Sky diving

For my birthday, Diana took me to an indoor skydiving place at the beach. You get a few minutes of training on the position you'll try to maintain--chin up, arms and legs half extended--and the hand signals your instructor will use, mainly to tell you to straighten or curl your legs. Then you get a jumpsuit and helmet and line up at the wind tunnel. The fans are at the top of the building, so you're not looking down at whirring blades--in fact, you're not looking down at all, because you're keeping your chin up. When your turn comes, you go to the door, lean forward and lie down on the wind. Get into position and stay there. It doesn't feel like snorkeling, where you can just drift and pay attention to what you're looking at rather than what you're doing; and you're feeling normal gravity, just lying on air rather than on, say, a deep sponge rubber mattress. You hang there for a minute with the instructor correcting your position and making sure you don't drift into a wall or something, and then he guides you to the door. Hands on the outside of the doorframe, curl at the waist to bring your feet forward and down, and you're standing up outside. On the second flight, we soared up to the top of the tube, about ten meters. Dropping back down was just enough free fall to get queasy for a moment, but then you get to the steel net at the bottom and soar back up. Fun time.

Art

I've finished an introductory art class at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Charcoal, pen and ink, brush and ink, sketch and wash. Main thing I learned was that I don't (or didn't) put use enough dark areas; adding deep shadows for contrast makes a better effect.

Anniversary pics

As her gift for our 29th anniversary, Diana got a professional photographer to take several portraits of her--looking quite adorable--and print them on canvas. We'll send one each to Willa, Mom & Dad, and Josh&Gwen, and that leaves two for here.

And the Kitchen Sink

Valentine's presents for Diana: card, roses, salted caramel chocolate, dinner, and the kitchen sink. Literally. Kohler K-5832-5U-0 to go with the impending new countertop.

Virginia Beach weather

Monday, shovelling snow at 12°. Today, walking on the beach, 70°.

Snow

It was predicted we'd get up to 14 inches of snow, but what we actually got was about five, although there was a nice bout of freezing rain first to get a layer of ice under the snow.

Go Karting

I unexpectedly found myself overseeing a 10yr old and 6yr old, and their mother asked if I'd take them go-karting. There is a kart place on the outer ring of Lynnhaven, so we went; and the minimum age for a driver is 8, so I ended up as a co-pilot for the 6yr old in a side-by-side kart.
$20 and a Groupon gets you two races at ten minutes each. You put on a "head sock", a neck brace, and a helmet, and squeeze into the kart. They give you a briefing on red flag, yellow flag, etc, but in fact the only signals we got were "when the lights flash, take one more lap and pull into the starting row." The attendant pulls the starter cord and away you go. The helmet restricts your peripheral vision quite a bit, so if you don't look over your shoulder, someone can be right behind you and you won't know it. The karts can hit 45mph and (when someone slightly more expert than I am is driving) can drift and do a bootlegger reverse. Steering takes quite a bit of effort, although the attendant said the single seaters are easier. At the end, you get a printout which shows your fastest lap and average time per lap (yes, the ten year old beat my Fastest Lap by about half a second).

Year in review, 2016 edition

• Diana recovered from knee replacement.
• Birthday party for Eunhye
• Dominion removed the power line across the river behind our house. 
• Went to Australia to see all the inlaws and outlaws, with an unexpected side trip to Hawaii.
• Visited Kelson before he moved to Boston.
• Hosted Michael Kelen for a couple of days.
• Betina from Zambia stayed here for a couple of weeks.
• Semi-adopted Razvan and George, students here from Romania for the summer. 
• Visited Jonathan and Stacey at their "so new we haven't even found all the boxes, much less unpacked them yet" house in Columbia.
• I attended LibertyCon while Diana and Rachael toured Chattanooga.
• Rachael stayed with us for ten days of beach and surfing.
• Josh got his Australian green card.
• Drove to Long Island for a funeral and, on the trip back, uttered the utterly improbable phrase "Thank God we made it to New Jersey."
• Finished our "New World, New Sun" D&D campaign with Darci, Kris, Jesse, Jana, and Tom Paul.
• Started waltz lessons, which transmuted into lessons on foxtrot, bachata, milonga, and I know not what.
• Went to Vienna, Cesky Krumlow and Prague. Came back from Prague, reluctantly.
• Celebrated Gwen & Josh's first anniversary.
• One of the more...interesting...presidential elections.
• Visited mom and dad before they went back to Zambia, and played golf with dad.
• Diana went to Toronto and Montreal for pre-Christmas visit.
• Hosted a Christmas party for the D&D group and another for the neighbors.

Antonin Scalia

Nobody — remember this — neither Hitler, nor Lenin, nor any despot you could name, ever came forward with a proposal that read, ‘Now, let’s create a really oppressive and evil society.’ Hitler said, ‘Let’s take the means necessary to restore our national pride and civic order.’ And Lenin said, ‘Let’s take the means necessary to assure a fair distribution of the goods of the world.’

