X-travaganza 2008!
December in Hilton Head

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Links are good as of their posting date. Comments may be directed to bradley@wogsland.org.


31 December 2008

Great news to finish out the year: Eliza Jane Cockrill exited the womb around 6 AM this morning! No doubt pictures and details will soon appear on The Forever Endeavor.


30 December 2008

Wine character varies with terroir but also vintage; place but also time. These characteristics change with age as well - tannins soften in the bottle and wines often mellow. One way to learn these differences is through vertical tasting - sampling several vintages of the same wine from the same winemaker. In the past few months we've tasted our way through several verticals. (more info on TheWineRater.com)


29 December 2008

Day 9 on Hilton Head - Dad has been making the trip rather interesting the past couple days. Yesterday while preparing dinner he volunteered to get the this stitches for this family get together. Those Cutco knives are sharp - they'll quickly slice right through the soft tissue of the thumb. After five stitches last night, today we headed over to Fort Pulaski and Savannah for the day. Unfortunately an underground fire was spilling out through the manholes on River Street, so we just spend a long time at Fort Pulaski walking all the way out to the lighthouse and seeing a musket demonstration. After dinner at Kurama's we planned to spend the evening playing the hilarious game of Catch Phrase. Apparently it was a little too hilarious. During the second round dad laughed so hard that his windpipe got closed off, his eyes rolled back in his head and he passed out. Some of us freaked out a little, thinking he'd had a stroke or something, but mom just said Oh, he does that. Oh, he does that!?! Dad makes a face like a frog and goes unconscious and this is routine? When he came to I asked him his name and Cara had him smile just to be sure it wasn't a stroke.


Mom with Mussels


28 December 2008

Day 8 on Hilton Head Island - The weather has been in the 70s most of the time we've been here. I'm not sure that I like getting sunburned in December. Not that I like getting sunburned in any month, December just seems particularly peculiar. Dell, who arrived with her girls on the 26th, came from a two foot blizzard in Tahoe, making our Nebraska snow stories seem a pittance in comparison. Last night we had a talent show which was quite hilarious, as our family tends to lean toward comedy. We'll post the videos sometime next month, but to stoke your imagination in the meantime check think of Bev dressed in a burqa discussing pleasuring soldiers for extra money.


27 December 2008 - HHI Day Seven


25 December 2008

Merry Christmas!!!!!!!


24 December 2008

Day Four in Hilton Head - Ray and Bev arrived last night after the kids all went to see Greg Russell do his special christmas show. They're staying at a different place but they were back over this morning for breakfast. Ken was also over, but Nancy and Brenton usually don't join us until after his morning nap. Today is warmer than the past few, but Maxwell and Zara would much rather open presents than go down to the beach.


23 December 2008

Hilton Head day threeeee!


Salty Dogs


Hunting for seashells by the seashore.


22 December 2008

Day 2 on HHI - Today the girls and I hung lights out front. Actually, they hung most of the lights. There's a 40 ft magnolia out front and they climbed almost to the top with strands of lights.


Watching sisters up the tree


Porter amongst the Spanish moss


Poppy's new fire pit


Gra, Jaime & Cara


The Stargazers


21 December 2008

Day 1 in Hilton Head - We arrived last night in the balmy 68 degree weather, leaving behind teens and snow. It's hard not to have mixed feelings, but I am ever so glad to be amongst the family. We stopped in Missouri on the way and picked up some wine, although there wasn't really time for tasting. The journey was long, but otherwise fairly uneventful.

Upon arrival we learned that Grandma was at the hospital with an unexplained case of vertigo. She's fine now and coming home this afternoon, but we still don't know where the vertigo came from.

Jaime has the inside of the house decorated and tonight the kiddoes and I will tackle the exterior. Brenton, Nancy and Ken are also here and we enjoyed a rare lunch today where the men were not outnumbered by women. Mmmm... Guiseppi's!


18 December 2008

Cara quote of the day:

These are my NEW glasses. They are for reading not for wrestling!




17 December 2008

Yesterday it snowed, so in the evening we went sledding...


