I swiped this image from Danger Room. Why? I dunno… I just thought it was funny. Consider it my contribution to that lolcat thing that’s been sweeping the interwebs lately.

(If anyone would like to come up with a suitably bizarre and/or funny caption for this in order to make it a true lolcat, by all means, be my guest.)

Sometimes, it’s really hard for me to wrap my head around the truth of just how old I’m getting to be. Maybe that’s because I spend so much time writing about my younger days on this blog; keeping my memories stirred up all the time tricks me into feeling like the year 1987 isn’t all that far away.

At least it doesn’t seem very far away until I really start thinking about what was going on in 1987: Ronald Reagan was in the White House and Margaret Thatcher was living at Number 10 Downing Street; the Soviet Union still existed; the Berlin Wall divided east from west; Iran and Iraq were at war with each other; the names “Gary Hart,” “Donna Rice,” “Jim Bakker,” and “Jessica Hahn” were all over the tabloids; The Simpsons were just short interstitial segments on The Tracy Ullman Show; the Fox Network had just started operation, and 21 Jump Street was its most popular show; and Richard Marx and Tiffany were two of the biggest musical acts in the land. Viewed in that light, 1987 suddenly seems pretty damn distant, doesn’t it?

Here’s one final salvo to really drive the point home: I’ve gotten word that my 20-year high school reunion is coming up this fall. It’s going to be held at The Depot, a really nifty night club located in the old Union Pacific train station at The Gateway, on September 8th. There’s a website with all the details here; it includes a feature where you can leave some info about what you’ve been up to for the past two decades (it’s free, unlike that other reunion-type website you may have heard of).
I happen to know that a number of my fellow Bingham Miners read this blog, so if any of you are still in touch with any of our other classmates, spread the word, will you? And go let everybody know what you’ve been up to! (Besides reading my humble blog, of course…)

On Saturday, The Girlfriend and I attended a family reunion/celebration in honor of her maternal grandmother’s 90th birthday. The following items are just some things that occured to me as I sat in a public park on a sweltering hot day:

Continue Reading…

This is a little after-the-fact, but I just got the news this morning:

My old school chum Keith Jensen and his wife Danielle have welcomed their second child into the world. It’s another daughter, Cailee Brynne Jensen (nicely Celtic name there, guys), born May 22. The statistics are as follows, for those who are into that sort of thing (Anne, I’m thinking of you): 7 lbs., 6 oz., 20 inches long.

Mother and daughter are both fine. Congrats to the whole family, and I hope life in Jersey isn’t getting you too down…

Best headline of the week: FBI tries to fight zombie hordes

The article is actually about the Feds’ efforts to stop cybercriminals who hijack home computers to use in their nefarious activities (such computers are called zombies by those in the tech biz), but damn, for a second there, I was having visions of Elliot Ness in a George Romero scenario, and wouldn’t that be cool?

A couple of random factoids about my dog’s cancer treatment that I found amusing and/or interesting:

• In order to administer the chemo drugs, the vet, of course, needs to shave the injection site, which is located on the leg. The course of treatment will run long enough that the vet will need to use several different injection sites to avoid discomfort and/or problems for the dog, so all four legs will end up with shaved spots. Apparently, however, the fur won’t grow back at those spots. I don’t know if that’s a side effect of the drugs or something to do with dog physiology or what, but, assuming he survives the cancer, Shadow will have permanent “battle scars.” I have asked my folks to try and convince the vet to line up the shaved bits. It will drive me crazy if my dog ends up with asymmetical bald patches.
• The vet is obtaining the chemo drugs from the Huntsman Cancer Institute, one of the preeminent cancer research and treatment centers in the country, which is conveniently located at the University of Utah here in Salt Lake. Which means that the drugs used to treat dogs with cancer are the very same ones used on humans who have cancer; they just dial back the dosage to account for the differences in body size.
  I don’t know why that surprises me, but it does…