It can't be breaking news for anyone living around here that winter has arrived. Officially on the 21st but effectively way back before Thanksgiving when we got hit with the first of a yet-to-be-interrupted string of major winter weather events. I can't keep track of them any more nor of the peculiarities of each storm. We're into a state of perpetual snow emergency. I wonder if Opening Day at Target Field will even be fully accessible or if Mpls will still be enforcing its quaint and totally incomprehensible winter parking regulations.
A sure sign of the approach of winter around the Young household is the annual Linwood Monroe Silent Auction Benefit. If you don't have it on your social calendar into the middle of the next decade...well then, just too bad for you. It's the brainchild of an unknown con artist who must have had a fleeting association with the Linwood PTA and has since been serving time in a federal penitentiary for some stock derivative arbitrage conviction. This thing is that insidious.
It works like this. The Linwood Monroe PTA sends its activists out into the St. Paul marketplace to beg for donations from local merchants. Parents and teachers and whomever else gets sucked in will donate goods and services. The individual grade levels work on collecting items for theme baskets. This effort always nets a high-quality haul of stuff to get auctioned or raffled off and pulls in a decent chunk of change for various school beautification projects. Probably not as much as might get raised out in Edina or North Oaks. But still a serious chunk of change for a humble St. Paul operation. Serious enough, anyway, to hire an off-duty St. Paul cop to keep the cash box safe and sound. And all in the name of keeping the kids from having to be out on the streets while hawking frozen pizzas and holiday wrapping paper.
Lately, the staff has been asked to contribute to a "Wall of Wine" by chipping in a bottle of hooch. Yeah, this is for a K-8 school; don't ask me how this gets justified. It's put me and Miz Susan in the interesting position of donating goods and then bidding on them to buy them back. I got hooked last year when one of the teachers sent her husband out for a bottle of wine and he came home with a bottle of premium tequila. I couldn't very well let someone else take that home, could I? We barely touched last year's bottle but that didn't stop me from bidding on this year's lot. Anyone up for a marguerita party?
Susan and I try to stick together to coordinate our bidding activity and keep an eye on the budget. That usually lasts for eight or ten minutes. After that, I just count on hooking up with her at the end of the evening. She tends to go for the highbrow stuff, jewelry and fabrics and artwork. I'm more inclined to the booze and chocolate. So far, I haven't given in to the urge to get into a bidding war over the 10-lb Pearson's Nut Roll but that's about the limit to my restraint. Anything else goes.
At the end of the night, I wander around and collect all of the stuff we've won and the bid sheets that get tallied up at auction central. This year, Susan's and my diverse bidding patterns drew more than the usual notice from the PTA bosses when it came time to ante up. Some catty comment came up about about her bidding on the month's membership to a health club and me bidding on the three homemade cheesecakes. And I thought the school was supposed to be all about celebrating our diversity.
All in all, a nice milestone to pass and a warning that the Christmas insanity wasn't far behind. As a precursor to winter though, the Silent Auction ran late this year. I had to claw my way home from B'lyn Park in the middle of the the December 3 snowstorm in order to get to the darn thing. A normal 35-40 minute trip got stretched out to nearly two hours. It's a good thing that we both enjoy the event so much because this year's version must have missed the news flash that winter had already arrived.
Happy holidays to all. And to all a good night!
Friday, December 24, 2010
Saturday, November 13, 2010
mixed messages: a recurring theme
A week and a half or so ago, Miz Susan made the mistake of leaving me home alone for a night. She was off to some party where husbands were frowned upon and she, always the gracious guest, was quick to tell me that I couldn't come and that I'd better stay out of the leftover Halloween candy.
This is usually cause for minor celebration; even the Halloween candy part semed a small price to pay. I'm always looking forward to the half a dozen or so nights a year that I'm left unguarded at home. I plan out unhealthy eating excursions for months in advance. Local pizza and rib joints' owners may still be scratching their heads over spikes in same-store sales over the last year's numbers but they're never likely to figure out that these were solely because a certain someone was away from home and not serving up another meatless meal.
I thought hard this time about the appeal of an extra 3-5 thousand calories and damn hard about all the various ways I could make that happen. But it turned out to be a no-go. I think that all the possibilities froze me into indecision.
This is what comes from living in a vibrant metropolitan area with a lively restaurant scene. There are so many spots within 7-10 minutes which serve food that's both totally delicious and totally bad for me; it's godawful painful to narrow things down. I've even been getting daring lately and have started thinking about...gasp!...Lake Street. Yeah, I know; dangerous for an innocent St. Paul kid like me but, my god, the food. The food, I tell you! So anyway---Thai, Italian, burgers, ribs, Friday night fish fries and more. It's tough to pull the trigger when there are so many targets of opportunity.
OK, so I wimped out on the illicit food thing. Call me what you want but I decided I couldn't let a night alone go completely to waste. I decided to get really demented and I walked up to Cheapo/Applause or whatever they call themselves these days. I hit both the CD store on the far side of Snelling and the record store back across the street. And if I didn't actually buy anything other than a lottery ticket at SA (a loser, it turns out), that doesn't make me anything less of a rebel and a man's man. Does it?
Just as I was browsing the Nancy Wilson LP's, looking for a record that I'll never actually see even after multiple reincarnations, Miz Susan called. Where am I, what am I doing, how soon am I going to be home and you do know that it had better be damn soon, right? Yes ma'am, I'm on the way.
I wrapped up my business at the record store (does grabbing a free City Pages on the way out count as business?) and headed home. The front storm door was hooked on the inside. I already had a feeling where this was headed but I played dutiful and went around to the back where I found that door burglar- (and husband-) proofed as well, keys be damned. Back to the front porch where I wondered just how many blankets were in whichever car I had a key to. I called on my cell phone and, in my very meekest voice, asked: please, could I be allowed into the house? Please?
I saw this as a classic case of mixed messages. I'd been told to get my worthless, dead ass home, stat. But, when I got there, the doors were all locked. In her defense, Susan seemed genuinely happy to see me, said it was all reflex action that had led her to lock me out of the house. Maybe she wouldn't have been quite so happy if she'd known then what I know now about that lottery ticket.
Election night left me feeling pretty much the same way. Minnesota has got to be the mixed messages heavyweight champ of the Republic when it comes to voting to ensure zero-sum government. This, after all, is the state that sent Paul Wellstone and Rod Grams to the U.S. Senate. At the same time. Minnesota seems to have loved Tim Pawlenty (yeah, I don't get it either) despite stacking the Legislature solidly against him. Now, to even up that score, we find ourselves with a Legislature in the hands of the Republicans for the first time since Alexander Ramsey's second term but with Mark Dayton as our presumptive guv-elect. Mixed messages on a heavyweight championship scale.
It's been a struggle to watch the GOPers strut and preen and spout their "The people have spoken." blather, ad nauseum. Hell, the people spoke two years ago. And these sanctimonious cockroaches did nothing but sit on their hands and state publicly that they weren't going to do anything to acknowledge the voices that had been raised. And, further, that they were, by God, going to do everything they could to obstruct and sabotage any and all efforts to respond to those voices.
It's going to be a tough two years of watching Mitch McConnell drool his morning Cream of Wheat down his tie and listening to Minnesota GOP mouthpiece Tony Sutton drone his endless recount conspiracy theory schtick between bites of jelly donut. The entertainment value of that kind of stuff has a pretty limited shelf-life.
Maybe I'll see if Tony and some of the other Repub wonks want to go restaurant-hopping with me the next time Miz Susan goes out and forgets to hire the kids across the street to track my movements. I'll even offer to pick up the tab. That has all the makings of a helluva mixed message.
This is usually cause for minor celebration; even the Halloween candy part semed a small price to pay. I'm always looking forward to the half a dozen or so nights a year that I'm left unguarded at home. I plan out unhealthy eating excursions for months in advance. Local pizza and rib joints' owners may still be scratching their heads over spikes in same-store sales over the last year's numbers but they're never likely to figure out that these were solely because a certain someone was away from home and not serving up another meatless meal.
I thought hard this time about the appeal of an extra 3-5 thousand calories and damn hard about all the various ways I could make that happen. But it turned out to be a no-go. I think that all the possibilities froze me into indecision.
This is what comes from living in a vibrant metropolitan area with a lively restaurant scene. There are so many spots within 7-10 minutes which serve food that's both totally delicious and totally bad for me; it's godawful painful to narrow things down. I've even been getting daring lately and have started thinking about...gasp!...Lake Street. Yeah, I know; dangerous for an innocent St. Paul kid like me but, my god, the food. The food, I tell you! So anyway---Thai, Italian, burgers, ribs, Friday night fish fries and more. It's tough to pull the trigger when there are so many targets of opportunity.
OK, so I wimped out on the illicit food thing. Call me what you want but I decided I couldn't let a night alone go completely to waste. I decided to get really demented and I walked up to Cheapo/Applause or whatever they call themselves these days. I hit both the CD store on the far side of Snelling and the record store back across the street. And if I didn't actually buy anything other than a lottery ticket at SA (a loser, it turns out), that doesn't make me anything less of a rebel and a man's man. Does it?
Just as I was browsing the Nancy Wilson LP's, looking for a record that I'll never actually see even after multiple reincarnations, Miz Susan called. Where am I, what am I doing, how soon am I going to be home and you do know that it had better be damn soon, right? Yes ma'am, I'm on the way.
I wrapped up my business at the record store (does grabbing a free City Pages on the way out count as business?) and headed home. The front storm door was hooked on the inside. I already had a feeling where this was headed but I played dutiful and went around to the back where I found that door burglar- (and husband-) proofed as well, keys be damned. Back to the front porch where I wondered just how many blankets were in whichever car I had a key to. I called on my cell phone and, in my very meekest voice, asked: please, could I be allowed into the house? Please?
I saw this as a classic case of mixed messages. I'd been told to get my worthless, dead ass home, stat. But, when I got there, the doors were all locked. In her defense, Susan seemed genuinely happy to see me, said it was all reflex action that had led her to lock me out of the house. Maybe she wouldn't have been quite so happy if she'd known then what I know now about that lottery ticket.
