Todd Bradley’s Galaxy

Beth and I finally went to see the latest Bond movie, “Quantum of Solace.”  I enjoyed it quite a bit more than I expected!  Everyone I talked to said it wasn’t as good as “Casino Royale” but I’m not sure I agree.  And if you’re having trouble parsing that sentence, it means I think it may have been as good as “CR”.

One of the disadvantages of living at the top of the hill overlooking open space is that we get a lot of wind in the winter.  Last night and this morning, it’s unusually bad.  According to the web, the highest gust last night was 82.  I think it’s blowing pretty steadily at about 50 to 60 mph right now.

The wind is so bad it:

• blew 5 Christmas trees across the park into our yard (there’s a drop-off point for old trees about 1/4 mile away) - that’s right, entire blue spruce trees are blowing across the park as if they’re tumbleweeds
• blew one of the gutter downspouts right off the side of the house (who knows where it is now, maybe Nebraska)
• blew my Weber grill apart (the remains are in the yard)
• is making the ceiling in the top floor of the house squeak as the negative pressure tries to pull off the roof
• makes me nervous to stand by the back door for fear the glass is going to explode

Looking back at my blog posts the past couple months I can see they’ve probably been even more boring than usual.  Back in November, there was a bunch of political/election stuff, and then there’s been a bunch of stuff related to my upcoming ear surgery.  But not much else.  So let me try to fix that.

At the moment, Beth and I are up in the Rocky Mountains not far from Marble, Colorado.  My parents retired to a log house up here several years ago, and we decided to spend Christmas with them this year.  We drove here from Broomfield on Wednesday through some fairly snowy conditions.  Thursday was Christmas, of course.  In the morning we exchanged gifts, and then some of Mom’s friends came over and we had a nice Christmas dinner of turkey, ham, dressing, cranberry sauce, green salad, rolls, etc.  They brought a Cranium game with them and we played that for a while and then spent the evening playing with all our new toys and stuff.

Friday the 26th, we braved the blizzard to go to Carbondale.  I needed to go to the post office to mail my old MacBook Pro that I sold on eBay.  And then we went to one of the few fancy restaurants in Carbondale.  It was pretty good food.  I was hoping to go hang out at the coffee shop while Beth and Mom went shopping.  But the sold coffee shop in the whole town closed at 1 PM.  So after the ladies hit one antiques store, we just went to the grocery store and then home.  That evening, my parents went to go pick up my aunt Carol and two of her grandkids, while Beth and I stayed warm and read.

This morning, after a breakfast of French toast, we went sledding in the driveway.  The snowdrifts up here are around 6 to 8 feet deep now, and the driveway’s pretty packed.  On each side of the driveway, there’s a berm of snow about 4 feet high.  So one of the first things I did was carve out the snow “cliff” near the bottom of the run into kind of an embankment.  So then the plastic disk type sleds would go up onto the bank and then be able to continue on, rather than just crashing and stopping there.  Once that started working pretty well, I carved a new trail off the side of the hill.  It was pretty much a 70 degree drop for about 20 feet onto the driveway.  Everyone thought I was crazy, but once I carved out the path, my cousins tried it and loved it.

Later today, there are a couple options.  Beth and Mom may go to Basalt to do some shopping.  And I want to take the rare opportunity of having Dad and his one sister, Carol, in the same place at the same time.  You see, I’m working on a documentary about their parents.  I’ve interviewed both of them separately, but never together.  And I think the conversation will be much more lively with both of them playing off each other.

Tomorrow, we pack up and then drive to Hot Sulphur Springs.  We’re going to check into the Riverside Hotel, and probably have supper there (if not there, then the Parshall Inn).  Then we get to go soak in the hot springs a while.  Monday morning, we’ll drive home by way of Grand Lake and hit our favorite breakfast place, the Fat Cat.  I figure the roads are going to be packed Sunday night with all the ski traffic plus Christmas traffic trying to get home to Denver.  But we’ll be going home Monday, and I’m hoping we’ll really miss most of the traffic.

Some of my Christmas gifts:

• “Warcraft III”
• a “mix tape” CD of my brother’s favorite songs
• “A Guide to Prehistoric Astronomy of the Southwest”
• a cool new wool cap which I wore today sledding
• candy
• “When We Left the Earth - The NASA Missions” on Blu-Ray

Yesterday was my last day of work for seven weeks or so.  You see, I’m taking the next two weeks off as a combination of vacation and the annual Polycom office closure between Christmas and New Years.  And then the first week of 2010, I’m flying to Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  There, on Tuesday the 6th and Wednesday the 7th, I have pre-op tests, and then on Thursday the 8th I go in for surgery to have my superior semicircular canal dehiscence repaired.

