Ho Ho Ho!

Why hasn't there ever been a Star Trek Christmas Special?

I can think of several titles that might have possibilities:

• The Little Drummer Borg
• E Plebnista, Charlie Brown
• Miracle on Talos IV
• Dilithium Christmas
• Chestnuts Roasted by an Open Phaser
• Walkin' in a Winter WonderLandru
• The Littlest Redshirt
• It's a Wonderful Life on Ceti Alpha Five
• The Wrath of Claus
• Gold, Frankincense, and Tribbles
• I'll Be Home For Pon Farr

And of course, we can't forget "Kirok-in' Around the Christmas Tree" and "Edith Keeler Got Run Over By a Reindeer."

Anyway, the point is that tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and I am totally in holiday mode at this point. Full of joy and Cratchit-turkey generosity, I am completely ready to get out of "work" mode and into "mashed taters n' pumpkin pie" mode.

So let me wish you a heartfelt "Merry Christmas" along with my sincere hopes for you to spend the next few days enjoying happy times with your loved ones. I hope everyone has a chance to relax, smile, and sing every single one of your favorite holiday tunes.

I was hoping to give you an update on my home-organization project, but I haven't yet made a whole lot of progress. I did manage to replace the hideous chandelier in my dining nook with a nice LED fixture...but the new light's constant flickering tells me I didn't quite nail the wiring. And of course, the attempt to purge some of the junk from backroom storage simply resulted in additional tasks being added to the to-do list. It appears that eBay and/or Craigslist will play an important role in my life over the next few weeks. My hope is that somebody somewhere can use some of the things that are currently just taking up space in my apartment (VHS camcorders, ancient vinyl record albums, custom carrying cases for electronic gear I no longer own, etc.)

Once those items have been dispositioned, I should have enough room to set up my new exercise area. Setting it up does not remotely guarantee that I'll use it...but at least I'll have a visual reminder that the tools for achieving fitness are easily available.

Anyway, I doubt that I'll be posting any new material here for a few days -- and I would hope that you have better things to do right now than read such online blather. But I hope you'll return after Christmas and join me in having fun with the new challenges that await in 2014. (One of them will be resuming my freelance writing career with an article to be published in "Swimming" magazine. More details later.) I also need to swim the 100 x 100s, edit a couple of veteran's history videos, continue my family history capture and archival project, and prepare for the Triathlon Nationals. January is full of proposal due dates at work, and I'm also expecting a somewhat improved social life as the new year commences. Should be fun, and I look forward to sharing those events with you...not to mention additional annoyingly geeky trivia contests. (Hint: The next one will be a challenge to determine if gibberish-sounding words like "drosophila melanogaster" represent a person, thing, or government program.)

So, Happy Solstice, my friends! Have fun, and I hope Santa brings you everything you could possibly want. Thanks for dropping by, and have a great day!

Whoville is a Creepy Place...but I'd Love to Live in Hooterville

I have no idea why I'm so tired.

Compared to most people, I face the holiday season with relatively few stresses. Well, OK, actually it's very close to zero stress. I have no huge family shopping pressures, no guests to prepare for or mega-dinners to cook, and no obligations to visit relatives who might expect me to exhibit manners and social skills I do not possess. The stuff that causes most people to freak out over Christmas simply does not exist in my dull and pedestrian life.

Nor have I been over exercising. Sure, I'm still a bit sore from my last plyometrics workout, but it's not like I've been wearing myself out with boatloads of running and swimming. As a matter of fact, I've been a bit of a slacker lately. And yet I find myself wanting to take naps and sleep in. That's not normal for me.

It's probably just the short days and cooler temperatures. The solstice is almost here, after all. My inner caveman probably just wants to hibernate. I am really glad that I'm off work from Christmas Eve through New Year's Day. That break should be restorative.

Anyway, as I mentioned in describing our latest trivia challenge, the answers are not 100% linear. But once I explain the relationships, you'll say "Oh! Of course!"

The idea is to match the item in the left column to the item in the right column that most closely relates to it.

Grinch	Potsie Weber
Gorn	Al Bundy
Grok	Frank-N-Furter
Gozer	Emperor of Rome in 35AD
Gort	Frosted Flakes
Grunka Lunka	Tuque

Answer number 1 involves this gentleman, the talented Thurl Ravenscroft. (I did not know about him before Tanner was born, or else I might have suggested "Thurl" as a good name candidate. There were three kids named Tanner in my son's 3rd-grade class...but not a single Thurl.)

Anyway, our first connection is Grinch-Frosted Flakes. And Mr. Ravenscroft provides the link. He is the deep-voiced talent who sang the song "You're a Mean One..." in the Boris Karloff Grinch cartoon -- and was also the voice of cereal legend Tony the Tiger over a 50-year span.

A Gorn, of course, is a slow-moving but immensely strong lizard creature from outer space. The first human to defeat a Gorn in combat was none other than James Tiberius Kirk, Captain of the Starship Enterprise. And as we all remember from high school, Tiberius was the Roman Emperor for a couple of decades shortly after Jesus threw his carpentry tools into the gears of the empire.

