As the week winds down, I have my impending jury duty hanging over my head. By tomorrow evening, I’ll know if I have to report next Monday. Last week, they only went up to juror number 135 and I’m #170 for next week, so I was feeling pretty good. This week, though, they’d called in the entire 450 person panel by Tuesday. I’m really hoping next week is a slow week, but I’m not feeling confident.

I’m sure everybody is aware of the fact that 30 years ago today, the space shuttle Challenger blew up. It’s one of those “I’ll never forget where I was when” events, like the the Kennedy assassination (which I was of course too young to remember) or when Neil Armstrong stepped out onto the lunar surface, or when you heard about 9/11.

I recall quite clearly where I was on January 28, 1986 (I think I’ve probably mentioned it before, but I’ll mention it again because I’m old and old people are always repeating themselves). I was in the projection booth running porn movies at the Franklin Theatre (and, no, I don’t actually recall what movies we were running that week).

It seems rather odd that there was a time when perverts had to go to a movie theater to watch porn (in a matter of a few years, home video all but killed that “theater experience,” and now with the Internet, porn is so ubiquitous that kids are paying their way through college doing it).

Poor Pewee Herman – he was just born a little too soon.

Anyhow, back then I was working double shifts five days a week (something like 9:00 AM to 10:30 PM), and another 10 – 4:30 shift on Saturday. Contrary to popular belief, you do not have to stand there and watch the movie the whole time. Other than the first run-through of the week when I had to at least pay a little attention at the start of every reel to make sure you didn’t splice something together the wrong way, about the only time I needed to look at the screen was when I was getting ready to change over from one projector to the other one (and by the time you ran through these movies for the hundredth time, you could more or less go by grunts, without looking).

Anyhow, so there I was up in the booth reading or something with the radio on, when I thought I heard the DJ say something like “the space shuttle exploded.”

Huh? That couldn’t be right. By this time, shuttle launches were routine – I don’t think they were even bothering to cover the launches live on television anymore (except on CNN, which was an actual news network back in those days).

So I went downstairs where the guy sold tickets. He had a little teevee down there, and we sat and watched the Challenger explode over and over and over again. And then it was time for a changeover.

At the time we all figured that they were all blown up right away and that was that. Sad, but there are worse ways to go. Unfortunately, it’s pretty certain that most if not all the crew members were alive and scrambling to get their oxygen masks on and regain control of the vehicle as they continued up for 25 seconds before watching what was left of their ship stop and then flip around for what must have been a terrifying nearly three-minute nose-first plunge to ocean – which they hit at over 200 mph with a force of 200 Gs.

Ouch.

When most people think of the Challenger, they of course think about Christa McAuliffe, who picked a bad time to try and become the first civilian in space. Not me though. I mostly think of Judy Resnick, who I kinda had the hots for (especially the way her hair floated in zero-gravity).

Amazing how fast 30 years goes by.

Sorry to those of you who are (or about to be) getting hit with this big snow storm on the East Coast, but I can’t help but smile when I see the storm track is going to completely miss us here in my neck of the woods. Like, it’s not even going to come close – we’re supposed to have a pleasant (though slightly chilly) weekend. Thank goodness – I’m getting too old for this stuff (and never mind they say we could get hit with another bout of lake effect next week to make the daily commute miserable), and am really not in the mood.

I try not to snicker derisively as I see news reports of the “killer” storm in places like DC. Mostly because the video basically looks like the commute I had back and forth to work on several days last week, and I didn’t see any news reports about that (other than the lo-cal news, which doesn’t have a whole lot to talk about – I never really understood the purpose of sending somebody out into the snow to tell me it’s snowing. I can look out the goddamn window to see it’s snowing). Of course I realize that they have way more people and they don’t have the equipment to deal with it (they sent a fleet of DOT plows from here down to Long Island to help out – I hope we don’t need them) or the experience of driving in it (hell, there are plenty of accidents caused by idiots around here who really should be used to this shit by now).

But it sure is nice to be able to sit this one out.

Instead of plowing the driveway, if I feel ambitious I think I’ll plow the front and back yards so the dogs can run around a little easier (and hopefully not try to jump the fence anywhere). I should also drop the plow off the bucket so I can move the piles of snow around a bit. I usually wait until the drifts are so high I have no place to push the snow, and then it’s a hassle. I at least need to clear it away from the gates to I can get them open and drive the tractor through.

The big event for the weekend though is Sunday, ‘cuz it’s brew day. This week I get to try out my new pump. Last brew day I realized that I’m getting too old to be lifting what feels like a thousand pounds of hot water and grain up in the air high enough to let gravity do the job. My back still hasn’t completely recovered.

Unfortunately, my new conical fermenter won’t be here until next week, which is too bad. But there’s always next weekend, I guess (or maybe the one after that – it kinda kills a whole day, or at least a whole afternoon). But I really need to step up my production, because it takes a lot less time to drink then it does to brew.

Anyhow, if you’re in the path of the storm (or even if you’re not), stay safe and warm. I guess I better get my trip to Costco out of the way today so I don’t have to do it tomorrow.