The plan is for me to spend the first day after surgery in ICU and then the second day in a regular hospital bed.  Then, if all looks OK, I’m free to “go home” to recover for the rest of the week.  Of course, there’s no way I’ll be able to travel home that soon (it’s a 3 hour plane flight or a 19 hour drive by car).  So Beth and I are staying in a hotel for another 10 days or so.

I’m hoping to then fly home on January 21, where I’ll spend another two weeks recovering at home.  And then, assuming I’m ready, I’ll go back to work on February 9.  All told, that’s 7 weeks off work!  I wish I could say it was going to be fun, but recovering from major surgery isn’t likely to be really fun.  I guess I’ll get some rest, at least.  In fact, I expect to be bored out of my gourd by the end of it, and anxious to return to work.

Some other filmmakers and I are planning to do a few short films about various things related to my ear problems, including one film we hope to distribute nationally to health care providers to help teach them about this particular disorder, how to identify it, and where to turn for more information.

I learned two new things about myself today.

First, I discovered this morning that I have Tullio phenomenon.  I didn’t realize it before, but after sitting downstairs for a while I ran upstairs to talk to Beth.  My heart was beating loud in my right ear, due to the sudden exercise.  As I was looking out the window I realized that my eyes were “bouncing” left and right in time with the sound of my heartbeat.  The medical term for this is pathologic nystagmus.  It’s a common symptom of superior canal dehiscence.  But, although I suspected I had some mild symptoms like this, I didn’t know for sure until today.  It was strange.  I held my head perfectly still against the glass of the window, and focused on a tree in the park.  My line of sight, though, bounced about 10 feet to the left of the tree whenever I could hear my pulse.

Second, according to Dr. Gianoli’s initial review of my head MRI from a couple months ago, I have an empty sella.  Gianoli’s the most likely person to do surgery on me to fix my superior canal dehiscence (see above), and so I sent him some of my medical test results, the week before last.  I got an email today from him saying he’s looked things over, and he noticed the empty sella, which wasn’t noted on the report.  Nobody else who looked at the MRI mentioned this to me.  I don’t even know what it means, other than what I read on Wikipedia.

When I was a teenager, I spent a lot of time playing a role playing game called Traveller.  If you’ve never heard of it, one of the fundamental game rules is that instead of just “rolling up” a character like you do in Dungeons & Dragons, you create a character who’s age 18 and then goes into some military (or quasi-military) service.  The idea is that during that service, he gains skills that will be useful once he musters out and the real game begins.  It also adds an extra element of randomness to the characters, because you determine what happens during each 4-year term by rolling the dice.

Well, one thing the game designers put in was the chance that the character might die during his military service.  Certainly seems reasonable, but it has a strange impact on gameplay because you might spend an hour or two creating a background history for your character only to have him killed off in the service.  One thing the rules didn’t say, though, was why the character died - only that he didn’t survive his military term.  So my friend Mike and I dreamed up some reasons why we thought military men in a sci-fi far future story might die.  In fact, Mike - who was a good artist and had fine motor control - created a small 6-sided die with the 6 causes of spaceman death.  From then on, whenever we’d be playing and someone’s character would die during character creation, we’ll throw this special die to see what happened.

I forgot about all this until just today I stumbled across the random death die while cleaning house.  Here were the possibilities:

1. inter-stellar social disease (the dreaded ISSD)
2. killed by friendly fire
3. fiery landspeeder crash (my personal favorite)
4. cardiac arrest
5. spontaneous combustion (ouch!)
6. hydraulic press

I now remember that “hydraulic press” was inspired by the Longshoremen song “Canning Factory” from their Walk the Plank album.  That album was released in 1986 and I quit playing Traveller sometime around 1989, so that narrows down when the death die must have been created.

After all these years, a couple of the faces of the die are extremely difficult to read, but I’m pretty sure that’s what they all said.

Mark this one “duh” but I just now realized after looking at CNN’s election results that we’ll have a Democrat President as well as a Democratic majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.  Looks like the Dems will have all the chips, so to speak.  If they can’t achieve great things in the next two years, then shame on them!  They may not get this same opportunity again in my lifetime.

ABC News just called the election for President of the United States in Obama’s favor.  And that means that for the first time in my life, I voted for a non-incumbent candidate who won the presidency.

