Saturday (Cheat Day) morning; lost 1.2 lbs since last week, making a total of 15.4 lbs since I started just over four weeks ago. Still very happy with my meals, still eating better (e.g., more green leafies and veggies on a daily basis) than I have in years. And for those intermittent cravings, I still have Cheat Day on Saturdays, and during the rest of the week, bacon. This morning, I had both: overnight (yeast-based) waffles with (previously cooked) strips of bacon cooked right in; butter pecan syrup on my first serving and spiced apple syrup and mascarpone cheese on the second serving (with plenty of butter on both).

Through these posts to date (including today’s), I’ve been finding examples of FHBD meals on the web and posting them (with links back to their originating sites). I’ll start taking photos of some of my own meals and posting them instead. I should have taken some photos yesterday afternoon — I did my ‘protein grilling’ for the week, which included:

• 1″ hand-sliced beef tenderloin steaks (7 or so), salted and peppered ahead of time
• lamb loin chops (8), marinated in olive oil, salt and pepper
• several salmon fillets (cut from one large salmon fillet), marinated in olive oil, salt, pepper and fresh lime juice (with more salt, pepper and lime juice applied while grilling)
• some precooked red pepper and spinach chicken sausages (5)
• a pack of (97% fat free) Hebrew National hot dogs
• a large bunch of thin asparagus (olive oil, salt, pepper)
• some sliced leftover onions

It all turned out great, except for the hot dogs — they were a last-minute decision, and that pack was all I had sitting in the freezer. The low-fat ‘dogs don’t grill very well because, well, they don’t have much fat in them. They still have good taste, but they don’t have the mouth feel of regular Hebrew Nat’l dogs. All the meats (except for the ‘dogs) were bought at Costco; the asparagus I bought at Safeway, because the Costco asparagus is too thick (finger-thickness vs. pencil (or less) thinness at Safeway).

To date, I have been relying solely on a change in diet for the loss, and that during a period of enforced reduced physical activity (due to a high ankle sprain I suffered the day after I started the FHBD, and which still hurts; it’s got a ways to go). My goal for the next four weeks is to apply physical activity several times each day. Ferriss suggests some simple do-anywhere exercises (air squats, wall presses, chest pulls), so I’m going to start working those in daily, just before and 90 minutes after meals.

I did do my canonical stretching routine (the last 20-minute segment of this video; been using it for about 20 years) for the first time in several months. I was more sore and stiff during it than I can remember being a long, long time — I don’t know how much of that is due to my general lack of physical activity for the last four weeks and how much is due to other effects of the fall where I wrenched my ankle. My ankle, on the other hand, held up pretty well through most of the stretching routine; there was just one short exercise that I modified a bit because it hurt too much otherwise. In any case, my ankle needs the stretching to working on recovering full range of motion.

That’s it for now.  ..bruce w..

Another week, another Cheat Day, a few more pounds gone. I weighed in this morning at 2.2 lbs less than than last week; if I can keep losing 1-2 lbs/week, I will be very happy indeed. I did again gain 4 lbs the morning after Cheat Day last week, which means my weight is actually 6.2 lbs less than it was last Sunday morning. Tim Ferriss states on his website (in response to a question) that post-Cheat Day weight gain is not unusual, but that the weight tends to vanish in a few days. That is been my experience to date.

Note in all this that I’m still limited in my physical activity by my high ankle sprain; I’ve been doing no exercising or stretching, and I’ve been doing fewer physical chores than usual (as evidenced by the snow and ice on our front driveway). However, I will likely start going back to the gym on Monday to see if I can swim — or even just walk in the swimming lane — without undue pain.

My cravings are changing, too. Two weeks ago on Cheat Day, I frankly overdid it because I felt a drive to eat things I had wanted all week long. I was a bit more moderate last week (though I did have both a Big Mac and a Quarter Pounder along with my fries between NFL playoff games). While I’ve got a few “nice to haves” on my list for today (a slice of Costco pizza, a trip to a Mexican restaurant, a toasted cheese sandwich), I don’t feel a need to eat everything that I wouldn’t be able to eat otherwise. In other words, the protein/legumes/veggies diet is starting to feel like normal.

Similarly, during-the-week cravings and impulses are becoming more and more muted — in part because of the diet shift, but also because of the Cheat Day exception. I don’t feel deprived that I can’t run through McDonalds or Taco Bell whenever the urge hits me; if anything, I feel a bit liberated and more thoughtful about my eating. And there’s always bacon.

I had to eat out (on business) three days in a row this week and had no problems. Each time, I ordered a salad that came with protein (e.g., cobb salad, salmon salad) and didn’t worry about beans.

By the way, last weekend I grilled up (a) salmon, (b) hamburger patties (88% lean), and (c) boneless pork chops (1″ to 1.5″ thick), all meats purchased at Costco. For the pork chops, I smeared them with a dijon mustard-chopped garlic paste an hour or so before grilling; they have been absolutely wonderful. The salmon I fixed two ways: two large filets on cedar plans with a savory spice rub (a bit of sugar in it, but eh?), and two smaller filets marinated in olive oil, lime juice, salt & pepper and cooked directly on the grill (using a perforated grilling pan). The latter filets were absolutely exquisite; easily the best fish I have ever cooked and some of the best fish I have ever eaten. All future grilled fish will be cooked that way. The meat I cooked last week not only lasted all this week but will last well into next week also (and that’s with my sweet wife, who is not on the FHBD, making use of it as well).

