July 7, 2005

• Developments

  
  

  I feel as if a loved one is in surgery and I’m anxiously awaiting news.  Josh, the tech doing the rebuild job on the computer the post office trashed when rosabelle and Rich, her roommate, so generously put it together and donated it to me, called yesterday.  He was getting my last-minute instructions.  He saw fit to warn me that Doug is incompetent to install the XP and Red Hat OS, and to recover the data on the old hard drive.  I tried to reassure him that not only has the kid studied the manuals and practiced that stuff, but he has a friend who is a certifiec tech.  I don’t think he was reassured.  His parting shot was, “When it crashes, come see me.”  Yeah, okay, Josh.  Meanwhile, we’re saving over $400 on the cost of this rebuild job.  If that insurance check can be stretched to buy a new printer (our old one was made by Gutenberg and we can no longer find ink cartridges for it) Josh’s little store will get at least part of that money, anyway.

  
  

  Meanwhile, I wait for further developments.  I’m on my way to Wasilla, and intend to stop in at the comp shop this afternoon just in case.  Stay tuned….

  
  

  
  

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  Watching Amphibians and Birds

  
  

  A couple of weeks ago I heard a bird sound I’d not heard before, a simple “pip” repeated on a single note.  I looked, and spotted two pretty little birds (smaller than the usual run of waterfowl I see, about the size of robins), one in a tree near the edge of the muskeg and the other swimming nearby.  I took a mental snapshot and checked the field guide when I got home.  It was a pair of phalaropes I saw, first time I’ve observed any of those species.  From the maps of their range, I suppose they are most probably northern phalaropes.

  
  

  The occasion on which I saw them was one of my frequent (several times a week) trips to the amphibian viewing station in the park.  Okay, okay… it’s really just a gap in the shrubbery where snowmachines and and four-wheelers have left the road to the cul-de-sac to cross the muskeg.  The muskeg (marsh, swamp) is protected wetlands and the developers of this subdivision marked it as “parkland” on the plats.  I sit there on the edge of the road and watch tadpoles turning to frogs.  As an added pleasure, I see violet-green swallows swooping to snatch mosquitoes out of the air, and two species of diving beetles eating the skeeters’ aquatic larvae.

  
  

  Over the course of the last two weeks, I’ve watched the frogs develop and change dramatically.  They have become ever shyer as they transform from tadpoles.  Originally, the tiny polliwogs that were beetle prey didn’t seem to notice my presence.  Later on, I’d see bigger tadpoles gathered on under-water rocks just below the surface, sunning themselves.  They’d dive as I moved closer, then come back when I settled on the bank to watch.

  
  

  Last week, there were no tadpoles sunning on the rocks.  The water level has receded as the marsh grass has grown taller, and what had been a pond about an acre in expanse had shrunken to several small pools.  After I sat still for a few minutes, several of the transitional froggies, with legs and tails, appeared, moving in a combination of hops and sinuous tail strokes. 

  
  

  This week, the water level is down so far that the only visible puddles are in the 4-wheeler ruts.  I sat there for at least ten minutes without seeing any amphibian activity.  Then I saw several bubbles rise from one particular spot.  I kept focused on it and saw something emerge from the mud at the bottom and pop partially above the surface.  Then this tiny frog, about the size of the first joint of my index finger, hopped away across the muskeg.

  
  

  
  

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  Doug’s D& D Date

  
  

  Did I mention that my 23-year old son Doug was expecting his two best friends from high school to come pick him up Friday evening two weeks ago and take him to town for a weekend of D&D?  Well, it didn’t happen.  Instead, Matt and Seph came to our place, and got there on Thursday while I was in town.  They brought a case of Mountain Dew, a commercial sized bulk tub of Red Vines, and a carton of assorted flavors of Corn Nuts.  Yum!  (said sarcastically — my true reaction is Yeccch!)

  
  

  They spent many hours in Doug’s room role-playing and somewhat fewer hours competing in fighting games and and Katamari Damaci on the PS2 in the living room.  We also used the PS2 to view Seph’s DVDs of the entire  Chobits series. 

  
  

  I’d been hearing about Chobits from Seph in phone conversations while he was in Germany even before he went to Iraq, and in Iraq he had told me about collecting some of the dolls spun off from the anime series.  I knew he was a confirmed Chobits fan, and I watched and listened with interest as Matt criticized the first few episodes as dopey and stupid.  He was reacting, I suppose, to the shallow silliness of the teenage Japanese protagonist.  Then, Matt got caught up in the story.  At the end, he asked something to the effect of how that dopey kid turned out so well and I said it was, “character development, a little trick writers use.”

  
  

  Matt came back from Iraq with a diagnosis of PTSD, and a still-undiagnosed heart problem that sounds to me, from the symptoms, like congestive heart failure.  The doctor he has already seen said it could be linked to Matt’s service in a Bradley fighting vehicle, firing rounds of spent uranium.  The VA was going to get him an appointment with a cardiologist in Anchorage, for further tests.  Meanwhile, Matt tries to avoid excessive physical exertion.  He brought an Australian woman, Kay, home with him when he returned from the Army, but she is now back in Oz working out the paper shuffle for her green card, etc.  She’ll be back.  From what Matt has told me, I’m looking forward to meeting her.

  
  

  Both of these guys are showing some character development of their own.  In some ways, they have been catching up with Doug in terms of socio-political awareness.  The Kid of my heart has always paid attention to history and world events and viewed them with sardonic humor.  Until recently, his two friends were focused on quite different things.

  
  

  Sephiroth took off alone on Sunday for a walk.  He was gone long enough that Matt went out looking for him.  A couple of hours later, I saw him striding up the driveway with an expression of grim determination and a very dirty sword.  In case you don’t recall or haven’t read my earlier blogs about Seph, he owns and wields a sword taller than himself.  The sword’s name is Masamune.

  
  

  He came in the house, cleaned the blade, and said he’d gone down to the Su, the Susitna River from which SuSu, Susitna Sue, got her name.  He said he’d gone maybe half a mile along the bank, using the sword to cut brush until the brush became too heavy for that.  Then he went into the water and waded until he fell in a hole.  With studied calm, he said, “It’s hard to swim with a six-foot sword.”   By the time he got out of the river, he was about three miles downstream from our place.  He laughed and remarked that he’d always thought Link, the little hero in Zelda, was a wimp because he couldn’t swim very well.  Now he understands.

  
  

  My hour is up, gotta go.  Probably next time you hear from me I won’t be on a timer.

  
  

  

  • 3:55 pm
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