Category: Zany (WTF?)

Virginia Winter Wonderland?

Posted on by chappyshi

Well, we are into our fourth or fifth snowfall of the season.  They are predicting 20-30 inches for this one which started at 10:00 AM this morning and is supposed to run until 10:00 PM tomorrow.  We shall see…  Everyone is stocked and locked for the storm weekend, including Super Bowl parties.  The grocery stores have been zoos since Wednesday evening of course.  Perhaps everyone got a good head start on their shopping.  When I stopped at the Giant this afternoon to get my sister a birthday card, the store was relatively deserted.

Here’s some pics from snow we got Tuesday night.  I watched the branches shed the snow all morning long…they were bare again by mid-afternoon.  Driving around yesterday there were bare patches of ground right next to patches of 2-3 inches.  Seemed odd.  I’ll be cross-country skiing tomorrow!

Pictures from the WWW…Williamsburg Wreath Walk

Posted on by chappyshi

The week before Christmas I drove myself and my parents down to see my sister in Suffolk, VA.  My sister and her husband were unfortunately not going to be able to join us for Christmas at my other sister’s house in Centreville.  Since my folks were in town from overseas, it was deemed opportune to get them down to Suffolk that week.

While we were there, my sister, my mom and dad, and I went to Williamsburg to check out the holiday festivities.  It was a cold, breezy day but we managed to stay comfortable by hitting the shops, having a nice lunch, and walking the main promenade.  Walking the promenade included viewing the Christmas decorations, many of which were elaborate Christmas wreaths,  displayed on the homes and shops.

And since I was taking pictures like crazy, and my mom and sister prompted me to take more, we have located here the WWW, otherwise known as the “Williamsburg Wreath Walk.”  Below are a couple of my favorites.

Virginia’s Fickle Winter Weather

Posted on by chappyshi

A month ago we had two feet of snow and temps in the low twenties…unusual for Virginia.  Today it is almost seventy and partly cloudy.  If I weren’t gainfully doing some work and if we weren’t expecting more rain, I’d be on the ZXR-1200 burning up some road!

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Never Worked

Posted on by chappyshi

In the Washington Post Outlook section article, Joseph Rocha — ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Didn’t Protect Me From Abuse in the Navy , dated October 11, 2009, Mr. Rocha tells a tale of how the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy for gays in the military not only did not work for him but worked against him.  Rocha joined the U.S. Navy in 2005 and was sent to the Bahrain, perhaps in Shore Patrol unit.

After qualifying and training for a spot in a dog handling unit, he joined a unit of 24 individuals responsible for 32 dogs.  The dogs were used to search for and detect  explosives, drugs, contraband,  bound from Bahrain to Iraq and Afghanistan.   Joe’s description of how he was treated vies with notoriety for stories of Abu Graib:

“– the chief had decided that I would be down on my hands and knees, simulating oral sex. A kennel support staff member and I were supposed to pretend that we were in our bedroom and that the dogs were catching us having sex. Over and over, with each of the 32 dogs, I was forced to enact this scenario.”

To make matters worse, the only person that stood up for Joseph, was the unit second in command, a 1st Class Petty Officer, who was named “Sailor of the Year” when she was 27, was blamed for  not reigning in her boss, a Chief Petty Officer.  WTF?  This woman, with orders to return to the States, was charged with negligence, had her orders rescinded and had to stay in Bahrain.  She killed herself.

The story continues.  Please read the whole article and write to your elected representatives and ask them to support gays in the military…or  anywhere.

I hadn’t had the time, or energy, to publish this entry before I read in the Washington Post on October 21, 2009, that the Chief Petty Officer responsible for the dog handing unit was under investigation for  “years-old allegations of hazing and sexual harassment against a gay sailor and others.”  Read more here…”Navy petty officer to face punishment in hazing.”

Disclaimer:  I am not gay.  I spent 10 enjoyable years in the Navy.  I worked for five years as an equal opportunity coordinator while I was in the Navy.  I have written, planned, coordinated, and conducted numerous classes/seminars on equal rights/opportunities, sexual harassment, and discrimination and briefed the Chief of Staff, Chief of Naval Operations, Korea, on said topics.

Acid Reflux…

Posted on by chappyshi

I was listening to the Worst of Airplane some days ago in commemoration of having just read, for the second (not seconal) time, “The Electric Koolaid Acid Test” by Tom Wolfe.  A non-fiction work of art, “true” as it were, the book records the antics of Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters as they trip and grok through the “LSD is not yet illegal” world of the 1960’s.

