My Dad in a Dr's waiting room (pic by my sister K).
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Wednesday, June 16, 2021
Sunday, January 10, 2021
My Dad's Phu Cat
Wednesday, February 7, 2018
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
A Sad Anniversary for my Dad
Friday, May 26, 2017
Brewers - Diamondbacks with my Pop pt 2
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
A String of Bad Luck
Wednesday, November 30, 2016
Bob Hope at Phu Cat
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
My Dad and I travel to Chicago to see a White Sox game
Sunday, June 19, 2016
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
BP
Sunday, January 17, 2016
Tutoring
My Dad tutoring YaYa at Zablocki library for her algebra final. He must be doing something right, as a stranger just came up and asked him for advice.
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
An Update on my Dad
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
My Dad is in the Hospital
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Friday, March 5, 2010
My parents just left. I'd invited them over for a Lenten meal of cajun style salmon cakes, rice, salad, and that homemade apple cake I made yest. Personally, I think the cake was a little dry, but everyone seemed to like it.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
A list, some congrats, and a nasty howling wind
[We were 'supposed' to get up to six inches of snow Sunday, an amount then downgraded to two to four inches, and then to none as the storm never bothered to arrive. It's like the meteorologists are trying desperately to validate my tongue-in-cheek column, but I'll gladly thank the heavens for nixing the white stuff, thank you very much.]
There is beauty in most things on this Earth, and the wind is no exception. I was reading Smiley a book when I glanced up through his skylight. The bare tree branches were an impressive sight as they fought against the wind, a sight that took our attention off the pages for several minutes.
* * * *
Kudos to my father, who told me today that he'd re-enrolled at UW-Milwaukee in hopes of completing his degree. It's contingent on financial aid, but I'm very proud of him.
* * * *
YaYa is compiling a list of all the books she's ever read, mimicking my own efforts. For the sake of keeping the obsession alive, and because it was a school assignment for her, here are all the books we read to LuLu in March (or rather, all the books we could find when I set out to make the list):
Dora: The Windy Day by Quinlan B Lee
Lady Lovely Locks and the PixieTails: The Golden Ball by Harriet Marcelle
Five Little Monkeys Sitting in a Tree by Eileen Christelow
Walt Disney's Cinderella
Clifford's Puppy Day's: A Snowy Christmas by Quinlan B Lee
Dear Barbie: Too Many Puppies by Lisa Trusiani Parker
Disney's Beauty and the Beast - The Teapots Tale by Justine Korman
Disney's Enchanted: Before the Fall by Tennant Redbank
CareBears: What Makes you Happy? By JE Bright
Goodtimes Storybook Classic: Snow White by Carl Baldassarre
Barbie: Freckles by Mona Miller
Clifford's Spring Clean-Up by Norman Bridwell
Disney's The Little Mermad See/Hear/Read Book
Goodbye Geese by Nancy White Carlstrom
One and just in case I don't get around to a Smiley list: we read Rooftop Christmas tonight.
Monday, January 5, 2009
A Q&A with my Dad about his time in Vietnam
* * * * *
Q: Could you please state your full name, branch, and date of service, and lowest and highest rank?
A: Edward M. Slap-, United States Air Force, July 1966 to July 1970. I started at E1, highest rank attained was E5.
Q: Why did you choose to enlist in the Air Force when you did?
A: Didn’t have much choice at the time. It was either that or being drafted. There were not many alternatives for young men at that time.
Q: What age were you then?
A: Oh, uh, nineteen
Q: The Vietnam War had already been raging for some time when you enlisted, what were your feelings about the war back then?
A: … hard question because, like I said, we didn’t have many options as, as a nineteen year old at that time. [You] Either had to go in the military, stay in school the whole time, or become …or head to Canada. Basically the only three alternatives a young man had.
Q: But what was your feeling about the war itself? About what was going on over there?
A: Well the war itself seemed, for what we were told, at age nineteen you just kinda don’t know too much about what’s going on yet, but it seemed like it was, at the time, a just war. Uh…there were some very serious questions being raised already at that time as to how we were going about it. Not only the reason why but how we were going about it. [I] Had questions concerning that.
