Only slightly less serious than getting involved in a land war in Asia

Transcribing 20 hours of meetings from an Australian business meeting. That's what I've been doing for the last 4 days...utter nightmare. Could NOT understand their accents. Making it worse were the bad audio levels and the fact that a lot of the people preesnt insisted on talking over each other from all around the room except in front of the microphone... I will never transcribe ANYTHING every again. Anyway, so sorry to be MIA from my blogs.

Iceberg: Colt derringer and more

pg 191

There is a .25 caliber Colt derringer
The term derringer is a genericized misspelling of the last name of Henry Deringer, a famous 19th-century maker of small pocket pistols. Many copies of the original Philadelphia Deringer pistol were made by other gun makers worldwide, and the name was often misspelled; this misspelling soon became an alternate generic term for any pocket pistol, along with the generic phrase palm pistol Deringer's competitors invented and used in their advertising. The original Deringer pistol was a single-shot muzzleloading pistol; with the advent of cartridge firearms, pistols began to be produced in the modern form still known as a derringer.
Pocket pistols may be considered modern-day versions of derringers.

Dirk Pitt was born in the Hoag Hospital in in Newport Beach, California
Hoag is a not-for-profit regional health care delivery network in Orange County, California, that treats nearly 30,000 inpatients and 350,000 outpatients annually. Hoag consists of two acute-care hospitals, seven health centers and four urgent care centers. Hoag Hospital Newport Beach, which has served Orange County since 1952, and Hoag Hospital Irvine, which opened in 2010, are Magnet® designated hospitals by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC). Hoag offers a blend of health care services that include five institutes providing specialized services in the following areas: cancer, heart and vascular, neurosciences, women’s health and orthopedics through Hoag’s affiliate Hoag Orthopedic Institute. Hoag has been named one of the Best Regional Hospitals in the U.S. News & World Report Metro Edition

you were already sketching up a storm while Admiral Sandecker played Izaak Walton
Izaak Walton (9 August 1593 – 15 December 1683) was an English writer. Best known as the author of The Compleat Angler, he also wrote a number of short biographies that have been collected under the title of Walton's Lives.

Iceberg: Keflavik and more

Pitt then quickly showered and changed clothes and took a taxi to the airport at Keflavik.

Keflavík meaning Driftwood Bay) is a town in the Reykjanes region in southwest Iceland. In 2009 its population was of 8,169.
In 1995 it merged with Njarðvík and Hafnir to form a municipality called Reykjanesbær with a population of 13,971 (January 2011).

The  Vikings had laned in Iceland, flourished,  and then disappeared.

The Vikings always did well in Iceland...it was from Greenland that they disappeared...

"Do you have a date with the farmer's daughter?"

The farmer's daughter is a term for a stock character and stereotype in fiction for the daughter of a farmer, who is often portrayed as a desirable and naive young woman. She is described as being an "open-air type" and "public-spirited", who will tend to marry a hero and settle down.
The character also forms the basis for a series of jokes, known as farmer's daughter jokes, which tend to be sexual in nature and focus on acts of promiscuity. The plot usually involves the seduction of the daughter by another stock character, the traveling salesman.

Iceberg: The best plans of mice nd men and more

pg 175

Pitt sat down on a bench over a life preserver locker and lit a cigarette.  "The best plans of mice and men."

"To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough, November, 1785"^[1] is a Scots poem written by Robert Burns in 1785, and was included in the Kilmarnock volume. According to legend, Burns wrote the poem after finding a nest full of mice during the winter.

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
Wi bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murdering pattle.
I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth born companion
An' fellow mortal!
I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
'S a sma' request;
I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,
An' never miss't.
Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
It's silly wa's the win's are strewin!
An' naething, now, to big a new ane,
O' foggage green!
An' bleak December's win's ensuin,
Baith snell an' keen!
Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,
An' weary winter comin fast,
An' cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell.
That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou's turned out, for a' thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble,
An' cranreuch cauld.
But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!
Still thou are blest, compared wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!

Perhaps most famous as the title of the play Of Mice and Men.

"Whoever was watching would have needed the Mount Palomar Telescope to tell Tidi was masquerading in your clothes."

Palomar Observatory is a privately owned astronomical observatory located in San Diego County, California (USA), 145 kilometers (90 mi) southeast of Los Angeles, California, in the Palomar Mountain Range. It is owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) located in Pasadena, California. Research time is granted to Caltech and its research partners, which includes the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Cornell University.
The observatory operates several telescopes, including the famous 200-inch Hale Telescope (5.1 m) and the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope (1.2 m). In addition, other instruments and projects have been hosted at the observatory, such as the Palomar Testbed Interferometer and the historic 18-inch Schmidt telescope (0.46 m), Palomar Observatory's first telescope, dating from 1936.