Mark Byron

The Joys of Summer

We had a church choir (I'm not in, but Eileen is) picnic partly washed out by a thunderstorm last night, and a front's coming through later today. I took a look at the regional radar, and see a big frontal fiesta (as my mother-in-law christened the Mexicanesque orange and red colors of a storm's core on radar) coming down through southern Indiana with Lexington's name on it.

As Little Enos said at the end of Smokey and the Bandit, "Daddy, you're about to get your afternoon ruined."

Too Close to Home

This was a scary piece of news in the Lexington paper; a guy was shot in the Lexington Green parking lot. That complex includes the Joseph-Beth bookstore that Eileen loves. The shooter then high-tailed it across town before getting cornered a few miles away.

The scary part is that I know where the shooting took place and recognize the Rio Dosa Drive area where he got captured; I'll use that road when going into Kroger's on Richmond Road when coming from the Hamburg shopping area to the east; it's part of a back way into that shopping center.

Another strange thing about Lexington; as the horse capital of the world, we have some high-profile people in town. Captain Kirk was in Joe-Beth during the shooting-

TV and movie star William Shatner, who owns a farm in Central Kentucky, was one of those patrons. Shatner said he had been at Joseph-Beth Booksellers. He was trapped at the scene for several minutes because his truck was parked inside the area police had cordoned off. Police eventually allowed him to leave.

"My car is here, that's all I know," he said. "I just want to get my car and go home. It happens where I come from; it doesn't happen here."

The early reports have the shooting as a personal issue; the dead victim was shot twice in his car, so this wasn't one of those random acts of first-shooter-acting-out.

Meltdown Day

We're finally out of the freezer. The Winter Wonderland shots of the ice clinging to the trees got toasted today when the temperatures got up into the 50s. The airport registered a high of 54.

So, you saw trees shedding their ice en masse this morning. By the time we came back from lunch, the trees were back to normal. Unless the modest amount of wet stuff due later tonight screws things up, I'll be back to teaching tomorrow.

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I've been watching too much basketball as of late. Eileen and I were running herd over the two year olds at church and one emotional youngster threw an elbow at a fellow rug-rat sitting next to him during a game of musical chairs. I called over to Eileen, "Was that a Flagrant One or Two?" She said two, but we changed it to just a flagrant-1 and kept him in the game.

Ice Capades

More bad weather fun today; Eileen is having her birthday and both of us have the day off. She's between assignments and Thursday is an vacant day on my schedule, since my four classes are Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights and a once-a-month Saturday (with the rest on line).

Sullivan U wound up having to cancel day classes for the third day in a row, which means (if traditional patterns hold) that they'll be meeting on Fridays for the next three weeks starting a week from tomorrow. That will make my Friday office hours interesting, since instead of the laid-back nature of our "Plus Fridays" (we run day classes M-Th and leave Friday mornings free as office hours for times all students can grab their instructor without having a competing class intervene) we'll have a normal weekday schedule for three weeks.

The ice is still thick on the trees, many of which have fallen down. I'm blogging from one of Lexington's public libraries while Eileen goes on a book crawl; one of the trees across the street from the library had one of its main branches split off, only to be held up by a neighboring tree. Even this branch has an abbreviated schedule, running from 12-5 today.

At least one stop light to the east of us on Man O' War was out; another one to the west of us wasn't working last night. The city schools are shut for the week; they've already announced that they're closed for Friday.

President Obama gets some brownie points from this red state; he's signed off on a disaster declaration. The latest reports have 1.3 million people without power nationwide due to the storm and 580K in Kentucky. I had anecdotal reports of a friend's house being without power in Poplar Bluff, MO; the owner's off at a conference in KC, so pray that nothing bad happens while she's gone.

Thankfully, we've kept our power and our Internet and cable, although we had the local station link to our satellite/cable provider taken out yesterday for a while. I got two days off when I could use a breather, which isn't bad. Now, I can continue to spoil Eileen rotten on her birthday, which includes a nice breakfast out, a library run (good for beaucoup husband point for my book-loving wife), a run to the mall for buying gifts of her choice and a nice dinner out.

Life's good, even when the weather leaves a bit to be desired.

Winter Wonderland

We've been iced in for two days here in Lexington; the tough-to-cancel Sullivan U had to pack it in both on Tuesday and Wednesday, leaving me with a one-night work week this week outside of my on-line class and office hours on Friday morning.

