Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
I was brought on to help create a new vehicle for people to travel. As I walked with the team, talking outside, I saw a small red and yellow snake. Ideas lit up my mind. I sketched out a plan for us to develop a design based on a snake. Objections quicky rose. Growing more excited, I explained how we would use small segments, giving the snake great flexibility. Each segment would be a living, working or storage compartment, etc. Our travel snake would be able to turn in multiple ways.
They told me it was supposed to be for space. I got more excited, telling them that we can develop multiple small segments, just like the other segments, which would be used for propulsion. They could be interspersed along the snake’s body.
While I was telling these things, the snake was being built. Without a short while, I saw it fly over some brown mountains and land nearby. I skipped through the sky to it. The snake’s segments were much larger than I’d suggested and its overall length blew away my expectations. Someone said, it’s getting ready to go.
By that point the sun was setting. The cloudless sky had grown deep indigo and purple. A few stars and satellites populated the zenith. Looking up, I watched the white snake, people visible in windows lit with a soft yellow-tinted light, climb into space on a blue flame.
Veteran’s Day in ‘Merica. Today is a holiday, Veteran’s Day, in the U.S., so happy Veteran’s Day to my fellow vets. As they say, thank you for your service. My service wasn’t very hard duty, which I did for over twenty years before retiring. Many others followed darker and more tortuous paths. Lives were lost. Bodies and minds maimed. Not a pretty tale, and sometimes, their losses were based on false narratives. The history of war and what it does to combatants. My sincere appreciation and respect to you.
It’s Friday, 111122. That could be an elegant piece of arithmetic: 11+11+22. It’s climbed to 38 F. With the sun’s help, we’ll hit 50 F. It was fairly cloudless at daybreak, so dawn was a slow, spacious event, with sun’s official arrival pegged at 6:56 AM. As the world turns, the other end, aka sunset, will be at 4:53 PM. It’ll be mostly sunny today. The November snow has fled all but the highest of the high peaks.
Now, a little weirdness. I awoke with the Easybeats and their 1966 song, “Friday On My Mind”, in the morning mental music stream. I thought, I used that as theme music not too long ago, didn’t I, Mr. Neurons? Looking it up, I confirmed that I used it last year.
On Veteran’s Day of 2021.
I asked Les Neurons, why would I think of that song two years in a row on Veteran’s Day? They giggled like children playing a prank.
Well, just to show them, I decided that the song would not be today’s theme music. The Neurons soon helped me out with a new song. As I made my coffee and fed me cats, I was thinking about Veteran’s Day and my last days of military service in 1995. Click, The Neurons turned on a song I was listening to in those days, Foo Fighters and “This Is A Call”. Thinking of that beat and the song lyrics, I decided, yeah, that will work. “Good job,” I told The Neurons. “Coffee,” they replied. I snickered. “What was that? I didn’t catch that.”
The Neurons weren’t amused.
Stay positive, test negative, etc. I’m going to give The Neurons their coffee now, before they attack me. Have a good Friday, 111122.
Cheers
The autumn sky is doing an awesome impersonation of summer. Scanning down to the trees, snow still caps the mountains. Further down and we see the autumn leaves on trees. Then, lower, comes the hard frost. Looks can deceive unless you take in the full picture.
It’s 32 F now and feels like 30 but no fear, it’ll soon be 40, then keep going until it summits 49. Then we’ll ride back down into the cold valley for the night.
Sunrise heralded this gorgeous, clear, cold sky at 6:55 AM. The other end of the stick will come at 4:54 PM. This is Thursday, November 10, 2022.
My beer gang meet last night and discussed election results and other news, along with the books by Mary Roach. We also had two guests as teachers. We gave them $600 to fund three more microscopes, continuing our funding of their hands-on workshops. Last year, we gave them six, so they now will have nine. The teachers do a joint curriculum of biology and social students of their third and fourth grade classes. They also loan the microscopes to other classes. Next week, the high school robotic team will come in and pitch to them. We plan to donate $500 to them, as we have for several years. We’re also addressing a donation to ScienceWorks to support a new project for them, providing students with hands-on project management experience. For this year, we’ve donated $2500 to the causes, all from donations collected each week when we have beer. We’ve donated over $35,000 in the ten years we’ve been doing this, all to support STEM at all levels, which is being expanded to STEAM.
The outside weather (yes, tell me where else it would be?) reminds The Neurons of my high school years. Jump out of bed early, kick it to clean up and dress, then out to catch the 7 AM bus as the sun is rising. Cold, hard ground covered with ice and frost thrived in the shadow. Foot stamping and hands in pockets are rampant while the sun drags itself over the hills and trees, shifting from apricots to gold to white sunshine. Daylight pulls in just as the bus reaches the school after its six-mile run with all its stops.
That ground cements the memory, pulling up a 1973 out of memory’s rear end. “Cindy Incidentally” by Faces, which was soon Rod Steward and Faces, and then — well, you know. Rock history is heavy with bands that formed and then dissolved, whether they succeeded or not. I always enjoyed Faces and was dismayed that the album with “Cindy Incidentally” was on was their final. Rod went on to huge success, fluidly shifting toward a disco style during his lengthy solo career. But I liked the Faces’s bluesy sound. Oh, well. Change, right?
The specific lyrics which gave The Neurons the idea for this song was that piece that goes, “And your local papers run out of news.” That’s due to our conversation while imbibing our beer that we don’t have a local newspaper. It’s gone under after going through ownership changes. Nor is there a daily paper for neighboring cities. We depend on the net and broadcast media.
In late-breaking news, Mom has returned to the hospital. She has pain in her appendix’s region. Ironically, she was scheduled for a Saturday CT to ensure her appendix is healed. It was perforated back in early September, contributing extensively to her medical melodrama. Fingers crossed that the tough old broad — her term for herself — will pull through again.
Stay positive and test negative. We have music coming up, and coffee has arrived. Have a most excellent day. Cheers
On many days, it’s like the muses are dropping breadcrumbs for me to follow. All I can do is scramble to get them, sometimes going back to see if I missed some, all the while trying to look ahead to see if I’m still going where I thought I was going.
He and his friend exchanged hellos. The follow up to his friend, “How you doing today?”
The other boomed a laugh. “Great. I can walk today.”
As both laughed, he said to his friend, “It’s interesting how your standards and goals change as you age, isn’t it?”
Michael Seidel, writer 