PITY PARTY

Ah, the flu. What is there to say? There is perhaps no real way to describe how good "normal" feels until you get to experience a full version of the flu as I did this past weekend. I will not bother you with the details, but I did come out of this experience with one valuable lesson. Age and distance do not propel one beyond the range of "Mommy".

After a long, LONG night of sickness and no sleep I decided that I would bite the bullet and ignore the macho-man act and call up mom for a good old pity session. As soon as my mom heard my weak voice she knew something was wrong with her baby. Even early on a Sunday morning, she was able to make me feel better. She remarked that she has done the same thing for all of the other kids on occasion and had been wondering when it would be my turn to make a long-distance withdrawal from "Mom's House O'Pity". I think perhaps the only socially acceptable situation for a 6'7" guy like me to whimper and whine is when he is sick and talking to his mom.

I think that it is probably only natural. I wonder if this has been studied by any pre-eminent psychologists, the sedative effects of the maternal voice. How utterly pathetic I must have sounded...but did it matter one iota? No! I am reminded of the inimitable words of Garrison Keillor from his opera, La Influenza (no, I am not making this up):

"Mom made me chicken soup
She fluffed my pillows up
She talked and sang to me
Til I was sleeping
I never feared the dark
There was no danger
There was no one like my mama
She was an angel"

Thanks, Mom.

SHAKE, RATTLE, AND ROLL

You may have heard about our fun little 6.7 earthquake last week. It was centered about 90 miles south of Fairbanks down in the mountains east of Denali National Park. I guess that it shook for about 20-30 seconds here in Fairbanks, but I only felt about 5 to 10 seconds of it. I woke at 3:30 AM with the shaking and of course, being the uber-nerd that I am, I had to get on the internet to find out the magnitude and where it was located. There was no way that I was going to be able to get back to sleep otherwise.

Well, no sooner had I gotten back to sleep when my phone rang and I was greeted with the voice of my brother from Seattle wondering if we were all ok. I guess he had heard on the news when he woke up that central Alaska had been rocked by a good quake.

I must say, I do enjoy earthquakes. If you have never experienced one, I would highly recommend it. It is actually fun. Of course, a bad enough earthquake would be "not necessarily that much fun", but until that hits, I will enjoy them.

GOINGS ON

My friend Jayme is doing well, and she is safe following the events in Tucson on Monday. Jayme is a PhD candidate in the cell biology in the medical center there at the University of Arizona, and the shootings took place in an adjacent building. I spoke to her, and she was a bit shook up, but otherwise well.

Our autumn continues. After I wrote you last, we have had a dramatic shift in weather and it has been very, very warm. A very strong upper level ridge over western Canada (the same system responsible for the cold and snow in the Plains and Midwest) has been keeping our temperatures way above normal. Our highs have been in the 40s to around 50 (way too warm!) and lows have been in the 20s.

And, my nephew Simon Julian Roggenkamp will turn the ripe old age of 4 next Thursday, November 7th. Happy Birthday, Si Guy! See you in a couple of weeks. In other Roggenkamp news, the second Creative Trains store will be opening soon in Egan, Minnesota. The first one, a double kiosk at the Mall of America is doing great, and the new store is a full-size walk-in store. Congrats and good job, Jay and Karen!

Dad is doing good, and will be released next week, so they say. I talked to him on Saturday, the topic was, of course, Husker football, but he sounded very good.

And finally, for Duane Needham, who so ably pointed out my omission of this feature in the last couple of email dispatches, a return to...

INJECTIONS D'HUMEUR

Two vultures board an airplane, each carrying two dead
raccoons. The stewardess looks at them and says, "I'm sorry,
gentlemen, only one carrion allowed per passenger."

How about another?

Did you hear about the two antennas that got married?
The wedding was horrible, but the reception was just great!

One more...

How many dull people does it take to screw in a light bulb?
One

Have a great week.

Brian "La Influenza" Hartmann