I have a ton of things to write about... Annie's and my trip to Missouri, politics, economics, and some things I can't put out there given the few people that I know read this. Anyway, this is what is on my mind right now...

I have a great deal of difficulty going to the doctor. I know that some people can visit the doctor and come out with miracle solutions. However, I am a Hockanson. Somehow, we are an enigma to the medical profession. Actually, it is just part of Hockanson luck. We do not win things, and we never have an easy time when it comes to a consultant. It might be a self-fulfilling prophecy, but that is just the way it is. I wait as long as possible to go to the doctor for things that most people make the trip, and then get told, "you are over the worst of it. Go home, and we will bill your insurance and you for the co-pay." Um... Why did I visit you?

Right before Christmas, I broke out on my upper back with a very itchy rash. I went through a methodical review of any possible changes I had made to my diet or frankly anything else right down to where I bought my Coke. There was no change, and I waited to see if it went away. Well, I had bouts of intense itching during the night countless times, and the next thing I know it is seven months later. Finally, I went to the doctor. I paid my $25 co-pay and the insurance was billed their part. The doctor was very nice, but she had no idea what was wrong, and refused to give me something. She sent me to a dermatologist. Yesterday, I went to the dermatologist and she didn't know what it was, but she prescribed something. I paid my $15 co-pay and the insurance was billed.

I admit that I have a problem with a profession that 'practices.' If someone came to me with a problem and I said that I had no idea what was wrong, but pay me anyway, I would get laughed at, and fired. By the way, both of these visits took less than 15 minutes between the doctor and the nurse... On top of that, the medication was essentially Cortisone. I could probably have adopted a routine on my own with that and not gone to the doctor...

I am supposed to go back in eight weeks. We'll see if I am willing to do that...

I am destined to be punished by Karma to marry a doctor... a medical doctor, that is...


I could be a medical doctor... It's almost like being a weather forecaster...

After tossing back and forth on the bed for a couple of hours, I decided to get up. I made coffee, started laundry, re-made the coffee because I did it wrong (don't ask), straightened up the kitchen, and decided to write a story from yesterday. I sat down at 5:15 am with my coffee and computer. I listened to the coyotes in the distance for a while, and started typing. At that precise moment, the power went out... again. I figure I can type for about ten minutes before my batteries die.

Yesterday morning also found me sitting on the deck pounding on the keyboard, although not quite this early. I was working away, solving minor problems for my employer and doing some paperwork that needed to be completed before I start vacation. I heard a very familiar sound, but there was something different about it. I had to pause to realize why it was different. Then I realized: I was used to the sound coming from much farther away. I turned around to see one of our chickens staring at me from three feet away.

I talked to her a while, and she walked over to me and just kept slowly walking around where I was sitting. I got up and walked up the road a little ways to where I could see the chicken coop. She followed me. We walked back towards the house, and with a little encouragement, she let me pick her up. We walked up to the coop, and found a horrible sight. The only thing I can figure is that the raccoons figured out how to open the gate. Mounds of feathers littered the coop. I put her inside, much to her displeasure, and went inside. One other survivor was huddled in a nest box trying not to make any noise. I looked around, but could find no other survivors.

I fretted all day on how to tell Annie about the loss. She came home mid-afternoon, and settled tiredly into the big black chair, with a big black and white cat. She rested for a while, and I continued working. Finally, I decided it was time to tell her. Her eyes got glossy, but she did ok. After a while, she decided to go see the survivors. It wasn't long before I was being summoned to the coop. I was about to witness one of those miracles of nature that often escape us.

Another chicken had managed to escape the predators. The original two survivors were not really damaged. They had somehow managed to elude the attackers. This one had not been so lucky. She was terrified, but so tired and weak that once we got her out from under the coop, I easily picked her up. I had to. The other chickens were trying to eat her. Damned cannibals. We brought her down to the house, and Annie held here wrapped in a towel while I built a temporary shelter out of a large storage bin. I couldn't believe that this chicken was still alive. Annie talked soothingly to her, calling her Lila. I painfully informed Annie that she might not make it. "Are you going to kill her?" she asked with tears welling up in her eyes. No. We are going to take care of her as best we can, but it might not be enough.