15 December 2008

From the 50s it has plummeted to negative - a wind chill of minus 23°F when I drove to work today. It's the kind of cold that starts to hurt ungloved hands after a while. Tomorrow there's another front of snow coming, but, as we have discovered, the clouds generally follow the rivers. They split as the Platte turns northward west of us and Lincoln gets bumpkiss.

The other day Brittan and I went over to Holmes Lake to play with the ice. After failing to break it with several very large rocks I stood on the lake. Sure, I was right by the edge and the ice was only an inch or two thick, but it was still exhilarating - I've never stood on a frozen lake before. I couldn't help but think how I would have approached the frozen lake with Packie and John a decade or two ago. There would have been dares. It might have ended badly. More than likely someone would have gotten their shoes wet. Nevertheless, I feel like I missed something. I love the weather here. I love wearing a coat and not getting sweaty in the afternoon. I love the smell of the cold air - it reminds me of being a kid in Maryland and Pennsylvania.

Interestingly, the 3 girls have all adapted to the cold but Maxwell is his mother's son. Tonight tucking him in Cara mentioned that he would get to walk to school in the snow tomorrow expecting excitement. Instead she got tears.


13 December 2008

Today I mourn the passing of my calculator. It was a TI-85 and for the past 15 years it has traveled the world with me. Maxwell, however, was excited at the prospect of having a new toy to pretend with. Life moves forward despite this loss, and today the girls and I grouted the top of the bar between the bottlecaps. With a high in the 50s it was an excellent day to work outside, and we all enjoyed the sunshine even though it now comes from so low in the southern sky.


12 December 2008

Back in 2002 Alora & Brittan were obsessed with pirates...


Pirate Christmas Movie


9 December 2008

One of my life's many goals is to sample wine from every single appellation in the world, but last night I hit one of the few French appellations where the beverage is not made from grapes: Calvados. With a name more Spanish-sounding than French one might expect it to be located near the Pyrenees, but it's actually located among the orchards of Normandy. Calvados, you see, is a distillate of apple cider. Christian Drouhin was the distiller and crafted a surprisingly subtle drink: when I first opened the bottle the smell of alcohol was overpowering, but after a few minutes of swirling in the snifter I caught the scent of fruit wafting up from my glass. The flavor was smooth like a brandy but much softer with a faint hint of almonds. As I sat at the table listening to Alora and Brittan belt out Christmas carols slightly off tune I thought of William the Conqueror and the hard wooden table he must have supped at in those cold Norman winters before he crossed the channel. Then there were the English who came the other way in '44. Through the vageries of history remain the orchards, and the soil, and the people. And in my glass I have a piece of it. I have touched it without leaving my home. Such is the transcending power of a beverage: I can travel the world without stepping my foot out the door.

Frank Gilbreth wrote of eating as a "unavoidable delay", something to be minimized and avoided where possible. Yet we all must eat to live. Indeed to eat is to live, so to avoid eating is to avoid life - a strange sort of nihilism. Anything that must be done is worth doing well and surely this includes eating and drinking. When I visit a new place I always try to get a roadside geology book first to learn about it. Then I branch out into the history and culture which people have built there. Talking with my boss Gena the other day she laughed at the idea of Nebraska having anything like "culture". Au contraire! said I. You can walk into any grocery store here, go up to the butcher and get an excellent steak. Not a good steak or a tough steak, but a throw-it-on-the-grill-for-a-few-minutes-and-then-let-it-melt-in-your-mouth steak. Many grocery stores here have a cheese AISLE. There are local cheeses, Wisconsin cheese, cheeses from France and Ireland and Italy. And then there is the beer. The local Empyrean is great, but there's also beers from Colorado, Kansas City, Montana and just about every other midwestern place. One could try a new sixpack every week for years and not exhaust them.

Nebraska's culture is not just in gustatory pleasures though, but also in the frank, forthright speech of her people. Then there is the dominance of Nature. The outdoor mall on the south side of town is reminiscent of the one in Palo Alto . . . except that there are weeks here when the thermometer doesn't venture above zero. Other places have indoor malls to protect shoppers from the weather. Here we give the weather a collective finger and then go on with whatever we were doing! If the culture has a fault it is that this collectivism seems to trump individualism here. But I have only been here a short time while most inhabitants have spent there whole lives here. That is another cultural oddity - most people who live here always have and given a choice always will. The disaffected and unsuccessful depart these cold climes.