In 2004, I voted for John Kerry, who lost to George W. Bush.

In 2000, I voted for Al Gore, who lost to George W. Bush.

In 1996, I think I voted for Bill Clinton.  He actually won, but was the incumbent.

In 1992, I voted for Ross Perot, who lost to Bill Clinton.

In 1988, the first election in which I could vote, I can’t remember for sure, but I think I voted for the Libertarian candidate, Ron Paul.  And of course he lost to George H.W. Bush.

I got this email from a left wing friend of mine this morning.  He lives in California.  While I doubt all these statistics are 100% accurate, I think the message they send it mostly true, and quite hilarious.  It reminded me of my despair being stuck in a red state at the last election, though maybe Colorado is going to be a blue state this time around.

Anyhow, without further ado:

Dear Red States:

We’ve decided we’re leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we’re taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren’t aware, that includes California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get the Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building. You get  Dollywood. We get Apple, Intel, Cisco and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Yale. You get Ole’ Miss. We get 85 percent of America’s venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama. We get two-thirds of the tax revenue. You now get to make the red states pay their fair share.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition’s, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms. Please be aware that New California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we’re going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they’re apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don’t care if you don’t show pictures of their children’s caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq, and hope that the WMDs turn up.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country’s fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation’s fresh fruit, 95 percent of America’s quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners), 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias, condors and Bigfoot, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT. With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia. We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we’re discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.

Finally, we’re taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed shit they grow in Mexico.

Peace out,

Blue States

Today is the first day I’ve had in weeks where I didn’t have anything planned.  And so I’m hoping to take best advantage of it and catch up on a ton of R&R.  Not only that, but I got an extra hour due to the time change!

Last weekend was fully action packed, because I attended the MileHiCon 40 sci-fi and fantasy convention.  I was fully immersed, and even got a room in the convention hotel Friday and Saturday night so I could just go crash whenever I wanted.  That ended up being pretty convenient and nice.  It was almost like a vacation, getting away for a weekend.  The con’s mainly for fans, but there were a few writer oriented seminars.  I probably sat in on 6 or 7 discussion sessions, total.  Plus, I saw a presentation on the history of computer graphics in film/video by someone who’s done it all.  I saw a few contests, some awesome costumes, did some shopping, and spent a fair amount of time in the bar drinking with writers.  Plus, I had several hours in my hotel room to just write, which was nice.

Even though going away to the con was a nice break, it’s nice to have this weekend at home.  Friday night Beth and I went to see Ballet Nouveau Colorado’s production of Garrett Ammon’s Rock Ballets.  It was three acts of contemporary ballet set to the music of INXS, Queen, and David Bowie, respectively.  It was really impressive.  Parts of it were so good, it made me weep.  Based on an awesome show by that same ballet company I saw last year I got season tickets this year, and I’m looking forward to the rest of the performances.  Beforehand, we had pizza at Virgilio’s Pizzeria Napoletana. It routinely gets awards for the best pizza in town, and has an astoundingly high ranking on Google Local.  The service was haphazard, bordering on lousy.  But the pizza was indeed exceptional.  So, since we were out for dinner and a show Friday night, we didn’t buy any Halloween candy this year.

Saturday morning I went to the grocery store and worked on my Halloween costume for Saturday night’s party.  Saturday during the day I had my gaming friends over and we played Dungeons & Dragons all afternoon.  It was fun, but I was the game master which means doing a lot of talking, and my ear problems make it very uncomfortable to talk much.  So I’m handing the game over to Chris to run for the next few months until after I’m recovered from my surgery next year.

Then, after all my friends went home I finished putting the costume together, and we went to the party.  I was Tim the Low Budget Enchanter, inspired by Tim the Enchanter from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  Beth was a flapper girl, using a costume she bought off the rack.  The party was a combo birthday party for Nick and Halloween party.  They warned that if you didn’t come wearing a costume, a costume would be provided for you.  But I think everyone arrived with a costume.  Some were great, like Buttman (a take on Batman) and his sidekick Swallow (a variant of Robin).  And the hosts were Princess Leia and Han Solo, which was cool.  There was also a Nurse Ratchet that looked good.  The party started to fizzle earlier than I expected (no fault of the awesome food and drink) and I think we were home by midnight.

And that brings us up to Sunday morning!  Here I am updating my blog and downloading the latest software updates for my new MacBook Pro, which arrived yesterday.  (woo hoo!)