It has been that icy. I got out to try and shake the cabin fever this evening and had to use every trick in the Michigander's winter playbook to get my car going. There was at least an inch of ice on the car with three inches or so of snow on top of that. If we were expecting warm weather tomorrow, I would wait for Mother Nature to do her thing, but we're expected to be sub-freezing for the next few days, so it had to get done sooner or later.

Trick 1-Hot Stuff. Fill up some available bottles with hot-as-you-can-get water from the bathtub. I had three empty two-liters of pop and a gallon milk jug filled with the hot stuff (cue Donna Summer). In an apartment, this also doubles as a device of getting said trash down to dumpster at the same time.

Once down, pour water on windows, or on doors to deice them so that you can get at your scraper.

Trick 2-Bang on the Drum Windows all Day. Time to go Cro-Magnon on the windows, gradually cracking down the ice. The hot water application creates a small water layer at the bottom that will allow the ice chunks to come off cleanly.

However, you need to be careful not to bash it with the scraper end lest the scraper come off from excess force, which I did; I had to get into Eileen's car to get Sparkle's scraper as a back-up.

Trick 3-Rock with You- I had enough snow and ice to deal with between my car and the plowed section of the parking lot to require the old rocking technique. Go back, then forward, then back, then forward, then back... until you get out. It's usually one I've used if I slid into a snow bank or off onto the shoulder of the road, but it worked well to get out of the parking spot.

Once we got out and on our way, we saw one of those views that you only get every few years, of everything being one big icicle. Some folks in town are without power, including one of the lights on Man O' War (Rapid Run, if memory serves). People don't seem to remember that a malfunctioning stop light is a four-way stop; most of the folks on Man O' War blew through not bothering to stop, although it was dark enough where they might not have seen the darkened lights in order to know to stop.

Many trees came down due to the ice coating they took. Some parking spaces in our complex are off limits due to tree branches sagging into them; we have a half-million people without power statewide and about 36K out here in Lexington. One of Eileen's buddies from church is without power and her cell phone is playing hard to get.

However, the main roads were clear enough to get us out to a late dinner. More later.

Retreating to the Cave

The first week of the semester has been a bit draining, especially when I teach Saturday afternoon and I'm recovering from bronchitis.

Bloggy goodness should resume next week.

Broncoitis and Bronchitis

No, I haven't fallen off the planet. I've just been on vacation and just got back from a newfound joy-finding a doctor in a strange town. Not that strange; it's northern metro Houston where my in-laws live. Still, I had to hunt to find a good urgent care place to take care of a budding case of bronchitis that I brought back from Rockford.

When did we stop going to our regular doctor for garden-variety illnesses? That used to be the case, but most GPs are booked solid and some sort of doc-in-a-box urgent care clinic is now the norm for treating things like sinus infections.

The PA who treated me was very good, hooking up a nebulizer inhaler to get some immediate relief to the lungs and getting some steroids and antibiotics to clear up my sinuses and lungs. I guess I need to hold off on my Olympic career for a bit ;-).

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I haven't been watching much football during bowl season; I've been on the road a lot and my in-laws don't have cable, so no ESPN.

The bowls have been cheapened quite a bit, which is good for mid-majors, who now get bids they would often get snubbed for in the past. Now, a pulse and a 7-5 record clinches a bowl bid, and a 6-6 has been known to get in. Down in Houston, the locals saw Rice beat Western Michigan in the Texas Bowl for Rice's first bowl win in 54 years.

Rice is one of the few school that's been downwardly mobile, going from being one of the doormats of the old Southwest Conference to being competitive in Conference USA. Had they been in the Big 12, they would have had a much harder time getting to a bowl and probably been slated to face a better team if they did manage to limp in with a 6-6 record.

Rockfordphiles

We're up in frigid Rockford, IL, having made it through some snowy and slick roads in eastern Kansas and western Missouri, introducing my in-laws' Houston-reared dog to her first sub-zero weather (it's 5 at present and slated to go down to -3 tonight). Poor little McKenzie is probably thinking "Who expanded the walk-in freezer?"

We'll be having Christmas with Eileen's clan tomorrow and going to a cousin's wedding on Saturday. I think this is the first time I've ever spent Christmas Eve in a hotel and the first time Eileen and her folks have been in Rockford for Christmas since her grandma passed on in 2005, so pray for the emotions to be manageable for her clan.

