I sometimes write about my fantastic experiences as a volunteer medic. Yet sometimes the experience isn’t so fantastic.
All emergency responders put themselves at great risk whenever they go on a call. This is a story of not beating the odds (but it could have been a lot worse).
My wife and I had the opportunity to “have dinner with” the first man to set foot on the moon, Neil Armstrong. It happened to be almost exactly* 43 years after that spectacular event. Like many kids who grew up in the 60s and watched that history being made, Armstrong was a hero to me, so when I got the opportunity to do this, I of course leapt at it.
This is being written in an unusual location. Not my office, not home, not even sitting in the passenger seat while Kit drives. Someone else is driving on our trip to Reno for the Mensa “Annual Gathering” (read: national convention), where Kit and I are speaking. We’re on the California Zephyr — a train (yeah, in the United States!)
Now and then I mention interesting books I’m reading, or TV shows I’m watching. I’ve found two related TV specials that are so good, I ended up saving them and showing them to my wife, who is also finding them fascinating.
Today I’m working while listening to my collection of “weird Christmas music,” which I’ve compiled over the years. Things like the “Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth” mashup duet — by Bing Crosby and David Bowie in 1977. Yeah, really.
Now and then I mention ham radio. I’ve been an “amateur radio operator” (the more formal title) for [gasp] a third of a century now; I’m K0RCC. You’d think, with the Internet creating instant, “free,” worldwide communications, that ham radio would be dwindling away, with just a few old-timers (heck: even older than me!) grasping at the straws of “No! Don’t change!”
It was Labor Day in the U.S. on Monday, and I was laboring. Not just to get the Premium edition out, but I put it together sitting at the Labor Day rodeo here in Ridgway, Colorado.
This story was originally published on my Jumbo Joke site, which is no longer online, so I’m transferring it here for posterity.
I don’t tell many stories about the ambulance calls I run on as a volunteer medic here in rural Ouray County, Colorado, but this one is worth telling.
At 12:51 a.m. this past Saturday morning, my pager went off for an injured 16-year-old female, just a few miles from my house. It was in an odd location for a middle-of-the-night rescue, and as my wife and I got dressed, I was a bit confused.
A friend of mine asked me for some advice last week. He’s preparing to leave the military, and thought writing might be his next career. Did I have any pearls of wisdom?
I gave him two main pieces of advice. The second one: he must understand that there’s no such thing as “writer’s block.”
As with every Sunday, I “had to” work on Easter — it’s when I write the stories for True (and edit the ones that come in from the writers). I pull together 10 or more stories each Sunday (11 yesterday, as it happens, plus one that I’ll be adding to the blog later since it must include a photo).
I write True to make a living, yes, and it’s gratifying that enough people support the publication to make that happen. But there’s another reason, too: I want to change the world just a little bit, on both a micro and a macro scale.
Everyone talks about the weather, but I only write about it when it’s really weird!
It’s Independence Day weekend in the U.S., and I thought I’d share a couple of photos I took yesterday in the “real” Rural America.
OK, I’m a crank: I really don’t like Facebook. But one of the things I hate about it is how all up-in-arms people get about nothing.
A special “extra” story this week. I’ve pulled it out separately because it doesn’t “really” fit in with True’s theme. While it is a bit weird, it’s certainly not about someone doing something stupid.
This is the sordid tale of my having been exposed to Teller’s bodily fluids.
I’m not sure if I’ve ever done a movie review in True before, and I won’t be doing them that often, but I went to see Avatar this weekend, and I was very impressed.
I’m really taken with a video released on YouTube last week. It’s an Auto-Tune, which is the name given to soundtracks that use the audio plug-in of the same name. Auto-Tune was designed to correct the pitch of vocals, but clever music creators realized they could use it to make spoken word recordings musical. This is a fantastic example of the genre.