Several Days in the life...

I would like to say that I have not updated the blog because my life is such a whirlwind of fascinating activities but then someone might jump up, point an accusing finger at me and shout "you lie!" as happened recently. And it would be true - the lie part - because these days life for me has been pretty much made of ordinary days. The most interesting day for me was drill day this past Saturday. I was honored with a visit from SGT Kurt Vogeley and his buddy SGT Lane Thompson. In the best tradition of the Army they managed to take the most slender of a legitimate reason to be away from their unit and turn it into a couple hour goof-off mission which involved dropping by to see yours truly. It was fun having them visit and I got to introduce them to several of the soldiers and officers in my unit. One commented on how handsome Kurt is which is true but it did concern me that the 'don't ask - don't tell' rule was about to be invoked.

All that morning the motor pool across the street from my building had all of the vehicles parked there undergoing motor stables (a term left over from the horse cavalry) and the multitude of diesel engines were clattering away for hours until the sound faded into background noise. Around lunchtime I started hearing a weird turbine type whine that rose and fell in intensity. It was kind of science fictiony sounding and reminded me of the space ships in 'Earth v. Flying Saucers' (you must see this movie - what a grand '50s version of the struggle of the free world i.e. the West vs. the evil empire i.e. the U.S.S. R.). This sound went on for about 15 minutes and I finally had to look out the window to see what the heck was making this noise. What I saw towering over the top of the buildings between me and the airfield was the top of the fuselage and tail of a C5 Galaxy cargo plane, the 2nd largest aircraft in the world, sitting on our dinky Army airfield, running up its engines! As I was taking in this amazing sight, it throttled up its engines and literally in a humongous cloud of blowing dust went down the runway and up into the air. The dust cloud would have put the dust bowl to shame. It was an amazing sight seeing the huge plane slowly flying off to wherever it was off to. I got a hop in a C5 from Dover DE to Germany once. The plane has two levels, cargo below and up a ladder to the rear facing passenger seats above. There are no windows upstairs and with the size of the plane it was kind of hard to tell the transition from taxiing to flying to landing.

Sunday was our first mass in the new church. We have been paying for this place since about 1990 and it is finally open. It is a very beautiful church, the 2nd largest in the Los Angeles diocese. My concern is that the 2/3rds of the parish that didn't contribute to build the church certainly won't contribute towards the upkeep of the place. Time will tell.

Claire, Daniel, and Laura arrive Friday for a week's visit in Santa Clarita! Yay!! I will be the lucky Grandad to take Laura to the L.A. zoo on the following Monday. I hope I can keep up with her!