Glyndwr Michael

Started on the anniversary of this hero's death.

Glyndwr Michael during his lifetime was known as an unfortunate man.  It probably all started with his name.  I mean, clearly, his last name should have been his first, not to mention the complete lack of consonants.

Glyndwr was born 4JAN1909.  He died 24JAN1943 from accidental ingestion of rat poison in an abandoned warehouse.  He was a semi-literate drifter who occasionally managed to find work as a day laborer.  His father committed suicide when he was 15, and his mother passed 3 years before he did.

In death, however, Glyndwyr saved the lives of thousands of his countrymen.

The Brits were planning an invasion of heavily fortified Sicily.  America had the support of the Sicilian mafia, who bribed, assassinated, and guerrilla-ed their route across the island to make their trip easier (another story altogether).

The Brits had Glyndwr.  Operation Mincemeat was a plan to let a fake intelligence officer wash up on a Nazi beach with vague intelligence on a planned invasion of Greece.  The stage was set, but they had one slight issue.  They needed a body.

Not just any body.  They needed a young-ish guy who could look like he died at sea and had no relatives who might ask annoying questions like, "Why do you need his corpse?"

So, when Glyndwr died, he disappeared and a couple months later, on the deck of the British submarine Seraph, Major William Martin was born.

The operation was successful, and the Nazi's pulled back troops from Sicily, making the British invasion less costly in time and lives.  Of course, on Stalin's advice, FDR decided to attack a heavily fortified beach in France (Gee, I wonder why a guy trying to own Eastern Europe would suggest that) instead of Churchill's plan of working from the awesome island that was now under Allied control and attacking a wider, less fortified stretch of sand, but again, that's another story.

William Martin (29MAR1907 - 24APR1943) is currently interred in Huelva, Spain.  In 1998, the British government released his actual identity, but hey, he was buried by the enemy with full military honors befitting a Major, so why disturb him?

KG7GPB

                  √    Amateur radio Technician

                        Amateur radio General

                   x   EMT-B

                        EMT-A

                        Ropes Rescue I

                        River Rescue I

                        Open Water SCUBA

                        Skydiver A

Unlike most people, my bucket list does not consist of places to go or things to do.  Mine consists of certifications I want to get.  Last November, after about two decades of "I'll get around to it" I finally sat for my amateur radio Technician class license exam.

In my defense, for most of the time I delayed, there were 5 classes, and 4 of them required a minimum proficiency of 5 words per minute in Morse code.  The 1 non-CW class was Technician, and it is still a relatively low-privilege class.  I cannot play in the HF band, which is where most of the around-the-world conversations take place.  It just didn't seem worth it at the time.

So when I found out that at some point in the last 20 years, they did away with 2 classes and ditched the CW proficiency requirements for the other two, I was ready to finally get around to trying.  Which of course means, it was 2 years later before I finally got around to it.  Just like I passed the exam in November and was so happy with myself, I am finishing writing about it 3 months later.

Hey, I'm a busy man.  If I don't teach my daughters to say "Rock On!" and throw horns, who will?

The Beloved has been somewhat dubious about the utility of amateur radio.  In her defense, most technology I touch tends to malfunction.  In fact, at the various labs I've worked, the following equation describes my luck:

R=D/T

Where R is the Reliability of an instrument, D is the distance from me, and T is the Time spent with me.

However, on our recent trip to Billings fort he Dot's MRI, I managed to use my poor old used 55-watt 2 meter mobile unit to contact a repeater from about 30-40 miles out and reach a fellow ham with crystal clear reception and transmission in an area with no cell reception.  Not that my rig is decrepit or anything.  It was NIB and the height of technology when it was introduced...roughly around when I learned about ham radio for the first time.  And that was on a temporary set-up with a magnetic mount antenna and a down-and-dirty power feed job.

So now, I have picked up a couple 25-watt 2 meters (which really are old and a little beat-up), my 5-watt handheld dual band, and my 55-watt Kenwood.  I'm supposed to pick up a 6-meter (diet shortwave) unit on extended loan, and figure I can rig a temporary inverted V dipole for it.

I'm leaning on the beloved to get her Technician later this year while I sit for my General.  And eventually I will splurge on a nice multi-band radio.  For now, I just want a dual-band  with dual-mode so I can work satellites from one unit.

Now to find a landlord that will let me build a true aluminum farm.

XY*

My worries of starting to lactate and/or menstruate have been officially laid to rest.  The oncoming storm is to be a bouncing young boy, hereafter to be referred to as “Squirt.”

Thank God.

Hopefully, there wasn’t a huge misreading of the ultrasound, especially given what I am about to say.

I would like to state that I don’t think I can exactly say I would have been just as happy if the Squirt had turned out to be a Squirtette, but I can say that had the Dot and Lump both been XY’s, I’d have been pulling for this one to be an XX.  I don’t think I could handle 3 or either genotype.  

And right or wrong, there are certain aspects to having a son.

For one thing, there’s just something about passing on your family name.  From a clinical, detached point of view, I’m not sure why.  The genes get passed down either way, but for whatever reason it’s important, it is.