In short, it is your responsibility....not just to be zealous in the pursuit of your ideals, but to be sure that your ideals are the right ones. That is perhaps the hardest part of being a good human being: Good intentions are not enough. Being a good person begins with being a wise person.

--Antonin Scalia, at a commencement speech in 2010

Beautiful Theories

“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.”
--Richard Feynman

Wedding

Josh and Gwen were married at St George's, Metis Beach, Quebec, with about fifty guests from the US, Canada, Australia, and England. The celebrant was Rev Malcom Evans, assisted by Dr James DeBoe; Emma Dillon was flower girl, and Daniel Rees the bell ringer.

Reception at Jardins de Metis.

Tank Museum

Josh and I took the opportunity to go to the American Armored Foundation tank museum in Danville on Run Day, which is when they have a couple of vehicles power up and drive around the display area. (One was an APC and the other was a self propelled gun, not true tanks, but we got the idea). Not as many WW2 tanks as I had hoped for, but they had a number of interesting things. Items of note:

• PzKpfw IV
• tiny Dingo II scout car
• slightly larger Ferret scout car
• M1917 Six Ton Special light tank
• Honest John missile, presumably without the 20kt nuclear warhead
• Mk 41 15cm Nebelwerfer (it werfs nebels!)

They also had a variety of uniforms, unit badges, posters, paintings, and other memorabilia. 

Tangier Island

Diana wanted to see Tangier Island, so we drove across the Bay Bridge Tunnel and up the Eastern Shore to Onancock, a tiny little village on the Bay. We took the ferry, which is a converted oyster boat, which makes one round trip a day, to the island. We passed quite a few osprey nests on the channel markers; once we were away from land, there were a few fish, plus passing boats and the occasional small island.
The island is pretty much as described in Wikipedia, There's a house which has been converted to a museum on the history of the island and some of the notable residents (or servicemen who signed up and left the island), The main thing is that in one day, you probably can't see absolutely everything; but you can easily walk around the island and see a representative sample of everything. For instance, you can visit one seafood restaurant rather than all of them--but "seafood" is the only kind of restaurant you'll find, except for Spanky's ice cream parlor. Take bug spray and sunglasses and comfortable walking shoes and spend a day.

Great Dismal Swamp

Joshua, Diana and I went to the Great Dismal Swamp today. The auto tour road is closed on Sundays, so we walked a mile or so to the Underground Railroad Pavilion and back. ("Underground" is not the same as "underworld"). The Pavilion talks about the maroons ("escaped slave") and how they survived in the swamp--mainly by hunting, surreptitious trading with loggers, and stealing from local farms. 

There are bears and bobcats in the swamp, but we only saw dragonflies and butterflies.

We did, however, see a couple of pines which had been stripped of their bark for their whole height. We suspect that this was due to the Great Swamp Bear, a reclusive species of 40ft tall ursines. During the day, they stay submerged in Lake Drummond, with only their adorable black noses protruding above water. They feed on alligators, giant mutant catfish, and canoes ("crunchy on the outside, chewy in the center!"). In the evening, they slip from their aquatic refuge and roam the woods. They strop their claws on the pines, removing the bark and sometimes breaking the tree in half when they get caught up in some particularly contentious philosophical point, or when strands of fiberglass are stuck in their teeth.

A Writer's Time

"The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book."
--Samuel Johnson

Lighthouse

Several members of the Conversation Group -- Kathy, Sangjae, Eunhye and her husband Chowan, Gulcerin, and I--took a trip to the Fort Story lighthouse, and climbed to the top. Steep spiral stairs, then a ladder to get to the platform where the beacon was. After that we went to the First Landing Cross, the Seashore State Park on Shore Drive, and then the other end of Seashore off 64th Street, and on to the Broad Bay beach. Just hanging out, having a good time with friends.

First Strawberry

The strawberry plants froze at 15° this winter, then drowned this spring, but didn't seem bothered by it. That tulip-eating squirrel nearly got the first ripe strawberry this morning, but I armed for battle, drove off the foul beast, and rescued the treasure.

Kayak

First day out with the kayak, as the weather this spring has cooler than usual. Just north of us, where the river widens out, there were a dozen or so little terns. Every now and again I'd hear a "plop!" and turn around to see one of them had just dived into the water nearby. One of them had claimed the top of one of the channel marker pilings, and another one was bringing her the minnows he caught. At the tip of the island on the other side of the river, a Canada goose has a nest. In the shallows a little farther along were some empty oyster shells, which I'm guessing were the work of an otter or something similar.

Publish

"Publish and be damned!"
--the Duke of Wellington, to a blackmailer

Engaged

Josh and Gwen called to say "I asked her, and she said yes!"