A Leap Day Quandary

A leap for Leap Day.
It truly is a delicate situation.
Nigh on precarious, I daresay.
See, I've never had a blog post on Leap Day.
I squandered 2008 away with a smattering of posts as
I cringed through my last semesters of college.  And the Leap Day
before that one I was coasting through my last months as a high schooler.
And the Leap Day before that one... there's no telling.

So this is a monumental day.  People all across

the world are literally erecting monuments

to Leap Day 2012, just like the

Mayans predicted all those

many years ago.  

But the

problem

with 

having a Leap 

Day post is that I 

don't have much to write

 about, and I struggle with the idea

 of publishing inane babble.  

I could talk about the

 new fancy gadget 

up on the sidebar

 there.  The media

 player thingy.  We've

 started recording and

 podcasting our weekly Coffee Talks.  It's

 a men's group, so if any of you ladies wanna

 give it a go you may wanna take a shot of testosterone

 before you go in.  This week we covered Genesis 1-25.  The guy

 at the end that says "Logan Stewart"... yeah, that's not me.  I'm the second person

 you hear speaking, the one with the odd and hickish accent.

Accents are another thing.  I could spend my 

time being self-conscious about it,

 about the way that I say words

 like "light", "night", or "like."  

The fact that I say stuff

 with a drawl and a 

mumble, but

 those aren't

 reasons 

to get 

upset.

     I prefer to see them as character attributes, not as words of a simpleton.  It's baffling 

          how city folk make fun of our accents, though.  Even folks from Louisville, the largest city 

     in the state, populations something-point-something-million.  Louisvillians are so diverse that

                  some talk more country than me, and others more city.  Personally, I can tell that my

          accent's gotten more noticeable as I've aged.

I intentionally used the word "gotten" in the previous paragraph to give birth

 to this paragraph for one solitary reason.  It bothers me to read the word

 "gotten" in anything that wants to be taken seriously unless

 someone's speaking.  Just seems like a lazy cop out.

My dad's dad was a cop.  A deputy sheriff, in fact.

  So yeah, I've taken a few rides in the back of a squad car.

A "young girl" jumped off the bridge here today.  She's in critical condition.

  I don't recall anything like that ever happening around here.  I can't imagine coming

 to the decision to do something like that, to stop your car in the middle of the span, get out, walk

 to the edge, 

   climb the rail,

      stare down the water, 

       feel the wind gusts 

  blow at you, 

and

  then

    jump.

      I can't imagine the thoughts in her mind for that 2-3 second drop.

  I can't imagine hitting the water and thinking that something has

 gone terribly wrong 

(or right).  

I can't imagine waking up in the hospital after deciding to do

 it.  It's an incredible opportunity the girl's been given, 

to not have died immediately.  

I pray that she recovers and that the love of

Jesus is shown to her.

I'm not a fan of buggy 

and clunky computer 

programs that limit user

input.  I'm talking to you, 

HEC-RAS.  It's the standard in

bridge & open channel analyses for anything

remotely complicated, and yet it's lacking plenty 

of functionality.  Maybe that's cause it's 

developed by the USACE?  As it 

goes, I'm doing a lot 

of experimentation 

with this thing.

I am a fan of format.   

And experimentation.  

And questionable verisimilitude.  

Happy Leap Day!