PhoneBoy Says

I've been writing about some things that have made me sad enough to cry lately, and it has made me think about the question of why. Oh sure, I can think of things you might understand being sad about, such as my grandma Hattie passing away. It's not as if, say, a beach I used to go to when I was a kid,particular television shows I watched as a kid, or anything else thatmay have happened in my past was particularly sad. If anything, those were happy things, and yet at times I will think about them and I will be sad.

I started thinking about the most recent post where I wrote about how I broke my arm at Bonny Doon Beach. I started hunting the net trying to find pictures of that beach because I had a hard time remembering what exactly it looked like. There aren't a ton of publicly posted pictures of that beach for obvious reasons: it is, or at least was, a nude beach. Oh I'm sure people have pictures of that beach in their private collections. But posting pictures of nude people just being nude, well, there's something wrong with that, at least in the good ole US of A.

Anyway, the pictures I was able to find were very different. Specifically, I was trying to see where the cove is supposed to be. There used to be a clearer separation between the cove and the rest of the beach. I remember walking through what was a kind of a large "hole" in a cliff to get over to the cove. Kind of like at Natural Bridges State Park in California, where I stole this picture from:

The more recent pictures I can find of Bonny Doon of the "entrance" to the cove area show the top part of the "natural bridge" completely gone. That along with the fact the beach is becoming a state park and could possibly lose it's clothing-optional status makes me sadder than it perhaps should. And I realized what it was that made me sad about this--this is something I had no reason to believe would change, and here it is changing.That makes me sad--enough to cry.

Going back through some of the other seemingly ridiculous things that have made me cry over the years (e.g. TV Shows, songs, music), it seems that it's the fact that those things are different or totally non-existent now is what bothers me. For example, I can't even begin to explain to my son how cool Sesame Street used to be. Now at least I can show him, thanks to YouTube, though of course he doesn't quite get most of it. I rented one of the Electric Company DVDs from NetFlix and showed him. He liked a few of the bits, particularly the Spiderman stuff, but didn't care for the rest of it.

I'm a gadget freak, and in the world of gadgets, things change quickly. My job, despite having the same employer for eight years, has changed in numerous ways. My kids change every day. It's not as if I can't deal with change. I guess there are some things that are meaningful to me and, for whatever reason, I don't think should change, but do. And in the right circumstances, well, the water works begins.

I guess that's another one of those things that makes me, um, whatever I am.

Yup, I've seen a Segway in person. quite cool!

What's the first image that comes up when you Google your name?

Various pictures of my second book:

Essential Check Point FireWall-1 NG: An Installation, Configuration, and Troubleshooting Guide

Dameon D. Welch-Abernathy

The folks at Vox have sort of made it possible to "make your own theme." Really, all they did is give you the ability to upload a custom banner and pick from a series of sides and text colors. Since I am not all that artistic, I decided that I would take a little bit from this picture and turn it into my banner. Let me know what you think.

Show us the best picture you took in 2006.
Submitted by Captured Moments.

It's really hard to choose, to be honest. Here's a couple. First one actually turned out a little different than I expected because of an error in the software controlling the camera for the Nokia E70. The colors came out more pastel-like or something after a while. The effect was kind of neat in these two:

Next one is my daughter:

And finally one of Jaden from Easter:

How many bones have you broken? Yours or someone else's?

When I was 8, I broke my arm--at a nude beach.

When I was a kid, my mom would take me to Bonny Doon Beach, a nude beach approximately 11 miles north of Santa Cruz, CA (incidentally, there are a number of nude beaches north of Santa Cruz along Highway 1). I went to a number of them as a kid, but Bonny Doon was always my mom's favorite. I bet I could still find it if I tried. It's not like these things have signs, though.

Just getting to the sand involves crossing railroad tracks and climbing down a cliff. Not terribly hard at that age, However, the best part of this beach involves climbing over and down another rock formation, into an area called "the cove." This area is by far the best part of the beach as it is relatively sheltered from the ocean breeze. The vast majority of the usual crowd hangs out at this part of the beach and sunbathes completely nude.

(And if you're wondering, yes, I saw my mom nude. All the time. Same with her long-time boyfriend. And a lot of other people at that beach too. Nothing sexual happened there, at least when I was there.)

Anyway, one day my mom had brought a friend of mine to the beach and I wanted to go play outside of the cove so we had a bit more space. The cove did not have a ton of space and I wanted to play ball with my friend. Unfortunately, I was being stupid and tried to carry this ball in one hand and hold onto the rope to climb out of the cove with the other. And yup, it was a bad idea.

I fell from pretty high. When I was a kid, I'd say the fall was 10 feet. Now I think it was more like 20. Can't be sure, of course. But anyway, I fell and hit the sand. My right wrist snapped like a twig (6 places, I found out later). My hand and part of my wrist was like an inch above the rest of my arm. It looked bad. Fortunately, one of the people there was a nurse and was able to get me fixed up enough that I might be able to get out of there without doing any more damage. I have no idea how I managed to get out of the cove with only one functional hand, but I did.

Seven weeks and two casts later, my arm was back to normal. Sort of. I did lose part of the function of my wrist, namely the ability to turn my right palm face up without bringing in my elbow significantly. Without moving my elbow, I can only manage to turn my palm to a vertical position. It's not something I think about all that much since I've had a quarter century to get used to it. It did come into play when I had to have my arms poke-tested for allergies last year, and it comes up in randomly from time to time.

I don't think I ever went back to that beach after that, or at least not too many times that I can remember. Maybe I was getting too old to go, I don't know. I'd like to go back there someday, if nothing else to go one of the few places that my fellow man hasn't changed at all since I was last there.

Oh, crap.It's about to become a State Park and possibly lose the legal ability to be "clothing optional." Not that I care about that so much. What is a bit concerning is that of the pictures I've been able to find online of that beach, almost none of them are how I remember it. Specifically, the cove (at the far right-end of the beach) appears to be no more. The cliff that I had to climb that I broke my arm on appears to be gone.

I better stop before I go too much farther down this rathole. It's making me sad, and it's late.

Looks kind of funny, but hey. Actually the best snow we've had all year for making a snowman.

Was up on the hill watching the kids sled down it. Meanwhile, took a snapshot of our house.

Overnight--around 4am according to the news people--we got another dumping of snow! And, of course, the folks at the school district have decided to close school for today given that some places still have ice on the road from the previous storms. Thanks to all the snow days and delayed school days, we're probably going to be going to school until July to make up for it.

The good news is that it should warm up later today. The forecast for the next week or so is for low 40s (4 to 6 C for those who don't understand this bizarre obsession the States has with imperial measurements). Meanwhile, we've got "yet another" day where Jaden isn't in school. And I presume I will be outside later this morning lettings the kids play in the newly fallen snow, assuming it isn't raining by then.

Show us something faded.

Here's a nice, fading picture I found of myself when I was about 2 years old.