I came up with a new favorite way of fixing the grilled hamburger patties during the week. In a large (non-stick) frying pan, I saute chopped onions and sliced mushrooms (small Portabellos; again, thank you, Costco), usually in butter. I heat up a (cooked) hamburger patty in the microwave, then put it in the frying pan to saute for a bit with the mushrooms and onions, turning it over at least once. I dump it all on a plate, put some beans on the side, and have some green veggies as well.

The pork chops are big enough that just one makes a meal; I usually slice it up and heat it (gently) in the microwave. Tasty Bite Madras Lentils (yes, available at Costco) make a great and easy side dish with the pork chop. I use the salmon largely to make salads for lunch, typically along with drained canned beans. I changed this past week from baby spinach to a chopped lettuce salad mix; I don’t like that nearly as much and will go back to baby spinach. My favorite green veggies are fresh sugar snap peas and steamed frozen peas, though I also keep a small prepackaged veggie tray in the fridge with broccoli.

My one cooking disappointment to date: I made a large batch of chicken legume soup using a dried ‘gourmet bean blend’ (beans, peas, and lentils — bought, yes, at Costco), my own homemade frozen turkey broth, and pieces of (prepacked) grilled chicken. It was decent when first cooked and hot off the stove, though I added rice vinegar and Sriracha chili sauce to punch it up a bit. However, after refrigerating it and then reheating it, one or more of the beans in the blend turned crunchy, which makes it very unappetizing for me.

Finally, my acne rosacea continues to improve. I find this fascinating, since I’ve dealt with this for 15-20 years and for most of that time was taking high doses of tetracycline (1000 mg/day or more ) to control it. I stopped that treatment a few years ago when I discovered — after running out of tetracycline and being unable to refill the prescription for a few weeks — that my nose was now pretty much acting the same with or without the antibiotic. (In fairness, the overall activity of the acne rosacea was down from its peak about 15 years ago, but was still there, still persistent, and still active.) I wasn’t expecting that as a side effect, and I’ll continue to monitor this to be sure it’s not just an unconnected cycle, but it is interesting.  ..bruce w..

Some months back, I ordered a copy of The Four Hour Body by Tim Ferriss, probably due to a mention on some other blog. After it arrived, it sat with 20 or so other books on my nightstand, unopened. However, some family members in other states started following Ferriss’s ‘slow carb’ diet from the book and reported steady, meaningful results. So a little over two weeks ago (12/29/11, to be exact), I decided to try it out myself.

Two weeks later, I’ve lost 12 lbs, in spite of being relatively inactive physically for reasons explained below. I haven’t felt particularly deprived, either.

There are lots of explanations of the diet on the web, but here’s a summary of my implementation of it:

• No ‘white’ or ‘bleachable’ carbs: flour, rice, potatoes, etc.
• No sugar or fructose (including fruits and fruit juices); limit artificial sweeteners.
• Drink at least 1/2 gallon of water per day.
• Meats (as used here and below includes fish and fowl), vegetables, and legumes (read: beans) at every meal. Limit corn and carrots, though.
• Eat within 60 minutes (and preferably 30 minutes) of waking up.
• One day a week (for me, Saturday) is ‘cheat day’ — all rules and restrictions are off.

As mentioned, I started this on Thursday, December 29th. The very next day, I managed to give myself a severe high ankle sprain slipping on a wet patch of reseeding soil on the sloping side lawn. This means that I spent my first week on the diet mostly lying on the couch or on our bed with my foot propped up and a cold pack wrapped around my ankle; I’m still limited in what I can do physically and probably will be for weeks.  Nevertheless, by the morning of my first real cheat day (Saturday, January 7th), I had lost nine (9) pounds.

I sort of went wild that first cheat day and the next morning had gained back four (4) lbs. However, my weight started declining a bit each day thereafter, so that, as noted, as of this morning I’m down a total of 12 lbs (which is to say, 7 lbs since last Sunday). I’m eating more modest amounts today and don’t expect to have the same weight gain tomorrow morning.

In preparation for the diet, I made a large batch of my Grandpa Jack’s Mexican beans (you can find the recipe in this post), froze half and kept the other half in the fridge. I also have been grilling a significant amount of protein (beef, chicken, fish, pork) on our large BBQ grill once a week, then sticking it in the fridge and using it each day. I stocked up on canned beans (no sugar/fructose) and various fresh and frozen veggies.

My daily meals have more or less followed this pattern:

• breakfast: some sort of eggs, often scrambled, with veggies (mushrooms and onions, most often), Mexican beans on the side.
• lunch: usually a salad with sliced meat and beans (canneloni, great northern, black) in it, occasionally other vegetables and/or diced hard-boiled egg. Dressing is either a homemade oil-and-vinegar dressing or occasionally a dollop of mayo. (I had a craving some days ago for a BLT sandwich and made a BLT salad instead.)
• dinner: meat of some kind, veggies of some kind, beans of some kind, either as three portions of the meal or combined in some way.

