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As has been described previously, some family members attended a very wind blown air show as Davis-Monthan Air Force base. I remembered to take my camera, and even remembered to remove it from my pocket, but I only captured one reasonable image.

The others looked like this... Technology and I are just not good friends. My Canon FTQL was never obstinate like this at all. It had its' share of bells and whistles, but they were all intuitively obvious. These digital contraptions use obtuse pictures displayed on a LCD screen, and in sunlight, they are simply not visible. I recall my mother struggling to master the use of an ATM and I just couldn't understand what her problem was. Well, now I know. My advice to you is to enjoy life now while you can and try not to think about what lies ahead...

During the month of April, Barbara and I together had a total of 16 different doctor/dentist/medical procedure visits. Given that Barbara rarely drives to Tucson, you can see where my time was spent. Barbara visited two different dentists and had five teeth pulled. She has been in constant pain from bone fragments left in her gum tissues ever since. While it appears to be an effective diet aid, I don't recommend it... The amount of information I gleaned from my share of those visits was minimal. My original cardiology specialist referred me to a specialist specialist cardiologist, who performed surgery on routine tachycardia cases. This specialist specialist cardiologist decided that, while my heart was healthy, the cause of my tachycardia was "complex." He would not perform the surgery, but would refer me to a specialist specialist specialist cardiologist whose specialty was complex tachycardia surgeries. My interpretation of "complex surgery" is that the probability of success has gone down, and the probability of complications has gone up. So when my specialist specialist suggested medications in leu of surgery, I didn't object. Unfortunately, he neglected to send any prescriptions to my pharmacy. My neurology specialist played a similar symphony. She referred me to a second neurology specialist who on a Thursday, ran a series of electrical conductivity tests (involving electrical shocks and needles) and told me she would call me with the results by the following Tuesday. That was three weeks ago today... I had a root canal, followed by a crown. The temporary crown had to be cut in pieces to be removed, but the permanent crown fell off last Saturday... I tried to schedule cataract surgery, only to have my insurance company inform my doctor that they only cover procedures in Maricopa County... On a positive note, my dermatologist, after a skin cancer screen, said that, while I had ugly things growing all over me, none of them are (or are likely to become) carcinomas.

At my wife's insistence, I gave up my tracfone and switched to a relative simple Verizon model. It has many features (most of which I can't imagine me using), including a camera and texting abilities. I have successfully sent a couple of images, but it seems to me that they are all blurry (like the one here). I can't decide if the phone had a defective camera, or the user is unstable... The machinations required to transfer a group of images from my phone to my computer is an instrument of torture as good as any employed during the inquisition.

I finally finished pouring the floor in the shed. Cement work was never one of my specialties, but it's done and I guess I can live with the imperfections. After all, it's just a shed, and bad cement is still far better than dirt...

Several of the upright 2 x 4 supports have warped. I replaced one and installed bracing between the rest of them--one row on the short side and two rows on the long side. I installed the skin on the end of the shed, but for some reason, I kind of stopped at that point. I can't decide if the stoppage is due to the fact that enclosing the sides will make it hot to work there, or if I'm waiting for the tendonidous in my left wrist to clear up.

I have undertaken (with help from Barbara, Ameilia, and Laura) to digitize and post the journals kept by my mother's father's mother (Susannah Janet Heward Allen Bates, aka Nettie, aka Grandma Bates). Once I got started, it became an obsession, and I have worked on it multiple hours each day. I have gotten to know Grandma Bates (a midwife), and at the same time renewed my appreciation for the comfortable life I enjoy. On the page shown here, the birth of my mother (and Nettie's first grandchild) is described. It just seems awkward to read that my mother (who in my world view, was always my mother and could never possibly have been an infant) slept completely through the second night of her life and refused to nurse on the fourth...

For some reason beyond my ken, I have felt impelled to convert the used coolers lying around this place into rock polishing equipment. It is kind of fun to solve the little problems of how to make this piece fit here and function... The ⅓ horsepower motor is definitely over kill, but I hesitate to call this an industrial grade piece of equipment because I have seen some on the internet that use a modified truck tires as barrels and can process 300 pounds of rock in a batch. Still, I'm confident this little beast can polish more rocks than I have...

Some months (years?) ago I, (with help from Barbara and AJ) constructed a carport. We left 8 poles sticking up above the roof (the structure was braced from above instead of below), and I said at the time that I would like to cap each one with an apparatus driven by the wind. Well, my first one is installed and functional. Compared to what I had in mind, it is a pretty cheap shot, but I have seven more tries... I envisioned a windmill that turned a small gear, that turned a large gear, that ran a chain with a "micro-bucket" that picked up a marble, raised it a few feet, then dumped it onto a circular track that returned it to the pick up spot. It's too bad there aren't any engineers or engineering students in the family who would like to design a project like that...

Some months (years?) ago I mentioned to Ameilia the idea of creating a "family cookbook" of the food we consumed when everyone still lived in Oracle. Ameilia seized the initiate and emailed a questionnaire to all the kids. Given my maladroit memory, I'm not sure I could reconstruct those culinary classics if I tried, but some of the responses were interesting. What do you think?