Q: Like what?
A: Well, it was just like [unintelligible] all we were doing is prolonging the war. It’s the old adage, ah, I hit you, you hit me back, I go out and get a club, then you go get a club and I go get a knife, then you go get a knife. I mean, it seemed [our] battle[s] were just escalating it, were not really settling anything.
Q: When did you arrive in Vietnam?
A: January 1968. Ten days before the Tet offensive started.
Q: What were some of your first impressions of that country and its people?
A: Of [the] country?
Q: Of the country and its people.
A: Well, we arrived about 11:30 at night and it was incredibly hot. Good Lord, was it hot! We just came out of Wisconsin and Seattle, Washington in the middle of winter and I think it was something like 98 degrees at 11:30 at night. You just couldn’t, and I mean you wouldn’t, by the time you got maybe hundred yards you were just soaking wet from perspiration and nothing you could do about it. You know just…didn’t even see my first Vietnamese until about…the following day because we were at Cam Ranh Bay checking in, and my first [laughs] impression of them was, was how incredibly short they were! God they were a small people. My God, I’ve seen kids in, going to junior high here taller then they.
Q: But were they-
A: And yet, after a while you start to learn that height didn’t really mean much.
Q: Where were you stationed?
A: Phu Cat Airforce Base
Q: Where was that?
A: About 40 miles East of Pleiku and about 50 miles North, Northeast of Qui Nhon, right off the, uh, south China coast.
Q: That was Northern South Vietnam?
A: About, uh…we were in the upper half, the lower upper half.
Q: What was your job at that base?
A: Supply Specialist. Just, anything to, our primary job was to make sure those airlplanes kept flying. And, uh, just anything they needed, anything the army unit needed, uh, our job was to get it to ‘em.
Q: You got there right before the Tet offensive. What do you remember about it, when it started?
A: [pause] Well, I didn’t really know it was a, Tet offensive, just, you know, it started. We . . . came under attack around 1 o’clock in the morning. And, uh, at the time we had not been, we were sleeping on a cot, sleeping on a cot, in the middle of a main hallway because our permanent quarters weren’t ready yet. And, I had sacked out and the first thing I knew I could remember hearing the concussion and the next thing I knew some guy who was trying to get out tripped [chuckles] over my bunk and fell right over me. And down went the cot, down went everything. I was on the floor then people stampeding out, grabbing their gear, trying to get up, trying to get this big shit offa me, tryin’ to find out where my stuff was because that was the first time I had been through it. And get over – get your weapon, get over to your, uh, assigned spot where you know down into the bunker. And then you just kinda wait it out, see what happens.
Q: What did happen?
A: Well, it was a mortar attack and, the barracks area itself was . . .away from the flight line where the aircraft were so there was a bit of a
Monday, October 30, 2006
Halloween '06 and My Dad's Party
I was shocked when I downloaded/uploaded/whatever the latest Halloween pics to my computer.
The folder 'Halloween 06' now joins its counterparts '03, '04, and '05. Hard to believe we've been doing this so long. Seems like just yesterday I dressed YaYa in a one-piece Halloween pajama back in the olden days of film cameras, circa 2001.
Just for kicks, here's some photos of the girls through the years.
This is 2003, where we had a Wizard of Oz theme. I'm the Tin Man.
(sorry, shoulda orientated that pic prior to Uploading it to AOL)
That's YaYa on the right dressed as Dorothy. Her friend Meadow is in the middle, and I think that's YaYa's cousin in the Barney getup.
And here's LuLu dressed as the cowardly lion.
Now for 2004.
Here's LuLu.
And YaYa.
I have no idea why the pics are different sizes. It was my first digital camera, a shoebox sized gizmo.
2005 I chronicled here on Slapinions.
I'm still waiting for the pictures from LuLu's trip to the pumpkin farm, but the Mrs. spent one evening carving the bounty they found there.
In Milwaukee Halloween is officially mandated to be the Sunday closest to the holiday, and during daylight hours only. It was fine for me as a kid, but my kids deserve supervised nighttime trick-or-treat. Therefore, we take up a friend's mother's offer to participate in a paid trick-or-treat event, this year on October 28th.