Ferrriss recommends four small meals about four hours apart, but I usually end up having just three most days. If I do have a fourth, it’s usually just snacking on some veggies or having another portion of protein.

For my water, I just use a standard 2 QT plastic water container. I add in one squeeze of Mio and another of lime juice just to give it some flavor. I drink maybe one diet soda every other day, usually Fresca.

Speaking of snacking — following this diet has made me aware of just how often I would usually snack during the day. Of course, most of the things I used to snack on (cheese, crackers, bread, sweets) are off limits now (except, of course, on Saturday). However, I have found a useful substitute for when I’m just really craving something sweet or salty. Once or twice a week, I’ll cook up a half-rasher of bacon in the morning, have a slice or two with breakfast, then wrap the rest in a paper towel, put it in a ziploc bag, and stick it in the fridge. When I get a strong snack craving, I’ll just pull out a cold, salty, crispy strip of bacon and eat it. Frankly, it’s better than candy.

Likewise, this diet has made me keenly aware of how many processed food products contain sugar, fructose, or other sweeteners. Some I can understand, but vinaigrette salad dressings? Soup? Mayonnaise? Really?

Farriss gives physiological reasons for the ‘cheat day’, but I think the psychological reasons are as important. Whatever it is I want, whatever it is I’m craving, I know that I can have it in 6 days or less without ‘breaking’ the diet. Last Saturday was my first real cheat day (I was only a day or two into the diet on 12/31, so that hardly seemed like a big change), and as I mentioned above, I went a tad overboard. Today, however, while I’m enjoying what I’m eating, I don’t feel quite the same compulsion or intensity. In fact, a lot of what I’ve had today have been frozen leftovers (brownies, homemade mac-and-cheese, pizza) from last Saturday. I still have a trip to McDonalds planned between playoff games, though.

Overall, I feel fine. It’s hard to gauge my sleep patterns to date, since I have this ankle and shin that are prone to ache through the night. But I tend to wake up rested and with plenty of energy, and I maintain my energy through the day and evening, even though my caffeine consumption (in the form of diet Coke) has dropped dramatically.

Most interesting is my nose. I suffer from acne rosacea, which for me means a reddish nose that’s prone to swell a bit, with one or more whiteheads each day to deal with. Since starting on this diet, I’ve seen a total of two (2) whiteheads in the past two weeks, there has been little swelling, and even the redness seems to have faded just a touch. I’ll be watching to see if this trend continues.

I’ll keep reporting from time to time. My initial goal was to lose 30 lbs by the end of April, which would put me back where I was five years ago, when my weight started slowly creeping up; I now find that after two weeks, I’m almost halfway there. My ultimate goal is to lose 50 lbs, which will put me back where I was about 15 years ago. Should be fun.  ..bruce w..

The second personal computer I ever owned[1] was an Apple II, with no floppy drive. I bought it, along with a small color TV, from my close friend Robert Trammel while we were both living in Houston sometime around 1980.We had already spent hours together programming on it, then carefully (though not always successfully) saving our programs out to cassette tape. After three months, I sold the computer and TV back to Robert — not because I didn’t like it, but because I was spending far too much time on it.

A few years later — in 1982 — my close friend Wayne Holder hired me into his nascent software company, Oasis Systems, in part to help with his existing and planned word processing utilities (The Word Plus, Punctuation + Style), but mostly to develop computer games. And we did, developing Sundog: Frozen Legacy on the Apple II, a game for which I still get e-mails (and which Wayne is even now working on resurrecting for modern platforms). In January 1984, a few months before Sundog shipped, we were invited by Guy Kawasaki to come up to Apple to see  a preview of the Mac and to talk about what software we could port to the Mac. Through my connections with computer stores in San Diego, I was able to get a personal loan of a Mac for a few days at home prior to the official announcement in Cupertino later that month, which Wayne and I attended as well. That was my first time seeing Steve Jobs in person, and it remains a memorable highlight of my professional life.

When the Mac shipped a few days later, I went down to the one computer store in San Diego that I knew would be getting machines from Apple. I took $3000 in cash with me and managed to convince the store owner — a friend — to let me have one of the three Macs he had to sell. Through a connection with Phil Lemmons — editor-in-chief at BYTE — I ended up writing the official BYTE review of the 128K Macintosh (August 1984 issue). By the end of 1984, I was writing full-time for BYTE, including on-going coverage of the Macintosh, particularly once my BYTE column started in mid-1985. After a few years of writing for BYTE, I switched to writing for Macworld magazine. Steve was now long-gone from Apple, and Apple was having some of its own problems going forward.

But in late 1987, I was contacted by Addison-Wesley. They were interested in having me write a book about Steve Jobs’ new project at NeXT. Folks at NeXT had apparently suggested me to Addison-Wesley, probably due to my writing at BYTE and Macworld. I leapt at the opportunity, particularly since in coincided with our family moving from Utah to just outside Santa Cruz (where I would be doing technical writing for Borland on a consulting basis). Once there, I found myself invited to visit NeXT HQ on Deer Creek Road, sit in on meetings, and attend the 0.3 NeXTstep Dev Camp. And, yes, that meant getting actual face time with Steve Jobs as well — not a lot, but this was a man whose creations had been impacting my personal and professional life for over a decade at this point.

