A first in history!

So we left for the French Embassy (yes, you apply IN PERSON for a French visa) at 3:15 a.m., and arrived in front of the building at 7:30... plenty way ahead of time for our appointment at 9:00. Great parking spot, right outside the gate. I took a little nap in the seat. Donna, having slept the ENTIRE way there, read a novel.

At about 8:35 we walked over to the gate itself, arriving about 2 minutes later... call it 8:37.

"We're here for our appointment at 9 o'clock," we say.

"No. No one is permitted past until eight forty five," says the woman at the gate.

There's nowhere to sit, and we're clearly not welcome to loiter at the gate. A car with diplomat plates drives through. We've got a few minutes to kill. We return to the truck.

I mention to Donna on the way that we've just made history!

Huh?

Yes, this is the FIRST TIME in history that France has ever successfully repelled an invading force! Woo Hoo!

Of course, 7 minutes later we waltz right in.

Now THAT's more like it!

As it turns out, her 15 minute appointment, from 9 to 9:15, was done right on the button. They have 15 min. time slots for the visa appointments. You show up, they call your name, you walk up to the window, hand in some basic papers. They then call you again a few minutes later, you hand them the rest of the papers (including the form saying that they require a vaccination that is not available in the U.S.), and you're out the door in 15 minutes.

Heaven help you if you don't have ALL of the required paperwork, notarized signatures, photos.
Heaven help you if you miss your time slot by even one minute.
Heaven help you if you don't have the funds (charged whether visa is approved or not) with you.

Go back home, reschedule the appointment on the web (it'll be in a few weeks) and try again.

Fortunately, I think everything was in order, and we're expecting her visa in another week or so. No one has called yet to complain about anything, so we're hoping/expecting success. Sadly, up until June 1, 2009 they did issue visas on the spot... now it takes a week. Whatever...

Of course, I also mentioned to Donna that the French Embassy has two stamps for the visa approval department. One is heavy, about 8 inches in diameter, has a giant red ink pad that is kept full, and says the word NON!!. They love using the big red stamp.

The other stamp, about 1 inch in diameter, uses a little green ink pad that always dries out, and says the word Oui.

So we're not out of the woods yet...

. . .

So now it's 9:15 and we've got a few hours to kill. My bro would've been proud. Wanted to do the Washington Monument, but they meter out the tour tickets, and we were too late, even at 9:45 when we got there, for any tour earlier than 8 p.m. Bummer. But we did the National Aquarium, the Smithsonian Natural History museum, and Air & Space. Natural history was AWESOME... I called home while standing under T-Rex, we checked out the Hope Diamond, and we saw another exhibit "Written in Bone... Forensic Files of the 17th Century Chesapeake" that was absolutely FASCINATING! We wandered into the exhibit and there's a guy with a crowd around him... very interesting guy and clearly knows his stuff. Turns out he's the curator of the exhibit, and the group around him is a bunch of social studies teachers from San Antonio, there on a teacher learning trip. They didn't mind if we hung out & listened, and listen we did. Except for the invasion of France, this http://anthropology.si.edu/writteninbone/ was the highlight of the trip.

. . .

We had to leave around 1 p.m. since I had to be back for a concert.

Yes, my bro would've been proud of that trip. One day, one embassy, three museums, ~9 hrs. of driving, and a concert. THAT's good efficiency!

ESK

Getting ready for France

It's... almost... time. Our daughter Donna is getting ready to hit the trail for France, as part of the Rotary Youth Exchange. She's spending her senior hear of high school there, and we've spent a lot of time the last few days getting everything together. There are papers from France, papers in French, papers that she needs to fill out in both French & English. A trip to Triple-A for more passport photos for the visa, notarized this and notarized that. Purchase a plane ticket. Fund her debit card. Many copies of everything, and it all must be perfect.

Tomorrow we drive to Washington, DC to apply for the student visa. Yes, this is done in person, and yes, if you live where we do, you drive to DC and show up at the French Embassy. The good news is that they say that if everything is in order, they'll issue a visa on the spot. That would be way cool indeed...

