Well, the month long craziness that is the Kentucky Derby festival is finally over.

The traffic disruptions, lack of good news coverage in favor of reporting on bed races, and worrying if it will rain on a certain Friday or Saturday are all over.

I watched the Derby on Saturday, and I have to admit it was a good race. I’m not one for horse racing that much, although I enjoy going to the track with friends. But that’s more to enjoy time with my friends than it is to bet on the ponies.

A few years ago, a friend of ours got us tickets to Churchill Downs on a Sunday for brunch on Millionaires Row. For those of you who don’t live around Louisville, Millionaires Row is the area where celebrities and politicians go to watch the Derby and Oaks. We didn’t go on a special day, so it was mostly regular people who paid extra to have a great breakfast, an air conditioned table to sit at, and a great perch in a tall building to watch the races from. We had all of the kids with us, and I allowed each of them to pick a horse from one of the races, and I put a $2 bet down for them. Junior Bear suddenly turned into Jimmy the Greek. He asked about track conditions, what the records of each of the horses was, and so on. Little Bear picked a horse at random as he was more interested in the buffet. Girlie Bear picked, and I quote, “the brown one”.

Needless to say, Girlie Bear won on a 25 to 1 shot. I let her spend her $50 any way she wanted.

After the Derby this year, we went over to a friend’s house to make dinner for the crew of friends who were working security at the Derby. They are parents and teenagers who are involved in the band program at Junior Bear’s school. The money they raise working security at these events goes towards paying for the band. These poor souls had been on their feet for 14 hours a day for the past two days, so we made them a good spaghetti and salad dinner. Irish Woman went to the store and got a flat of cupcakes and an apple pie for dessert.

When the crew got in at about 9, we got to hear about all the celebrities they’d seen as some of them had worked the limousine entrance and some had worked on Millionaires Row. Apparently, Kim Kardashian is as pretty in person as she is on the Internet. Or at least she is to the eyes of an 18 year old high school senior.

So, until next year, we can get back to just being a city in the South/Midwest.

Over the weekend, while I was at home watching the Kentucky Derby, members of the Dallas Cowboys were at a rookie mini-camp. During a violent storm, the facility they were in collapsed, injuring several of them.

One of the injured will be paralyzed below the waist for the rest of his waist. Another broke his back, but has no paralysis.

My thoughts and prayers go out to these men, their families, and the Cowboys in general. During the season, on the field, they are the evil empire. When stuff like this happens we let all that go and help each other any way we can.

Looks like Jerry Jones is going to do the right thing and support these employees in any way he can. Good on him. Mr. Jones sometimes has a bad reputation, but if he’s going to do right by his people when they get hurt on the job, he goes up a notch or two in my estimation.

After my earlier discussion of the new flu scare, Roberta X linked to a great article on why this flu isn’t that panic worthy over at Atomic Nerds.

Just when you thought you were informed and eloquent, someone else does it better.

Some brainiac at the White House thought it would be neato to get some nice photos of Air Force One against the Manhattan skyline. So they fired up the jet, did a fly by, and had a grand time. Of course the Air Force had to send a chase plane or two to guard the Presidents plane.

They forgot one box in their checklist. They forgot to tell anyone else about it. Not the mayor of New York, much less the people of the Big Apple.

One shudders at the idiocy of someone thinking it would be a good freaking idea to have a 747 and some fighter jets buzz Manhattan unannounced. Kinda like parking a Ryder truck in front of the new federal building in Oklahoma City and walking away. Or having a fat girl deliver pizza to the Clinton library. These things tend to make people jumpy.

I hope they televise the butt chewings that this brought about. It would be nice to know who was responsible and watch them walk off the White House grounds with the contents of their desk in a small box on CNN.

Well, a new strain of swine flu is apparently worrying the socks off of the CDC and DHS. Secretary Napolitano has declared a preemptive state of emergency over the outbreak.

Mexico City is apparently shutting down, to include such religious things as Sunday Mass and soccer games.

So, what do we have here?

Hopefully, this is only going to be as bad as the SARS outbreak a few years ago. Yes, it’s pretty bad if you get it, but good quarantine methods contain the outbreak.

I really hope it doesn’t get as bad as the 1918 “Spanish” flu outbreak. That killed 10’s of millions. But that was just as modern medicine was starting to come out. Anti-viral medicine was a dream, a lot of the medical establishment still didn’t believe in germs, and not a lot of people had access to good medical support if they needed it. Now, even though we still don’t have magic bullets against viruses, we at least have a few widely used drugs like Tamiflu. Doctors are readily available to all Americans, and the doctors are well-trained and certified. I’m sure that work is going on already to develop a vaccine. If one is found, it could be quickly mass-produced and distributed.