The writing of the book dragged out as I waited to get my hands on an actual NeXT cube, which finally happened (if I recall correctly) at the end of 1988 or early 1989. I wrote the first several drafts of the book on that NeXT cube itself. The book came out in the fall of 1989; it remains the single most successful book I’ve ever written, due to the intense interest in NeXT itself, more than any particular writing skills or technical insight on my part.

The following year, I found myself working with a world-class typographer (Mike Parker) and graphic designer (Vic Spindler) to create a design-oriented desktop publishing system. I was doing all the software prototyping on my NeXT cube, and we made the decision to make the NeXT our first target platform. For five years — 1990 to 1995 — I served as chief architect and CTO at Pages Software Inc, where we developed Pages by Pages and then WebPages, while spending nearly two years just trying to raise venture funding. We closed on funding at the start of 1992 and shipped our first version of Pages in early 1994. We quickly sold all that we were going to in the all-too-small NeXTstep market. My frustrations at seeing larger firm try to leverage off of NeXT’s incredible innovations led to an op-ed piece in the November 1994 issue of BYTE, “Whither NextStep?” The day that issue came out was the last time that Steve Jobs and I spoke — he called me from the back of a car somewhere to ask me what the hell I was doing writing that. I said, telling the truth. Pages would close its door the next year, unable to secure additional funding to move its technology to Windows.

When Steve engineered his brilliant reverse takeover of Apple — getting Apple to buy NeXT for $400 million, then slowly moving himself into the CEO seat — I was not optimistic. I still had unconditional praise for the NextStep technology, but I was dubious about Steve’s ability to sell technology to markets and to compete with Microsoft.

Boy, was I wrong. I was not only wrong about his abilities at Apple, I was wrong in my BYTE article about NextStep being on a downward slope. NextStep, of course, was the foundation of Mac OS X, and Steve transformed Apple into the most-admired, most-imitated, and most-valuable company in the world. And I was tickled that, when Apple brought out its own word processor, it was named “Pages”. Steve had always liked that name when we were developing (and shipping) our own product years before; glad he was able to use it.

To quote John Perry Barlow over on FB, “The world is suddenly a less interesting place.”  ..bruce w..

[1] The first was an HP-67 card-reading programmable calculator.

…here’s where I come out on the Political Compass Test.  About where I’d figured, given the questions.  ..bruce w..

Sandra and I didn’t expect to end up with a new dog of our own when we took her sister Betty Jo to look at MinPin puppies in December 1994. The owner of the puppies, John Batchie, was a house painter in Escondido who lived in the upstairs portion of a converted barn on his property. We walked in, sat down — and suddenly this one-year-old MinPin, the father of the litter in question as it turned out, dashed across the room, jumped into Sandra’s lap, buried his head between her arm and her side, and didn’t move for the rest of our stay there.

That was our introduction to Deacon, sixteen-and-a-half years ago.

John was not very attached to Deacon and said that both Mary (the mother of the litter) and John’s cat picked on him a lot. So John offered him to us on the condition that we make him available from time to time for stud duties, which we did until we left San Diego a year and half later. We took him with us to Virginia, to Maryland, to Texas, back to Washington DC, and finally to Colorado.

Deacon was always Sandra’s dog. Our own kids loved him, and he would snuggle with just about anyone, particularly as he got older, but he loved Sandra, and she loved him. He loved nothing more than to be curled up with her: on a couch, on the bed, wherever.

In every single house that we’ve lived in since we got him, he’s escaped at some point (usually multiple times) and gone wandering through the neighborhood; in some of our neighborhoods, the local kids got to know him and would take him home to play with before bringing him back to our house.

When we ended up with Deacon in 1994, we already had another dog, Belle, a Yorkshire Terrier/Chihuahua mix. Deacon was rather intimidated by Belle; when we put her to sleep about 3 years later due to cancer, he seemed to relish being the only dog. He tolerated, but was never playful with, the subsequent MinPins in our home: first Laverne and Shirley, whom we got nine years ago because I was concerned about Deacon’s age(!); then Winni and Marti, whom we got five years ago, several months after Shirley was killed by a coyote.

Deacon was still doing his ‘walkabouts’ after we moved here to Colorado six years ago, and he would sit or lie out on our deck and bark at all the other dogs in the area. But a few years ago, both his eyesight and his hearing began to fail, and he lost the confidence (and, as time went on, the strength) to climb stairs or jump up on the furniture. But he still had a great appetite, he loved to snuggle with us, and his sense of smell got, if anything, keener — he’d be asleep in on our bed, I’d open the fridge door and take out food, and Deacon would wake up and start barking.

Deacon had a good, full life, extending long past the usual canine lifespan. He was always a favorite at our large BBQs because he would let all the kids hold and pet him to their hearts’ content. During the last year or two of his life, he was prone in the late afternoon to get cranky and bark until Sandra or I picked him up to hold him or let him curl up with us on the couch or the bed. And for the last several months, he would often wake up in the middle of the night — he slept on the cushioned cedar chest at the foot of our bed — and bark until one of us got up and brought him to bed with us, where he’d fuss around between us until he found the exact right spot, collapse down, and sleep contentedly until morning. (Sometimes, we’d try to put him back down on the cedar chest after he’d gone to sleep — he’d usually wake back up and bark until we brought him back to bed.)