Most of the action takes place in the San Francisco Bay area and Mexico but includes a noted bus trip  (no pun intended) to the East Coast and back.  The thread of the book runs around the Kesey rapper, tripper, grokker persona, and his role as a polarizer or a freak.  He definitely drew people to him who wallowed in his “our existence really means nothing until we can go beyond acid” attitude.

Items, bands, persona, and thoughts referenced in the book are randomly listed below.  If you have any interest in the diverse history of the USA as relates to the 1960’s, “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” is a must read.

  • Freedom of expression w/o criticism
  • The bus
  • The music and the recordings
  • “The Movie”
  • Getting the police involved in “The Movie”
  • Owlsey Blues
  • Beatles concert
  • Stones concert
  • The Grateful Dead
  • The Hell’s Angels
  • Writer and Poet Jack Kerouac who wrote “On the Road,” “Big Sur, and “Dharma Bums”
  • Ken Kesey who wrote “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”
  • Allen Ginsberg who wrote the poem “Howl,” not to be confused with the painting “Scream,” by Evard Munch
  • Hunter S. Thompson who wrote “Hell’s Angels” and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”
  • Country Joe and the Fish

Bats in the Belfry

Posted on by chappyshi

In this Washington Post article, “Environmentalists divided over wind turbines, endangered bats, ” dated October 22, 2009, the merits of a wind turbine farm planned near Greenbriar, WV, are compared to the threat the farm might pose to the endangered Indiana bat.

According to one self-proclaimed caving fanatic and animal rights activist, “…if the turbines kill one Indiana bat, that ought to end it.  That ought to shut it down.”  I am all for animal rights but maybe we should stop driving cars too…fool!

Personal Cellphones in the Workplace, Not!

Posted on by chappyshi

Someone wrote to the Washington Post Jobs section asking “Who Do You Call When Your Boss Bans Cellphones?”  Apparently the boss had not only outlawed personal cellphone usage at all times including getting alerts silently and during break times but also forbade using company landlines for personal use.  That is a bit excessive in my estimation.  I believe that an organization has a responsibility to make it’s employees available to their friends and families in emergencies.

I do believe in banning cell phone usage, not during break time though, and allowing use of company landlines for personal use in emergency situations.  I can’t think of any reason that phone usage should be verboten in personal/family emergencies.  Were cellphones used only in emergencies, I wouldn’t ban them either.  We all know however that cellphone use in the workplace is rampant and flagrant.  I bet most organizations could realize a 5  to 10 percent increase in productivity were cell phone usage to be banned.

Growing up as a child (oxymoron or impossibility???), I cannot remember a time that my mother called my dad at work or that my dad called home from work.  I am sure it happened  but those occurrences could in no way mirror the frequent instances of frivolous cell phone usage that I have seen in the work place.  On top of cell phone usage, corporate email is also blatantly abused for personal use.  At least, for the employee, that is not as visible to management and coworkers.

Fortunately, company landlines and corporate email can be monitored, abuse documented, and disciplinary action taken when warranted.  I know from personal experience in the workplace that too much time is wasted on personal business using cellphones, landlines, and email.  In an effort to trim telecom costs at a previous company, I found company cellphone users who were nighttime supervisors who racked up three times  the amount of minutes per month the site VP racked up.  Please reconcile for me why a night supervisor should need to spend an average of 100 minutes per shift on the telephone. Really, you don’t need to.  I know from  viewing the call records that those minutes were not used for business…

Disclaimer, I am in no way commenting on policies of any company I ever worked for.  Also, I am single, have no exes, and no children, so my experiences having to keep in touch with people are extremely limited compared to many others.  Nonetheless, we have done without the current modes of  instantaneous and constant communications for thousands of years.  What makes us sure that we have to have them now?

Bear Facts

Posted on by chappyshi

My uncle who has lived in Alaska since 1972 or so sent me this story of a rogue black bear’s recent activity in their area.

“What isn’t normal is having a problem black bear in the neighborhood.  One night it pushed open a front door a half mile away and stuck it’s head inside before a very startled guest of the owners yelled and scared it away.  It got into an outbuilding a mile or so away and ripped up a bunch of bulk food stuffs (flour, coconut, all sorts of stuff).  At the cabin downstream from us (only occupied about a week a year these days) the bear went through a window and made a huge mess of their kitchen area.  At our place, one night it opened the freezer in our entryway and pulled out a bag of ice cubes, ignoring salmon, halibut, moose, caribou, etc.  Then the next night it pulled up our locked shop/garage door, pulled out a closed plastic garbage can, carted it 50 feet away, and opened the unopened bag of dog food inside and gorged itself.  The next night it was back to the shop again, but didn’t appear to go inside, perhaps because all possible goodies were now inside the house.  A neighbor apparently wounded it soon after, but didn’t kill it.  But we haven’t heard of any sign of it since.”

