Word of the Day

Handkerchief: Cold storage

We're back! HTP and I finished up our Vegas trip on a high note...yup, I got another Royal Flush. Yeah! There wasn't enough Dam to traffic to mention. As a matter of fact, the traffic all round was very light on our return to our Arizona home. Well...we did hit rush hour traffic but since there were two of us we got to drive in the diamond lane. Carpool. We carpooled back from Vegas.

There was a whole mailbox of mail waiting for us when we got home (mainly bills, a couple of absentee ballots for an upcoming election in Wisconsin, some sales catalogs and....). Our luck continues. We got a letter from our daughter from boot camp. Our first letter. She's learning all about how to beat up on the bad guys and play with guns and use gas masks. It may take her a bit longer to graduate then she'd originally hoped. I don't know. She wrote this letter a week ago so maybe (I hope, I hope) she's much improved. She's been wounded in action. Achilles tendonitis. Crutches and light duty. Sounds like there's a lot of wounded soon-to-be soldiers at camp. This stuff happens or there wouldn't be a need for an FRP (female rehabilitation platoon) with doctors and physical therapists.

So anyway, I thought it might be interesting for you all to read a bit about Achilles since my daughter seems to be having so much trouble with his namesake tendons. Achilles was the son of Peleus, king of the Myrmidons in Phthia (SE Thessaly), and the sea nymph Thetis. Zeus and Poseidon had vied for her hand until an oracle revealed she would bear a son greater than his father, whence they wisely chose to give her to someone else. According to legend, Thetis had tried to make Achilles invincible by dipping him in the river Styx, but forgot to wet the heel she held him by, leaving him vulnerable so he could be killed by a blow to that heel. (So came about the famed Achilles' tendon.) Homer (really famous author of epic proportion), however, deliberately makes no mention of this; Achilles cannot be a hero if he is not at risk. Homer, however, does mention his being wounded, although not seriously, in the Illiad. There's more but did you really want to even know this much?

Murphyism of the Day

Paul's Law

You can't fall off the floor.