It basically hasn’t stopped snowing around here for the past three or four days. Not a ton of snow by our standards (I don’t know what the official tally is, but I’d say we got something in the 18″ – 24″ area at my place), but enough to have me out on the tractor plowing twice a day for the past few days. Nothing more invigorating than starting off a 12° morning with a ride on the tractor. I really hope it stops, soon – and it looks like the impending Nor’easter is going to stay away from us, so that’s a good thing.

I get to go back to the doctor tomorrow morning. Nothing too icky, thankfully – they’re just gonna steal some of my blood and see if my BP is better (which it is; I’ve been taking it twice a day, and it’s somewhat amazing to see how easy it was to get it to normal). I’ve also knocked off the beer for a bit (mostly because I killed my most recent keg of homebrew – it takes an awful lot longer to brew 5 gallons than it does to drink it), and all work (and snow plowing) and no beer makes Jack a very dull boy indeed.

The doctor informed me that if you’re going to drink every day, you’re not supposed to drink more than 2 8-oz beers a day – which is of course ridiculous, since beer doesn’t even come in 8-oz containers. I mean, can you even buy “splits” anymore? I remember being able to get a case of O.V. splits (we called them “German grenades”) and dumping a bag of ice on top. And rather than inhibiting drinking, it actually induced you to drink more, ‘cuz the damn things went down in one swallow and never got warm.

Ah, those were the days.

Anyhow, I think I’ll go for one more night of enforced sobriety, and then spring for a few cold ones tomorrow night. Otherwise I’ll have to keep going to bed at seven.

Although we officially celebrate his birthday with a day off on Monday, my dad would have been 96 years old today. Oh, and Martin Luther King Jr would have been 87. While my dad died too young at 74 (hard to believe it’s been close to 22 years already), I find it truly astonishing that King was only 39 years old when he was assassinated. At this stage in my life, 39 seems like a kid. I would definitely like to be 39 again (though if I could choose an age, I think I’d go with 34 – things were still pretty good back then).

In an effort to stave off my own death, I finally went to see a doctor yesterday. First time (other than the occasional trip to the Urgent Care) in more years than I can recall. I couldn’t get an appointment until the afternoon, so I had to sit around all day thinking about it (though I did get a few things accomplished in a losing effort to keep my mind off it).

I really hate the thought of getting caught up in the medical/industrial complex, but I’m a bit past what folk medicine can do for me at this point. In fact, my BP was so high, they immediately have me a pill and wouldn’t let me leave until it came down (they had me lie down for a while, even).

Yesterday was fairly painless (nobody tried to stick anything into any of my orifices or anything like that), but I now how all this works, and now I’ll be thrust into the world of tests and appointments, and a lot of people trying to stick things up my ass.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But you can only walk around feeling like your head’s gonna explode for so long (before it actually does).

It doesn’t help knowing that if my dad had stayed the hell away from doctors, he might still be alive today. OK, well, probably not. But he’d certainly have lived longer (and better) had he avoided the urologist that set the wheels in motion to cure his prostate cancer, since it was the cure that killed him in the end (hey, at least he died cancer-free).

Oh well, time to hurry up and get this week over with already. Enjoy your 3-day weekend, if you’ve got one.

So, after what was the warmest December ever with the least amount of snow, ever (2.1″ vs. a normal 45″ or so), our luck finally ran out. After an early morning (like, midnight) high temperature of 20 yesterday, we plummeted into the single digits and have just now gotten up to around 10°. Plus, I had to get out on the tractor at 5:00 yesterday morning to plow the driveway (I even shoveled the walk). Not that I’m complaining (much) though. Things are supposed to start warming up a bit, and it looks like we’ll be in the 40s and rainy for the weekend (though they say we’ll have another arctic blast for a few days next week). And even if we have a “normal” year from here on out, at least we were spared a miserable November and December.

In other news, I reckon everybody’s heard about the brave patriots who have taken over a federal wildlife preserve (and gift shop) in Oregon. Twitter has dubbed them as ‘Y’all Qaeda’ or – my preference – ‘Vanilla ISIS’. The are prepared to fight and die – though they forgot to bring snacks, so if you could send them some Little Debbie’s (I think they have more than enough Ding Dongs), they’d greatly appreciate it. And although they despise the tyranny of the Federal Government, they are happy to have you send them whatever you can via the USPS.

I’m not sure if this Junior Bundy guy aspires to be the next Prime Minister of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick or what. On the one hand, I find this all rather amusing. On the other, it pisses me off that these assholes think it’s OK for them to steal what belongs to all of us for their own personal use. And I’m certain that if these weren’t white people, they’d be branded as thugs and wiped off the planet (or thrown into prison) with the full backing of all the Republican candidates for President (which, sadly, no longer includes George Pataki. You know, I really thought he had a shot).

I think I mostly wish everybody would just ignore them until they get cold and tired and run out of pretzels and Old Milwaukee and then declare victory and head back to Arizona.