Things Are Looking Up!

Highlights of this day, Wednesday, the 4th day of October, 2017:

# My luck began to change this morning when, just in the nick of time, my dentist had to cancel all of the day's appointments because his wife had a horrible kidney stone thing that forced him to flee the premises to rush her to the hospital. YES!!

# I heard on the radio that today is the tenth anniversary of the opening of Big Al's, giving me an excellent excuse to watch tonight's baseball playoffs at my favorite bar.

# Our Secretary of State and fourth in line for the Presidency, Rex Tillerson, called a hasty press conference this afternoon to dispel rumors that he was about to resign because he had concluded that his boss was a moron. He assured the country that no, he had no intention of resigning...despite the fact that his boss is a moron.

# Blood Pressure clocked in at an impressive 120/80 at my doctor's appointment. My new doctor, the one I was assigned after my doctor  of over thirty years suddenly dropped dead, cheerfully informed me that despite my overall good health and fine conditioning, the primary driver of life and death is genetics, so I shouldn't get too cocky about one decent BP reading.

# The US Postal Service finally delivered our mail that we had asked them to hold while we were away for three weeks. To the surprise of absolutely no one, they only held it for roughly half the days that we were gone, delivering it on the other days. According to the advertisements I received in today's haul, one of the guys running for some office in the next election is a real scumbag, and if I know what's good for me I won't vote for him.

# After their victory in last night's wild card game, the Yankees have become the odds on favorite to win the World Series...according to every single solitary talking head at ESPN.

A Troublesome Losing Streak

Ok, it seems like since I got back from Maine, I've settled into a disturbing losing streak of sorts. Maybe it's my imagination, a kind of vacation jet-lag or something, but lots of bad things have been happening. First, the dish washer goes belly up, then all of these ponderous machines take over the kitchen, sucking up water, de-humidifying and blowing air everywhere at deafening noise levels 24/7. If the machines don't fix the bowed floors, they will have to be torn up, replaced and re-sanded...which will require great dislocation for weeks, I'm sure. As a side benefit of all of this, I have had an allergy for two days, no doubt due to all of the mold being flung throughout my home by the aforementioned machines. This particular allergy has featured a swollen and runny eye, always a delight.

Now, today I discover that my day will be consumed largely by visits to a couple of health care specialists, appointments that were set months ago. First up there's my all time favorite buzz-kill, a trip to my dentist. Dr. T (I withhold his real name as a courtesy) is a decent enough guy, well-trained and friendly, but that doesn't change the fact that he makes his living probing about people's mouths with sharp, pointy objects accompanied by the hideous, high-pitched wail of even more machines. I spend my time there holding my breath and trying to conjure up my happy place (front row seats down the third base line at a baseball game, being served kielbasa and beer by an adorable blonde wearing a Cappy's hat...if you must know!). But every time I get close to that image, this guy shows up.

My second appointment is with my general practitioner for a six month check of my blood pressure and a follow up blood test on the results of my new cholesterol medicine regimen from my stroke thing earlier this year. When I was reminded of this meeting via text my heart sank. Just about the time I had put that unfortunate incident behind me, here comes a snooping doctor to rub my face in it again. 

All is not lost, however, since last night saw the beginning of the greatest time of the year... the Major League Baseball Postseason!!!

Of course, I couldn't watch last night's opener between the Twins and the Yankees on my beautiful television downstairs because of the high winds and industrial hums coming from these guys:

I might have watched on the big screen upstairs in what used to be Patrick's bedroom, now the upstairs den, but that television doesn't work because of a faulty Verizon connection or box or some such things that for some weird reason we have failed to have fixed for like two years now. It's on the list of crap I need to get done, and last night I was kicking myself for putting it off. So, there I was, huddled in my recliner in my bedroom, door closed to the violent wind storm downstairs, following the action on my iPad's MLB app. Aaron Judge doesn't look so huge on an iPad, but I still hate the guy because he's a miserable Yankee.

But, I have no doubt that better days are ahead. My son is getting married to a beautiful girl soon, my daughter and her husband are killing it down in South Carolina, and I'm married to the most beautiful woman in Short Pump. Unlike America under Trump, I'm actually winning!!

58 Dead, 515 Wounded

I wake up this morning to the news that a new record has been set in my country for deaths in a mass shooting event. 50 killed and over 200 wounded is the new standard for American violence. A 64 year old man named Stephen Paddock opened fire from his room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel with an automatic weapon into a crowd of 30,000 people gathered below for a country music concert in Las Vegas. A SWAT team eventually burst into his room and killed him. His female companion, a petite Asian woman named Marilou Danley, is being questioned in police custody at this hour. At this point, no motive has been assigned and not much is known of Mr. Paddock other than the fact that he is an elderly retired white guy going through a divorce who likes to gamble.