We frankly were surprised he lasted this long — he would have been 18 this coming December. Three months back, he vomited up a half cup of fresh blood late one afternoon; we were sure he was dying, cleaned him up, made him comfortable, and waited. He recovered fully; we still don’t know what the problem was.

Then six weeks ago, in the middle of the night, he had a major seizure that lasted for a good minute or so. Again, we were sure he was going to die; again, he didn’t, and he mostly recovered, though he was more frail and weak afterward.

Ten days ago, however, he had a second seizure, and he never fully recovered from this one. For several days, he seemed profoundly confused; it was clear that this attack had affected his mind. He recovered a bit, but still was going through bouts where he just seemed…lost, as if he didn’t know where he was or why he was there. He would just stand in one place, with his head going steadily back and forth, until Sandra or I went and picked him up. That, on top of his blindness and partial deafness, not to mention his general physical weakness, seemed to rob him of what quality of life he had left.

So this morning, I made that oh-so-hard call to Dr. Jones, our wonderful vet who has been treating Deacon and our other dogs for the last six years. He scheduled us for the last appointment of the day; he was quick and humane, and we took Deacon home, wrapped in his blue dog blanket, and buried him on a ridge on our property just a few feet from where I buried Shirley five-and-a-half years ago.

I have pondered for years the bonds between humans and dogs; they seem different than those we have with any other animal. I can’t think of another species of animal that has on so many occasions put itself into harm’s way or even given its life to protect a human — not because it was trained to do so, but out of love and instinct. Likewise, I have a hard time naming another species that gives its human owners such unconditional love. We laugh at the cliche, “Help me to be the person my dog thinks I am,” but we wince a bit as well — those of us who have or have had dogs know just how true it is.

There is also a sentimental cliche that heaven is the place where, when you arrive, all the dogs who have ever loved you come running to meet you.

Let’s see: Tubby. Max. Yo-Yo. Howl. Belle. Princess Jamaica. Shirley. Deacon. And, provided I outlive them, Laverne, Winni and Marti.

You know what? That works for me. That works for me just fine.  ..bruce w..

My father’s life spanned three-fourths of this [the 20th] century and was, perhaps, as pure an example of American life and the American dream as can be found. His life was shaped by three major forces — history, the sea, and my mother — though I leave it to others to decide which has been more powerful. (Being my mother’s son, I know where I’d place my bets.) And through his life, he set an example for all of us here.

John Arthur Webster was born in Rapid City, South Dakota, a town that in 1924 was barely removed from the Old West we see in movies. His grandfather, George Cosgrove, was an immigrant from Canada who had served as a Deputy US Marshal in the Dakota Territories in and around Deadwood and who knew Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane well — in the latter case, perhaps a bit too well. When Dad was just five years old, the stock market crashed, and America began its long slide into the Great Depression. It is perhaps impossible for use of a later generation to comprehend the shortages, difficulties, and despair of that time. It marked Dad for life, and he referred to it often as we grew up, stating frequently that he never wanted us to go without as he and so many of those around him had.

While still young, Dad and his family moved to Nebraska, then down to Panama — his dad, James Webster, was in the Navy — and then to San Diego. California, a frontier of a different kind, was something quite different in the 1930s from the sprawling mass we see today; it was, indeed, a golden country, full of promise and opportunity despite the persistent weight of the Depression. San Diego itself would become home to the Webster clan, the place where we all return to again and again, producing third- and even fourth-generation Californians.

But that would come later. For now, Dad’s concerns were mostly school, girls, and work, not necessarily in that order. After less than a year in San Diego, Dad’s family moved to San Pedro, up near Los Angeles. As a young man, Dad used to go out to the harbor breakwaters and harvest the abalone that covered the rocks. Using a sharp knife, he would cut the abalone meat very carefully away from the shell — then throw the meat into the harbor, while stacking the shells to one side to be sold as souvenirs to tourists. Decades later, he would wince and shake his head as he recalled this. He also worked delivering newspapers to help pay for his clothing and other necessities, first on his own, and then with his lifelong friend, Jerry Gannon.

Here he also met Jackie Fickes, the daughter of an LA County law enforcement officer. This could have been a Romeo-and-Juliet situation — Dad’s own father was now working as a longshoreman, and there was little love lost between those two groups back then. The only problem was that Mom and Dad never dated in high school. Dad claimed that he had his eye — and his heart — set on Mom even back then, though Mom tends to be skeptical. But subsequent events may support Dad’s point of view.

First, though, history and the sea intervened again with war breaking out on the far side of both oceans. In 1939, Dad’s own father was called back to active duty in the Navy — and Dad would not see him again for seven years, a separation that we would find hard to imagine today. Two years later, upon turning 17, Dad followed his father’s footsteps, wanting to see the world, He enlisted in the US Navy, made it through boot camp, and went out to sea on board the USS San Francisco (CA-38), a heavy cruiser.

