Looking through the window, faded, back pain, remembering

I forgot to mention that when mom was over this past weekend she brought along two dvds.  These had old home movie footage that my Uncle Randy had ripped off of ancient reels of tape.  It covered the time period of mom’s childhood, not in it’s entirety but a good chunk of it.  Although there was no sound and in many sections the video quality was awful, I still found it fascinating to look through the time machine.  I had only seen a handful of picture of mom when she was younger, the films were filled with images of mom, my uncles and grandparents that I never saw before. It was fascinating.

The resemblance between mom and my sister Torrin at the same age is pretty staggering, they almost look like twins.  My Uncle Butch looks very similar to my cousin Steve during the same time period. My grandfather looked like a younger version of what I always a remembered, a guy that always seemed happy and full of energy.  Uncle Randy was definitely the star of the show getting more camera time than anyone else. Perhaps movie cameras became more popular shortly after he was born.  Seeing the greater Reading area 50 years ago on the screen was very interesting to me.

In total it was probably close to three hours of footage.  Ironically mom was the one that wanted us to cut it short, I could have watched that stuff for hours on end.  Unfortunately I have no idea whatever happened to any video footage of our youth. My thanks go out to Uncle Randy for doing that, it was cool.

So I asked Ali to rub my aching back last night.  Although it felt good at the time it seems to have done more harm than good.  I was awakened at 1:30 am by the pain in the area.  No matter which way I laid in the bed I could not relieve the discomfort.  Finally I got out of bed and took two advil, once they started to kick in I finally was able to fall back asleep.  I am hoping that I make a very speedy recovery as in 48 hours I will be running, jumping and diving in the sand at South Beach.

When we redid out counter tops we splurged and bought a black composite granite sink to go with it.  The sales pitch was this type of sink is nearly indestructible, impervious to pretty much everything.  Well I noticed from day one that when the sink was totally dry it didn’t look very nice at all, it had a white hazed look to it.  Over time this discoloration has gotten worse.  The other night Ali used considerable elbow grease trying to scrub the sink thoroughly to remove the film.  It didn’t make a difference.

So last night I once again turn to the internet for answers.  In 10 seconds I am looking at a message board post of various other black granite composite sink owners that have the same problem.  The solutions to it were intriguing and varied.  People reported using magic erasers, Avon Skin So Soft, mineral/baby oil and even WD-40 to bring the color back to their sinks.  We happened to have both a magic eraser and mineral oil so I first hit it with the magic eraser which didn’t seem to make much of a difference.  After the sink dried I wiped it down with the mineral oil and BAM it looked great.  The sink still looked great this morning.  From what I read you have to apply the mineral oil on a routine basis but it is very easy to do so that shouldn’t be an issue.

So of course I did not forget that today is 9/11/09, a full 8 years after that dreadful day we all remember so well.  9/11 marked a period in history where the country was united like never before, we were no longer democrats, republicans or something else.  All that mattered was we were americans.  Ironically after the aftermath of 9/11 started to settle in it started the most divisive political period in my lifetime.  The division between the left and the right today is so deep and combative it seems like there will never again be anything that can be unilaterally agreed upon again.

The horrible 9/11 event reeks of controversy as well.  While many people simply refuse to entertain even the remote possibility that some parts of US government had their hands in events that lead up to the catastrophe, there are simply too many unanswered questions regarding the incident to ignore. I mean hell, one of the things that was portrayed as a negative about Van Jones was he dared to sign a petition that questioned the validity of the government’s 9/11 explanation.

  With all of the deception that has become a staple of US policy in the modern era, why for some reason people think this is outside the boundaries of possibility confuses me.  If you are able to simply read the information presented here and draw your own conclusions I challenge you to maintain your stance the the government came clean about the events of 9/11.  No I’m not saying that George Bush ordered planes to fly into buildings, however there are far too many head scratchers presented for it all to be conveniently filed under the coincidence category. 

Hey even opening up your mind to the idea that we were deceived once again regarding 9/11 is a scary thing to do.  Who wants to believe that our government would try to pull the wool over our eyes over such a horrific tragedy?  It’s far easier to just accept the official government explanation. It’s safe.