I do not know why the elder Kirks felt obliged to name their son after a Roman. And though I'm sure that this time of year elicits many "Is Kirk better than Jesus?" arguments, I have no desire to discuss that question in this forum...at least not today.

Moving on. The term "Grok" was coined by author Robert A. Heinlein to convey the idea of fully grasping a complex concept. I could say, for example, that I grok why swimming is better than Celtic dancing, or that I totally grok the sensation of York Peppermint Patties. But I doubt that even Stephen Hawking could grok the Captain and Tennille.

Anyway, the actor who played Potsie on Happy Days was a fellow named Anson Williams. And guess what Heinlein's middle initial stood for? That's right...he was also an Anson.

Thurl is definitely a better name than either Anson or Potsie.



A "tuque" (pronounced "tuke") is the type of knit wool cap enthusiastically worn by Bob and Doug McKenzie (pictured here) and other beer-drinking natives of the Great White North. Our connection to Gozer the Gozerian (evil Sumerian deity capable of wreaking widespread destruction in marshmallow form) is that Rick Moranis (aka Bob McKenzie -- the one on the left) portrayed one of Gozer's primary henchmen (Vinz Clortho, Keymaster) in the historical documentary film entitled "Ghostbusters."

Dr. Frank N. Furter was the transvestite mad scientist alien who tormented Brad and Janet in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." The first line of Rocky Horror's theme song is "Michael Rennie was ill the day the Earth stood still", which gives us our connection to Gort.

Gort, of course, was Klaatu's robot buddy who threatened to melt the world to slag if everybody didn't calm down and play nice in the classic film "The Day the Earth Stood Still."

One of the things I love about this job is that I always learn something new as a result of these quizzes. I had no idea that Ringo made an album with Gort on the cover until I did a search for Gort graphics. I always liked Ringo for his sense of humor...but was never once tempted to buy any of his solo albums, and thus remained ignorant of his good taste in cover art. Despite my newfound admiration for the man, I still don't plan to buy his records -- because his music still sucks.

And that brings us to the Grunka Lunkas, featured in the video at the top of this post. They are Futurama's version of Willy Wonka's Oompa Loompas, and they sing lyrics almost as bad as Ringo's. They are connected to Al Bundy via Ms. Katey Sagal, who played Peg Bundy on "Married with Children," and also played the kung-fu Cyclops delivery babe on Futurama.

So that completes our matching challenge. I hope you enjoyed it.

Tomorrow, I shall attempt to run, swim, buy Tanner's Christmas/birthday present, and begin my massive junk-purging project at the condo. I'm hoping to throw away enough stuff to leave space to set up an exercise area with room enough to assemble my new Weider PowerTower. Historical precedent suggests that a very small percentage of the planned tasks will actually be completed...but I have to give it a try. I know that the recycle bins will be full after Christmas, so the more I can toss out now, the better.

As always, thanks for dropping by. Enjoy your last few shopping opportunities, and have a great day!

Yeah, I'm Still Alive...

'Tis the season for serious warpages in the fabric of space-time.

Each day appears to consist of the normal contingent of 24 consecutive hours...but I am convinced that several of those hours are getting deleted.

Either that, or I'm just senile and have no idea how to manage my schedule. Regardless, the bottom line is that the last several weeks have been a blur. I have no idea where the time has gone, and I have very little to show for it. I also suspect that my grand plans for significant holiday accomplishments will result in little more than a few loads of laundry and a larger number glaring at me from the LCD panel on the bathroom scale.

Sigh.

The good news is that my son is in town, and we'll be able to spend some time together before he heads back to Hippie Country after the first of the year. He has agreed to help me with a significant home cleanup project that I hope to document within these pages after its completion. (Hint: I'm hoping the result will give me better access to my home fitness equipment...along with more motivation to actually use it.) My focus is still on the Triathlon Nationals next August, and I need to dial up my commitment to my training.

I'm heading into 2014 with some mixed results from the end of this year. Happily, my ankle has greatly improved, and it no longer seems to be hampering my running. I expect to finish up my physical therapy before New Years, and am feeling that I should no longer be tormented by fallout from The Water World Incident of 1991. With that particular flexibility challenge out of the way, my only barrier to high performance should be my historical rack of disciprine...which I hope to overcome with the support of my more-focused athletic friends.

Of course, it would be easier if people didn't bring those huge trays of cookies in to work. I love the holidays, and I certainly appreciate its traditional accessories of fudge and peppermint. But I'd have a quicker pathway toward becoming a lean, mean, triathlon machine if nobody was waving chocolate in front of my face throughout the day.

Oh well.

In the meantime, I do have a backlog of photos, observations, and stories to share, along with the standard amount of ranting and whining. But since I still seem to be in a time warp today, I will simply leave you with a matching quiz challenge, and will return with those other elements within the next few days.