We opened the towel, and I began pulling leaves and feathers out of her wounds. I had already given her a cursory inspection, which is why I wrote that I couldn't believe she was alive. We don't trim our chickens' wings, so I thought maybe she had managed to get out of the partially opened gate and take flight. Further inspection made this doubtful. Her wings were pretty beat up, and one of them didn't have enough feathers to keep her airborne. Her face had some scratches and a little bleeding, so maybe she turned on her assailant and gave it a peck that made it stop long enough for her to bolt. Those wounds were nothing. Her back and sides are what made me what to vomit. She looked like something had taken a carving knife to her, and stopped when they realized she was still alive. Large chunks of meat were neatly sliced open, but not enough to come off. I considered actually taking them off, knowing that they would never graft back to the body, but was afraid to have her bleed any more. With a little luck, new feathers will cover up these three and four inch chunks so that the other chickens won't go after them.

She wasn't happy with the peroxide treatment, but I had to do something to stave off infection. We wrapped her back in the towel, and placed her in the bin located next to Annie's side of the bed to begin her convalescence. She had food and water, and was hunkered by the water, having been without it all day. She was so exhausted she fell asleep immediately, and Annie and I both had to check to make sure that her head had not sunk into the water. I still had little hope that she would make it through the night.

When my insomnia started around two, and my mind drifted around trying in vain to shake the aftereffects of the bad dream that had awoken me, I heard a noise. I heard it again a little later: a scuffling sound. Afraid that Lilo was investigating the smell of a bird in our house, I got up and found Lila standing up in the bin. I just checked on her, and she is up and walking around. It is a freakin' miracle.

I just hope she heals enough that she can go back in the coop. I do not want to have a chicken as a house pet.
Stupified...

It hit 105 degrees here today. Just now, I took a break from work... I have to interrupt myself here. I've been working from the deck today. The computer is hotter than heck under my hands, but I can sit on the deck and punch away. When the sweat started rolling down my arms, I shed my shirt. That's right. I am working and getting paid to sit outside with no shirt, and my slight gut leaning out over my jeans. That last part I do not like, but so be it. On top of that, I haven't shaved in two days... and I haven't gone to the grocery store in long enough that I am out of soap. You can figure out what that means about my current fragrance...

Anyway, by the end of yesterday, I had exceeded fifty hours of work this past week. So, when I had a break a couple of hours ago, I mixed up a bag of mortar to put in the forms I had previously constructed. This particular bag is supposed to set quite quickly, and it is recommend that cold water be used to mix it if the ambient temperature is warm. So, I did that. However, I noticed that the water got absorbed instantly, and even after I exceeded the maximum recommended water addition, it wasn't right. I grabbed the mixture with my bare hands, and noticed that it had to be in excess of 90 degrees. I tried to use it, like an idiot, and it would not pack. It set up almost instantly in the wheel-barrow. In fact, the only place that it set up well was in the wheel-barrow. I will have to chisel it out, now. I tried to clean up what I had installed, and will have some more work to do with that tonight. I dumped the load down the hill side. I would be concerned about Al Gore showing up at my house to complain about the environmental impact, but I figure he is too busy sitting in his house with the air conditioning set at 65 degrees staring at his Nobel Peace Prize for environmental conservancy.

At any rate, I did have some good news. Home Despot called today to tell me that the rest of my order is in. I can procrastinate the final concrete work on the bathroom in favor of putting up cabinets, which I feel more confident that I can do well...

Not gitin 'er done...

It has been a long day, but I wanted to share a few pictures. Granted, I had great things to say about these, but now I am too tired. So I will make a couple of comments, but ultimately, the pictures will have to stand on their own. You never know, I might have the energy to say a few things...


Seriously, is there anything better in life than feeling loved by those around you and going to sleep with them close to you with you either feeling like you are protecting them, or they are protecting you?



That black lump next to Annie's head is Lilo... Yes, I wondered if there was room for Annie that night, but she was fast asleep, and had no complaints...

