Up Late and Early

I feel a nap coming on about 2 PM today. I woke up in the middle of the night and now I am up kind of early. I am reading a book about the Civil War and the print is small. I can read it for about an hour and I have to go do something else. The book is Faction, a little history mixed into a good story that is made up. It is about what would have happened if Robt. Lee had won at Gettysburg and Grant was brought back East to save the Union and end the War. It is written by Newt Gingrich and I wish I had it in large print.

Just got off the phone with the K-State extension agent for Shawnee County. It was my interview for the Master Foods program I am going to start attending in a couple of weeks. It is my understanding that in exchange for about 40 hours of training, I will be required to provide 40 hours of volunteer work in the area of foods. As a person that loves to cook, I am looking forward to learning more about foods. The one area that I am very deficient is in baking. Barb does most of that and I do most of the grilling. She can grill and I probably could bake but just don't have the interest.

Barb and I have a collection of old worn out cars. Our newest is 11 years old, with almost 100,000 miles and a couple are almost as old as we are. Did I say "OLD"? Even our second oldest car is 51 this year. I am struggling on just how to go green in our transportation selection. Barb's goal is to have a car that gets 40 MPG and costs less than $10,000. What I want is the ability to have a car with a little over 100 mile range on batteries and have the ability to tow a trailer with a generator if I want to go on a longer trip. Yes, I would also like to have the ability to take our bikes on that trailer. I guess one of these days I am going to have to engage my mechanical engineer guy Ken in the project.

Today I saw a cartoon that a guy on his birthday realized that he was now old enough to have "Natural Causes" listed on his death certificate as the cause of death. When I was 20 and engaged in a war, it never crossed my mind just how old I would get to be. My concern was would I get older? Now each decade I cross into seems like a natural place to be. Kind of like when I was a Captain I wondered if I could ever make Major and Colonel was almost too good to hope for. When I got there, I always asked myself, "what would happen if we had a two promotion war". Now I wonder what 80 will feel like. Which is better, to have good health at 60 or live to 80? Would I settle for quantity over quality? I would rather die of exposure on an ice flow than suffer a long and painful death.

Kind of like the old Eskimo's are reported to wonder off and get eaten by a Polar Bear than be a burden. That is an old joke we always told in our family. Right before my Dad died he was in the VA Hospital. He had a very high fever and the only way they could get it down was to put him on one of those cooling mats that circulated cold water under him. He woke up and looked surprised and said, "Where are the Polar Bears". I am pretty sure that he knew the end was near.

Oh well, didn't win the lottery so I'd better go do something.

MUD