It'll be easy enough to identify the elements in column one. Your challenge is to match them to the appropriate item in column two. They do not necessarily have a direct correlation; you may have to apply a bit of Kevin Bacon reasoning to find the solution. But I am certain you can solve it if you stick with it. Good luck, and have a great day!

Grinch	Potsie Weber
Gorn	Al Bundy
Grok	Frank-N-Furter
Gozer	Emperor of Rome in 35AD
Gort	Frosted Flakes
Grunka Lunka	Tuque

Thanksgiving 2013

I actually think it's kinda creepy that the Google homepage assaulted me with a special birthday doodle.

I wonder what was on everyone else's computers today? I would hate to have missed learning about the 100th anniversary of the invention of the Fourier Transform or something.

I also received cheerful BD emails from a boatload of vendors who really shouldn't know about my birthday. On the plus side, I got a bunch of emails saying a zillion people had written greetings on my Facebook wall. (I logged on to Facebook, but couldn't find any of them, and have no idea how to acknowledge the comments. I don't know why Facebook baffles me so completely, but I really just don't get it. Anyway, thanks to all the friends who wished me a happy birthday!)

And if that weren't enough, I also received a bunch of food. Desmond, Lisa, and Stephanie all brought food to swim practices, and Erin delivered my Thanksgiving catering order of burritos, chocolate-chip peanut butter cookies, and chocolate mint marshmallows. They are amazing!

Everything was delicious! But seriously, you should check out http://divatasticgladiator.com/ and order some of those marshmallows. (I don't know if she's already booked with orders for Christmas catering, but no matter what sort of food you like, chances are good she can impress you with her versatile culinary skills.)

Anyway, I'll share more about my birthday in a moment. But first I need to catch up on some pre-Thanksgiving events. Here's a photo I took while in Wichita:



I bet that could inspire an entire Stephen King novel. But it's actually nothing weird at all; it's just my dad watching my brother change a flat tire in his driveway.

Hey, I actually helped! While it's true that my brother got all of the handyman genes available to our family, I can still do simple things like turn a lug wrench.

My dad had just turned 94. He still gets around pretty well, though he no can no longer reliably articulate the difference between a Gorn and an Archon. But he can still eat pizza with plenty of gusto, and still wants to be useful and involved. Fortunately, we were able to talk him out of helping with the tire...though my sister ended up getting stuck with taking it to the station for the repair.

Dad also helped us sort through some memorabilia he wanted us to take and preserve. Unfortunately, many of the papers and photos had succumbed to entropy, but I did end up with quite a few family pictures that I'll be scanning and archiving over the next several months. I'm hoping that some of the information hidden in those old crates will help me fill in some gaps in our family's genealogy.

This portrait is my great grandfather, Asa Osias Gere, in his Union Army uniform from his service in the Civil War. He looks like he's about 12 years old -- I'll let you know if I find out exactly how old he actually was in the photo.

As for the rest of us, here's a current family photo:



Anyway, after I returned to Denver, I was surprised to receive a package from UPS. I hadn't ordered anything at that point -- after all, it wasn't even Black Friday yet. I didn't recognize the shipping label. And when I opened the package, it appeared to be a children's book.

? ? ? ? ?

Then I actually looked at the cover and saw the author's name. OK, I thought, this might actually be intended for me after all.



The source was still a mystery. But the autograph on the title page confirmed that this was indeed a birthday present:



A few pages into the book, the mystery was resolved. There was a picture of my college roommate and best friend with my number one musical and literary hero:



Wow! What a great birthday present! I can't remember ever getting anything that made me smile any wider than this. I immediately wrote an email to Mickey to thank him. It turns out that Al was in Tulsa to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the filming of the movie UHF, and Mickey stood in line for a couple of hours to get this book signed for me. That is a true friend. (And you gotta give credit to Al for knowing how to pose for book signing photos. Class act all the way.)

It was a great birthday. And I'm looking forward to the next year. I've started making plans for doing some special things during my 60th orbit on this planet. Of course, the National Championship triathlon is a big part of those plans. And I'm trying to take my training seriously.

I have learned, though, that "seriously" is not necessarily the same as "smart." I had decided that I needed to do some cross-fit style plyometric training to increase my power and agility...so I attempted to do one of Erin's calisthenic workouts on Thanksgiving morning. It didn't sound that hard; just four sets of jumping, tossing medicine balls, and running in place.

I had plans to run a lot over the weekend, but I was SO sore from that Thanksgiving "jumping around" workout that I could barely walk, much less crank out any running mileage. (Sigh.) But the good news is that after a 6000-yard swim practice on Sunday morning, I finally started to loosen up. I should be able to return to my scheduled activities this week (though of course, the change in the weather and the fact that I have proposals due at work might have an impact.) We'll see.

As for Thanksgiving and my birthday, well, I'd just like to thank you all for being my friends...and for being kind enough to drop by my blog page. I do appreciate it. I'm looking forward to a great year-end and a fantastic 2014. I hope you are, too. Thanks for everything, and have a great day!