This is a picture of our wonderful hotel made during the class's investigation about how Santa Cruz might have looked when it was first created.



The picture does not do it justice, but Annie looks great! The sign above the second story windows is made from walnut, with wood-burned lettering that says "Hotel Hockanson," so it is really dark in the picture. I think there are 22 windows in the building, and we spent two days making the freakin' windows. If your only comment is that some of the windows are crooked, I will be forced to find a way to have you beaten. This took us so much time, you would not believe. All the siding, flooring, and roofing we ripped on the table saw from left over wood. The roof, and the second story lift off for access inside. We ran out of time before we could partition the inside and make it perfect, but Annie was ok with that because she is going to use it as another building in her playroom. I believe right now that it is currently housing a number of horses and stuffed animals.

Hmmm... I meant to share a 'few' pictures, but one of the pictures came out wrong, so I am sharing a 'couple' of pictures...

No one is going to be able to compete with us when we do the mission model that I believe will be required either next year or the year after.




Happy Daddy...

I am not positive about why I started thinking about this today, but it appealed to my curious nature so I started doing some calculations. I could have just looked it up on the internet, but I like to work through these things on my own. After scratching a little deeper than the surface the fundamentals of physics ranging from how fast a ball will fall from a building window, to how fast a 105 foot train must travel to instantaneously fit inside a 100 foot tunnel, to the shape of the region an electron will most probably be found at a particular quantum energy level in an atom, to why cows will at times line up facing tangentially to a lone tree in the middle of a field, I have changed an early opinion about the universe and creation in general. I used to believe a circle was the most fundamental geometry that nature wanted to achieve. I was wrong. Sure, there are a lot of circular or spherical objects that we encounter, but there are many others that are equally as spectacular and interesting patterns in nature. Nature is the ultimate builder/carpenter. If something goes off in the original design, look at it first to see if there is something intrinsically interesting, beautiful, or functional about it. If so, let it go. If not, fix it as you go. Maybe that is the fundamental point of the universe: nothing is perfect from the onset.

One example of interesting pattern adaptation is the pinecone. I know this is not the only example of this particular pattern, but it is the one that springs to mind, and I am too lazy to look up others. If you look at a typical pinecone, it does not grow in repeated circular rows, but rather as an Archimedes spiral. It grows in specific dimensional relations that provide not only a beautiful representation of nature's reproductive skills, but it also seems to aid in the dissemination of seeds in a cone that reaches maturity on the tree, opens up, and then relies on the wind to distribute it's progeny. Just thought of another example of an Archimedes spiral in nature, but I don't know the reason for that adaptation: the nautilus mollusk, which if I poll the deeper resources of my brain has been around in similar form for some 200 million years. I guess it works, whatever it does, assuming my recollection is not off by more than a few tens of millions of years.

My normal digression aside, the pattern in particular I have been considering is the sinusoid, or more simply, cyclic patterns. Patterns that go one way for a while, then swing the other direction for a while before going back. Sort of like a pendulum swinging. If you were to draw a horizontal line and make that time, and a vertical line and make that the distance from the center line of the pendulum swing (above the horizontal line for distance to the right, below for distance to the left), and plot the distance from the center versus time you would essentially have a sinusoid. It is one of those things that geeks like me find interesting, but if you don't, that's ok. You still depend on it every single day. In fact, you are probably using a sinusoid right this second: the power used to run your computer. Even if your house is running on solar-powered batteries, you have to eventually translate that to something sinusoidal because everything you plug into an outlet is designed to expect it (much to Thomas Edison's displeasure). Yes, the voltage that is generally run through your house for something like your computer swings gracefully up to about 156 volts, and then swings down, through zero, before bottoming out at negative 156 volts. 110 is the rms value, but you can look that up yourself when you are bored with insomnia, or have nothing to live for and that is just the last thing you were curious about before you give in.