I scrolled through the pictures and videos from the scene, courtesy of a British news service, the U.K. Daily Mail, and note that it is always the British press that gives me information like this first. It's odd but consistently true. This sort of thing used to fill me with sadness. In the past a mass shooting would enrage me. Now, I flip through the pictures and shrug. Now, I brace myself for a week of boilerplate shrieking from politicians. I wait for my Facebook wall to fill with some new solidarity icon for the victims and their families, then the inevitable memes that will follow. I will quickly get tired of the calls to Pray for the Las Vegas Victims. Why have I become so jaded? This....

-April 18, 2017 Kori Ali Muhammad shoots dead three people before being arrested by police and charged with murder and assault with a deadly weapon.

-June. 12, 2016 Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old security guard, killed 49 people and wounded 58 others in a terrorist attack/hate crime inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

-Feb. 25, 2016: Cedric Ford, 38, killed three people and wounded 14 others lawnmower factory where he worked in the central Kansas community of Hesston. The local police chief killed him during a shootout with 200 to 300 workers still in the building, authorities said.

- Feb. 20, 2016: Jason Dalton, 45, is accused of randomly shooting and killing six people and severely wounding two others during a series of attacks over several hours in the Kalamazoo, Michigan, area. Authorities say he paused between shootings to make money as an Uber driver. He faces murder and attempted murder charges.

- Dec. 2, 2015: Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27, opened fire at a social services center in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 people and wounding more than 20. They fled the scene but died hours later in a shootout with police.

- Oct. 1, 2015: A shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, left 10 people dead and seven wounded. Shooter Christopher Harper-Mercer, 26, exchanged gunfire with police, then killed himself.

- June 17, 2015: Dylann Roof, 21, shot and killed nine African-American church members during a Bible study group inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Police contend the attack was racially motivated. Roof faces nine counts of murder in state court and dozens of federal charges, including hate crimes.

- May 23, 2014: A community college student, Elliot Rodger, 22, killed six people and wounded 13 in shooting and stabbing attacks in the area near the University of California, Santa Barbara, campus. Authorities said he apparently shot himself dead after a gun battle with deputies.

- Sept. 16, 2013: Aaron Alexis, a mentally disturbed civilian contractor, shot 12 people dead at the Washington Navy Yard before he was killed in a police shootout.

- July 26, 2013: Pedro Vargas, 42, went on a shooting rampage at his Hialeah, Florida, apartment building, gunning down six people before officers fatally shot him.

- Dec. 14, 2012: In Newtown, Connecticut, an armed 20-year-old man entered Sandy Hook Elementary School and used a semi-automatic rifle to kill 26 people, including 20 first graders and six adult school staff members. He then killed himself.

- Sept. 27, 2012: In Minnesota's deadliest workplace rampage, Andrew Engeldinger, who had just been fired, pulled a gun and fatally shot six people, including the company's founder. He also wounded two others at Accent Signage Systems in Minneapolis before taking his own life.

- Aug. 5, 2012: In Oak Creek, Wisconsin, 40-year-old gunman Wade Michael Page killed six worshippers at a Sikh Temple before killing himself.

- July 20, 2012: James Holmes, 27, fatally shot 12 people and injured 70 in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

- April 2, 2012: Seven people were killed and three were wounded when a 43-year-old former student opened fire at Oikos University in Oakland, California. One Goh was charged with seven counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder, but psychiatric evaluations concluded he suffered from long-term paranoid schizophrenia and was unfit to stand trial.

This country needs more than prayer at this moment. 

Taking the Bitter With the Sweet

What follows goes into the category of the ebb and flow of life, or maybe... you win some you lose some, or even, you must take the bitter with the sweet. If any of you are my secret enemies and read this blog only to collect evidence to support your resentment against me, or if any of you have quietly resented my three week Maine vacation, you're gonna love this!