Scammers

Got a call on the home line today from caller ID 786-333-0000 / Eric Corrales. Female prerecorded voice says "we can lower your credit card interest rate to 6.9%" or something like that. Smelling a rat, but with a little time available, I pressed 9 to be connected to a live human. Sounded like a call center in India, but maybe it was just a couple knuckleheads in a basement in (anonymous city here). Immediately asked them for their company name (first he said "MCS" then when pressed "Master Card Services") and address (fake... Calypso Cay Way, Orlando FL 25230 is what they said), and they gave me a callback number of 800-943-3250. I talked with one agent, then a "supervisor" then they disconnected.

The 800# they gave me answers at:

Mutual Consolidated Savings
1215 Earnest S. Brazil Suite 33
Tacoma, WA 98405-4025


I spoke with an actual American human being, Mandy at MCS, who said not only was it OK if I record the call, but they haven't called anyone in this state in 5 years... too much trouble with the do not call list, getting registered to do business here and all that.

She also mentioned that MCS has a cease & desist order against an Orlando, FL company called JPM & Associates, which may or may not be the knuckleheads mentioned above.

Reported all this to donotcall.gov... who knows, they may be able to do something with the info someday.

Moral of the story... if someone calls you looking to "help" you with your credit cards, or especially for credit card info, don't waste your time. It's a scam.

Scammers / phishers / spammers... may they all rot.

Office cleanup time

So I decided to do a little spring cleaning here in the office the last couple days. Ran into trouble when I couldn't fuel the flamethrower (ran out of napalm, unfortunately). Had an old buddy/roommate from college mention that he cleans out his car with a leaf blower.

Now, that would beat the heck out of my Plan B... and I couldn't figure out how to get a backhoe through the door anyway.

If I could just pull one of those trucks with the leaf-blowers mounted on the back right up next to the office, then reach in through the window with a hose... Hmmm...

Kate & Jay's Birthday 4-11-09

Copyright 2009 by Ed Kmetz


Yo:

Kate & Jay are now into their second decade as of 07:50 and 07:52 this morning. Double digits for the dynamic duo.

Happy birthday wishes to them. I have to tell you about their party. First, a little back story.


So we (mostly Karen) decided that their party would consist of 10 (ten) kids. Each of them gets to invite 4 friends. They'll arrive for dinner Friday night for "make your own pizza," stay overnight, we hammer some breakfast into them, they play games outside Saturday , then parent pickup is around 3.

That's the plan. So far, so good.

Karen has numerous outdoor games planned, plus guess the gummy bears, draw strange pictures of people (as only 10 year olds can do), watch a movie in the (almost completed) theater downstairs. The kiddies will jump on the trampoline, have races, play with Halley, ride razor scooters down the driveway, play volleyball, and on and on.

That was the plan.

Of course the weather forecast does not cooperate, and all week they're calling for floods, tornadoes, locusts. Ark-building is recommended. So we have to plan on a plan B.


Keep in mind, too, that there are differences, stark and many, between 10 year old girls and 10 year old boys. These differences cannot and must not be ignored.

Let's start with last night....

After dinner we tell 'em all get your PJ's on, then we'll put on a movie in the theater for you. Now, I have a Vudu movie server with 12,000 titles available, so selection is not expected to be a problem. I put on the filter for "family" movies in high def, and the list is narrowed to 292. So I figure it's time to have some fun. I hand Jay the Vudu remote and say "here, all of you decide on a movie."

Try getting ten 10-year-olds to agree on anything, but especially the single most watchable movie of nearly 300. I basically poured gas on the floor and tossed a match into it. It was awesome. I couldn't resist.

I headed upstairs.

The discussion continued downstairs for maybe 8 - 10 minutes. Call it discussion if you like, but know that the negotiating tactics of 10 year old boys are based strictly on volume, and not at all on logic, compromise, or tact.
Girl: "I LOVE that movie"
Boy: "That's a STUPID movie, I wanted to barf."

And so it went.