Nathen: Breakfast: Biscuits and gravy, grits, hash browns, breakfast sandwiches (pastrami), fried potatoes pancakes, waffles. Dinner: Bean burros, green chili sandwiches, hamburgers, lasagna, leftovers navajo tacos, pizza, potato soup, roast, spaghetti, tacos, tuna noodle casserole. Dessert: Carmel, carmel popcorn, fudge, ice cream, no bake cookies.	Ameilia: Breakfast: Biscuit & gravy, baked potatoes, grits and eggs, awfuls with cracked wheat, crepes, doughnuts, cinnamon rolls, cake and ice cream, soft boiled eggs in cottage cheese Dinner: Pizza every Sunday, before that a chuck type steak with a round bone in it (pizza was on Mondays then), chicken noodle soup, bean burros (with home made tortillas), beans (yuck), tuna noodle casserole (my personal punishment). Dessert: Doughnuts, caramel dipped in chocolate (or not), divinity, fudge, hot fudge pudding, ice cream (cut with a knife) and MALT, watermelon, caramel corn
Jon: no response	Andrea: no response
Mylinda: Breakfast: Biscuit and gravy, waffles, pancakes, cinnamon rolls, oatmeal, cream of wheat, grits, fried potatoes, breakfast sandwiches, breakfast burritos, homemade chocolate pudding, home made hot chocolate, crepes, bagels, eggs in toast, cereal, fruit with every breakfast, waffles with salsa or egg on top, homemade bread with breakfast Lunch Sandwiches, banana and cheese sandwiches Dinner: Tuna noodle casserole, enchiladas that were in soup form, potato soup, pizza, generic casserole wrapped in egg roll and fried, lasagna, spaghetti, beans and corn bread, burritos, tuna salad, shepherd pie, pot roast, turkey dinner, ham dinner, stroganoff, rabbit, goat, homemade rolls, veggies with dinner	Sabrina: Breakfast: Biscuits and gravy (my favorite) breakfast sandwiches with pastrami and Italian dressing (maybe this one is my favorite), waffles (more commonly awfuls with cracked wheat), sundaes once, crapes--always the fruit and whip cream kind, the occasional pancake (but not often), cream of wheat or oatmeal (I always hated oatmeal with a passion), cold cereal (but I think that was only when he was desperate), grits and eggs (but the kids never HAD to eat that) and we ALWAYS had a fruit with breakfast Dinner: Chicken and dumpling, chicken noodle soup (always with home made noodles and saltine crackers), PIZZA (loved that night), generic casserole (hated that night), tuna noodle casserole, pork chops with apple sauce and egg noodles, hamburgers, hot dogs (and going shooting), foil dinners, lasagna (again with home made noodles), spaghetti, goulash with cheese (spaghetti sauce over macaroni noodles--oh how I loved it!), stew (another one I did not like, but the bread was always good), beans (I wished for death on those nights, you could always smell it coming for hours), chimichangas or burros, leftovers always leftovers on Saturday--what a ripoff Sunday dinner--roast, potatoes and gravy, vegetable, rolls... (never a fan of that one but there were much worse meals). You know I don't remember one cold dinner item he did save for watermelon and popcorn on Sundays Dessert: Peach cobbler, ice cream--occasionally home made but most often a half gallon cut into X # of pieces, brownies with chocolate chips in them, crepes, graham cracker cake, cheese cake (always with way too much lemon in it for my taste), sweetened condensed milk that had been pressure cooked (carmel like), carmel, fudge, divinity, the occasional cookie always chocolate chip and once in a while no bake, caramel corn (I think that was his favorite), chocolate dipped caramels, more recently date bars, date eggrolls, fruit eggrolls (he would always try to put generic casserole in those too)
LaRena: no response	Symantha: Breakfast: Breakfast sandwiches, homemade bagels and cream cheese, cold cereal, hot cereal (cream of wheat, oatmeal), rice with milk, sugar, and raisins, homemade toast and tomato, biscuits and gravy, waffles, pancakes, scrambled eggs and fried potatoes, cheese crisps, muffins, crepes, cinnamon rolls Dinner: Potato soup, chicken and dumplings, beef stew, chicken noodle soup, lasagna, spaghetti, tamale pie, stroganoff, generic casserole, bean burros, tacos, tostadas, enchiladas, bean soup (pinto beans) with cornbread, tuna casserole, tuna salad, nachos, taco salad, stirfry, pork loin with mashed potatoes, pizza Dessert: Ice cream, cheesecake, watermelon
AJ--no memory of ever eating...

Ameilia also solicited any "dadisms." I don't admit to ever uttering anything vaguely similar to these, but here is the collective wisdom culled from the defective memories of the short people who used to live in my house... Greetings earthlings. Whistle battle songs in the mornings. Sing a song to everything that you would say. "Who told you life was fair?" "I did not ask you to like it I asked you to eat it." "Why do I need a dishwasher I have nine right here." "5 minutes is plenty of time to take a shower." "Makeup is just war paint." "GARBAGE!" "OH SWEAR WORDS!" Dad is know for singing songs that usually have silly stories to them or that are really really old. He always has a five-paragraph answer for your one word question. Known for using the longest scientific words instead of the generic counter parts. "He said, 'Try it, you'll like it.' So, I tried it--I thought I'd die!" "Grandma was slow, but she was old!" "And, we're off like a wounded chicken/herd of turtles." "Once more, this time with feeling!" "You don't eat because you're hungry. You eat so you won't get hungry." "I didn't ask you to want to--I told you to do it." "If I don't get my pen back, I'm going to break your fingers." "On the road again...I just can't wait to get back on the road again..." (That was sung while YOU were driving...) "Too many chefs spoil the broth." "Now, would I do that?" (Cheshire Cat-like grin) "Do you know what this is? It's the world's smallest violin, playing My Heart Bleeds For You..." "You're very perceptive for one so young..." "Cooking is an art, baking is a science" "You'll live." "So, I was wrong. I've been wrong once before, in my life. It was back in 1939..." "It doesn't work in actual practice, but the theory is sound." "People who would eat that would drink their own bath water." "I think you scared that stop sign." "Greetings Earthling" I didn't ask you to be hungry I asked you to eat it If God wanted you to have holes in your ears he would have put them there. LOOK AT ME!!!!! Usually to (Mylinda) You are good kids Songs with breakfast, the making of (or dinner) What's your biggest problem?

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