Your Weekly Whoomp

Well, April Fool’s day was last week. I hope you were stoopid for that one day. Please, next April first, if you’re told there’s an elephant in the back yard, go look. There may be one.
That was a minor mistake (I probably made more, bigger ones) I made while raising my own. They played their own little childlike pranks - and I never fell for them. Hey, one day a year of pretending to be stupid can only add to you child’s fond memories when they grow up.
Today’s Easter. I remember, when Russ was small, we hid 12 Easter eggs around the living room. Russ went looking for them and found 11.
I said, “Russ, turn on the light, please.” He turned the switch on the lamp, and continued to look for the missing egg.
I said, “Russ, why didn’t you turn on the light?”
He said, “I did!”
I asked, “Gee, I wonder what’s wrong with it! Why don’t you take out the bulb, and we’ll change it.”
He looked under the lampshade and found the 12th egg where the bulb should have been.
Every year after that, the lamp was the first place he looked, even if the light was on! Mea culpa! Maybe I should have played into him and put one there - at least once! Anyway, after that one time, he never found another one there.
Well, HAPPY EASTER!

Sorry about that.

Small moratorium in the advent of Linda Johnson’s death. You don’t know her, and I’ve never mentioned her before. She was a nice lady that I’ve known for years. Once the moratorium was over, I had trouble getting into the swing of whoomps.

Susan accepted a ring (diamond, of course) (from me, of course). We’re still trying to ascertain the significance if it.

I case you’re curious, damages from the accident (August 1, 2005) included a totaled car, 14 rib fractures a spot of blood on the brain and, (what do you expect when you have 14 bone fragments floating inside your rib cage) a punctured lung.

The blood spot and the lung healed overnight.but. yunno, you only have 13 ribs on each side, countem! If I had 14 rib fractures on one side, that means at least one was fractured twice! That means an extra long time to heal. Took 6 months. I’ve had muscle sprains take much longer, 11 months, for example.

This is the first day of a new year! 2007, in case you hadn’t heard! I hope your new year will be at least as good as mine is gonna be!.

Got a note from Russ, my oldest, who, rightfully, pointed out that the inside of a can of red paint was white, or possibly, silver, depending on the manufacturer.
I read that and said, “??”, and looked back at the whoomp.
I had, in fact, asked, “What color is the inside of a can of red paint, before you open the can?” And then, I proceeded to talk about the color of the paint. He picked up on what my unintentional question really was and described the inside of the container, after it was opened, of course. He didn’t concede that without light, the inside of the can was probably black–or maybe he decided that it was unnecessary.
Also, I made a statement I’m not sure I completely understand, last week.
I was talking about my temporary reassignment, and pointed out that it wasn’t rocket science.
Thinking about that statement, I got to thinking, “What’s complicated about rocket science?” If you fill a balloon with air and let it go, you understand the basic premise of rocketry, but then you have to consider stabilizing it, directing it, computing a viable payload, and continuously building better and better fuels-and don’t forget safety concerns.
????
Guess I answered my own question, huh?
Well, lookee here! A truly short whoomp!

I found out recently that I’m about to become a grandfather again! My fourth grandchild, second grandson, is due around Thanksgiving! Maybe I’d better tell my sons what’s causing it, quick!
Yunno, this past week, a reporter wrote an article about the “Blackfeet Indians”! I read the article, but the content of the article was lost in the number of times he used the term throughout the article. Those of us who didn’t drop out of grade school know that there are no Blackfeet Indians. There is one Blackfoot Indian and there are many Blackfoot Indians. Blackfoot is the name of the tribe.
Except for the special detail I was on this last week, there’s not really not too much to whoomp about! It seems like every day, I learned some way to do my temporary job better or to make someone else’s job easier. The job had nothing to do with rocket science. I won’t bore you with the details, but we had to get vehicles of all kinds ready for shipment to Kuwait!
Anyway, let’s get on to the subject line!
Do you know what color a can of red paint is, before you open the can? The proper (according to some authorities) answer is, “Black, because there is no light to reflect.”
But someone else may say, “Don’t be ridiculous! Someone put red pigment into the paint, the can says ‘red’, and when you open the can, you don’t have to wait for even a short period of time to wait for the paint to turn red! Of course it’s red inside the can!”
But as I said in the subject line, this is not about the can of paint.
I cite the paint to show that this is a point about which you can argue. That is to say that the point is arguable. One might even say, “Arguably, the paint inside an unopened can of red paint is black!
Pet peeve!
People make statements like, “Arguably, the sun lights our days!” There’s nothing arguable about it! They should say, “inarguably” in its place!
Well, I got that off my chest! Time to put the soapbox away!

Not really too much to whoomp about this time, so, I guess I’ll just share a couple thoughts about my cane.
My boss asked me if I’d beat anybody with my cane yet, and, having thought the conditions under which I’d use it, I said, “Yunno, being mad isn’t a good enough reason to hit someone with my cane… I’d hafta be scared!”
Someone once asked me why I don’t use it at work. After much thought, the answer is really very simple, and didn’t warrant as much thought as I put into it. I don’t want my coworkers to think I can’t handle my part of the load, and I don’t want coworkers to think I want them to think I can’t handle my part of the load. So my cane gets hung up at work.
Now, this next story really does have something to do with the cane, so bear with me.
A pirate walked into a bar in pretty bad shape. He had a wooden leg, a hook for his left hand, and a patch on his eye.
The bartender said, “Hey, Pete, I haven’t seen you in a long time! What happened to your leg?”
The pirate answered, “Got it blown off by a cannonball!”
The bartender continued, “That’s too bad! What happened to your hand?
“Got it cut off in a sword fight.”
“You’re ALL messed up! What happened to your eye?”
“A seagull, flying overhead, pooped in it!”
“Seagull poop? That wouldn’t cause you to lose your eye!”
“Well, it was the day after I got this new hook….
Now, if you didn’t get it, imagine you would do immediately upon something getting in your eye.
Now, here’s the part where my cane comes in. Remember when I said that I had put a spike on it? Well getting into the car at the same time as the cane, I sat on the spike. I was wondering if I drew blood, but, so far, nobody’s mentioned it.
So, why am I using a cane at all. You might well ask. Ever since I watched, “The Avengers”, an adventure series of yore, starring a pair of Brits, I’ve thought a cane was cool, but I never had a reason to justify the cost.
My excuse was handed to me on August first, via a Ford EXP, which gave me those 14 rib fractures, and, soon afterward, I wanted a signal to tell drivers, as a pedestrian, “I know I’m not moving very fast, but there’s probly a reason.”
It worked.
My ribs have healed, I’ve taken cane Hapkido classes, so, now, the cane is a means of self defense, and an external “cool” thing. but, occasionally, like today, I wonder if the having a cane isn’t just too much of a pain in the ass.
This is the part where I usually say, “Please write” or something like that, but after this letter of confession, I’m not sure I want you to! Maybe you will anyway!