Wow. I just scrolled up through this, and have no idea how I am able to ever provide a concise expression of anything. Those who know me well probably would say I can't and don't. Oh well... moving on: sinusoids and cycles to me are about the ability to handle the stresses involved in living without breaking altogether. As an example, we have a slight breeze today, the branches of the redwoods are moving up and down, even though the breeze is certainly not blowing in that direction. If the breeze picked up and became brutal like it sometimes does, the branches would still be moving up and down, and the trunks would be moving back in forth in what? a sinusoidal pattern. This is how the trees have adjusted in composition and leaf/branch design to stay alive. Give and take. Ebb and flow. Another example would be how we often swing our arms as we walk. Have you ever thought, "why am I doing this?" It is a natural response to counter the forces that are generated when we swing our legs in a similar pattern that causes stress to our bodies. Try holding your hands tight on your hips and walking with any speed at all. Notice what happens at your shoulders. Frankly, you should see my sister power walk. Her arms are generating tornadoes around her.

Sometimes, however, the sinusoidal pattern can have a negative impact on life and we have adjusted to deal with it. That example would be winter. You can love the snow as much as you want, but most people would have to admit that they generally experience more depression in the winter than the summer. This is not because of the reasons you hear around the office or in the grocery store. They might play a small part, but 'it's too cold' or 'I am sick of the snow/rain' are only the tip of the iceberg. The reason is because of the decrease in sunlight. It is not really that much unless you live near a pole, but it is profound. UV rays may cause cancer, but we need sunlight as a species. Exposure to sunlight increases the generation of serotonin, which is a natural feel-good chemical in our neural systems. Given the number of people on drugs assist with balancing serotonin levels, most of us our probably aware of this already. We have had to accept this cycle through winter, and deal with it. Our evolutionary development has not given us the wisdom of deciduous trees or bears. Deciduous trees 'realize' that the days are shorter and therefore they can not make as much food. So? They shed their leaves and shut down for the winter. When the days get longer, they go through new leaf growth and their reproductive schedule. Bears have the ultimate wisdom: screw this I am going to gorge myself for a month, and then sleep my way through winter. When I wake I will have my swimsuit figure.

Well, finally, I got to thinking about another cycle that I wonder if it might have an impact on us. It is really out there, and the reason I decided to make a new category for really whacky rants from the right part of my brain. I guess this started in my brain when I was considering climate change, and the fact that I believe that this is the way the planet operates. It has done so (in my opinion, and from what I have read) since the planet developed a crust that cooled, and water and land formed (which by the way the really interesting parts of earth's development have only happened in the last 20% of earth's existence, although I might go as far as 35%). Sorry for the continued digression, but you are probably skimming anyway. So, my thought regarding cycles moved on to a request that I made to a group of Annie's classmates: stand as still as you can and tell me how fast you are moving. Without exception they told me they were not moving. Well, duh, Hockanson. You spent almost ten years in college and you didn't realize that? Well, this is why I decided to run the equations. Have you ever been on a train or a boat that was running at a fairly constant speed? You get used to it as you stay on it. That's what we do: adapt. But when you get off, you have trouble walking. Well, I do. I have gotten used to walking on a surface that is moving to the point that I don't notice it again until I am on one that is not moving the same way. It's like a kid with her arms spread out spinning, but not really getting dizzy until she stops. The inner ear finds a point of reference that allows us to judge position and provide balance. It adapts, and we deal with whatever the change is. Frankly, in writing these last few sentences I may have answered my own question: the body responds very quickly. But, I've gotten this far, so I'll continue with my harebrained question.