Finally, I decided that rather than having them declaring all out war, or reaching a bitter, movieless stalemate... and having started the conflict I figured I'd better mediate the conflict. Found something (one of the "most watched" features) that about 7 of 10 agreed on, and only 2 or 3 thought was stupid.

An hour and a half or so, and a couple gallons of popcorn later, they head back upstairs. Movie pronounced satisfactory by all as it turns out.

Time for bed.

We corral the 5 boys into the living room, the 5 girls up in Kate's room. There's the constant underhum of girl giggling and chatter until who knows what time. The boys talk and scream, then a couple drop off line, then pretty quickly all of them are circuit breakers tripped. Like puppies, when the boys go down, they go down hard and they're out like they're under anesthesia. The girls giggle and chat quietly until who knows what time (word this morning was that they stayed up until 01:30, but who really knows...). The girl sound level is low enough that it doesn't matter much if they're awake and quiet or asleep and quiet. Quiet is quiet enough.

Now it's this morning. 07:30. The first girls awake, they decide to play the game hangman. No doubt it's words like "turquoise" and "gentle" and "breezes."

The first boys wake up about the same time and within seconds, all boys are awake.

The girls chatter quietly amongst each other, and giggle. Another game of hangman... "pastel" or "zephyr" this time. All girls gently awake and wish each other a good and delightful morning.

The boys start by drilling holes in each other's heads. They swing at each other with machetes. Contact is frequent.

A butterfly lands on Katie's bed upstairs, and the girls watch, breathless, at the gentle flapping of its wings.

The boys chainsaw through the sofa. They jackhammer the floor.

The girls cure the common cold, then ask to be excused.

The boys start the Chicago Fire.


We finally get them all dressed and rounded up and at the breakfast table for chow. Pancakes fly, syrup is dispensed, bacon is nuked, orange juice poured. Kid bellies fill. Before we know it, they're all outside. 5 girls head for the trampoline. The rain has somehow held off.

5 boys grab a new birthday "flying ring," a gizmo like a Frisbee but without a middle. It can fly 25,000 feet when propelled by appropriate boy power.

It can, however, only fly 50 ft. horizontally and 20 ft. vertically when tossed up straight into a tree, which happened maybe 2 minutes into play.

I couldn't find the camera, but it would've been an award-winning shot for sure. One fluorescent yellow flying ring hooked around the end of a skinny tree branch, 20 ft. up. 5 boys staring up at the ring, mouths open, like turkeys in the rain. They head for the garage to find tools. Out come rakes, hoes, a broom. After some minutes they conclude that even a 5 ft. long broom handle held by a 4 ft. boy is no match for a 20 ft. tree. One boy decides to lift another boy into "piggy back" position. They both fall down. They try the tools again, with no success. They then decide to build a human pyramid, so Victor gets on the ground on all fours. Jay climbs up on Victor's back. They enlist Trevor, the smallest kid, to climb on Jay's back. Trevor gets as far as Victor's back and the whole works collapses in a heap of random boy parts. Minutes pass. Plans are argued, debated, considered, rejected. Tools are tried again. Clark climbs the tree, reaches fruitlessly, and beats a retreat. Hunter climbs the tree and as he's a bit taller, he can actually reach the offending branch. Shake shake. Shake shake shake. SHAKE SH

The ring falls from the tree!

The boys storm the house in glorious celebration, like ancient hunters returning with a wildebeest tied around a sagging carry pole. They did it! It was all about the TEAMWORK! There was NEVER any doubt! They had it ALL the way!

By that time, 09:30, it was time to head for the climbing gym... the "Plan B" mentioned above. http://www.northsummitclimbing.com/

10 kids, plus Donna, wanted to climb the walls. We get 'em all saddled up.

2 hrs. of climbing ensued. Super-nice and careful people there at the climbing gym. Almost all the kids had a ball, except for one who claimed fear of heights after he made it up about 3/4 of the way, and another who had suffered a *severe* ankle injury earlier in the day. (He required much ice, and rest. Fortunately, no Medevac. Somehow he managed to recover in time for baseball practice this afternoon.)