He got more than even he bargained for. On the way out of port, they were diverted down to the waters off Mexico to rescue a Naval barge caught in a hurricane. To get there, they had to sail straight through the hurricane. The barge turned out to be fine, but the San Francisco suffered damages and even lost a man overboard.

The San Francisco then made its way to the Naval shipyards in Pearl Harbor to undergo repairs. It was still in that condition — with the ship’s guns dismantled and ammunition offloaded — when the Japanese attacked on December 7^th. Dad and his crew members were issued rifles with which to fire at the Japanese planes that were wreaking havoc on the US Pacific fleet. At this point, Dad said he began to have second thoughts about having joined the Navy, but by then it was too late.

Dad spent most of the war in the Pacific. His ship, the San Francisco, came out of the Pearl Harbor attack unscathed. However, it was badly damaged and took heavy losses after engaging several Japanese warships at close range during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal (November 1942). The San Francisco made it back to port for repairs, and Dad was sent back to the States for Officer Candidate’s School. Dad got kicked out of OCS for slugging an instructor and instead was given training in radio communications, becoming a very skilled radio key operator. He then was sent to the recently-established Camp Pendleton to train with the US Marine Corps and was in the third wave of the USMC invasion of Guam (August 1944), part of a team with the responsibility to set up Radio Guam, the US armed forces communications center for the South Pacific. He spent the rest of the war there and helped to relay the news of the unconditional surrender of Japan.

In 1943, while back in the States, Dad had secured a brief leave home and used it to track down and renew contact with Jackie Fickes; if his heart hadn’t been set on her in high school, it certainly appeared to be so now. In December of 1945, a few months after the war ended, Dad was back in San Pedro on leave. Once again, he tracked down Jackie Fickes. Mom at that time was in nursing school and engaged to be married — to someone else — on December 30^th. However, she apparently had some interest in Dad, because she not only agreed to go out with him, but after one date she broke off her engagement with the other guy. A few weeks later, Jackie and John were having dinner with Jerry and Claudine Gannon, high school friends of theirs who had married each other a year earlier. One discussion led to another, Dad suggested that he and Mom elope, and the four of them headed to Las Vegas with Jerry driving his uncle’s car (unbeknownst to his uncle). Various car problems, wedding logistics, and the Clark County clerk’s refusal to believe that Dad was 21 delayed the actual ceremony until about 4 pm the following afternoon, but they were finally married — on December 30^th, Mom’s original wedding date.

Of course, they had to go back and face Jackie’s dad, John (“Jack”) Fickes, who had contacted the LAPD and put out an all-points bulletin when his daughter had failed to come home a few nights before. When they pulled up in from of Mom’s house, Jerry said he’d wait in the car, thank you. Dad often said that the hardest thing he ever had to do in his life was to walk with Mom back into her parents’ house and explain to her father what they had done. He sat down, set his sailor’s cap on the table, lit a cigarette, and tossed his lighter into his cap while he started to talk. Jack Fickes finally had to interrupt him to point out that the lighter hadn’t closed or gone out and that Dad had set his cap on fire.

Mom got pregnant right away, a fact that soon came to the attention of the nursing school director. Since the nursing students were not allowed to be married, much less pregnant, the director called Mom in and asked her to explain her obvious condition. Mom looked the director straight in the eye and said, “Don’t you remember I asked you for permission to get married?” They both knew full well that Mom hadn’t, but the director, choosing the best of some difficult choices, accepted Mom’s statement and allowed her to stay.

While Mom was dealing with nursing school and pregnancy, Dad was back out on the ocean and touching history again. The U.S. in 1946 was conducting open-air nuclear tests in the South Pacific. Dad was part of a team assigned to go aboard and inspect unoccupied target ships that would be anchored various distances from the blasts; the team would then attempt various decontamination procedures. He spoke in later years of how they would drop pieces of metal and equipment overboard and watch them glow as they sank in the clear ocean water. At the conclusion of these tests, Dad and the rest of the team were informed of the possible effects of radiation upon them. This may explain much about the Webster household, especially the offspring, except for Deirdre Ann, who had already been conceived. We don’t have an explanation for her.

The next fifteen years were an intense period of separation, childbearing, and travel. Susanne Evelyn, John Alfred (whom none of us will ever call anything but “Chip”), and Lorraine Imogene came in successive years –1947, 1948, and 1949 — but Suzanne and Lorraine were born on the West Coast while Chip was born back in Washington D.C. While in D.C., Dad — then a Radioman First Class — took the Navy-wide competitive exam for promotion to Chief Petty Officer and placed 6^th out of over 2000 candidates. Needless to say, he got the promotion.

Then, shortly after Lorraine’s birth, Dad called up Mom and asked her how she’d like to come to French Morocco. Mom, with four kids under the age of four, had to work to earn the money for their plane tickets to Washington D.C.; the Navy would then transport all of them from there. She did so, and soon the entire Webster family was in Port Lyautey in northwest Africa. It is small wonder that Dad loved and adored Mom so much, was so grateful to her, and was so devoted to her well-being.