Ok, so after unpacking yesterday, I collapsed on my bed for a nap. I've come down with some sort of sinus thing/cold or something, so I was pretty wiped out. When I woke up, I walked downstairs and noticed that where my coffee maker used to be there's an unopened box containing a brand new Hamilton Beech model. My wife explained that when she opened the lid to give it a clean after three weeks of inactivity, she noticed a that the filter and grounds from my last pot was still in there, encrusted with enough mold to kill an asthmatic at thirty paces. She had made the snap decision that instead of cleaning it out, the damage was so severe and disgusting, only a new coffee maker would do. So, she did an online search of five different stores, picked out this Hamilton Beech beauty and marched herself over to Walmart to buy it...and there it set. The maiden pot was brewed without incident. All was well until thirty minutes later when we noticed an odd humming noise coming from the shiny new appliance. The side of the thing became hot. The unmistakable smell of burning plastic filled the air, then the digital display began to flicker. It seemed possessed by an evil demon. Pam grabbed the chord and ripped it from its plug, preventing it from bursting into flames. Now, I have no coffee maker.

After this fiasco, things settled down nicely. We had dinner while we watched the first episode of the new Ken Burns Vietnam documentary. After dinner, Pam loaded the dish washer, turned it on, then went about her business. Suddenly, I heard her exclaim...Oh no!! What's this?? There's water leaking out of the dish washer!! 

Over the next couple of hours, Pam and I did our best Keystone Cop imitation as we frantically tried to...get it to stop!!! Turn it off!...was my expert advice. But turning it off did nothing to stop the flow of hot, dirty water being belched out across the kitchen floor. Legions of towels were brought to bear against the gushing beast. I tried opening the door, which turned the flow into a deluge. Quickly I ran to the fuse box and turned off power to the thing, to no avail. Still, the water gushed. Pam, frantic and wild eyed, instructed me to crawl under the house and find the thing that shuts off the water to the house! I did as I was told, of course, although in twenty years here I have crawled under the house exactly once, and had no idea where this magical valve was located. But, there I was on hands and knees, crawling towards the sound of rushing water, with a sharp eye peeled for any reptilian beasts that might be lurking in the formidable shadows. To my great relief, I heard my wife scream, the water has stopped!!

Of course now we had the dish washer door opened, and it was full of water and weighed a ton. The inside of the expiring appliance was also full of water. If Pam's husband was the handy type and knew anything about how stuff works, he might have instinctively known what to do. But, that ship has sailed...so she did what she always does in times of mechanical crisis...she called Ron Roop, my brother-in-law. Within fifteen minutes, he shows up with a shop vac to suck up the water in the bottom of the dish washer. Although it worked, it also began some belching of its own, spewing filthy water out of several places around the the lid. Then we positioned a couple of deep dish pans under the door of the unit and slowly lifted the door, releasing torrents of water all over the place, but mostly into the dishes. After bailing in this fashion for fifteen minutes, it finally stopped leaking. Order was finally restored and every towel we owned was now draped over the deck railings to dry, making our deck look like it belonged to a family of Gypsies.

So, now I have no coffee maker, our dish washer doesn't work, and the hard wood floor in the kitchen is bowing quite nicely.

Welcome back home, Dunnevant's!!!

Back Home

Just a note to let everyone know that we made it safely home this afternoon. It was a largely uneventful two day slog back to Short Pump. And, just like that, it's over.

Lucy has been ecstatic to be back home. She has alternated between sitting on our bed, which has always been her upstairs throne chair, and the sofa, the only piece of furniture she's allowed to sit on downstairs...therefore, her downstairs throne chair. She took a quick spin around her fenced in yard out back just to remind herself that she was home, now she's sacked out on the floor in my library. She may sleep for a week.

It's when you arrive back home from vacation that you realize you're not rich. If I were rich, surely I would have people on the payroll to do all my unpacking. What a miserable exercise...as if I needed any reminders that my vacation is over. You open up your suitcase full of mostly dirty clothes and the delightful aroma of Loon Landing hits you in the face. It's a mixture of pine needles, lake water and campfire smoke. One tumble in the washing machine will take away the smell from my clothes. Luckily, there is no machine capable of getting that smell out of my heart and soul.

The good news is, there's only 9 more months until we go back, this time with the kids. 

Tomorrow is my one and only buffer day between being in Maine and being back at work. It's all I'll need. There are actually things about home that I've missed. I missed my house. We've been here twenty years. That's a significant amount of time which has endowed this place with its own powerful memories. I've missed my office, the people there more than the actual work, but missed them just the same. I missed my church, and the people in my small group. But, mostly I missed the calming, dependable rhythm of my life here. How lucky I am to be able to go to so fabulous a place as Maine, then come back to a good life in Short Pump. Sometimes, I wonder why I have it so good. Why me, while so many others have such a struggle? I have no answers to questions like this. But, I am grateful, and I don't take a single part of it for granted. 