BTW, for a really good read about the 1918 Pandemic, check out The Great Influenza. I picked it up a few years ago in an airport book store, and it goes into great detail on how the influenza is believed to have originated and how it spread. BTW, the 1918 flu is also believed to have originated in pigs and crossed the species barrier.

So, what’s the worst case scenario? Well, it would be a repeat of 1918. In 1918, the flu spread quickly through soldiers who took it from North America to the fighting in Europe, then spread globally when soldiers returned to every continent in the world. This flu could spread quickly through air travelers. That’s probably how it has already spread from Mexico to places like New York and New Zealand.

Doctors in the USA are saying that the cases they’ve seen so far have been pretty mild, but that follows the pattern of the 1918 influenza. The first outbreak was pretty mild, with a lot of people getting sick, but not a lot of them died. Then the subsequent waves hit later in the year and killed millions.

Things could get pretty ugly for a while, but it won’t be the end of the world. Pandemics burn themselves out eventually. Those who are going to sicken and die will do so pretty quickly. Hopefully, those who survive will have at least partial immunity. Society will change temporarily to keep from getting sick. Things like movies and sports will suffer because people will either be prevented from or voluntarily quit going to such things.

What we can do now is to just do what we do every flu season. Wash your hands, cover your mouth when you sneeze or cough, and stay home from work if you feel sick.

I hope this doesn’t get too bad. Just in case, please use the Purel at the door as you leave.

According to Fox News, a British agent in Colombia messed up their entire operation in South America by losing her purse.

How, might you ask, can losing a purse on a bus destroy an entire intelligence network?

Because the idiot was carrying around a thumb drive loaded with the identities of undercover agents and informants.

That’s right, a supposedly trained and competent agent of MI-6 was walking around her target area with an easily accessible roster of the agents her agency was using to get at the local drug lords.

My guess was it was totally unencrypted. Our allies in Her Majesty’s Secret Service were forced to move a whole bunch of people they had spent years getting in and getting to.

Here’s the deal kids: Thumb drives are really neato for carrying around your term papers and pictures of your kids, but don’t put anything you wouldn’t want put on the front page of the local newspaper on them. Like your tax return, or your checking account records. Or maybe even the identities of your SECRET AGENTS.

And if you have to do this, try using some kind of encryption to at least make it difficult for the bad guys to get to the information.

Starbuck over at Wings Over Iraq has a great post about the differences between the small outposts and the big bases in Iraq.

One thing that stuck out was his description of amenities at a Forward Operating Base or FOB:

They were isolated cities unto themselves, often boasting coffee houses, fast food restaurants, massage parlors, and massive dining facilities

Now, I’ve been deployed a couple of times, and I’ve seen some pretty posh large bases in forward areas. Never did see a massage parlor though. Is that the new Morale, Welfare, and Recreation at work, or is it contracted through KBR?

Just have to wonder.

It’s Thunder Over Louisville this weekend, and I have never been happier to live on the other end of town.

I’ve been to three of these collective insanity episodes. What a great idea. Let’s get a couple hundred thousand strangers together, throw in sun, liquor, and explosives, and then try to get them out of downtown Louisville at the same time all at the same time. Hopefully a race riot doesn’t break out in the middle of it. This year I think they’re trying to set a new record for obnoxious twits getting on camera flashing gang signs while some poor reporter tries to put a good spin on the whole thing.

Here’s how a day at Thunder goes:

You get up at 6 AM to throw some food down your neck and load the car. The kids are still sleepy, so they move in slow motion. By the time you back out of the driveway, you can feel the throbbing starting in your temporal lobe.

When you get either downtown or across the river to watch it from Indiana, you park about 2 miles away from the event. All of the things that you didn’t want to bring but were deemed necessary by your spouse are then strapped to your back and you trudge to the waterfront.

If you’re there with family or friends, it’s a fun afternoon. The two times we’ve done it with the Irish Woman’s family, the kids have really enjoyed playing with the cousins. The family will usually rent a few camper spaces in a lot over in Indiana, and it makes the day much better if you have a place to relax that’s not crowded and actually has a flush toilet.

If, on the other hand, you try to do this alone, you’re continually either allowing your kids to run off with strangers or you spend the day trying to not end up on an Amber Alert interview.

While you’re enjoying your afternoon, the air show is going on. Sometimes you look up and a neat military or civilian aircraft is going overhead. A lot of times you look up and a bunch of nutballs are flying way too fast, way too close, way too loud, and way too low.

Then you get hungry. You discover that all of the food you brought is gone, so you end up satisfying your hunger with a deep fried Snickers, a funnel cake, and steak on a stick. Wash all of that down with a $5 Pepsi.

Now you’re broke. And the nearest port-a-potty is half a mile away, which isn’t that bad because that’s how long the line for it is.

