Woodstock

Woodstock – 40th Anniversary
I was sort of caught up in the Woodstock 40th Anniversary over the weekend. It was hard to escape the television coverage of aging hippies waxing semi-eloquently over how great the actual event was.

I think more people have claimed to have been at Woodstock than were actually there; sort of like the Middle Ages and the sale of religious relics than included pieces of the Cross.

This all got me to thinking what was I doing when Woodstock was happening.

At the time, I was in a semi-depressed state.

A month or so earlier, I had a terrible breakup with my girl friend. We changed dramatically in the year that I had been overseas on the good ship USS Leonard F. Mason. I had just been transferred from the Mason to the good ship USS Lucid as the Operations Officer. I was also looking at my third trip to Vietnam and having my active duty service time being extended involuntarily to complete the project one year cruise – deployment.

The Lucid was in San Diego at the Fellows & Stewart Shipyard undergoing a major overhaul when I joined her. The ship was a noisy, dusty mess and I suppose this contributed to my discomfort. The Mason was always ready for sea and neat and clean.

I probably had the duty that weekend. I had the watch as the Command Duty Officer from Friday morning until Monday at Noon. When you are the CDO, you cannot leave the ship. I think we had perhaps 25 enlisted men on the ship with me.

There was too much for me to do. The ship was in dry dock with large holes in the bottom. We had no anchors or any electronics equipment except for a partially installed sonar system. The new sonar system resulted in the removal of the ship’s one gun. It was a small 40 mm gun but it was still a gun.

Had I not had the break up with the girl friend, she would have probably come down to the ship to have dinner with me. That would have made the days go by faster.

Colorectal Surgery Clinic
I had been phoning the clinic off and on for three weeks to talk to them about consolidating two appointments I had scheduled for September. On Friday, I finally got a return phone call from the clinic. The clerical staffer who called said the clinic was going to consolidate the two appointments. That was nice of them.

This experience of having to call the clinic and leave voice messages for three weeks did not give me an altogether good feeling about the idea of a completely government run medical program in the United States. All of my calls were placed when the clinic was open. I knew the clinic was open because I only placed calls at times when I had previous appointments so there was no apparent reason why someone in the clinic could not have picked up the phone.

I suppose that I should not be upset since the clinic has established a low level of customer – patient service and satisfaction with Doug and me.

Referral Sites and Popular Pages
I was wandering around Sitemeter.com’s statistics for the blog over the weekend. I do this randomly.

I noticed that I had referrals from sites that I would not have thought of. One was from SkeetonMischa which was Doug’s old blog at blogger.com. The site has been dormant for close to two years now. The other one of interest was from bing.com. I would not have thought that bing.com was indexing any of the blog.

Doug was surprised when I mentioned to him that I had a referral from his old blog site last week. I think his explanation was that good writing doesn’t go out of style.

In another surprise to me, the actual blog is now the second most read page. None of the readers have posted any comments about the blog. I think I have had only two or three actual comments about something that I wrote.

My favorite comment came from Faline Song. She was one of my Women of the Moment and was featured in 2007. I think she was one of the last of the Women of the Moment. I ended up with a collection of over 65 images of her.

Faline said that she liked the nice things that I wrote about her.

Perfectomundo.


Be well and stay happy.