If I were judging, and this was a competition, the girls would've won it going away. The girls left scorch marks as they scampered up the walls. I'm thinking a couple of them could've done it upside down. Most of the boys held their own, though. The look of pride on all their faces as they'd come down off a difficult technical climb all the way to the top was way worth the trip.

Brought them all back to the house. Lunched 'em and ice cream caked 'em.

Back out into the yard for an (uneventful!) session of ring toss and trampoline.

Parents came. Kids packed up and left. A couple of our good friends hung around and helped us polish off some chow that was jamming our fridge.

The rain held off.

Tired, but quite satisfied. A good day. A great birthday for K & J.


Happy Easter!




ESK



Copyright 2009 Ed Kmetz. All Rights Reserved. ALL broadcast, publication, retransmission to e-mail lists, WWW or any other copying or storage, in any medium, online or not, is
STRICTLY PROHIBITED without PRIOR written permission from the author. MANUAL FORWARDING by e-mail to friends is allowed IF 1) the text is forwarded IN ITS ENTIRETY, from the Copyright line on top through the end of this paragraph and 2) NO FEE is charged.

A day of skiing on glass

Yo:

Checking in with a late-nite note after falling asleep in The Chair for a while. Had to record this awesome day for posterity.

Had a bright/early departure for a noteworthy day of water skiing with Fred/Donna. Took the kiddies and a friend from my bidness networking group, Jason. It was Jason's first time, so we were all pretty psyched about that.

Conditions were P E R F E C T. Certainly the best conditions I've ever skiied in. We were in position by about 09:40, and at that time of the day with no wind, a near-glass surface, and nary a competing boat to be had, it was just swish swish swish. This was three feet of trackless Utah powder, but add 60 degrees and move it to the water.

Donna (daughter Donna) is now skiing on one ski, and she launched just fine, pretty much routine at this point. Great accomplishment for her, since it takes many/most people (it certainly took me) many, many attempts to get up on one ski. She was up on one her second weekend of trying... sheez. Kate/Jay are now both up on two skis. Fred and I both do one ski, of course, but Fred is much better at it than me. I'm still working to get nice fans of water on those cuts across the wake. Fred is a pro, makes it look easy, and believe me, it ain't. Jason owns a gym, and expected to snap right out of the water, NO problem. He didn't think that for long... He did manage to get up on two skis for a bit after the obligatory many attempts, much water up the nose, down the throat, and in the ears. I think he's going to be a sore puppy at the gym tomorrow.

Karen will be off WORK next weekend, so we should have a full boat once again, Mom Nature permitting...

Anyway, that's the news flash from here... definitely gotta go night-night. A tip of the cap to Fred/Donna for yet another awesome day on the water, the awesomest.

Cheers

Flying in the B-17

Yo:

Susan reminded me that I hadn't checked in with the post-flight debrief.

Oh man.

Tough to get started, almost one of those "words fail me" things.

Almost.

Attached a few pix to this... hopefully it won't balloon the size of the message too bad. Accidently switched the date setting to Day Month Year, so it really was October 5 when all this happened.

If you want to read more about these planes, check out http://www.collingsfoundation.org/

And now, to our story.

This all came about through one of the guys at the gliderport, who is learning to fly gliders as one of Paul's (bro-in-law) students.. He donated some thousands of bux to the Collings Foundation, got his name on the side of the plane, and as a plane sponsor gets to ride in it from city to city from time to time. Super nice guy... Can bring a few guests along, too. NICE to have friends in high places. Got a pic of him polishing his name on the side (Alain).

Weather started off pretty iffy... when I left home at 9 a.m. it was maybe 800 over, 1 mile in drizzle. But as I left the greater Stroudsburg metroplex and got closer to Hazleton the weather started to break up. By the time we flew around 2 p.m., you couldn't have ordered a better day for this flight. Screaming blue skies, calm air, early fall Poconos warm/cool, awesome all the way.

