Author Archives: gmcdavid

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About gmcdavid

Retired IT professional with a wide range of interests. Married. Three sons, two with autistic-spectrum disorders and the third being transgender with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. From Chicago but now living in the Twin Cities metro, Minnesota. Episcopalian. Carleton College (BA 1972, physics) and Stanford University (MS 1974, Applied Physics; MS 1976 Statistics).

Christmas Tree

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Normal room lighting, using flash No flash, room lights out, lit only by Christmas tree lights.

We got the tree from Hansen Tree Farm, driving up there and cutting it down ourselves on Sunday, December 19. We had to trudge through 17″ of snow, deep and crisp and even, but it was a fun outing.

<LiturgyGeekMode>Christmas does not begin until the evening of December 24. December 19 is during Advent.</LiturgyGeekMode>

That evening we saw this episode of Mythbusters. We laughed through all the “remedies” for keeping your Christmas tree from losing needles. From past experience with fresh cut trees we knew we would not have that problem. In fact the tree is doing very well and we do not expect any problems before we take it down on January 8 or 9 (the weekend after 12th Night/Epiphany).

Nasty, brutish and not that short

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Medieval warfare was just as terrifying as you might imagine

The soldier now known as Towton 25 had survived battle before. A healed skull fracture points to previous engagements. He was old enough—somewhere between 36 and 45 when he died—to have gained plenty of experience of fighting. But on March 29th 1461, his luck ran out.