After two years in Africa, Mom and the four kids returned to the States, but a fifth — myself, Bruce Francis — was already in the oven, so to speak. Dad continued on cruise in the Mediterranean. As the time for my delivery came near, Mom asked the local Red Cross to certify her pregnancy so that she could request Dad to come home on leave to help out with the children and the birth. Appallingly, the Red Cross refused to comply, stating that there were plenty of qualified foster families in the area that could take the older kids, so that there was no need for Dad to come home. Dad, when he found out, went to his fleet commander, who was likewise appalled and not a little irritated that the Red Cross should presume to decide whether Dad could come home. He not only sent Dad home on leave, but told him that he could remain there in Rhode Island until his ship got back to the States.

After Rhode Island came a stay in San Diego — the first for our family — then a stay in north Chicago, at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, then back to San Diego, where Jacqueline Diane, the last of the Webster kids, was born while Dad was out to sea on the aircraft carrier USS Hancock (CV-19). Then late in 1958, the whole family packed up and moved to Subic Bay in the Philippines for two years, meaning that in six years the Websters had gone 2/3rds of the way around the earth. Mom’s dad, Jack Fickes, by then a widower, came to live with us out there and would live with us for the rest of his life (another 13 years).

n December of 1960, we returned to the States, moving to Astoria, Oregon, a place most noted in family annals for the snakes I captured and let loose, often in the Naval housing duplex in which we lived. But Dad and Mom decided it was time to settle down. So Mom, in an act of remarkable faith and confidence, sent Dad and Grandpa Jack down to San Diego to find and buy a house for all of us to live in. They did so, and we all moved down to La Mesa (in east San Diego County) — the rest of us, Mom included, still not having seen the house — in August, 1961.

It was an inspired choice and — besides marrying Mom — one of the best choices Dad ever made, though he would often grumble in later years about the yardwork and maintenance required, threatening to sell the whole place and move into a condo. Still, after fifteen years of traveling from one side of the world to the other, it gave us a sense of permanence, a place to plant our feet and our hearts. It was just in time, too. Over the next ten years, the five oldest children left home for college and marriages, but we now had a place to come back to, and we did so — Christmas, Easter, Fourth of July, and Thanksgiving — year after year.

During those ten years, Dad — when he wasn’t on cruise — got to deal with a bunch of bright and independent teenagers during the turbulent 60s. We had sit-down dinners most evenings, and the conversations were anything but dull — not just because of the topical issues, but because of the Webster family propensity to zing one another and anything (or anyone) else that got in the way. Those of you who have attended Webster family gatherings know what I’m talking about. Indeed, the combination of Dad’s and Mom’s personalities, beliefs and genes seem to have created a very distinct Webster clan: irreverent, determined, with a skewed sense of humor, freely razzing one another, yet fiercely loyal, confident in their ability to achieve what they want to, yet willing to endure what sacrifices they need to. Indeed, if there is a Webster family motto, it is my mother’s simple reply when I have asked her how she managed to endure all she went through during the early years of her marriage to Dad: “You just do what you have to do.”

History, in the form of Vietnam, intervened again a few years after moving to San Diego. Dad did two tours of duty, each lasting roughly a year, in Vietnam. The first was aboard the USS Piedmont (AD-17), a destroyer tender that would carry out repairs and maintenance for destroyers off the coast of Vietnam. The Piedmont’s motto was “Non bonum sed perfectum” — not good, but perfect — which could have also been Dad’s professional motto. While most of Dad’s work was done at a safe distance offshore, he and a colleague did draw a hazardous mission in country. It seems that a freighter had been abandoned in the channel leading from the ocean up to Saigon. Their mission was to get the ship operating, underway, and out of the channel before the Viet Cong sank it to create a hazard for other ships. They did so, but not without several nerve-wracking experiences along the way.

Dad’s skill and competence were recognized when he was hand-picked by the Western Pacific Fleet Commander to head up the electronics division aboard the USS Providence (CLG-6), a guided missile cruiser that was the flagship for the entire US fleet in Vietnam. This would be Dad’s final assignment; when the Providence finished its Vietnam tour and was reassigned to San Diego, Dad came home for good, finishing out his Navy career in port.

But Dad retired in 1970 after 29 years, not in 1971 after 30 years, as would normally be the case — and therein lies a tale worth telling. As Deirdre has explained it to me, it seems that a high-ranking admiral back in the Pentagon had a pet project that was developing advanced electronic detection/countermeasures technology. Because of Dad’s experience and reputation, he was chosen to give the system an independent evaluation. After a series of tests and reviews, Dad said it was, in effect, worthless. This infuriated the admiral back in the Pentagon, who demanded a new set of tests. Dad’s own fleet commander, likewise an admiral, explained to Dad all the issues and potential repercussions, then asked him to go through the process again, but also told him that he would back whatever evaluation he made. So Dad did all the tests and reviews again and came to the same conclusion. His fleet commander backed the evaluation, and the project was killed — but not without a cost. Dad, having been kicked out of OCS during World War II, had slowly worked his way up through the enlisted ranks (Chief Petty Officer and Chief Warrant Officer) and had finally earned his commission the hard way, becoming a Lieutenant JG and then a full Lieutenant. With only a year or so to go before retirement, he was up for promotion to Lt. Commander. That promotion was now denied, almost certainly torpedoed by a certain vindictive admiral back in the Pentagon. Furious at such shabby and petty treatment in consequence to an honest evaluation, especially after 29 years of hard work and sacrifice on the part of him and Mom, Dad immediately resigned, refusing to spend even just one more year in the service that had occupied his entire adult life. So in February of 1970, just shy of his 46^th birthday, Dad was a civilian for the first time since high school.