For those of you who cannot visit I will bring a little bit of Nebraska in bottles to the Xtravaganza...


8 December 2008

Today while exploring the information available about me on RapLeaf (not even a small fraction of what exists) I happened along the blog of their CEO, Auren Hoffman. He's a regular guy interested in online data like me, and has written a very nice post listing some prominent blogs in the field. It's exciting to see how many bright minds are all trying to get their heads around the problem. Of course, none of us is Google. Their size, however, has now become a hinderance to business by painting a large target for governments on their back. The Bush Department of Justice was 3 hours away from filing antitrust litigation before Google broke off the deal with Yahoo! and it's quite likely they'll get the same treatment from the Obama administration Microsoft received from the Clinton adminstration. With the 800 pound gorilla focused elsewhere there are niche openings for the rest of us.


7 December 2008

A lazy Sunday at the Wogslands...


The girls hung around ...


... while Maxwell did his calcuations,


Mollers slept,


and I played artiste.


6 December 2008

Lately I have been rewatching John Adams and feeling very revolutionary. Human history has long been a battle between liberty and power, between the economic means of the market and the violent means of the state. Daily we hear of the auto guild, which has long supported the government in war and peace, demanding monies from those who buy and produce the free market cars also made in this country but bearing foreign names as well as the rest of the populace. The total shares of GM are today worth $2.49 billion and yet as members of the auto guild they have the audacity to demand ten times that amount.

I am sorry that time and budget did not permit me to attend the 3rd Secessionist Meeting in New Hampshire this fall. Independence or collapse are the only ways to escape the tyranny of an ever-growing government and I do not foresee Washington's fall within a thousand years. Governments don't generally shrink of their own accord. The last few centuries of hygiene and medicine have allowed the world's population to increase at a rate government could in no wise keep up with. Liberty and prosperity have resulted, but as the rate of increase has slowed and we have passed the point of inflection power and government will soon be growing much faster than the free economy. Our government and others in the west now look for advice to China, where a central government apparatus has stood for two millennia with only changes of the ruling dynasty at the top. Make no mistake that this longevity is desired by every state existing today.

Adams had a somewhat inverted pyramid of priorities, putting society before family or self, but I have a more rational assignation, indeed a more fluid definition of Self which I always prioritize. The kernel of my Self is my mind. Therefollows outwardly increasing layers which successively encompass my body, my family in order of genetic similarity, my social network, humanity, the earth, the living universe, everything. What I consider to be Self varies depending on situation. Divorced from the social nexus of the church by the simple application of logic I have found a wider audience to educate on the internet and monetized it to boot. But my family must take priority so I am focused on building a financial platform on which we can firmly stand and this has led to a rather nomadic life. I am ever committed to leaving the places I inhabit better than I found them but time in place is often the main constraint upon this. Here I am still casting about for something to do.


5 December 2008

Tonight Cara and Alora fell asleep on the couch reading by the fire. I'd love to include a picture, but I can't find the camera! Wait, here it is . . .


4 December 2008

Yesterday it finally really snowed. Admittedly it was merely a half-inch dusting, but it was enough to cover everything white and for Maxwell to exclaim "I can't believe there's so much!" I had fun with my new snow shovel while Alora and Brittan made snow angels in the yard. Maxwell only ventured outside with trepidation but Zara ran out with gusto. As Maxwell and his sisters headed off to school, resigned to the cold and ebullient with excitement, Zara picked up several handfuls I had shoveled up for her and decided it was fleezing. She returned to the warmth of the indoors as I drove to work.

We are for the most part well now after a bout of stomach flu which delayed the departure of my mom and sister Monday after a festive Thanksgiving. We all got it, although Cara and Jaime not to the full extent as the rest of us and mom worst, with a trip to the hospital for dehydration. The one thing a stomach bug is great for is weight loss - last time I weighed this little we'd just gotten back from Hawaii!


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Last ∆ on 31 December 2008 by Bradley James Wogsland.
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