You never know how much you take something for granted until it is gone, even if only temporarily.

My left eye has seemed a bit out of focus lately, and I was growing concerned with my overall eyesight. I had Lasik surgery performed five years ago, and was afraid that it was starting to go bad, or, worse, that I’d have to have another procedure.

So I bit the bullet and went in for an eye exam. Good news! My eyesight in both eyes is 20/15, and the fuzziness in the midrange of my vision with my left eye is due to dryness and variations between the eyes. So I live with it. Nothing is wrong with my eyes, and I still have a few years left before they change enough for me to need reading glasses or something. All perfectly normal.

The problem was that after the dilating drops were given I couldn’t read any books. Wow was that a living nightmare! I could juggle, relax, pace, and think, but the one thing I really wanted to do was read.

The drive home was a thrill a second. Everything was way too bright, even with sunglasses, and everything was just off.

When I got home I basically ate lunch and watched television and napped a bit. I could use the computer, barely, but it was a terrible strain.

Thank goodness that was only temporary.

I can read now without too much strain. Enough hours have gone by that while things are still blurry, they have improved much. The computer screen is far enough away (and I can magnify word documents) that doing a blog is possible too.

I hope that I never have to do without the ability to read. Even for a few hours, it wasn’t any good at all.

Proud Father: Hello Marcus!

Marcus Man: Hello Daddy!

PF: How are you Marcus Man?

MM: I’m watching the Wiggles!

PF: That’s great, Marcus Man!

MM: Bye bye, Daddy!

PF: Goodbye, Marcus Man!

What can I say about Kara? I mean, she has her own blog, so revenge is easy for her. She also likes to post pictures, and we all know that I’ve been a bit to, um, photogenic in my life.

I could say nice things about her, writing about how pretty I think she is, how talented a photographer I think she is, or even how she also seems to have a brain.

But that isn’t fun.

I could make fun of her taste in men.

But that is too easy.

I could gloat about how easy she is to beat in Catan.

But that wouldn’t be true.

You see, what I really want to say is that I think she is evil. Oh, not evil in the “I’m going to sack your village and salt the earth before I leave” sort of way. Or even evil in the “Hey, sticking

these needles in you creates in interesting reaction! I’ll experiment now to see how many times that reaction will happen.”

No, nothing like that.

She has this evil look. Oh, she probably thinks it is her innocent look. You’ve seen it before. It is the look at cat gives as it is playing with a mouse. Right before she eats it.

I can’t be certain, but I’m pretty sure she enjoys having that air about her. You never know what she might be thinking. It might be about what she wants to have for dinner. It might be about what a good picture that might make. Or it could be about how much fun it would be to increase the chaos in the world.

The slight tilt of her head. The whisper of a smile as she thinks.

Be careful, John. Be very very careful.

Why am I always surprised that cherries taste, well, cherry flavored?

The final class performance for the Conservatory program now starts at Noon, I think, and not 1 PM or 2 PM like we were told (August 7th). It should take place on the actual Second City stage in Novi, so I’m very excited!

We had our midterm show on Sunday, and I have to say I think we did pretty well! It was at the Emagine Theater which, contrary to the impression one gets from looking at the outside, really is just an ordinary movie theater, except it has cars on display in the lobby.

As it is a normal theater for movies, there are no performance theater things that are helpful, like, oh, lights, or even a stage.

They set up a temporary stage for us. During the class four show it fell apart and almost injured the class.

The temporary lights are turned off by pulling the big plug that is seven feet off the ground.

Gotta love showbiz!

But anyway, our show was fine. I still feel I can do better, but I think I did fine. I need to remember to use the tricks I’ve learned. Pick a strong character, have a point of view, get totally into it.

I’ll work on it though. I can see the path.

And, most importantly, the journey is fun!

I’ve always liked military people. I enjoy military fiction. I like reading up on military history and technology. I still get a thrill about of playing war games.

However, I also do like hanging out with people who are in the service. I was thinking about this the other day, and I finally figured out when that solidified.

I wasn’t recently. I do hand around a lot of military people in my line of work, enlisted and officers, and on a good day I can make their job a bit easier and do some good. They are always friendly. More than that, they show respect. To me, someone who they might not know. But more, to each other, and especially themselves. That is one of the aspects of military people that I find extraordinary.

It wasn’t in college. When I worked at Fort Meade on of my bosses was an active military officer, and I hung out with many military people. I even worked for two weeks at a Navy base in Guam, and not only did I work with them, we ate, drank, and explored the island together. Well, I explored. They showed me and made sure stayed alive.

It wasn’t in high school. In fact, that should have turned me off. I wanted to join the armed forces, but was turned down because of my poor eye sight. Later, after my Ph.D. they wanted me (for their Nuclear Submarine program), which I turned down – not my field, better ways to help.

No, it was right after college, before graduate school. I went to Europe for two weeks, and met up with my sister, Golda, who was in the Navy and stationed in near Formia, Italy (just south of Rome). One night I got to hang out with all the enlisted sailors on her ship. We went drinking, and had a rowdy good fun time. They treated me like one of their own, with respect, and yet without airs. It didn’t matter that I was going to graduate school. I was just someone new to meet.

I do recall that during that night on the town I felt incredibly safe!

That was the first time that I got to spend a long period of time with regular military folk in an easy relaxed setting. It solidified in my mind what I had hoped: that people in the military are in many ways just like you and me, and are great people to get to know.

I would have never have had the opportunity to learn that first hand if it weren’t for my sister. Thank you, Golda, for that wonderful gift.

Have a happy birthday.

Well, it isn’t that quick, as I’m here until late Thursday night (it is Tuesday), but it will go by quickly.

And, as I’ve discovered, slowly.

My flight was supposed to leave at 5:30 PM. However, due to thunderstorms in metro D.C., we were stuck on the runway in Detroit for an extra 90 minutes. Annoying, but I do think that it is better than the alternative: flying into a thunderstorm and crashing in a fiery ball of death.

When we arrived, we sat on the runway for another twenty minutes waiting for a gate to open up. I guess it was a bad idea to decide to wait until I arrived to have dinner.

I got to my hotel by about 9:15, and did my sit up workout. If I waited until after dinner, I would have to wait a long time and I’m pretty tired. The good news is that the restaurant was open until 10:30, and I made it with 15 minutes to spare.

Instead of packing last night, I left work a tad early to go home and pack before my flight. This was good because I had a nice surprise at home: my Newsweek was waiting for me! Usually it arrives on Tuesdays, but when I have a trip and I leave on Wednesday, it invariably arrives after I leave. I guess I fooled it this time.

It would have been nice if I had remembered I had it while stuck on the flight! Fortunately I had Honor Harrington to keep me company.

As a gift, my wife bought me a clothes packing utility folder. I tried it out as I had two suits to pack and didn’t want to wear one on the flight out (good choice this time). I was very surprised! Not only did all my suits fit, but I had room for toiletries, underwear, and two computers (my personal one, and one for demos), among other things. Very impressive! I did wear my shoes, but I probably could have packed them also.

A bit of technology has made its way into my life without me realizing it until today, and it has made my traveling easier. Years ago, I used to have to dialup an Internet connection, which meant finding out the dialup number ahead of time. However, slowly but surely, and for the past year I think, I haven’t had to use dialup at all. Now every hotel room I’ve stayed at has had high speed Internet access! Usually it is $9.95 to $14.95 a night, but some times it is included with the room charge.

Yes, that is expensive, but I constantly have mail I need to respond to, so it is required. And no, I don’t have World of Warcraft installed on my work machine.

Oddly, the USB-Ethernet hardware that I installed at work and have been using for over a week didn’t work when I arrive here. It couldn’t find the driver. Usually I’d go online to find it, but, um, can’t do that unless it works.

I also didn’t have the installation CD.

Surprisingly for me, I was able to find the driver in the maze of Windows directories, and got it to work!

My skills as an engineer sometimes come back at the most useful times.

As an aside: why don’t most hotels carry the Comedy Channel?

Okay, so it is almost midnight here and I’ve finally unpacked. Tomorrow I have a meeting at 1 PM, but I need to arrive at Noon to get through security. It shouldn’t last long, but I hope it is productive. That night I’ll be having a business dinner with people from work and others from another company we work with, and, hopefully, some of our government friends.

Thursday I have two meetings, which, including security will run from 8 AM until 2 PM. Hmm, probably later, as I’ll want to take care of some work stuff with our subcontractor. My flight out is at 8 PM, barring weather and alien invasions.

This all means that I probably won’t have any time to write proposals. Tomorrow morning won’t be enough as I have some prep and review work to do.

If you have read this far, then you get to find out that I have two performances coming up. Our Second City Level 2 midterms show is at the Emagine Theater on Sunday, July 10th, starting at 6:15 PM. I think we go on first. I think we are doing a bunch of improvisational scenes – no games. I’m not really sure.

Our Second City final class show will be on August 7th starting at 2 PM. Hopefully it will be at the new SC theater, if it ever finishes construction. I have absolutely no idea what we are doing for that. The good news is that it isn’t during the main war weekend at Pennsic. The bad news is that I miss land grab.

The even worse news is that it is right before my trip to California. And then I go to Pennsic.

Am I babbling yet?

Battlestar Galactica and Stargate (both SG-1 and Atlantis) start their new seasons next week. Yay!

Monk starts this week! Reserved “yay” because those episodes are either really good or just okay.

I should probably stop writing and get some sleep. More writing isn’t going to make me miss my family any less.

Elaine and I, along with Natalie and Tim, saw War of the Worlds this morning. I highly recommend it. It was exactly what I wanted to see, and except for updating it for modern times, it was pretty faithful to the H. G. Wells version.

I should probably say right now that there are spoilers ahead, although if you haven’t figured out how the movie ends, then you probably aren’t into science fiction all that much.

There are two things I want to talk about. The first is that I wish there was a part two to the movie. Seriously! Much of the Earth is in ruins, with major cities decimated and a huge chunk of the population gone. Food distribution has been disrupted so much that there will be widespread famine, not to mention disease.

So I want to know what happens after that. Does the United States survive? Does technology even survive? If this happened during Wells’ time, it wouldn’t be as major a deal because the drop in tech wouldn’t be all that great. But today, with so much specialization and the world economy, it would be rough going for years, if not decades.

But then I realized something, which leads to my second thought. There would no Part II. Consider this. You are an alien invader, things are going great, you are wiping out humanity, and then, suddenly, you realize that you can’t live on the planet and there is no way you are going to take it over.

What do you do?

Do you just leave, letting the species that already has primitive space flight capabilities survive and eventually prosper? And hope that they won’t hold a grudge?

Or do you decide that if you can’t defeat them, you’ll just wipe them out. You already have the high ground. Just slam a few asteroids into the Earth and you won’t have to worry about those pesky Earthers coming back for revenge in a millennia or two.

So here is how I think the movie should have ended, if it was trying to remain realistic. Tom Cruise sees some the Aliens being destroyed. Everyone cheers. Humanity will survive. Two days later, the impacts hit the Earth, and all life is destroyed.

The End.