deck belly up to the bar. I counted at least 6, and there were probably more.

We are on a migration path for the rufous hummingbird, so I suspect that these just stopped in for a snack on the way south. I really wonder how they find the feeder. Do they leave little marks around like hoboes? Do they have very good eyes? Good noses? You just gotta wonder..

Last Friday I went over to a friends house to play D&D (Dungeons and Dragons). Contrary to rumors, there is nothing of the occult in it, since everyone playing is acutely aware of the artificiality of it. You don’t cast a spell, you say “I cast XXX” and describe what you are doing. The roll playing comes in interacting with other characters, not in the specific actions.

I’ve know about it since the 70’s, but I never played until I had to get included in a game that Andy wanted to go to. My main purpose was transportation and security services, but I liked the people playing, and had fun. Later, Andy found a regular game DM’d (Dungeon Mastered) by one of his teachers, and they needed another character, so I helped them out. When Andy left for school, I got invited to join their adult game, and I found that I really enjoyed it.

Partly, it’s a social thing like any other game. We play at the DM’s house, which is normally chaotic. He has two small children, and some of the other players sometimes bring their kids, so you can imagine what it’s like. I find it a refreshing change from the quiet order that’s settled in at our home since the kids left. Last time, his wife recruited me to hold their 9-month old baby while she tried to finish feeding the others. It’s a chance I don’t get all that often.

The game gives me a chance to pretend that I’m doing things very different from my normal activities. I play a barbarian, dumb, very strong, and very destructive. Sometimes it’s nice at least to pretend that you can solve some problems just by hitting something harder. Of course, it doesn’t always work. Last night we had a big battle, and had (we though) just about won, when the last remaining enemy ran off screaming “Help Daddy” and this really BIG dragon appeared. We ran away, and got away by the skin of our teeth. Next game, fresh and prepared, we’ll go beat him up.

I think most of us play characters who are our opposites. One of the players is a middle-school English teacher, and he loves to play magicians. He spends hours researching spells and feats and planning elaborate strategies. Somehow, this doesn’t appeal to me at all. It’s too much like real life I’ll stick to my barbarian

I’m trying something rather different with pictures this post. Instead of embedding large images, with possibly slow loading, I’m including small images. you can see the large image by clicking on the smaller one. It should appear in a pop-up box by itself. See how this works for you and let me know which solution you like better.

Christmas has come and mostly gone, leaving behind the usual clutter and smiles. The “children” still like to play the stocking game, I think as an exercise in nostalgia, and they still seem to like getting socks and underware along with silly stuff. Flo and I mostly got books, and Andy got mostly music stuff. Almost anything that makes a sound interests him. You can see the Slide Show if you like.

After the opening, it was a very quiet day. We all seem to live such hectic lives that a day of doing essentially nothing was positively delightful. The cat couldn’t decide which lap looked best, so made the rounds all day.

Christmas is fast approaching, and the clan is gathering. Andy came home Monday night, after striking the set for the madrigal supper, and Kevin and Tali came in last night. The cat has been in seventh heaven with all of her attention sources in one place. I kind of like it myself.

Tuesday, we went Christmas Caroling on Mt Helix, a local park. It was fun. The best part of it was the kids who treated the whole event with enormous enthusiasm. The top of Mt. Helix at night has a glorious 360 degree vista over all of San Diego.

It’s hard to believe just how close Christmas is. The temperatures have been in the 70’s, and are liable to go into the low 80’s today. This is unusual even for San Diego. Some of the hummingbirds are still around. This fall we had well over a dozen making their home in our tree, and eating at our feeders. Now we are down to a couple of diehards. It’s really about time for them to get on with their trip, but I think the warm weather has them fooled.