Daily Update

Weight: 225

Currently Reading (fiction): Nothing.

Just Finished (fiction): The Eye of the Needle, Ken Follett.

Currently Reading (non-fiction): Beyond the Influence...I don’t remember the authors’ names. It’s a stop drinking book, recommended to me by someone on an AA board I post on. It’s really good. Highly advised for anyone wanting to stop drinking.

Currently Listening To: Anthem, Rush.

Rush Lyrics of the Day: I want to look at life in the available light.

Money Update: Some unexpected raises in salaries have gone a long way to help bridge the gap that Melanie and I were experiencing due to having Sydney in daycare now. I may be able to avoid having to work a second job, at least for the time being. I may, however, see about working one or two shifts per week in the kitchen at Don Pablo’s, just to make sure we have a little padding. I’ll have to see what they have available and are willing to offer me.

Weekend Update: I’m going on Friday to Cincinnati to see the Reds play the Astros. While there, I am meeting up with three friends of mine from the Rush Message Board. One is a Cincinnati police officer, another is an electrical engineer from Minnesota who is on a 12-day bus trip with his kids seeing baseball games at various parks around the country, and the last is a housewife from rural Ohio. You couldn’t get a wider array of backgrounds, and yet we all find commonality in Rush. It’s sort of like a cult that way. :) Actually, these are friends I have made in the religion forum on the Rush Message Board. The cop is an evangelical Christian, the housewife is a former Christian, now an agnostic/weak atheist, and the electrical engineer grew up a Jehovah’s Witness, turned atheist, then turned agnostic. All really great people. I’m looking forward to meeting them in real life.

Hailey’s Christmas Present Update: I finally put together the all-wood kitchen that Hailey got from Santa Claus for Christmas. We had to move some of her other stuff out of the room to make room for it, which is why we hadn’t put it up before now. It’s like a piece of furniture...when we move, it will move as a single piece. She loves it, though. Here are a few pictures of it:















Today in History, August 16:

1355 – Birth of Phillippa Plantagenet, granddaughter of Edward III. She married the powerful Edmund Mortimer, and this connection of the Mortimer family to the ruling family of England eventually paved the way for the House of York to take the throne under Edward IV in 1461, following the War of the Roses.

1777 – American Revolution: At the Battle of Bennington, the British are defeated by the Americans. (Americans 1, British 0)

1780 – American Revolution: At the Battle of Camden, the Americans are defeated by the British. (Americans 1, British 1)

1812 – War of 1812: Fort Detroit is surrendered to the British without a fight. (Americans 1, British 2 – The British win the Battle for August 16th Supremacy.)

1858 – President James Buchanan sends the first telegraph signal to Queen Victoria of England. What he says is kept secret, but the phrase is uncovered in 1901, following Queen Victoria’s death, among her personal journals. Buchanan telegraphed the following, “Nice tits, Vickie.”

1868 – 25,000 people in Arica, Peru are killed in a tsunami caused by an 8.5 magnitude earthquake in the Pacific Ocean.

1888 – Birth of Lawrence of Arabia.

1896 – Gold is discovered in a tributary to the Klondike River, setting off the Klondike Gold Rush.

1914 – One of the first major battles of World War I, the Battle of Cer, begins between the Austro-Hungarians and Serbians. Nearly 25,000 men are killed.

1920 – Cleveland Indians shortstop Ray Chapman – a native of Beaver Dam, Kentucky – is hit in the head by a pitch thrown by Carl Mays of the New York Yankees. The ball hits him so hard, it bounces all the way back to Mays near the mound. Mays thinks the ball had hit the bat, because of the sound it made when it hit Chapman’s skull, and he fields the ball and throws to first base. Chapman dies the next day, becoming the only major leaguer in history to die from an injury received during a game.

1920 – On the same day that Chapman was hit by Mays’s pitch, my favorite modern poet, Charles Bukowski, was born.

1942 – The crew of a Navy blimp disappears without a trace while in flight over the Pacific Ocean. The blimp floats unmanned all the way to California, where it crashes.

1946 – Birth of Elissa’s lesbian lover fantasy woman, Leslie Ann Warren.

1948 – Death of Babe Ruth.

1960 – Joseph Kittinger parachutes over New Mexico from 102,000 feet, setting 3 world records for highest altitude jump, longest free fall, and fastest human speed outside a vehicle.

1969 – Charles Manson and the Manson Family are arrested at Spahn Ranch, in California.

1972 – The Moroccan Air Force mistakenly fires on the plane of their own King, Hassan II, but fails to bring him down. Hassan is, understandably, pissed.

1975 – Ted Bundy is arrested for minor burglary, but later escapes.

1977 – Death of Elvis Presley.

1987 – Northwest Airlines flight 255 crashes in Detroit on takeoff, killing 155 passengers and crew. A 4-year old girl unaccountably survives the crash.