It looks like there is some excellent hoops action tomorrow if you get tired of family or don't have any. If you're in the former block, I'll lift up a prayer for you to get along with your clan. If you're in the latter block, I'll pray that you not get lonely on a family day.

Either way, Christmas winds up being a depressing time for a lot of folks, as dysfunctional families get out the long knives when they get together and lonely folks feel kicked in the gut if they have no one to share a family holiday with. May they all reflect on a God who loved (and loves) them so much that He sent Himself in human form to die for them.

"Mt. Enterprise... and put it in a museum"

We're in Texas, possibly for the last time in a long while. Eileen has a long Christmas hiatus from her current position and I can prep for next semester from my laptop anywhere, so we're visiting my in-laws in metro Houston. They're looking to sell their house and retire to Tennessee, so it may be a while before we come this way without her parents as a draw.

We took a slightly different route south than with previous trips to Texas, swinging by metro Longview to visit a high school buddy of Eileen's on our way down yesterday. A couple of the locales on the way down got a chuckle.

One county en route was Upshur county. It's good that they don't have county wide school districts like they do in Kentucky, where many of the high schools are X County High. "Upshur, up your [insert anatomical part]." Kilgore was en route as well; sports chants there would have spooked the Secret Service in the 90s.

The one that got the most fun was a small berg of Mount Enterprise. I recall saying "Don't give the Obama team any ideas, for they'll want to mount enterprise and display it in a museum."

I like the trip in from Beaumont on US-90 better, where the mileage roadsigns have Liberty winning out over China, then see Liberty losing out to Houston.

Please, Not on the First Date

We've been on the go this week; we spent Monday and Tuesday in Missouri visiting a seminary buddy of Eileen, bopped back to Lexington on Wednesday so Eileen could start a temp assignment, then back on the road Wednesday to spend Thanksgiving with my clan.

The traffic on I-75 Wednesday night in Ohio was nasty. I would love to have some sort of rear-mounted LED display to tell off people following me.

For the jet jockeys flying past at 80-85 miles an hour

"Your speed: Mach 0.12...0.11..0.12" (acting like those radar-equipped roadsigns)

For the tailgaters doing their best NASCAR imitation

"Please, not on the first date."

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On a lighter note, I caught an interesting gospel group at the community-wide Thansgiving service in Poplar Bluff on Monday; a Golden Road Quartet that did barbershop-quartet style southern Gospel, but with a gal and three guys. I'd seen co-ed Christian groups, but not one that was singing guy-style in a mixed manner.

That's not too much of a reach, since most of those all-guy quartets have a guy singing a rather high tenor that a lady alto could easily sub for. You didn't notice the difference until the gal, Stephanie Clark, had a lead and you could tell she was a gal. When they did four-part harmony, she blended right in.

I was expecting something tame, giving that our friend in town is a PC-USA pastor, but a local charismatic church, the Palace of Praise (that sounds like a generic Pentecostal church for something like The Simpsons to use) was hosting and most of the speakers were Baptist.

Expect blogging to get back to normal next week.

Give Thanks

It's the beginning of Thanksgiving break here at Sullivan; well, we have our Plus Friday office hours this morning, but we have the week off next week.

We've also got (for Kentucky) an unseasonably early snow, but a near perfect one, one that sticks to the grass but blessedly leaves the roads unscathed. Eileen gets to rub it in to her heat-weary Houston-based Midwestern transplant mom who's still waiting to sell their house and get out of Dodge.

Me, I'm not a winter fan; I'd rather be back in Florida, all else being equal. I recall my Grandpa Byron, who would snowbird down near Fort Myers, calling up on a winter day with six inches of snow in Midland; "It's a bit chilly, only in the high 60s, and we just got back from a round of golf" or some other rub-it-in statement.

When I was doing my teaching at Warner Southern, we were literally a few miles north of Frostproof; we had to squeegee off the car rather than scrape off frost barring the one or two near-freezing days of the year.

However, I've got a nice place to teach, good colleagues, good students and considerate bosses. I can go into Thanksgiving and count my blessings.

A bass-ackwards blessing is Eileen's unemployment; she lost her long-term temp position late last month and has yet to get a replacement. The advantage now is that she has the week off, too. We'll be able to spend some time earlier in the week visiting one of Eileen's seminary friends who could use some de facto family for Thanksgiving week (she lost her parents recently), then bop up to Midland for Turkey Day and my family and watching a likely Battle of the Perfects, with an 11-0 Tennessee playing a 0-11 Lions.

Illicit Freebies?