And now my father now has 2 chances to pass on the family name.  Given the accident-prone nature of our lineage, it’s always best to have a back-up.

Plus, there are just certain things that a father can do with a son.  Like go to the garage once a month to flee three sets of ovaries work on the jeep.

Not that I would be opposed to the Dot or the Lump learning about auto work.  In fact, I intend to help them restore their first cars, as long as they choose a classic Jeep, early model Bronco, classic Toyota FJ, or VW Thing.  It’s not that I’m choosy, I just want to instill good taste and keep my children from going over 50 mph.

Who needs a nanny chip when you have 33” wheels?

This also frees me from attempting to make one or more of my girls into a rough-and-tumble tomboy.  Now when we have tea parties, I don’t have to feel I need to take them to a demolition derby to balance things out.  Girls, thank your brother someday for that.

On top of all that, there's the relatively insignificant fact that the Squirt’s name has been picked out since before the Beloved and I tied the proverbial knot, and it would have been a shame to waste such a great name.

So here’s to a Y chromosome to have a beer with someday and say “Man, women are crazy.”



*Part of my backlog; started several weeks ago.

Backlog

 While opening a new post to write about the MRI trip, I found numerous unfinished drafts.  Not as bad as my overflowing email, but still, pretty atrocious.  So, in order to rectify that, they will be going out over the next couple days in no particular order as I finish them.

I recently told a friend that I hadn't been up on my communiques because I was too busy living my life to talk about it.  Apparently, I can't write about it either.  What with the new job with sometimes crazy call nights and weekends, medical trips, my EMT course, amateur radio licensing, and that little thing called making up for lost time with my family.  I mean, really, write or talk about my girls or see if I can tickle them until they pee.  Not a tough choice there.

Children are an endless hole of food, money, and time.  For instance, in the last paragraph, I rescued the Lump from the big mean toy otoscope, then toddler-eating beads, then her sister.

Oh, gotta run, the bead monster is trying to eat the Dot now.

MRI

I would not trade the dot for the world.  I would, however, trade her skull for $5 and a lightly used older model.  Heck, you could keep the $5.  For that matter, I’d pay the $5.  Why not?  We’ve already paid about $5000.

In spite of my rather abysmal intracity snow driving skills, we made it down to Billings and back in one piece.  Well, technically in 5 pieces, but each piece was in one piece.

Along the way, I made had my first ragchew just outside of the CMR.  My cute little outdated 50-watt 2-meter managed to reach a good 40 miles to the Zortman repeater, which was in turn being worked by a ham in Great Falls.  Since we were in the middle of a zero cell phone reception area, I conclusively proved the value of amateur radio to the formerly dubious Beloved.  I am officially a ham.

I did not realize how badly my anesthesiaphobia (yes, that is obviously a word, since I just used it and I define reality) extended to other people until they attempted to put the pulse oximeter  on the Dot’s finger.  In an attempt to reassure her that it was okay, they placed it on Daddy’s finger first.  My resting heart rate was 91.  For scale, at my MET class tonight, my resting heart rate according to the cute little Welch Allyn combo meter was 64.  This was when the Beloved declared that I was the one in need of the Versed.

At this point, I should say that shortly before my first wisdom tooth surgery, my dear sainted mother made one of the very few really dumb mistakes in my upbringing.  She told me of a teenage girl who had died about 2 weeks previous from anesthesia complications…during a wisdom tooth surgery.

Really, Ma?  How did that seem like a good idea?

I attempted to take my mind off the impending gassing of my child by cheating to get increased intracranial pressure.  I held her upside down and tickled her for a while, followed by a few minutes in the Trendelenburg position.  Can’t blame a father for trying.

Fortunately, my job was to entertain the Lump while the Beloved waited for the Dot to get to the PACU.  You could say she drew the short straw (sorry, honey, couldn’t resist).

So, I did what any red-blooded Montanan would do:  I took her to Cabelas.

Heaven in logs and fieldstone.

And yes, I get to call myself a Montanan.  Once you’re standing in 4 inches of snow at 0300 in -20 F with a -40 F wind chill, you are officially a Northerner.  When you’re doing it because you hit a deer, you’re officially a Montanan.

Rats.  With.  Antlers.

This is where I say I am indebted to Mr. White Pickup for evading me when I realized a wee bit too late that I was coming up on a red light.  Hey, you try stopping short in 4 inches of snow.  Patty’s ABS is good, but not that good.

After approximately 8 slow laps of the store, we emerged with only $116 in miscellaneous goods.  Hey, Northern emergency supplies are expensive.

I could have spent more.

After an uneventful return to the hospital, we found the Dot still asleep.  That is roughly when we realized that, being a classic father, I had entertained my girl for an hour and a half while forgetting to…well…you know…feed her.  So after a quick overpriced meal of Swedish meatballs and grapes we were joined by the Beloved and Sleeping Beauty, the latter of which proved that a toddler NPO for 12 hours is a bottomless pit.

So now we wait.  The projected turnaround time for a routine scheduled pediatric MRI is 48 hours.  Hopefully Wednesday, we will discover that my attempts to stack the deck worked.