Where No One has Gone before in Trichotomy

Cabin Fever

It’s been 2 weeks since coming back from Ticonderoga. It is a small town. There’s one Walmart, one Dunkin Donut, and one McDonalds, and that’s it. The rest are just lake houses, farms, boat launches, and lake beaches. Would have been a nice place to hike or go to the lake, but since it rained 3 out of the 4 days we were there, we just stayed in, relaxed, played games, and made food. La Professeure’s college roommate showed us how to make pizza and quiche. Even without the outdoor activities, It was a fun time.

She has a fitness app where she could wager money and keep up the number of steps for consecutive days, which was a great motivator to exercise. But on rainy days, she had to resort to walking around the house.

It was dedication.

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Recreations

A resident at Ticonderoga is a Star Trek fan who was involved in the production of some of the episodes. He used his fortune (amassed from being a top Elvis Impersonator) to build a “museum” of Star Trek set recreations at a warehouse. Since it was raining, we went.

The recreations were so good, it really looked like the sets. The owner has connections with Paramount and managed to get blueprints of the sets to base his recreations off of. I lost count of how many sets there were - there was the engine room, the hallway, med bay, science lab, transporter room, and of course the bridge. The guide was knowledgeable and talked about the production of the series, and pointed out the props were made from (e.g., medical tricorder scanner were actually salt-and-pepper shakers).

It was well worth the time. The only problem is that it was all the original series sets, which I hadn’t watched. They were making a section of Next Generation sets, so I’m hoping I get to see those some day.

The owner took 20 years to put these sets together, and it showed. The guide said that if there were imperfections (e.g., the set walls don’t line up by a few inches) he would scrap the whole set and build again.

That was dedication.

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Memorial attire

Before we left, I was asked by the Treasurer to contribute a video of me playing the Stars Spangled Banner for a virtual recital on the 20th anniversary of 9/11.

I sent it in a few days after we came back, and she rejected it. In the message, she politely asked that I make the recording again, but with “memorial appropriate” attire: with pants and collared shirt. And preferably, with a camera angle that shows the whole of me.

I can’t move the camera because Petra is in such a tight space, but I suppose I could wear something uncomfortable. 3000 people died, and putting on pants was the least I could do.

I was only aiming to be better than this singer who performed at CPAC last year. Her performance would not be stopped by anything.

That is dedication.

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