Then it gets dark. You’re shivering because your sunburn is bleeding off of the heat from your body. You and your kids and family watch 20 minutes of fireworks that are pretty impressive. Hopefully the wind is blowing away from you, or you get to inhale the smoke from all of those fireworks to add to your later case of black lung that you get just from living in IndiUcky.

Then you begin the death march back to your car. If you’re lucky, you don’t get mugged or lose a kid in the crowd. Extra points if your kids are so tired and worn out from running around all day that you end up carrying one or more of them, along with all of the things that your wife wanted taken along, but never got unpacked. Last time, I wondered if it would be better to just strap Little Bear and Girlie Bear to my backpack with bungie cords rather than have to pull them along.

Once you get to your car, you strap the semi-conscious kids and wife in, re-pack the car, and spend an hour getting out of the parking lot. On at least 3 occasions you will be scolded for your language by the wife.

You then spend 2 hours trying to get to the interstate to get home. If you parked in Indiana, welcome to a 4 hour ride home, since it makes no sense to let people just come over the river on the bridge that leads directly to Louisville. No, the powers that be will make you drive 25 miles west, then get on a bypass, then get on the interstate that leads you home.

If you parked in Kentucky, welcome to a road company remake of Road Warrior, in which you get to watch nuns cut people off and then threaten their lives. It still takes 4 hours to get home, but at least you have a show to enjoy on the way. The city always has some Rube Goldberg plan for getting people out of downtown without World War III breaking out, but I’m pretty sure they’re actually trying to reduce the population using car accidents, shootings, and starvation.

If you’re lucky, you arrive home in that sweet spot where you’ve caffeinated yourself enough after a 16 hour day that you make it home without falling asleep and killing your entire family, but you’re not so wired that you can’t fall asleep for 4 hours after you get home. Good luck on that balancing act.

Congratulations, you smell of old beer, sweat, and SPF 200 sunblock, and you’ve survived another Thunder over Louisville. OK, your kids will sleep all day Sunday, and you and the wife won’t speak to each other for a couple of days, but wasn’t it grand to spend quality time together?

No thanks. I’ll stay home tomorrow, maybe cook out, but definitely stay away from all things Thundery. If I’m feeling froggy, I might go to the range and make my own Thunder.

Apparently Phil over at Random Nuclear Strikes is fighting the creeping crud.

I’ve had that annoying balloon deflating sound in my head too, and it’s always a warning to go running for the nearest box of tissues.

I’m feeling marginally better today. Irish Woman self medicated this morning and stayed home from work.

Let’s hear it for partying the weekend away while on Sudafed!!!!

As most of you know, I’m not from the South. I’m from about as north as you can go without having to learn to drink Molsen. I didn’t really experience any kind of racism until we moved to California, where I learned that my mom was extremely prejudiced. Over the years, I’ve known some people who lingered in the past when it comes to how they judge people, but I never let those people become an important part of my life.

For the most part, I don’t see much racism here in Kentucky. There’s still not a lot of love between the “black community” and the “white community”, but I see hope for the future when I go to Junior Bear’s school and see white and black kids laughing and talking together.

Anyhoo, today I got smacked in the face with racism. I was sitting in my doctor’s waiting room, and was watching the news. They were talking about the recent rant that Jamie Foxx made about Miley Cyrus. After a while, the staff changed the channel to a talk show that featured Ben Affleck talking about his new movie.

The other patient waiting for her appointment, a woman about my age, remarked that she was glad to see a clean cut “American looking” guy like Affleck on the TV instead of more pictures and video of Jamie Foxx.

To say that I was shocked would be quite an understatement. I was so gobsmacked that I didn’t respond. How could someone as young as she was, in this day, think like that? If she’d been an older lady I’d have chalked it up to habits learned a long time ago, but I never expected to hear something like that from someone my age.

An “American Look” that apparently excludes people who look like Jamie Foxx? If I’d had time and courage to argue with her, I’d have said that there is no “American Look”. Instead, I sat and waited for my name to be called and got on with my day.

But it got me thinking.

Martin Luther King looked like an American. Bobby Jindal looks like an American. George Lopez looks like an American. Lucy Liu, David Patterson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and even Jamie Foxx look like an American.

We are all Americans, and we all make up this motley assortment of rugged individualists. We fight, squabble, shout, and hurt. We comfort, befriend, and make peace ever day. We come from all corners of the globe, and if you’ve been to Santa Monica or Times Square, you might believe that we draw from beyond the globe.

I am going to have to learn to watch for this attitude in my kids as I bring them up in Kentucky. My parents were prejudiced, and I sometimes have to monitor myself to keep from falling into that trap. I want my children to understand that different doesn’t mean bad.