Roughly 600 kids pay $3 each to receive a treat bag and pin, and the right to trick-or-treat at night within a supervised neighborhood.
We started out with YaYa in the Barney get-up
Yes, we reuse our costumes. We are poor.
But she grew tired of it and switched to the Rapunzel dress we bought her for her birthday.
LuLu went as a witch
And Parker went as Toto, again a recycled costume. I'd have had better pictures of him, but . . well, I 'll explain later.
Garsh, I look good, no?
You'll note the kids are dressed for Arctic battle. It was supposed to be 30 degrees, so we dressed appropriately. We even brought blankets along for the stroller.
The evening started with a generous dinner at the Mother's house. There were a lot of kids.
Then it was out to trick-or-treat.
It turned out to be a mild night and the blankets went unused.
Two big memories of the night, aside from great times watching the kids have fun going from house to house; Parker stumbing down the road, YaYa stopping to chat with many of the people handing out candy, LuLu getting frightened of a scary house and me dragging her kicking and screaming to the door, just so her life wouldn't be ruled even this once by fear.
Memory one: we're two or three blocks in when LuLu announces firmly she needs to use the potty. So I take her on my shoulders piggy-back all the way back to the house where we started, use the potty, then retrace our steps and try to catch up to the rest of the family - occasionally stopping to trick-or-treat along the way. LuLu and I are getting close lately, she's just so cute.
Memory two: when LuLu and I were on our own we came to a house where a 3 or 4 year old boy dressed as a Storm Trooper was crying. The woman handing out candy said he was lost and had been on her lawn for more than 20 minutes.
Well, a short time later I saw a SUV cruising slowly down the street. I flagged it down, and sure as day it was the father searching for his son. When he told me what he was wearing I said "Well, I have good news for you. He's down the road about two blocks, over on your left"
He drove off - and went right past the house. So I ran, yes ran, down the road after him. "I'm too fat for this s**t," I said when it was over.
Father and son were reunited.
Now after the trick-or-treat we dropped the kids off at my mother in law's (where YaYa was unusually sentimental about us leaving) and headed off to Caroline's, a pub near downtown Milwaukee that featured a live jazz band. It was my father's belated 60th birthday party, and a good (and unusually large) number of his side of the family showed up.
I'm a fan of jazz and enjoyed it, but I was tired and Lisa was exhausted, so we made an early exit. But my Dad stayed til nearly 2 - and he had to work at 6. The highlight while I was there was the band seranading my father. He had a great time and couldn't stop talking about it at work the next day. Kudos to my sister Katie for planning the bash.
Alas, sometime in the night my camera - my beloved camera - started taking crazy shots, blurred and streaked. It wasn't discovered until the next day (I had assumed it was just the poor lighting on the trick-or-treat and in the bar). This is a bad thing for two reasons: 1) we are 11 days from embarking on the 1st Slapinions Family Vacation and I cannot afford a new camera and 2) half the photos of the trick-or-treat, all of my Dad's birthday photos, and all of the daytime trick-or-treat were useless.
Don't believe me? Here's the most usuable of these discarded pics, a fluke solid shot of (naturally) a lousy pic.
And the one usuable photo of Parker from the 29th's daytime trick-or-treat, showing the after effect of all that candy.
We didn't want to stay home and be bombarded by candy hungry kids (aren't we horrible?) so we split and did a little trick-or-treat around my Mom's neighborhood, then visited my Aunt Rosie, then headed to my mother-in-laws.
While there we handed out candy, or YaYa did. She was upset at the low turnout in the older neighborhood, but I helped her out by flagging down some customers for her. All three of my kids and I then played tag, hide and seek, and Zombie in the front yard. And YaYa played a trick on passer-by's. She hid on the ground under my coat adn then jumped out and yelled 'Boo' when I gave the signal. She scared the bejeezus out of one infant!
Afterward we toured a house my friend Emo had remodelled and put up for sale.
And just for kicks, the camera decided to start working again later in the evening, tho' I still half-believe it's just tricking me into leaving for vacation with a bum camera.
Here's two random pictures of my girls from the test shots: