At The Range

carts
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

I've not been able to get out and play golf for a while, but I did head out to Midway Par 3 to hit a large bucket of balls at the driving range this evening.

I wanted to try out my two different drivers and see which will work best. And I worked my way through a few other clubs. It was a way to stay loose, get some motion in, and have some fun.

A couple of fellows came along and started hitting balls a short way down the line of mats. One was teaching the other to play. As much as I tried to not listen, I found the guy's advice to his friend starting to affect my swing. That's the worst thing you can do.

Over the years I have developed a serviceable, if ugly, swing. It usually works for me, though it is probably more appropriate to an arthritic, one-armed, 80-year old pensioner in a back-brace.

Listening, even unwillingly, to proper swing-advice just doesn't help. I think, frankly, that it may be too late.

Back on Stage at Possum Hall

I've taken a small role in a production by the Possum Point Players, a community theater in Georgetown Delaware where I spent many days, pre-kids.

The show is Stinkin' Rich, a retelling of Moliere's The Miser, set in 1929 in New York. I'm playing Simon, a lawyer and go-between who is on-stage for all of 30 seconds or so. The director is my old friend Nina Galerstein, who introduced me to the Lovely Karen. She asked me to jump in and take the small role and I decided, "why not?"

It has been a good long while since I've been on stage at Possum Hall as an actor. Back in 2004 I helped out as a stage-hand. I used to be a regular, but as the children came along and their activities took precedence, I stepped away. I'm enjoying getting back on-stage again in a speaking role. I like playing Drosselmeyer in The Nutcracker for the girl's dance school. But it's cool to be using my voice again.

I've been taking rehearsal pictures, which may give you a preview of the show. I'll also note that fellow blogger Kim Klabe is a part of this production, playing a worldly operator named Rose.

The show opens this Friday and runs Friday and Saturday nights, and Sunday afternoons, for the next two weeks.

Con"grad"ulations

I saw "congratulations," spelled that way, with a "d," written in soap on the back window of a truck at Sussex Tech today. We were there for a graduation ceremony, so I assume that the misspelling was intentional and a celebration of someone having completed high school.

Our Colleen will graduate next year, so this was rehearsal, in a way. And we were there in support of our friends Andy and Lynne; their eldest, Rachel, was Class President and a speaker at the ceremony. That's her, at right.

Colleen's young man, Michael, also graduated, as did several of her friends, some of whom we've known since they started school. It's cool to see how they have grown into fine young men and women.

Sixth Golf Game of 2009

I played a solo round at Old Landing Golf Course, outside of Rehoboth Beach, yesterday afternoon. Old Landing is a course I've played many times in the past. It has not been the best-kept place to play, but it is getting better and is a fine value. I walked, carrying my clubs, as part of my attempt to get into better shape.

I decided to try playing the whole round with my driver in action. In the past, I have limited the use of the driver, as I am not very good with it. But my swing is improving and I can sometimes hit a decent drive, so I decided to use the driver on all holes save those where it is clearly the wrong club -- par-3 holes and those with narrow, tricky drives.

I had mixed results. There were several drives that I was proud of, but often, when I hit a firm, rising shot that seemed to have some distance in it, my slice ruined things. I hit a few trees. But my fairway shots are getting better; I've found a comfortable spot with my 3- and 4-hybrid clubs. There were several holes that I was able to approach in something like golfer fashion.

I still carded a disappointing 114, but had at least one par and several holes where, but for a decent putt, I'd have had more. There was only one truly ugly blow-up hole.

And I got some very pleasant exercise.

Floating History

I spent a pleasant hour today visiting the Nina and the Pinta, reproductions of two of the ships that Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain to the Americas. The ships are in Lewes for the weekend and the volunteer crews are offering tours.

I love boats of all kinds and am a voracious reader of maritime stories, so I was in heaven. I took about a hundred pictures, some of which I liked well enough to post on-line.

While I was aboard, a small group of volunteers from the Kalmar Nyckel were wandering around and playing compare and contrast. The Kalmar Nyckel is a reproduction of the ship that brought the first permanent European settlers to Delaware, in 1638. There are almost 150 years between the two voyages; it was fun to listen to them compare notes with the Nina and Pinta crews. The Kalmar Nyckel was a much more technologically advanced ship, yet all three are but small cockle shells in which to cross a stormy sea.

One of the perks of living in Lewes is the town's close connection to the sea. We were historically a port, and a fishing town. Now we haul in tourists and retirees, but the water still plays a key role.

A Stormy Night in Delaware

A storm front moved across Delaware last night, bring high winds, thunder and lightning, and possibly hail up and down the state.

The scene at right was at 7:05 p.m., just outside of Rehoboth Beach. Heavy rain showers had just moved through, though there was not much thunder or lightning. There was a momentary opening of the clouds that showed the sunny skies that had been around earlier in the day, and the tops of the storm clouds above the murk that hovered just over our heads.

As the evening progressed, we watched storms roll across the sky north of Lewes. They tend to pass us to the north, but we did get a few brushes of rain and wind and were able to watch the show from our north-facing living room windows.

And it was possible to track the various storms via twitter.

In Ocean City, Maryland:

• drvcrashI sweat a tornado is coming thru right now
• drvcrash It's hailing sideways
• scottking http://twitpic.com/67xft Hail just shattered the windshield on our neighbors truck. They look like cocktail onions.
• drvcrash @scottking yeah i was watching the cameras at work when it hit and all the customers run in
• scottking @drvcrash I can only picture being putt-putting or on the boardwalk and have it start hailing. Bet it's hilarious to see tourist run.

In New Castle County, Delaware:

• del_editor http://twitpic.com/680ld - rainbow outside the news journal
• del_editor power's out in bear, we hear
• del_editor about 5,600 Delmarva Power customers w/o power in Glasgow area. power back on by 11 p.m. they're saying.
• del_editor http://twitpic.com/6863r - rainbow on 141 SB

At around 10:00 p.m., del_editor, who works at the News Journal, tried a little twitter-based reporting:

• del_editor so how's the weather, any power outage situations out there in the south, north and in between delaware?
• andytuba @del_editor Well, Newark had that weird yellow sky earlier, but it stopped raining a while ago and the power's doing fine.
• lifeontheedges @del_editor not much crazy weather here, lots of thunder and lightning for a while but calm now. sky looked like orange sherbet at sunset.

I assume there were several other responses, from folks I don't follow, because del_editor soon seemed satisfied:

• del_editorI love the power of twitter. In a few seconds, I can gauge weather throughout state. thank you, all.

And others were watching the storm and storm-watchers:

• lifeontheedges wow, looking at flooding in Salisbury on @wboc preview

Meanwhile, in Southern California:

• martenhogeweg even the fox weather man is twittering: it's sunny in socal.. it's sunny in socal.. it's sunny in socal..

And this morning? Here on Delmarva:

• oceanviewde Storm last night was worth the incredible weather it brought for today!

Words Matter

There will be plenty of other people parsing the security/terrorism speeches by President Obama and Dick Cheney today. There are substantive differences in policy, of course. But I wanted to keep it simple and just look at the words.

To the right is a word-cloud of Dick Cheney's speech. Note the largest word. We spent the last eight years having that word, "terrorists," shoved down our throats.

At left is a word cloud of President Obama's speech. His largest word is "people."

A note to Dick Cheney: go away.

New Photo Project

I've started collecting, photographically and geospatially, Kent/Sussex Boundary Monuments. These are stone monuments, set in the past to mark parts of the boundary between the two counties. Most of the boundary follows streams, but there are two stretches of lines which run from point to point. Most of those points are marked with stone monuments. The New Castle/Kent boundary is similar.

Staff from all three Delaware counties and several state agencies have started a project to improve the accuracy of the geospatial data that we use to represent the county boundaries in our GIS tools. We have been looking at historic surveys and have noticed references to stones that serve as monuments in several places. So I have started do some scouting to see if we can find these. And, of course, I take pictures.

I Hereby Challenge #1

I hereby challenge former Lewes City Councilperson and several-time Sussex County Council candidate Judson Bennett to Get Your Own Blog (GYOB).

Jud is a prolific e-mailer. He maintains a private mailing list he calls the "Coastal Conservative Network" to which he sends a constant stream of updates which read, to this jaded liberal reader of conservative thought, as blog posts.

Here are some subject lines from Jud that are still in my inbox:

• Future Scan-the Development of the future of Lewes?????????
  Repeating charges from some no-growth activists that a regional planning initiative by a local group is developer-controlled.
  
• Group threatens to stop Prayer at Sussex Council Meetings/Prayer Breakfast
  Jud is shocked that Americans United for Separation of Church and State object to explicitly christian prayer before county council meetings.
  
• Legislating or "Dictating Morality"- A Response
  A sort of "comment -rescue" in which Jud forwards a rebuttal by a local pastor to something he (Jud) had to say in a newspaper column.
  
• The sailing ships Nina & Pinta-coming to Lewes
  Cool local news.
  
• Marine Corp Band to Perform in Lewes JULY 1st !!!!
  Also cool, local and news.
  
• Lewes Council Goes for Carrying Capacity Study
  Lewes City Council agrees to try to get funding for a traffic study.
  
• Sussex County Council will sue DNREC ??????
  Jud questions the wisdom of the county suing the state.
  
• I endorse Joan Deaver
  Jud had recently lost the republican primary and endorsed the democrat running in the race. Big news locally.
  

I'm know I've deleted a few others over the months, and I left out several purely procedural e-mails. But there's enough here to illustrate my point: Jud is a blogger without a blog.

There was a period of time when Jud was contributing a regular "Jud's Rant" to the "First State Politics" blog (which became Delaware Politics after some other name, which escapes me). But that stopped. And he does appear occasionally as a "from the inbox" post on Nancy Willings' Delaware Way blog.

Other than the occasional guest spot, Jud continues to generate content that is only going out one-way and is not really part of a back and forth discussion (except when contrarians like me pester him back with argumentative e-mails).

I think the Delaware body politic would be better served if Jud left the closed-circuit of e-mail and entered the world of blogging, on his own blog. I think "Coastal Conservative" would be a great name. Blogger and Wordpress are both easy to use.

So... I hereby challenge you, sir. Get Your Own Blog.

Help Wanted: Perfect Parent

There's a classified ad in our local paper this week-end from a family from the city that is planning to summer here at the beach. They are looking for someone to help with their kids. The ad reads, in part:

...a reliable, ENERGETIC, patient, yet firm, individual to help with caring for/nurturing a 4 year old boy and 6 year old girl, as well as light housekeeping items (laundry, meals and kitchen).

...to help with sports activities (swimming, running, playing ball, bikes, etc) outings to the park and beach, on our boat.

We also would like our children to have reading, math and other "lessons" over the summer. The ability to teach a musical instrument ... is a plus!

Apparently, Maria Von Trapp, Mary Poppins, and Nanny McPhee were already booked up.