Pam's at the store. Tonight she will make white chicken chili. We will watch something on television while we eat. Tomorrow morning, we will go to church.

Good. Maine was great, but being home is good too.

The Last Day

The problem with vacations is that they all have a last day. Today is ours. 

My profession is measured out in numbers, it's how we keep score in the investment business. Everything, eventually, can be reduced to a number. Not so with vacations. Although it doesn't prevent me from trying:

Loon Landing vacation by the numbers:

Only 1 day of rain.

Pam, inexplicably, only ate 1 lobster roll.

Played 2 rounds of golf.

Hosted 2 sets of guests...Russ and Vi White and Alan and Lisa Smith.

Turned the television on 3 times...two games, and the season premiere of This Is Us.

Fell in love with family of 3 loons who continually entertained us for 3 weeks.

Read 5 novels.

Posted photographs of 7 sunsets on Facebook. Could have added 13 others.

Took at last 20 killer naps.

Logged 25 miles of runs/walks on the paths and trails around the cabin, along with 12 miles of kayaking around the lake.

Caught 4 bass, 3 largemouth and 1 smallmouth.

Cooked at least 20 meals on the grill, including steak, hamburger, shrimp, chicken, smoked sausage and foiled potatoes.

On one particularly fabulous run of weather, took 10 consecutive meals outside.

Of course, numbers tell an incomplete story, turning wonderful things into flat, one dimensional digits. Sure, I can tally the number of sunsets, but to understand the beauty and magic you needed to be here. No mere number can describe what it's like to watch the leaves change in slow motion for three weeks. Photographs help, but only a little. I cannot assign a numerical value to the peace that has come over us during our time on this lake. That's the thing about this life, the thing that our parents told us when we were kids...the best things in life can't be measured by numbers. There is so much more to life than the counting of things...how much we have, what we own, the size of this, the heft of that. Too much counting produces men and women who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

So, every year we come here to banish the numbers from our mind. And each year, there is a last day.

But this day, like all others, is a day that the Lord has made. We will be glad in it.

On The Home Stretch

Our vacation has entered the home stretch, there's just a few days left and we are already trying to banish images of packing up from our imaginations. Weather still holding on to this amazing run of beautiful, sunny days and crisp, cool nights. It might make it easier to leave this place if it would get rainy and cold, but no such luck. Last night we drove into Camden to have dinner at Sea Dog's, the replacement for our beloved Cappy's, which used to serve the best clam chowder in the world, but now serves clam chowder with a strange spice in it which disappoints. 

Besides, nothing Sea Dog's ever does will be able to top this awesome hat I bought at Cappy's on the occasion of their 25th anniversary back in 2005.

This morning I will be heading into the offices of our fabulous rental company, On The Water In Maine, to begin plotting and scheming next year's four week adventure. I will lay out my must-haves and throw out some possible dates, and they will get to work. We can't actually make 2018 reservations prior to November 1st or something, but we must begin the search right away. Next summer will be tricky. There will be a wedding at some point next year. That may make it difficult for Patrick and Sarah to take a week in Maine after having already taken time off for a honeymoon. Also, funds will be tighter since I will, no doubt, have spent a bundle on the blessed event. But, this is the sort of thing I do. I excel at making things happen when it comes to my children. If I have to fly the two of them up here on a Friday and fly them back on a Sunday, well, so be it. There's a chance that Jon and Kaitlin might be able to come for two weeks. Then there's Ron and Paula, and Gordon and Leigh Ann....probably need to find a bigger house for next year. But, I would love to find one on this lake. Quantabacook is about as perfect a place as we have ever stayed up here. And, if this house had one more bathroom I might be tempted to shoehorn everybody into Loon Landing next year too!

Woke up with a sore throat this morning, which is a bit unsettling, since I hardly ever get sick in Maine, or at least...it's been a while since I have. It's probably God's judgement on me for foolishly getting involved in ( i.e...starting) a Facebook political dispute yesterday about the NFL protests. That was a rookie mistake that you would think a seasoned Maine vacationer wouldn't have made. The key to happiness up here is to stay fully disengaged for the duration. I should have known better. So I wake up with a sore throat. God is just, and he will not be mocked! There will be no more of that!!!

Almost finished Empire Falls. Holy Cow, can Richard Russo write. I can't wait to read everything else he has written. Of course, if you can't write inspired prose sitting at a table at the Camden Deli every morning overlooking the bay, then you should probably give it up.