I'm blogging from Larry Bird's hometown of French Lick; Sullivan U's having their faculty "advance" at the French Lick Springs Hotel this weekend. I'm comfortably ensconced in my room, watching the Pistons beat the Lakers after practicing our skit for tomorrow morning and making a visit to the hotel's casino.

Yes, the casino. They had a $10 free playing money voucher as part of our check-in package. I've never been inside a casino in my life, at least not in the gambling part, other than to momentarily walk past the tables en route to a concert at the Soaring Eagle Casino in Mt. Pleasant.

Dilemma: do I have the discipline to take advantage of the offer, pocket any winnings off of my freebie, and walk away? Is it sinful to do so? After a bit of prayer and a call to Eileen back in Lexington, I decided to give it a shot.

I got my $10 comp card and headed to the nickle slots; instead of feeding coins in like the old one-armed-bandits, this system has a debit card-like setup. I proceed to make $42 on my $10 of gaming money, cash in my winner slips (getting a bar-coded coupon-like critter for the $31 highlight jackpot rather than a gusher of loose change takes a bit of the mystique out of things, but c'est la guerre) and leave the joint.

I know that the casino is willing to spend $10 on folks, counting on making a gambling fan or addict out of that on some. Was I tempting fate by making my foray?

Good question. I'm not one who has that gambling bug, at least not the casino type of gambling. I don't enjoy the games much and know that the house will win in the long run. However, if the house gives me $10 free, I'm literally playing with the house's money, not mine.

I might get that for sports betting, where there is an art and science to handicapping games and races. However, I know I have that weak spot, and steer well clear of Keeneland in my new home turf of Lexington. Sullivan has Keeneland outings at least once a year, but I've opted out of such trips, lest I get the parimutuel bug.

Question to the Peanut Gallery- Is this a stronger brother-weaker-brother issue? Should I have passed and not given other folks a good example when someone else might get hooked on gambling? Possibly, but I don't know of too many weaker brothers.

It seems odd that something might be legit if it's a freebie but sinful if you're paying for it. If someone hands you ten lottery tickets, do you rip them up? If you think you might get hooked on the lottery, maybe. It will depend on the person, I think.

What sayest thou?

Escape from Headache Central

Things seem to be improving, finally. I had a CAT scan Monday, experiencing that for the first time. Looking at my reflection in the machine as they were scanning my head reminded me of something out of Altered States, but the process was rather painless, in and out in about 10 minutes.

Like the old joke about Dizzy Dean, the CAT scan of my head found nothing. I visited my regular doctor this afternoon, who thinks that what I have is a tough but localized sinus infection; I'm on antibiotics, Mucinex and am continuing to take the pain medication the urgent-care doctor prescribed on Thursday.

In 20-20 hindsight, I should have asked the doctor for antibiotics on Thursday on the chance that it was a screwy sinus infection that was so ingrained that it wasn't kicking loose any discolored phlegm. I'd have had the thing licked by now that way, assuming my regular doctor is right.

C'est la guerre. "La Guerre."

Headache Central

Prayers are an order; I have a recurring headache in my left temple that doesn't want to go away. It's not a sinus infection, but it is influenced by sinus pressure and has been coming and going for two weeks; I went to the doctor Thursday and got some pain medication that makes things a bit more bearable without turning me into a zombie.

I'm due for a CAT scan tomorrow to check on things. I don't think it's life threatening and the pain wasn't that bad untreated, but bad enough to slow down my intellectual life and cut my blogging down to a crawl.

Inside Terms

Every family seems to have a few inside terms that outsiders don't get; sometimes their one liners that get retold so often they get down to an word or phrase. Here's a few of ours.

Robert Norris- An aggressive driver who changes lanes a lot. His full name is Robert Norris Weaver, known to his buddies as Bob N. Weaver. His female analog is Roberta Nancy Weaver, a.k.a. Bobbie N. Weaver.

Wockets-Cars in your blind spot just behind you to the right and left; you've got a Wocket in your pocket when they're not quite beside you but too close to turn in front of you.

"Got any colors you like?"-When someone is painfully slow getting started after a light change.

Atticus-the unspecified rodent in the crawl space above our apartment. It's too big to be a bird, otherwise he'd be Atticus Finch.

Werhner-Our paper delivery guy. We don't know his real name, but he has the habit of lobbing the paper up to our third-floor apartment. Sometimes he's accurate .... and ... sometimes the paper finds the other side of the railing or finds the roof. To borrow from Tom Lehrer's Werhner Von Braun "'Once the papers go, up, who cares vere day come down? Dat's not my department', says Werhner Von Braun."

Nobody likes Ike

The remnants of Ike have come a-calling. The Lexington airport has 33MPH winds at its 2PM fix, with gusts up to 54MPH. Thankfully, no rain to speak of; the core of what's left seems to be plastered over southern Michigan.

I'm still getting used to being in Lexington on a football Sunday; I was watching the Tennessee-Cincinnati  game just now, and it took a little thought to remember that their weather was our weather, since Cincy is only about 90 miles north of us. The wind was whipping up there as well.

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Speaking of Ike, we've heard from my in-laws in northern metro Houston. They have full tanks of gas, a full pantry and no power. The latter is typical, since about 5 million people had power knocked out in the Texas gulf coast area.

Houston, We Have a Problem

Hurricane Ike seems to be heading towards Houston, as its current track has it landing south of Houston in Freeport. Freeport rings a bell, since Dow Chemical has a big plant there and there was an active shuttle of staff between Dow's HQ town of Midland, MI (my hometown for those new to the Peanut Gallery) and Freeport.

However, it's not Dow's plant that has me worried; my in-laws are in the northern suburbs of Houston, as well as a number of Eileen's freinds. They are out of harm's way for any storm surge, but not from the winds or the occasional tornadoes that crop up; the Atascocita area will likely be on the ugly right side of the storm.

The historic parallel is of Hurricane Alicia, which hit just before they moved in a quarter-century ago. That part of metro Houston was badly hit by winds and tornadoes from Alicia.

Hopefully for Houston, Ike will shift course; this time three years ago, Rita was slated to hit Houston, only Rita decided to slide northeast and take on the Port Arther-Lake Charles area instead.

The family dog will likely be yapping up full-tilt this weekend; she hates thunderstorms.

Walking the Financial Walk

Summer term is behind me, and I can relax a bit. I have the next two weeks off to prep for next term a bit and veg a lot.

One of the things I did today is to start a stock portfolio for the first time. The portfolio details are over at The Stochastic Wok. That might sound odd, but I've always been in debt since leaving college and felt that paying off credit card debt was more fruitful than investing any excess cash; where can you get a 18% risk-free return on your money?

The answer to that one is "nowhere" but the other question is "where can you get a 300% yearly return on the money?" That's the clip my TSW picks have been at the last two months. True, I can't expect to keep that up, but a college finance professor needs to walk the walk a little.

Surprisingly, Ameritrade turned out to be a solid first bet for a first-time investor. I was expecting some of the lesser-known discount brokers to be better, but a package of free trades for the first month, allowing me to set up a portfolio on the cheap, plus rather low $10 trades once the teaser month is up, seem to be a good bet.

I figure that the firm hiring Mr. Law and Order DA to hawk their stuff on TV would be overpriced, but only by a few bucks. Once I get really rolling, switching to another broker with $7 commissions might make sense, but it's a good start.

Customer service was good. When I e-mailed them to note that I was getting charged for my trades, my account was adjusted in less than an hour, and the account was set up on-line in a few minutes. So far, no complaints.

I made a whopping $13 the first hour I was invested; I only got things going about 3:00 after posting grades and running errands. We'll see how the rest of the way goes.

The Stochastic Wok

I don't know what the future for this will be, but I've started a new blog to play off my Dr. Byron side; it's called The Stochastic Wok and will have a daily feature of a quick analysis of a randomly-selected stock. Today's inaugural stock stir-fry is of Frontline, the #1 oil tanker company. That's something that will stay in business for a while.

If that takes off, it could be an interesting site. We'll see if people like it.

Tuesday Musings

I haven't been my normal blogging self lately. Yes, that's not news. Between a hectic schedule, allergies and a slightly sour spirit, I haven't been in a blogging mood as of late, which has been rare since I started this blog six years ago.

There are a number of things on my mind. Zimbabwe is one of the bigger ones. The macro news isn't bad, as the recount seems to be leaning in the direction of letting the opposition win. However, the powers that be are gooning it up out in the countryside, which isn't good.

I did follow the NFL draft, but don't have too much to say of profundity. I'm happy to see the Pistons doing well, digging out of a 1-2 hole to be up 3-2 on Philly. I'm also happy to see the Tigers dig out of that disaster of a start to be only four games out of first as we go to press.

The other interesting story is the Southern Baptist internal census data that came out last year, showing declining attendance and baptisms, causing much gnashing of teeth in SBC-land; here's Pastor David's take on the issue. I'll have mine later in the week, God willing.

More tomorrow. My home Internet connection is down and I have to close up the office for the night.

TGIF Musings

I hope to get back to regular blogging; I've been too exhausted to do much blogging the last couple of weeks, running herd over three traditional classes, two on-line classes and an independent study. Throw tax returns, a graduation ceremony last Saturday (the second trip to Southeast Christian/"Six Flags over Jesus" as a Sullivan prof, and the associate degree silver gowns still look like a Guinan outfit from Ten Forward) and other hassles of modern life into the mix, and I've felt like I'm on a treadmill that doesn't stop and is going a notch too fast for comfort.

However, things are starting to level out. I have a tentative summer term schedule, which is good, since my contract runs out next month (they don't do formal renewals until near the end of the contract); if they were planning on getting rid of me, all the finance classes would be in the TBA bucket. A summer schedule means an all-but-likely renewal, so I can breathe a bit easier.

Spring has arrived in Lexington in earnest; we've had temperatures in the 70s and I can come to class in shirtsleeves if I come later in the day.

I had to pay money on both my Federal and Michigan tax returns this year; I usually wind up getting refunds due to capital loss deductions (my failed computer store of the late 90s is still yielding $3000/year writeoffs) and Eileen's student loan interest. However, this year, we had to write checks to Uncle Sam and Aunt Jennifer; we'll get enough back from Uncle Steve to buy a nice dinner for two, but probably not beverages and tip.

Usually, conservatives are in high disdain of the tax system this week, but I'm actually a bit glad to be paying income taxes. It means we have income to be taxed and excess cash flow such that I can write a mid-three-figure check without doing five layers of creative finance.

My notes are ready through Tuesday, my online classes aren't in mutiny mode, my bosses like me and the weather's nice. Time to enjoy a weekend for a change.

Pinning the Other Intruder-Anxiety

Well, I'm back from hiatus.

Let's cut to the chase; I had been fighting off some anxiety issues since my home intruder issue in February. As it turns out, it merely heightened some problems I had been dealing with for decades, but managed to previously muddle through with bit of crying and a lot of prayer.

With things ratcheted up a notch, I needed some help from the psychiatric tool kit; I'm on some long-term medication to manage those anxiety attacks that were paralyzing me mentally.

I used to be a skeptic of such medication, buying into the world-view common in evangelical circles that most emotional problems can be prayed through and talked through. However, the operative word in that last sentence is most.

I don't have too many Word-of-Faith visitors here, but this is one issue that has been prayed over for years without any major success. If the shortcoming is with me on the issue, all I can say is that I've done all I can in my power to draw closer to God and have more faith. I can't say that I'm perfect (far from it) but I've seen far weaker faiths be rewarded, so I don't see a perfect correlation between level of faith and answers to prayer.

God can (and does) heal such things directly and supernaturally. However, there are times where He allows nature to take its course and rely upon natural forces (like counseling and medication) to do the healing. Other times, healing just doesn't happen at all.

There are some situations where there are physical issues blocking rational thought and that drugs in the modern tool-kit can help. Some of it is a placebo affect, where people feel better knowing they're on medication, but there also seems to be an additional calming affect that heads off a debilitating cycle before it gets rolling.

We're not shy about using the modern medical system to manage high blood pressure or high cholesterol; despite some of the New Age leanings of modern psychology, we shouldn't be that fearful of using the medical system to manage some emotional/mental issues that have physical solutions.

Still Here

I haven't been up to blogging for the last few days. I'll explain why in the near future once I figure out how to explain it in such a way that present and future employers will be comfortable with. It's not bad or illegal, but somewhat touchy.

Bear with me as I figure out how to share with my good on-line friends and keep up my near WYSIWYG persona.

Still on the Planet

I haven't quite dropped off the planet. I was out of town most of the weekend seeing one of Eileen's seminary buddies get installed as pastor in a church in Missouri. The new reverend is still unpacking into her new house and doesn't have her Internet up, so I bummed just enough church bandwidth to keep tabs on my on-line classes.

It's also finals week and I have a backlog of grading to get done. I'll be up for air later in the week.

Shell-Shocked

For the Peanut Gallery regulars; I'm feeling better after my incident on Sunday, although the early part of the week had me too shell-shocked to teach. I can relate to people who have been in combat; even though it was only a one-shot deal and I had my unarmed intruder outweighed 2-1, it still was a jolt to the system.