The fact is we are moving at incredible speeds all the time. Take any point of reference, and you are moving with respect to it. You can decide that you are the center of the universe (you can do this easily, but the mathematical equations that describe the motions of everything around you get so complicated most of us would rather not contemplate it). Your brain does this. Not just out of an ego-centric point of view, but I think that is how the inner ear works. 'If I assume this point is stationary, then I'll send the signals to the brain that allow for translation on how everything else moves so we don't go insane.' This is where I started wondering. The body takes this into account, but in the truest sense, that is not the point of reference. So, what does the body do? If one chooses a point of reference involving anything on an astronomic scale, we are moving at speeds that require high end equipment to match... basically military airplanes and rockets, and even then it is a stretch. If you take the center of the earth as your reference, and you live on the equator, you are traveling about 1000 miles/hour even if you are standing still... and you are changing direction throughout the day. Given where I live in California I am moving a little more than 800 miles/hour. Now, what if our biological point of reference is the sun. We have worshiped the sun in one form or another essentially since the birth of 'civilization.' So, if we take the sun as the reference, neglecting our speed revolving around the earth, we are traveling 66.7 thousand miles/hour around the sun. If we take into account the revolution of the planet, we then go through changes in our speed throughout the travels around the sun. Sometimes we are going with the speed of the planetary revolution, and then other times we are going against it. As a result we change our speed by about 2000 miles/hour over the course of a day if we use the sun as a reference. That changes during the year given that there are subtle differences in our speed as we go around the sun. I don't think that the solar system speed of almost 500 thousand miles/hour around the galaxy makes much difference, given that we have only traveled 20 times around the galaxy since birth. But I wonder if the change in speed as we move around has an impact on our psyche.

Ok. I am tired, and I recognize that this is truly a bull crap thought, but it still makes me wonder. I haven't done the numbers, but could this be why we want to sleep at night? Just a thought.

Expressing my crazy side...

I've had the itch to write recently, but haven't done so. As it turns out, I really appreciate feedback and comments, and no one does it. Well, no one but Meera. So, I figure I'll just write to her given that no one else finds the interest or ability to make a comment. You all are a bunch of lurkers, and should go somewhere else to practice your voyeurism. If you are too scared too put your words out there for others to read, then don't go looking for words from others to read...

Anyway, Meera, you really missed out today. This is one of the reasons we live here. My field trips as a kid (I think I have said this before) were fairly lame with only a couple of exceptions. Today, the entire third grade class from both elementary schools in the district went on a field trip. It freakin' rocked. We drove 10 miles from school, and boarded an old steam engine train to travel through the redwoods to Santa Cruz. The kids had a blast. They watched the redwoods pass as we ventured down the tracks, and when we got to Santa Cruz, they waved and yelled at those unfortunate commuters that were stopped by the tracks, most of which smiled and honked their horns at the passing kids. The weather was great. It was warm and sunny, although I confess that I was looking for ice floats in the water. That's right. I was in the water freezing my... stuff... off. You know what? I was the only parent out in the water that I saw. The kids were told that they could not go further than their knees in the water. Good grief. My kinship with the dolphin couldn't be a fluke (pun intended). So, I wandered out to stay with the kids that wanted a little more than knee coverage of the mighty Pacific. It would have been hypocritical of me to do otherwise, as I know I would have been the same way. I was arrogantly confident that I could grab a head of hair and bring it up to air fairly quickly. I never had to, but a couple of the kids that I was supervising were 'beached' for going out too far. The beacher never said anything to me, so I gave up and decided to go eat a sandwich and sit next to Annie after an hour of that.

I sat there and smiled more than I had in a long time. Watching these brilliant kids 'doing their thing' was wonderful. Despite my concerns about the world we live in, these kids will make it right. Ptolemy told me in the classroom that he purposely did not wear shorts because he did not want to go in the water. I saw in his eyes later that he at least wanted to get his feet wet, so I offered to roll up his jeans. Come on. No kid near the ocean can keep from getting wet. He refused at first even though I had just done that for a friend of his. He came back. "I changed my mind. Could you roll up my pants?" Sure. Ten minutes later he was one of the kids I was supervising fully submersed in the water. I managed to convince him to take his shirt off so I could wring it out and possibly have something warm to put on... followed by three other kids that thought that was a good idea. They were shivering so much I thought they were going to break their teeth. But you don't stop going in the water for something so trivial as cold water. It beckons. It seductively calls. Not to mention that running on the beach will warm the blood fairly quickly.

