Cosmic Balance

First, my mom had her eye surgery on Monday, and the preliminary results look good. She was reading off the 20/50 line on the eyechart, and that's with no glasses and a not-healed eyeball. She could barely do the 20/70 line before the operation. In a week or so that could conceivably be knocked down to 20/40. A good day. The best. One wonders if things go like this if she could get her driver's license again. It's Illinois-if you have one decent eye and a pulse they'll let you behind the wheel. If she could read a large-print book again I'll be pleased, nay, ecstatic.

Evidently Ausgaz's Giant Magic Didgeridoo, NatV's good vibes, and Bangar's beads and rattles did some good. Appreciated the support, all.

To balance this, the brake light came on in the car coming home tonight. A push on the pedal (clear to the floor) indicated that, yes, the sensor isn't lying. A stop at the Ford dealer and their service department indicated a disintegrating brake line. Whoever tried to off me with the old 'cut brake line' trick is going to have to try again!

Actually, the Brazen Chariot is a '97, so those lines are in fact pretty ancient. The Midwest climate is hard on vehicles, especially if they sit outside. Better the brakes went now then in the first ice storm.

Good news on the eyes. Bad news on the brakes. Thus the Cosmic Balance is maintained.

I'm going to relax tonight and do a bit of reading. I found a copy of author/historian Robert Leckie's Helmet For My Pillow, a memoir of his service in the 1st Marine Division during WWII. We've read through his basic training at Parris Island, the Guadalcanal Campaign, and now we're into the Conquest of Melbourne. I'm surprised the pubs and brothels could handle a division of US Marines. Before there was FKN Havock, there were the FKN First Marines! Evidently part of the division was bivouacked at MCG when it arrived, and they mentioned places like Flinders Street Station, St. Kilda, Dandenong, and Rye-which, thanks to many of you readers here, are more than place names from far away. I've read the names of those places and thought, 'Yeah, Barnesy mentioned that' or 'Havock talked about that place', or 'Natalie took pictures of this area.' Kind of cool if you think about it. No doubt some of the locales were out in the boonies back in the 1940s, and now they're suburbs today.

At any rate, I imagine the next few chapters of the book should find Leckie and his band of brothers up around New Guinea on some of the offshore islands there for the Cape Gloucester campaign.

Speaking of which, I just finished re-reading Peter Ryan's great book, Fear Drive My Feet. Now that is an outstanding work! Has anyone ever attempted to make a movie of it, and if not, why not? It has plenty of adventure (if not a lot of blood) and some of the places he wrote about would make for some fantastic visuals.

Spraying a bit to all fields tonight, but so it goes. Back to the grind tomorrow.

yankeedog out.