First of all, it's Friday! It's been a long, busy week of x-ray madness. But a wee bit of good news in the x-ray world--my boss is thinking about upgrading our x-ray table, which is a very happy thing! It would mean less weight to push around (the table sticks and has a "heavy" feel), and anything that saves the back of me and the other x-ray tech would be most welcome!
And my vacation time is starting over again, and there are no surgeries planned this year to wipe that out in one fell swoop like last February/March.
I am, however, hoping to use a week of vacation sometime in late January/early February to meet James in Arizona and road trip it with him on his permanent journey to a new start in Florida. That'll be a lot of fun, and I think we're planning on stopping in Santa Fe for a day. I'd also like to see the area near the Ingenhuett Ranch in what Forrest's fondly remembers as "God's Country" in Texas. I've been wanting to visit that beautiful area for a long time.
Who knows? Maybe we'll even get a chance to swing by Temple and see Forrest's old stomping grounds. I'd like to see the foundation on Main Street, and also the place where he watched the gypsies dance. And I wouldn't mind snapping a pic of the house Bonnie and Clyde hid out in.
I'm really looking forward to that, but I've first got to coordinate with work so I don't leave my coworkers short handed.
And I'm really looking forward to meeting NTMI, his wife, and Will this weekend at a meetup in the Tampa area. James is even flying down so he can be a part of the fun. I'm sorta dreading the ice bucket challenge NTMI brought about by donating enough to put the donations for Chris at over $2000. I think we only need $879 to reach the goal, and man, it has been so heartwarming to see how searcher's responded to an urgent plea for help from one of their own. We need to do this kind of thing for each other every time the need arises. I wish I had been actively participating in the chase when Renelle was still with us. I would have liked to meet her, and would have liked to participate in helping her, too.
Anyway, so I guess Will is bringing the bucket. And NTMI gets the honor of dumping, while his wife, and who knows who else, videos it. I guess I shouldn't get my hair done before the meeting...
And I'll make sure to bring my floats:
And giant, George Costanza parka:
However, if we reach the $3000 goal by Monday, I will get to dump a bucket of ice and water over NTMI...so let's finish this campaign and get it done!
So, lots to look forward to this weekend. Joe also has a Model UN meeting at a high school in Orange City tomorrow morning, and he will be representing Cuba for this one. He gets a lot of the fun and interesting countries to play in the UN. I'm excited for this one. He will also have a new pair of dress shoes that fit and a new tie that's not sorta shredded at the bottom thanks to my wonderful James.
Yesterday, I got our Highwayman painting and the gorgeous George Catlin book with the Buffalo Bill Center letter signed by Harold McCracken in 1968 inside it. The Highwayman painting is unique and really pleasant--I really like it. That may be hard to part with.
I've studied "Forrest Gets Mail 11," and like many others, I found many oddities in this "email."
Here's what I think stands out the most:
1. The haphazard appearing use of lower case letters that should be upper case letters.
2. A sentence or two aren't even close to grammatically correct.
3. The extra space between "career" and "in"
4. The abundant use of ellipses
5. The use of "your book."
6. The use of "best shot."
7. The capitalization of "Him" after a comma.
I did read the Wikipedia page about Ted Kaczynski and was struck by the magnitude of the rabbit hole this could potentially lead one down. I wondered if perhaps Forrest himself had edited the page recently, and was able to see the edit history on the page. Curiously, since the first edit in 2001, the page has been edited 4,587 times by 2,363 editors. In the last 7 days, there have been 3 edits. In the last 30 days, there have been 11 edits, and in the past year, there have been 140 edits. However, the averages of edits historically over time seems consistent with the latest numbers, so I can't say if Forrest has edited anything there or not.
There were some things I found particularly interesting in the TK bio. I'll list them for you.
1. In 1971, being fed up with technology and people in general, TK moved into a remote cabin in Montana. The wiki page specifically says, "without electricity or running water." Compare that with the page in TTotC with the picture of F's one room cabin in Paradise. That little brown home is just above "The Paperboy." And what's even more curious is the wiki page repeats "without electricity or running water" one or two more times.
TK's cabin:
2. TK wrote a "manifesto" which reminds me of the "Big Deal" or "New Deal" and "Manifest Destiny."
3. TK skipped both the 6th and 11th grades. He describes skipping 6th grade a "pivotal" event.
4. TH studied Geometric Function Theory and Boundary Functions.
5. He worked briefly at a foam rubber factory.
6. He said this when referring to his escape from society into the wilderness: "The best pace for me was the largest remnant of this plateau that dates from the tertiary age. It's a kind of rolling country, not flat, and when you get to the edge of it you will find these ravines that cut off very steeply into cliff-like drop offs and there was even a waterfall there. That summer there was too many people around there so I decided I needed some peace."
7. He said, "Most people take the path of least resistance."
8. One name he was known as was the "Junkyard Bomber."
9. He made a bomb disguised as a piece of lumber.
10. He had an obsession with wood.
11. He left false clues in every bomb--he would make them hard to find to deliberately mislead investigators into thinking they had a clue.
12. He capitalized words to show emphasis and used irregular spelling and hyphenation.
13. He was a believer in positivism--the belief that through sensory experience (touch)one attains knowledge.
14. He was searching for utopia, and described our society as a dystopia (see my thread on utopia at the MW Forum).
15. What worried him the most about being in prison was that he might lose his memories of nature and the woods and mountains.
Now, back to "Brett's" email. You will notice that with few exceptions, all the capitalized letters are also Roman Numerals. You will also notice that there is an asterisk after the word "trust." An asterisk is sometimes used for multiplication.
Then you will see a few places where a number is implied, rather than specifically written, such as the number of years Brett had lived in Las Vegas, and the number of years TK lived in the wilderness. Find those numbers and figure out the equation, and see what you get. :)
However, I'm not good at math, so my number is probably wrong. Lol.
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