Moth morals.

The miller moths that have been infesting our house for a month have mostly moved on to the mountains. Every few days a bunch of stragglers stop in, though.

To help deal with the moths, I'd bought a bug zapper. It is somewhat of a humane zapper. When a moth flies in and hits the grid, it doesn't make that satisfying ZAP sound. Usually it just stuns the moth, which then falls down to the bottom of the zapper, which is, I learned on the first morning, open. So after the first day I put the zapper on top of a large jar half full of water. The next morning there were about 20 moths in the water. I dumped the jar outside, and at least half of the moths flew away. That eased my conscience.

Yesterday, though, I began to think that probably some of the freed moths just reenter the house. I wasn't willing to drive them to the next county to release them, so I wondered if it would be okay to leave them in the water until they drowned. That is, after all, a relatively peaceful way to die, once you stop struggling. You don't actually inhale lungfuls of water, because when you eventually have to inhale, your throat constricts. You just suffocate, and possibly see mermaids in that long tunnel with the light at the end.

I was thinking about that last night and watching the moths around the zapper when I realized: those moths are really, really stupid. They bang and bang on the protective enclosure, trying to get through to that violet light, even though ten seconds before they saw their Uncle Fred get through, hit the grid, and get blown to smithereens. What are they thinking?

I made my decision, and I don't think I'm a bad person. I really do hope the moths get to see mermaids.

Write-in campaign.

I guess I should have named this blog "durf-sez", since contributions from "oui" have been scant. It's time to get rolling again, and the way to do that is to put a little pressure on esteemed blogger Twila, who otherwise might slither and dither until all readers have long gone. She is, after all, the one who preaches that a blog needs a daily entry to stay alive.

I can't publish her email address here, but most of you already know it. Please drop her a note asking her to get her blogass in gear!

Flying, or not.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, a couple of months ago I bought my first collective pitch RC helicopter. It's a micro, for flying inside. It weighs 1.6 oz, its total length is 9", the main rotor diameter is 10", and the tail rotor diameter is 1.5". I had just learned to hover it when one of the servos (which receive commands from the radio) burned out. It turns out they're backordered for two months, a bummer. What to do?

I decided that I'd buy my ultimate (in current projections) heli, a much larger model for flying outdoors. I ordered it last week. (I left a human in the pic for relative size.)

Here are the specs. It weighs 3 lb. 12 oz., its total length is 33", the main rotor diameter is 38.2", and the tail rotor diameter is 7.9". So it's a lot bigger. It will arrive in a kit, so I'll have to build it.

The best part is that it's really cool. The worst part is that every crash will probably cost $100 or more. But I'm going to be really, really conservative. ACK! Bad word! I mean, really, really careful.

My philosophy of life, compleat and unabridged.

Love is everything.

Chris Bliss, P.S.

Here are a couple of minutes of his show last night (well, you know).

Chris Bliss.

Twila and I drove to south Denver yesterday and had an excellent dinner. We then went to the comedy club (I don't remember the name, but it was something like "Comedy Club"). Somehow we managed to end up in the front row - I was resting my feet on the stage. The first three acts varied from :p to :), then Chris Bliss appeared. He was wearing clothes that looked like they were pulled from a dumpster, and he looked a lot older than in his glory days five years ago. But he was hilarious. It didn't hurt that his political leanings are the same as ours - if he had said that Mitch McConnell had just been run over by a steamroller, we would fallen off our chairs laughing. As it was, many times I laughed so hard my eyes watered.

At the end of the show he did one of his famous juggling routines, in which he juggles three tennis balls in time to music. It was amazing.

Chris Bliss

All in all, a great date!

An anniversary.

Last year on June 4 Carl asked if I'd like to go to New York for six months and work on NuSTAR. I laughed and said no, but then agreed to think about it. Twila was in Texas for a graduation. I spent the weekend thinking, thinking, thinking, and finally decided that I really did not want to do it. I had to propose it to Twila, though.

Twila arrived home on June 6, and we sat down with wine, cheese, and crackers. When I felt sufficiently lubricated, I tossed it out: "Hey, you don't want to live in New York City for six months, do you?"

She said:

And that was the beginning of that.

Finally examined!

The pros and cons of a man sitting down to pee.

Life as we know it.

I've been wanting for Twila to start blogging again, because it seems easiest and best when we do it together. She's insistent on having a "theme", though, and she hasn't thought of one yet.

Yesterday we climbed 3 miles up Round Mountain. I considered it training for my attempt at Pikes Peak in about 6 weeks. (Twila could climb Pikes Peak tomorrow, if she wanted to. She could probably climb Mt. Everest, if it weren't all icy and stuff.)

The hike was difficult, but not as hard as the last time. That's a good sign, maybe. But when we got to the bottom, Twila said, "Wow. That was fun." And I was like, "Huh?"

We're all pleasure people, I suppose. Really, who doesn't like pleasure? It's kind of in the definition. But when I think of pleasure I think of cuddling, having my feet massaged by my super chair, a hot shower, web surfing, or an afternoon nap. Twila thinks pleasure is struggling up the side of a mountain for 12 hours, clambering over rocks and boulders, gasping for breath at high altitudes, fighting past constant pain, putting up with bone-chilling cold or intense heat (sometimes on the same hike), and forcing your body to do things it doesn't want to do, and probably was not designed to do, except in extreme emergencies.

So we did climb Round Mountain, and I felt some satisfaction, but when she said, "Wow. That was fun.", my oxygen- and nutrient-deprived brain could not grasp what she meant. I'm still working on it.

Tomorrow night we're going to Denver for dinner and then a Chris Bliss show. Chris Bliss is the guy who went viral a couple of years ago by juggling to a Beatles tune, or something. I don't really remember what it was, but I know seeing him is going to be a lot more fun than climbing Round Mountain.

Durf gets a raise.

Today is, for me, historic. It's the day I make my last obscenely large health insurance payment, about the same amount for one month that people in civilized countries pay for a whole year. As of July 1 I am a Medicare baby (as, I might add, we all should be, and not because we're geezers).