Barely knew him….

Northern Virginia Craft Beer News

Posted on by chappyshi

I am pleased to note that we have two new eating/drinking establishments in my area:  Vintage 51 South Riding and Dogfish Head Ale House.

Vintage 51, hereafter known as V51SR, is an extension of Vintage 50, hereafter known as V50, in Leesburg.  V51SR’s website is supposed to be www.vintage51sr.com but is still not up and running, which is stupid in my estimation.  The restaurant  has been open for at least three weeks now but in truth it is still not up and running.  The menu is still not complete, prices are up in the air (a bit too high), but the beer selection is awesome.

V50 Leesburg brews some awesome beers in my estimation and I can get growlers there which is a major bonus.  However the drive to V50, 30 to 40 minutes, diminishes the value of the brew.   V51SR, less than 15 minutes away, has a nice selection of craft beers on tap from Ales, Pale Ales, IPA’s, Kolsches, Hefe-Weisens, Stouts, Lagers, etc, well as quite a selection of bottled beers.  Don’t expect to get a Coors, Bud, or Miller Lite there though.

They are supposed to be pouring growlers.  My initial impression is that they won’t be able to do so profitably, since they would be pouring growlers of beers purchased from distributors rather than those produced in house.  That impression has nearly been confirmed by at least one of their bartenders.  The initial pricing projections are way beyond what even the most devoted micro brew aficionado would spring for.

V51SR is in a weird spot.  First of all  let me say that the Virginia booze laws are wacked.  V50 in Leesburg brews their own beer on site.  They can’t sell their  own beer at another one of their own restaurants without selling it to a distributor and then buying their beer back from the distributor.  So V51SR would have to sell beer produced by the the same company that runs V50 and V51SR at a higher price than V50 sells it for.  WTF?

If you are half-way serious about craft beers, you will be familiar with Dogfish Head.  Their 60 Minute IPA is fairly widely distributed.  The 60 Minute IPA is a a great beer…it is the anchor of their product line for those of us who like ales.  Unfortunately, for one,  they don’t sell growlers.  I think if  they brewed the beer  on site they could sell growlers.  Secondly, the beer selection is good but also a bit exotic, particularly on the flavoring side.

Most people will like their Lawnmower Light and then have to do some tasting of the other beers to find what they might like.  The Aprihop is a good beer but I am not likely to have more than one at a time.  I recently had the “Festina Peche,” which I now remember, after finding reference to it on the web, was sour tasting, not as in bad but as in citrusy sour.  Like the Aprihop, I am not likely to have more than one at a time which could be a good thing.

Please don’t ask me about the food at either Dogfish Head or V51SR.  I eat at home.  I visit these places only to check out the beers and the talent.  I do know that both of the “Vintage” restaurants get many of their fresh ingredients from the Fields of Athenry Farm in Purcellville, VA, where, as I understand, everything is grown/raised, organically.  Fields of Athenry, is on Snickersville Pike, which is a great motorcycle ride from Rt. 50 west of Aldie to Bluemont on Rt. 7 west of Leesburg.

Enjoy your beers but not before you ride!

I Must Be a Loser

Posted on by chappyshi

I must be a real loser because I don’t have a a cell phone permanently attached to my ear nor do I use a Bluetooth headset for my cell phone.  I do have only a cell phone…no landline…so maybe I  not such a loser but…

I really don’t get it.  I am having a busy day if I talk on my personal phone once a day.  Yet all around me people are walking in and out of their houses talking on cell phones, they are getting in and out of their cars talking on cell phones, they are pulling into and out of parking spaces talking on cell phones, and they are walking and crossing streets…talking on their cell phones.

I watched a young girl walk across a major intersection today talking on her cell phone totally oblivious to her surroundings.  Yesterday, I saw a woman in her late fifties/early sixties run into a hip-high flower pot on a strip mall promenade while talking on the phone.  She thought no one saw her but I gave her a little nod to let her know that her mishap had not gone undetected.  Not too long ago when I was walking on a neighborhood trail, I frightened a young woman who was on her cell phone walking her dog.  I was not 10 feet from her before the dog called attention to me.  I am not sure that she would have ever seen me…

I don’t really understand why people  have to be so connected.  It is amazing that people even have time to take a crap without getting a call or a text message.   For all I know, they don’t!  I should create a web site called “Shitter,” based on Twitter, from which you can alert all your friends to the fact that you are on the crapper.