sitting in the early morning

So when (or maybe if) we go back to the moon and set up permanent camps, will we designate the areas where the Apollo missions landed and left stuff as kinda sorta national parks?  Six US flags were left there; five are still standing.  Other astronauts left family pictures.  I guess there's other things, too.  It would be odd to create houses and work areas, floating lightly from kitchen counter to couch.  Magnets will probably be in high demand to hold things in place.  I imagine it would get quite annoying not being able to walk.  Playing basketball could be fun.  Long term, it would be interesting when the first birth occurs in such a place.  How will that kid react to coming to Earth and dealing with gravity?  I imagine his or her body would have difficulty adjusting.  Anyway ...

Sad.  Some 16-year old kid moved to our greater area this past year.  Must have lived somewhere that didn't have trains.  We all know here the mortality rule - stop, look, listen.  This kid slapped on the headphones and walked the tracks.  Music was so loud, apparently, that he didn't hear the train's airhorn - or feel the rumbles.  Train scooped him up and toasted him.  I guess everywhere have its local knowledge - avoiding gators and poisonous snakes, taking cover with approaching tornadoes, preparing for hurricanes.  We have trains.

Christmastime spawns such odd commercials.  This woman tries to take something out of a microwave with  her bare hand.  She drags it to the edge and spills it.  Problem solved with some pot holder shaped like a glove.  She cooks something in a microwave so long that it is bubbling.  She tries to remove that with a bare hand?  Idiot.  Another has some guy sitting on the edge of his bed coughing up a lung.  Wife or whoever he's sharing the bed with is tossing violently seemingly incapable of wrapping a pillow around her head.  He takes some medicine and everyone cuddles.  If those clowns are married it's clear that the marriage isn't aged.  First, the guy's an idiot for not taking the medicine that was apparently just in the other room before he starting spewing spittle.  Second, veterans know that if you can't control the disruption to the other half, you park it on the couch.  Same product has another commercial with this - whew - family watching some television show.  Little Timmy and Buffy sit trying to hear the show.  The wife looks normal.  The dad, hacking up what remains of his intestines, is dressed like a complete doofus - sweater over a shirt, pristine little head of hair.  He coughs and coughs and coughs, hand positioned properly in front of his mouth.  Presented with that scenario, I'd be standing behind him squeezing his chest in spurts to dislodge the chicken bone.  The wife dutifully goes into the next room to get medicine for the apparently incapable of helping himself husband.  Then everyone is happy.  Who writes this stuff?  Have they left the office ever?  In real life people just are not that helpless or useless.

Some guy wrote to me about the Trans Siberia post. Odd.  He started off threatening me with physical violence, but quickly transited.  I doubt he's the violent type; he just wishes he could be sometimes.  He told me about how he enjoyed the show.  There was a few shots at me in his writing, which is fine.  I wrote back.  Was nice.  He didn't respond.  I hope he has a nice life.

I don't think I wrote about the Van Dyke Piano I'm getting.  Lemme find the picture ... hunh.  I know I have one.  I'll find it later.

Van Dyke was my great-great grandfather.  Piano company was in Scranton, about five blocks from his house ... the same house within which I grew up.  His library was my bedroom.  I doubt he would have approved when I played with chemistry there.  I wanted the cork to fly off the test tube.  So I put some chemicals and water in the tube, corked it, and flamed on the burner.  The cork flew only when the entire test tube exploded.  The dark spots on the ceiling where still there when we moved away several years later.

Anyway, the family had no pianos from the company.  In the 1990s, I found one and had it restored for my mother.  She was thrilled.  So I was prancing around the net and somehow found one in Cortland, NY.  Looks to be in very good condition.  Getting it Saturday.  Going in my office.  I'll walk to it and play some blues riff when clients need a walk-up call.

I'll amend this post later when I find the pics.  Ah, no need.  Found them!  I'll drop them in and leave.  Bye for now.