An ultra-conservative's views on this and that

31 December 2015

So long, 2015. Welcome, 2016!

It's that time again.  Time to reflect on 2015:


  • January:
    • Boko Haram massacres 2,000 people.
    • Our pet Flemish Giant, Goose, turned 6.  It was his first birthday that he had without his twin sister Dori.
  • February:
    • Leonard Nimoy, the actor who played Spock in 3 seasons of Star Trek, guest-starred in Star Trek:  The Next Generation, and played the character in 8 Star Trek films, dies.
    • A blizzard hits our little corner of Iowa and dumps a ton of snow on us, just in time for my sisters to visit from Florida.
    • My sisters make the trek from Florida to Iowa to meet their new little nephew for the first time.  He has lots of smiles for them and becomes quite talkative.
  • March:
    • The NASA probe Dawn enters orbit around dwarf planet Ceres.
    • ISIL effectively annexes Boko Haram.  Still a JV team, Mr. President?
    • A suicidal airline co-pilot locks the pilot out of the cockpit and crashes Germanwings flight 9525 into a mountain.
    • We finish the dormer attic in our house, giving us a new spacious den upstairs after having to relocate our computers to the front living room when our son was born.
    • My father's plane catches fire after a gear-up landing.  He escapes unscathed, but his plane, and the logbooks and computer in the backseat, are a loss.
  • April:
    • A magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Nepal kills over 9,000 in Nepal, India, China, and Bangladesh.
    • Percy Sledge, who once topped the charts with When A Man Loves A Woman, dies.
    • My wife and I celebrate our second anniversary, the first one as parents.
    • My wife, her parents, and our son are thankfully OK after being rear-ended by another car while sitting in traffic.  It is the second vehicular collision my son has been involved in since his birth.  I put my old airplane headset on him and he relieves the stress that evening with infectious laughter.
    • My in-laws celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.
  • May:
    • Ireland legalizes same-sex marriage by popular vote, becoming the first country to do so.
    • Grace Lee Whitney, who played Janice Rand in the Star Trek franchise, dies.
    • Blues guitarist B.B. King dies.
    • The 70th anniversary of V-E day.
  • June:
    • Corruption in FIFA
    • ISIL, the "JV team", kills almost 300 people in one day in a series of coordinated attacks.
    • Actor Christopher Lee of Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Dracula fame, dies.
    • Composer James Horner (Star Trek II:  The Wrath of Khan) dies.
    • Actor Dick Van Patten dies.
    • Fatherhood is the joy you experience when carrying your sleeping son off to bed when he falls asleep in the living room.
    • My father, shopping for a new plane, visits us in Iowa. 
    • Our son enjoys his first family vacation to Okoboji, IA.  Upon our return, I manage to slip and fall down the stairs from the attic.  I luckily ended up only with a spiral gouge in my right arm and some stiffness in my right leg, but nothing broken or sprained.
  • July:
    • Greece defaults on its debt, choosing to pour gasoline on the fire that is their economic crisis.
    • NASA's New Horizons probe visits Pluto.
    • Cuba and the United States re-establish diplomatic relations.  Still waiting for the reimbursement from Cuba for the nationalization and seizure of American companies' property...
    • Omar Sharif, Alex Rocco (Moe Greene from the Godfather), and Roddy Piper (They Live) die.
    • My folks visit Iowa.  I drive my father up to Minnesota to look at a plane.
  • August:
    • Part of Malaysian Airlines MH370 is finally found.
    • Director Wes Craven dies.
    • A crew from the EPA causes a spill of 3 million gallons of water polluted with mercury, arsenic, and other toxic metals from a closed mine into the Animas River, a (former) source of drinking water for 3 states and at least one Indian reservation.  Unsurprisingly, the EPA encountered a lack of compassion or cooperation from the states and municipalities in the area that they had bullied and fined for far lesser sins.
    • Goose, our beloved Flemish Giant "puppy-bunny", dies.  For the first time in 11 years, there are no rabbits for me to care for, save the wild ones in the backyard.
    • My father purchases a new plane in Minnesota, and I fly back to Iowa with him.  It had been 26 years since I had last sat right-seat with him.  This time definitely felt different, probably because I could see over the instrument panel.
  • September:
    • Volkswagen gets caught cheating on diesel emissions tests
    • Russia starts staging air strikes against ISIL, showing Putin to be more of a man than Obama.
    • Yogi Berra, famous New York Yankees ballplayer.  "It ain't over till it's over."
    • Took our son on a trip up to Minnesota.  Picked up equipment for my dad's plane on our way up.  Delivered several bags of hay from Goose's "estate" to my fellow rabbit friends in the Cities.  Our son also got a chance to see many rabbits playing on the mats.
  • October:
    • My son and I hit the streets for his first Halloween.
  • November:
    • ISIL kills 130 in Paris in terror attacks.  Still a JV team, Mr. President?  There are indications that at least one of the terrorists may have entered France by posing as a Syrian refugee.
    • RIP Fred Dalton Thompson, former U.S. Senator from Tennessee, actor, and one-time presidential candidate.  As an actor, I think my favorite role of his is as Rear Admiral Joshua Painter in The Hunt for Red October.
    • My son celebrates his first birthday with aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents from Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas.
    • We suit up our son and take him around the snow-covered backyard on his sled for the first time.
    • Our first airline travel as a family.  Thanksgiving with my folks and my sisters and their families was enjoyable, but the trip left me wondering if installing and removing a infant car seat from an airplane would be a fitting punishment for some misdemeanors.  Still, our little one got to meet his uncle and two of his three first cousins on my side.  In addition, he befriended my sister's dog, we learned that he likes the taste of tea and doesn't like the taste of lemons or dark German beer.
    • My mother-in-law goes in for knee surgery.
  • December:
    • Jihadists open fire at a Christmas party in San Bernadino, CA, killing 14. Predictable response from the Obama regime?  "We need tougher regulations on guns." Seriously?
    • COP21 summit results in a climate agreement that causes a bunch of "journalists" to behave like enthusiastic sports fans.  Objectivity?  We don't need no stinkin' objectivity!
    • Remember the Animas River being polluted by the EPA?  Yeah, now they're saying they're not responsible.  Being a government bully means never having to say sorry (until a judge orders you too, which would be a nice outcome to this ongoing saga).
    • RIP Robert Loggia.  I will always remember him as Frank Lopez from Scarface.
    • RIP Natalie Cole.  I'm sorry she's dead at a relatively young age, but I wonder how long it is until someone sings with her in a posthumous duet.
    • RIP Wayne Rogers.  I enjoyed his performance as Trapper John McIntyre on MASH, though he was still enjoyable to watch in his other career as a financial analyst on Fox Business Network.
    • I spend my 40th birthday having a quiet dinner of Spaghetti-Os with my son.  In retrospect, I couldn't have asked for a more fun evening!
Farewell, 2015.  Here's to 2016!

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