I was in to see my doctor yesterday and he gave me some anti-anxiety medication to help me calm down; I was too out of it to lecture on Tuesday and did podcasts of my Wednesday night lecture ahead of time in anticipation of being too stressed out to teach. I went back and did podcasts of my Tuesday lecture this afternoon and will turn my attention to my on-line EMBA classes tomorrow; I'm not behind with them, since I normally do their podcasts for the next week on Fridays.

The medication has helped, giving me the best night of sleep I've had in a while without grogging me out too much during the day. I'm not getting those mentally-frozen spots where I can't do anything intellectual, and that's good when I have to be an intellectual for a living as a finance professor.

Here's a message for the Peanut Gallery-don't be afraid to get medical help for stress. God can and does heal, but He often does in mundane ways like medication, as well as through talking things out and prayer. In my case, the medication for the stress is making a difference so far.

Pinning the Intruder

I'm not sure how to start blogging on this, but I wound up subduing an intruder to our apartment early this morning. No, that's not a metaphor for a cockroach or a stray dog, but an approximately 5'9", 150lb "stoner" who wandered in through an unlocked front door; hold the lecture about locking the doors, for we've heard it more than once already today.

It was a smidge before 7AM, and I had awaken from a bad dream a bit before, in which I had a troublingly-angry response to teasing within the dream. Eileen and I are talking in bed, and I hear some noises coming from the living room. Given that we're the only people in the apartment, it's not natural to hear movement in one room when we're both in the other.

I get out to find a young man seated at the kitchen table, handling a bottle of one of Eileen's prescriptions; his back was to the bedroom door. I reach over to get the drugs out of his hands, and he literally threatens to kill me as the first words out of his mouth. Eileen heard that threat as well, as she ducked behind the bed in case any bullets started to fly.

Saying "I'm going to kill you" isn't a cool introductory line when you have a guy twice your size right behind you; I'm 6'5" and about 300 pounds. I wrestle him to the floor, making sure he has no weapons to back up that threat. He starts apologizing very quickly once I get at least three points for a near-fall; I'm not sure I got the pin, but I think I did have both shoulders to the floor for about five seconds.

It turns out that I just tackled a very confused young man, closer to 20 than 30 I would guess, wearing no shirt, jeans and socks without shoes. Mind you, this is February in Kentucky where the temperature outside at that time was in the low 50s. 

He was about 5'9 and 150, a white guy with dark brown hair, a lip piercing, and a goatee; a young Johnny Depp gets to play him in the movie. He starts rambling about knowing me and having permission to crash here; he's clearly under the influence of something, for he seems to be a few fries and a toy short of a Happy Meal. He's too zoned to be a good Jack Sparrow, this is the Pirate That Doesn't Do Anything... except do unlawful entries into third floor apartments.

I call 911 and have the police sent out, keeping myself between Mr. Stoner and the front door; the 911 operator stays on the line until the police got there. The police seem to have seen this young man before; he gets cuffed, I tell my story, and Eileen, who's been praying up a storm back in the bedroom, comes out to confirm my story. When asked by the lead police officer, he admits to smoking "the usual stuff."

I opted not to press any charges, since he seems to be in enough trouble as is.

I didn't harm the guy; a lot of folks would have been tempted to rough him up once they had him pinned, especially after being threatened. However, once I sensed he was no threat to me, I let him up and called 911. I didn't even make fun of his inebriated state, just kept him around until the police came.

I feel a bit bad about not thinking any God thoughts, but other than tackling the guy when initially threatened, I didn't show any hostility and acted fairly calmly. I'd like to say that "I prayed and then did X", but I just did stuff.

A lot of the things that I've learned managed to get applied in the heat of the moment about being merciful and gentle; not a total pacifist, mind you, for I responded with appropriate but minimal force, but much more gentle than the average guy would have been when faced with an intruder.

You always wonder, after seeing news reports or TV shows involving intruders, how you would handle things. As it turns out, far better than I would have thought; I was too pumped with adrenaline to be scared and had enough of the Gospel internalized to be merciful once out of danger.

Also, the anger that manifested itself in my dream didn't transfer to real life, and that's a blessing.

[Update 7:15PM-Prayers for the young man are in order; he was lost in multiple ways and needs to both get sober and find his Savior.]

