losing traditions before they are formed
One of the things about fatherhood that I really enjoy (and look forward to) is creating traditions. Not huge "we take a family trip" or "everyone comes over for Christmas" type traditions, but little ones.
Though it wasn't a tradition for Heather growing up in Crystal Lake, I always sorta though going to a local restaurant called "Little John's" could be mine and Nate's. An "out with dad on a Saturday" type tradition. It has been open for 29 years serving gyros, italian beef, hot dogs, burgers, etc. While not the easiest place to get in and out of, it was always worth visiting.
Sadly, I found out only this evening that the business is closing its doors at the end of the day tomorrow.
http://www.nwherald.com/articles/2009/09/18/r_kn1xtxtcsucwsn5efe_4wg/index.xml
Thankfully, the owner is not being forced out and is not closing because of the economy. He's closing on his terms and frankly, after 29 years, any small business owner deserves his or her retirement.
But in thinking about its closure, I realized something: a number of the local businesses that I enjoy frequenting are owned by people who will probably be retiring in the next few years. There are so few new local businesses opening (or finding it possible to stay open) that it's very difficult to get any sort of tradition going in the first place. Little John's, for example, is going to be knocked down and a Walgreen's put in its place.
**sigh**
I'm certainly going to miss Little John's, but I'll miss its potential even more.
photoblog meta
Just an FYI: thanks to some help from an admin over on the PixelPost forum, the RSS feed for cetan.org now has click-able thumbnails.
I'd been meaning to implement this for ages but only recently got around to asking them how to actually do it.
Oh and if you're looking at the syndicated feed on LiveJournal, the reason 6 or so photos just showed up in your friends list is that syndication was completely h0rked. No feeds were coming through until they fixed it this afternoon and then the floodgates were opened.
11 years
If for no other reason than for me to try and gain momentum on posting to the blog, I present:
I managed to catch my odometer rolling over 111111.1 miles. My Chevy Cavalier has been with me since Easter before graduating college. I put quite a few miles on it those first couple years (trips out east, down to the Carolina's, back and forth between Indy and Crystal Lake) but a majority of its life has been quite mundane: It travels between home and the train station and around town.
How to test your back
There are many things one can do to test your back, but my method this weekend was to seal coat the driveway.
The cost of hiring someone is about equal to buying the seal coat myself but there's an advantage: the quality of the seal coat I purchase is much higher. Thus it's longer lasting and more durable. In fact, it was looking like I would be able to do it for /less/ because the quality seal coat was going further (thanks to last years application).
However, the township tore up about a quarter of our driveway late last fall (to install storm drains) and so I ended up using all the buckets I purchased. (As new asphalt tends to require a lot more seal coat.) Still, I came out of it with a better protected driveway and only a sore back, and legs, and arms, and neck and....
Er...Well, I came out ahead and that's the story I'm sticking with. 
sacrifice
I had a draft post started that was going to be your run-of-the-mill "rob posts about some amazing new cameras or lenses or whatever." This summer has been pretty exciting as far as that is concerned, but the post felt hollow and empty after this past Sept 1.
On that Tuesday, in lieu of layoffs or furloughs, my company cut everyone's pay by 10% for the remainder of the year. And, while I'm very grateful to have a job and while I certainly recognize the room for belt-tightening in our finances, I was worried and stressed. I don't think things are magically going to turn around on 01/01/2010.
But these worries seem silly too as people I know or people I'm acquainted with are unemployed or looking at losing half their income.
Then, later that day, my mom emailed me a video file and I realized that this is what I should be writing about.
The file was a 1996 or 1997 interview my paternal grandfather gave World War II historians of the US Army's 12th Armored Division. They simply asked him to recount his time in the Army from when he was drafted until he was discharged. It's not a terribly long story (the video is about 20 minutes) and he and I have talked many times before about his time in the service.
But my point here is this: I far too often forget how blessed I am. How tightening the budget by 10% is so minuscule an act compared to the sacrifices made by our grandparents generation (multiple times within their lifetimes, might I add). 400,000+ sacrificed their lives and millions more sacrificed the food on their tables and the clothes on their backs.
This may seem hyperbolic, but we (as a generation) really do not understand how good we have it. This is natural, given how far we are removed from these time periods, but it's something that I think should be dwelled upon.
This shouldn't be something that needs reminding, but I indeed can lose sight of what's really important. And so, while I'm grateful for what I have, more importantly I'm grateful for the people I have around me.