2016 Winter February 15 Monday

48 degrees this morning, walk 35:33 minutes

In the final throes of moving.  Packing everything we can, except for the few essentials.  Very fortunately Aliene is an excellent packer and actually she has done most of the packing.  Probably one of the best packers I have ever seen, she could also really good at packing for travel.

Anyway, that makes a huge difference when moving or traveling!  

Today is a “three day weekend” Presidents Day today.  I always enjoy it since it is the last holiday until the last Monday in May, Memorial Day.  It doesn’t mean quite so much now since I can take a day of vacation and actually “get away” whereas as City Manager, while I was never really “away” on a holiday most everything shut down, when I took vacation, everything kept on going, so I always liked Holidays.  

Listening to the “Great Course” on the Civil War, it is very interesting and I learned some new facts or concepts.  

For example, I had never realized before that the “smooth bore” versus the “rifled bore” made such a difference in the Civil War.  

The “rifled bore” had a much longer range for accuracy (300 yards versus 100 years), which meant that calvary charges were almost impossible, and artillery couldn’t get close like it could with “smooth bore” rifles.  

With “smooth bore” rifles, it was so difficult to aim accurately (and to “repeat shot”) plus frequently jams, the calvary charge was very effective and artillery  could  get close without any real repercussions.  

Quite a difference in  battle on both sides.  

Also, he mentioned that many of the units were “hometown” units.  While I realized this in general, I didn’t think of the importance of the esprit de corps resulting from basically neighbors and relatives serving together.  

The unit successes and failures became a reflection on the community and soldiers wrote back home on how each other performed etc.

Also, while I realized this in general, 2/3 of the battle deaths were from disease, 1/3 from actual battle.  It was kind of shock to learn details of the lack of medical knowledge and procedures.  

Also, he mentioned that a general unit of solders (I don’t recall the number) required six tons of food PER DAY! to survive!  I am amazed they were able to do it considering the transportation of the day.

He mentioned the south was especially always hungry and he mentioned you never see an overweight confederate soldier!

Pondering the move.  Whether we made the right decision or not, we will find out over time.  We didn’t live here long enough to develop a lot of attachment to the house, but there are certainly a lot of things we will miss after we move.  

We will like having more storage and display space.  While it’ isn’t essential to my life, it will be nice to be able to do my exercise indoors (although the covered porch was fine and I never really was uncomfortable out there).  Hopefully I will be able to set up my weight set so I can bench press etc.  Currently I use only barbells, which has actually worked fine.  

Hopefully I will also be able to let my Hot Wheel/Matchbox cars out of their captivity and display them also.  

We will miss the large covered back porch and probably one of our first projects will be covering the back porch, although actually living in the house may establish other priorities.  

That’s it for now, Monday, February 15, 2016.