Code of the (Mid)West

It seems to be an unwritten custom of mine as a Michigander to break out the shorts on the first warm (70+) day of the new year; I wasn't counting on it being this early, or I would have done the get-up properly with a new pair of sandals, as my old pair died this fall.

We hit 70 today here in Lexington, an all-time high for 1/7. Short's definitely aren't up to the business casual code at Sullivan for night class instrumctors, but I didn't have any classes today. So, when I saw the car thermometer hit 70 when getting back from some errands, the next trip outside was in shorts.

Everybody Must Get Stony-brooked

Things aren't happy in Big Blue country; the basketball team is underperforming, allowing low D-I Stony Brook to actually give them a game last night, with UK winning 62-52. They're 4-1, but 4-1 on a Twinkie diet, with lowly Gardner-Webb coming in and providing the one in the loss column. North Carolina comes to town Saturday, and things might not be pretty; one of the Herald-Leader guys said to "leave the children at home."

My drive home last night was interesting after my FIN 540 class; when I hit Harrodsburg Road about 9:30PM, I normally have a car or two heading south towards the New Circle Road beltway.  Last night, it was rush hour. A clue came from the post-game show on the sports-talk channel; the Rupp Arena crowd had just let out and a good chunk of it was heading out of downtown on Broadway/Harrodsburg (it's Broadway close to downtown, then it morphs into Harrodsburg; Limestone/Nicholasville does the same morph).

That's interesting, being caught up in post-game traffic. I've not lived close to a major arena before where you get rush hours after a game.

One of the host alluded to my apartment complex, saying something to the effect of "Stony Brook... isn't that the apartment complex on Man o' War and Armstrong Mill?" No, that's Stoney Falls, but it does sound like either an apartment complex or a upscale subdivision.

Talkin' Turkey

When I was running errands yesterday afternoon, one of the ESPN radio talkers (Mike Tirico, IIRC) was picturing guys working on their honey-do lists and the gals getting ready to cook dinner, which got a scathing bit of "that was sexist!" retort from his female co-host. Not in Casa de Byron; I'm the cook in the house.

I had the to-do list, but I also cooked my first turkey... with in-laws in da house... successfully. Not that there's a lot to do. I went with a turkey breast, and all you do is rinse it off, pat it down, apply some oil, stick the bad boy in a 325-degree oven and stick the probe thermometer in the bird. Wait 2.5 hours until the readout's showing 170 (shades of Alton Brown cooking geekdom), go Jack the Ripper on the the poor bird and serve.

It was a scaled-back menu, just stuffing (stove-top version), mashed potatoes for Eileen's dad, green beans (just out of the can, no fried onions and mushroom soup) and canned gravy, with a pair of store-bought pies on deck for desert.

One rite of passage down; hosting Thanksgiving for the first time. All my life, I've either been at my parents, my grandparents or my sisters; during our stay in Florida, we had one Thanksgiving with our home group leader's family and another at our church. This is the first time people came to my place for Thanksgiving.

Makes you feel grown-up. Yes, I'm 46, but there are times where I feel like I'm half that age, especially when you have holiday traditions where your parents or grandparents are the patriarchs of the clan. Today, I got to play the grown-up, cleverly disguised as a responsible adult.

Hata la Vista, Baby

That's a deliberate malaprop. I'm having to learn to work around MS Vista, the successor to Win XP. I'm not really a Vista hata, but I'm not happy yet; it makes for a cute title, though. There are some nice features, but the newness gets in the way for now, like the little blue halo that replaced the hourglass for the "I'm working on it" icon.

The good news; papa's got a brand new laptop that forced the Vista issue. My five-year-old Gateway is now relegated to PowerPoint duty until I track down a copy of MS Office for the new Dell; I downloaded a copy of Open Office, but it didn't quite want to do PowerPoint, obscuring the last line of a long screen.

The old boy had its battery go years ago, had its CD shot, its PC-card reader's shot and read a USB-WiFi modem when it wanted to, which wasn't often. However, it still reads a USB memory stick OK, so it gets presentation duty for now.

I'm not a big fan of Vista so far. It seems slower to boot up and clunkier to get around.  Vista did bring back a "Recent Items" slot, which was a nice Win98 addition that got junked in XP.

However, the CD works nicely, the built-in WiFi rocks on toast and the Master level of Scrabble still hands me my lunch every time. I can play above .500 with Smart and bat around the Mendoza line with Elite, but I've yet to win one with the Master.