The cold sapped their strength and the train trip back was a little more subdued. I think the parents were also a little drained. One mother that I have known since Annie was in Kindergarten tried to use me as a leaning post. I told her that I would probably move during the tunnel and she would fall on the bench... She moved, knowing that I would never really do it. I am sure that Annie slept on her way to her mother's. My sweet pea had a good day. Believe it or not, we have another field trip on Monday. This one will also be great, but will require more exercise from them as we will be hiking through the coastal hills. Freakin' awesome. Maybe we will see some elephant seals!

These kids are amazing. I watch them interact. I see their problems. I see how they deal with them. Quite honestly, I don't worry so much about them. I think if they keep it up, they will fix what we screwed up. Kids: don't stop questioning. Don't stop thinking. Don't stop finding an answer that makes sense. "Because that's the way we have always done it" or "that's the way we do things" are horrible answers. Find your own answers, and realize that sometimes your parents are wrong... That includes me, Annie.

Feeling good, even after putting in a mortar bed after the field trip...

Regardless of the outcome of the next election, it looks like we can count on more entitlement programs, and more government control. It sickens me.

I heard about and researched an incident that happened in Michigan this past week. In my opinion it is government involvement gone amok. A professor at a Michigan university took his son to a baseball game. He asked his seven-year old son what he wanted to drink, and the response was 'lemonade.' The gentleman went to the booth selling beverages, and asked for a lemonade. He paid for the bottle of lemonade, which he did not recognize. He gave it to his son. It was Mike's Hard Lemonade (alcoholic). A security guard swept in and took the kid. Based on protocol, the kid was taken to the hospital, and the doctors called Child Services. The result? The child spent the night crying under state custody, and the next day he went into foster care. It took two days to get the child back to his parents, and was only possible then under the requirement that the father left the house. It was almost a week before the father could see his son again.

God bless America, comrade... sieg heil...

Sorry, Annie, this is the world you inherit...

A couple of months ago, my upper back broke out in something akin to hives. It itches like crazy, and sometimes I wake up in the night from it. It really seems to be an allergic reaction, but I can not figure out to what I am allergic. So? I just deal with it. In times like that, I am disgusted with the fragility of the human body.

However, a couple of weeks ago I got into a fight with my table saw, and lost. Well, more accurately I lost the top of my left thumb. I fortunately missed the bone, but I was missing a lot of flesh. I have been amazed at how fast it is growing back. Right now, it looks a lot like the inside of a tree. I can see all these rings of regrown skin. Ok, it might sound a little icky, but I think it is fascinating. Initially, if I stretched my thumb, or bumped it on something, the nerves flared and I was in excruciating pain. Now, it is just little more than a scratch; a scratch with tree rings, but still a scratch.

It might be a weird coupling, but I have something else to share... I got a telescope last December from Sun as a gift for celebrating(?) my tenth year with the company. I have tried time and time again to align the spotter's scope to see the moon, and had been completely unsuccessful. Wednesday night was fairly warm, and the moon was approaching full, so I thought I'd try again. I told myself to be patient, and after about an hour, I got it! I let Annie stay up a little later as we spent over a half hour staring at and talking about the moon. It was incredible. The magnification is large enough that we can not see the whole moon in the eyepiece. Looking at the face of the moon was moderately interesting, but looking at the rim was spectacular. It was there that we could see all the detail left behind by eons of meteoric battering. If you have never had the chance, I highly recommend this view of the moon. It brings into stark reality the relevance of the moon in our own survival as a species.



Moonstruck...

My junior year of college, I was a Resident Assistant. I was a little nervous about it, but felt confident that I could be good at it. I was. In the process, I made some great friends. I just talked to one of them that I haven't talked to in probably 15 years. God, maybe I really am getting old. I remember this resident coming to me indicating an interest in doing something more than just being a resident. He became our Floor President, and we became good friends. We talked a lot about life and the future. Granted, I did not know then what I know now, but that was a good thing.

At any rate, it was great to hear from him. Even better, he said something that made me feel really good. He told me that he owed me for everything I taught him. I was a bit surprised, but very proud that I had had a positive impact on someone, and it worked. How cool is that?

Feeling good that there is someone I didn't screw up...

My last name is spelled H-O-C-K-A-N-S-O-N. The gentleman on Page 7 of the following document could not possibly be me...

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