After this time, history pretty much left Dad alone. He worked a series of jobs — delivery of pet food supplies to retail stores, selling real estate, assisting at a veterinary hospital — before finally retiring for good. The sea was still his (second) love, though, and he often went out deep sea fishing, keeping us stocked in albacore and yellow fin tuna. He took over many domestic chores to help support Mom, who had been working full time (and then some) since shortly after moving back to San Diego. Dad’s support, not to mention the departure of most of us kids, allowed Mom to go back to school and get her Bachelors degree in Nursing — all while continuing to work as head nurse of a rest home. (Did I mention “overachievers” in the list of Webster clan traits?) The two of them also established a tradition of taking trips each year, having bought into a timeshare company. They were usually accompanied by their close neighbors and dear friends, Nancy and Carroll Reed. Dad and Carroll –an art professor who had served in the Army in World War II and who had gone ashore in the Normandy Invasion on D-Day — would sit, talk, read and fish, while Mom and Nancy would go off hiking, exploring, seeking adventures, and generally causing Dad and Carroll to shake their heads.

When Mom retired as well in 1989, she and Dad bought an RV and began several years of extensive travel, sometimes being on the road for months at a time. Their longest trip took them up the West Coast, across the length of Canada, down the East Coast, and back across the South and Southwest. After so many years of being separated, it was sweet and true justice that they could have these months and years alone together. And in the end, both history and the sea faded away, and it was Mom that occupied the rest of Dad’s life, though he always delighted in visits by the kids and especially the grandkids, of which they had an abundance from a variety of sources.

My daughter Jacqui — one of those grandkids — once told me that her image of Dad will forever be of him sitting at the kitchen table of the house in La Mesa, in the evening, the lights dim, listening to a Padres game, occasionally muttering, exclaiming, or even slamming the table when something bad or good happened. She also said that she was 12 years old before she realized that Dad really didn’t send vials of his best gravy to the Smithsonian Institute. And some years ago, when Deirdre and I shared an office, she found herself chuckling because, she said, my unconscious mannerisms and expressions were so much like Dad’s. In so many ways, Dad’s life and habits, not to mention his jokes, will resonate in our family for generations.

But the greater heritage for all of us was Dad’s dedication to family and country. He epitomizes something I read years ago, written by Tom McGetchin, a planetary scientist who died from cancer as a relatively young age. McGetchin spent the last months of his life in Hawaii with some friends and kept a journal during that time. In it, he made the observation that there were three main tasks we had in this life:

• Shaping our stone, that is, making our contribution to civilization and humanity;
• Loving others;
• Taking the next step.

Dad did all three and did them well, and he has now taken the ultimate next step. It is fitting that here at the end, Mom, the sea, and history — in the form of the representative of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association — have come together again, with all of us, to celebrate his life, mourn his passing, and rededicate ourselves to living up to the quiet example he set. That is the best legacy, tribute, and repayment that we could give him for all he has given us. That we may all do so is my hope and prayer.

Overslept last night (despite the iPhone alarm I set) and woke up around 1 am. Not a problem: got the brisket out of the smoker, double-wrapped it, put it in the oven (at 200°) and went to bed.

Got up this morning at 6 am. Cleaned out the smoker’s firebox completely; the coals are on a grate, and I had been shoveling out ash from time to time, but this let me get everything cleared out. Likewise, replaced all the aluminum drip pans in the smoker itself with fresh clean pans. Lit a new set of coals in a chimney, then pulled the last smoking items — three bone-in turkey breasts and a leg of lamb — from the ice chest where they had been marinading since…Thursday night? Friday morning? I don’t remember.

I marinaded two of the turkey breasts in white wine with fresh basil and various poultry-type seasonings (sage, marjoram, rosemary, salt, pepper); the other turkey breast I marinaded in the same brisket marinade I on the brisket. All three turkey breasts have thick peppered bacon strips fastened via toothpicks as a way to help keep them moist early on; I will remove the bacon towards the end to allow the skin to brown and to help get the internal temperature up. The leg of lamb I marinaded in red wine, fresh chopped onions, fresh basil, garlic, salt, pepper, and olive oil; I’ve actually saved some of the marinade to baste it with while it’s smoking. They’re all on the grill now:

Right about now — the morning of — is when I start worrying that no one will show up. Sandra, my sweet wife, tends to worry the opposite: that everyone will show up. But we always get a great turnout, and Sandra always has a wonderful time once the first person walks through the front door.  ..bruce w..

Last batch of brisket has been in smoking since about 3 pm this afternoon; I plan to take it out around 11 pm and put it in the oven. At that point, I’ll let the smoker rest until early tomorrow morning, when I’ll start on the three turkey breasts and the leg of lamb. Sandra and I also got the downstairs set up (folding tables, folding chairs).

I have no photos to reflect the progress made as of this evening, so I’ll just stick in a gratuitous cute dog photo above.  ..bruce w..