They sold rides for $400 for what basically amounted to a long spin around the pattern, had 8 or 9 takers for each plane which I guess for Hazleton is some sort of record. While the planes were on display we had a chance to spend time in the B-24... the only restored, flying B-24 anywhere. Remarkable... there's so little space inside either of these two planes for anything but bombs. They planned to have the B-25 there as well but, can you believe it, couldn't get a pilot? I'd do just about anything to fly one of these planes, any one of 'em, and here they are coming up short on pilots. Incredible. (Maybe it's time to get checked out in a B-25... anyone got a spare $30K or so?) Anyway, we took a few pix of the B-24, and climbed around inside... but most of our attention was focused on the -17.

We knew that was our ride.

After they finished with the local flights, it was time for us to climb in for the flight to Carroll County airport in Westminster, MD. We all had to be buckled in during ground ops, but as soon as the wheels left the ground, we could get up & go wherever we wanted. For takeoff I had an awesome seat at the left side, just forward of the waist gunner position, at a radio (with telegraph key). Unlike the folks further back, I actually had a small window. They had to sit on the floor, strapped in... at least I could see out, nice for me.

I expected this airplane to be LOUD... and it was pretty loud, but not as much as I expected. I brought along my DC headset, in case it was either (a) too loud and I had to put them on for protection, or (b) I could plug in. Turns out, I did neither. Those 9 cylinder radial engines really purr, a smooth, flowing sound, no brap brap brap at all. It was way too loud to hold a normal conversation, but you could make yourself heard if you shouted and were about 1 ft. away from the person you're talking to... all in all, about the same acoustics & volume as the Irish pub here in town.

I made a beeline for the bombardier's station as soon as we were wheels up, and stayed there while we climbed to a lofty 2200 ft. for the flight to MD. Scoped it out, spun the seat, adjusted the Norden bombsight, then (grudgingly, hesitatingly) let the others have a crack at it. It requires some gymnastics just to get to the bombardier's station... you have to crawl down through a tunnel, then back up a couple steps. But man, whatta view... perfect viz in all directions, including (especially) straight down. Left the bombardier's station, stood behind the pilots a while (note the GPS moving map in front of the pilot, vs. the 60-year-old power levers with the chipped paint between the pilot and co-pilot). Up to the radio operator's station, confirmed that our mission planning hadn't changed, did some celestial nav, fired a few hundred .50 cal rounds at a swarm of incoming Me262's, saved the B-17 once again. Back to the bombardier's station, took out a ball-bearing factory, an ammo dump, *and* a rail yard -- all on the same bombing run (a record for the month!). Captain Mitty got on the intercom with his warm congratulations on a Job Well Done.

Of course this plane has a few mods, one of the best ones being where they cut the roof off right in the middle of the plane, so as you're flying you can stand up and stick your whole head in the slipstream. An incredible view, completely unrestricted.

As we flew across central PA, I couldn't help but think how the landscape had to look like Germany, 1945... gently rolling hills, mostly small farms, lots of trees, a very few small towns. But you can bet we were thinking very different thoughts than when Uncle Ed was fline these for real Back When.

The other thing that struck me was... the skin on this airplane is t h i n and if you get hurt, you are in a World of Trouble. I never thought about it much, just sort of assumed these planes were armored, or at least protected *somehow*... but no. There is very little space to move around at all, much less try to treat someone who's bleeding all over the floor. Then there's the poor guy stuck in the ball turret (the station below the belly of the airplane... he sits in there scrunched over, firing his machine guns when needed). There's no way out for that guy... he gets in and out of the ball turret only when the plane is parked. So if there's any trouble with landing (say, one of the main gear legs breaks off) it's all over for him.
I had tons of respect for the guys fline these planes before... but now, seeing what they had to work with, thinking of sucking oxygen through a mask in an unpressurized plane at 31,000 ft. when it's 40 below outside and not much warmer in, the 22 year old captains and the 17 year old waist gunners and the 19 year old radio operators, and the guy stuck in that ball turret for 6 hrs. at a time, hoping the gear stays on when they land. Unbelievable.

What an incredible day. Thanks, Uncle Ed.



Cheers