Election night left me feeling pretty much the same way. Minnesota has got to be the mixed messages heavyweight champ of the Republic when it comes to voting to ensure zero-sum government. This, after all, is the state that sent Paul Wellstone and Rod Grams to the U.S. Senate. At the same time. Minnesota seems to have loved Tim Pawlenty (yeah, I don't get it either) despite stacking the Legislature solidly against him. Now, to even up that score, we find ourselves with a Legislature in the hands of the Republicans for the first time since Alexander Ramsey's second term but with Mark Dayton as our presumptive guv-elect. Mixed messages on a heavyweight championship scale.
It's been a struggle to watch the GOPers strut and preen and spout their "The people have spoken." blather, ad nauseum. Hell, the people spoke two years ago. And these sanctimonious cockroaches did nothing but sit on their hands and state publicly that they weren't going to do anything to acknowledge the voices that had been raised. And, further, that they were, by God, going to do everything they could to obstruct and sabotage any and all efforts to respond to those voices.
It's going to be a tough two years of watching Mitch McConnell drool his morning Cream of Wheat down his tie and listening to Minnesota GOP mouthpiece Tony Sutton drone his endless recount conspiracy theory schtick between bites of jelly donut. The entertainment value of that kind of stuff has a pretty limited shelf-life.
Maybe I'll see if Tony and some of the other Repub wonks want to go restaurant-hopping with me the next time Miz Susan goes out and forgets to hire the kids across the street to track my movements. I'll even offer to pick up the tab. That has all the makings of a helluva mixed message.
Friday, February 26, 2010
some observations and modest proposals for the iooc...
02/26/10
Both Miz Susan and I were disappointed when the U.S. women's hockey team didn't grab the gold last night. Heck of a game though, eh? If the USAers didn't claim the top step of the podium they at least caught Susan's attention to the point that she watched the entire game from the time that she got home. We missed the early scoring--her, because she works for a living and me, because I was boiling eggs in the kitchen for another of Susan's nummy salads (translation: meatless meals) for dinner. I shouldn't be kicking since all I had to do was stand around in the kitchen waiting for the water to boil while she had to brave the Mississippi Market to get salad greens and more half+half.
Despite the loss, Susan's willingness to watch the game last night might just mark the opening up of whole new worlds of possibilities for us. I doubt that, in her entire life, apart from her niece Marcy's youth league games, Susan has watched enough minutes to patch together a full hockey game. You'll hear the hockey announcers talk about a star defenseman racking up 40+ minutes of ice time in a big game but that's about where Susan stands for her viewing career. In her defense, I sense that ice hockey was not a way of life down in Lamberton, MN. I'm not saying that there wasn't talent for the game out west on Hwy 14 but it would appear that whatever talent there was got scooped up early and hustled of to the top Junior A leagues. It's tough to run a grade-A high school hockey program when your best kids keep getting sent north to Montreal and Toronto.
Susan was very disappointed that our ladies (didn't you want to strangle Mike Milbury every time he used that word last night? I'd forgotten how much I despised him when he played for the Bruins.) fell short but I tend to the philosophical in these things. As the puckheads are want to say, "You've got to put the biscuit in the basket if you wanna win." Do puckheads really say that? Anyway, our skaters didn't really come close to lighting the lamp except for maybe once off of a scramble in the second period and the Canuckers played plenty well enough to make it stand up. Hats off to the Canadiennes. I'm happy to join in on Oh, Canada! most any time.
But we do need to remember the real purpose of the Olympics and who invented them. The Americans and NBC-TV, right? C'mon, everyone knows that. And when I say "Americans", I'm not willing to get all inclusive to bunch Canada and Mexico in with us. Both of those countries have made plenty of contributions to the world at large but, by god, the Olympics are ours. And with an eye to avoiding future disappointments to households all over this great land and to maintain the potential for ad revenue growth for NBC, I have a few suggestions (the "modest proposals" mentioned in the title above) on how to improve the game of Olympic hockey.
What we really need to understand is that we can't have the U.S. teams in ice hockey losing to anybody. The rest of the world can have all the curling and team Nordic combined skiing medals that they can bear to drape around their necks but the integrity of U.S. viewership needs to be protected at nearly all costs. So, with that in mind, I'm going to throw out these few simple suggestions. Get back to me and tell me what you think.
I'm perfectly willing to let the first period of any future hockey game get played on an even keel. But if Team USA (and this is for women's and men's teams alike) is losing after the first period then the second period will need to be with the other team playing without skates. Broomball shoes would be OK but no skates. And if we're still down after two, then the other guys will have to pull their goalie. For the whole period. Oh, we'll let them have a sixth player but he or she would be restricted to staying inside the center face-off circle. Oh yeah, and that sixth player wouldn't get a stick. These few simple rules modifications should be enough to give our U.S. team a fighting chance to win in most games.
I came up with these ideas last night after Team USA's loss but I'd been thinking hard about ways to improve the Olympics even before that. How about, for example, running the downhill skiing events at night? The cameras could be equipped with infra-red lenses to pick up the body heat from the skiers as they go bouncing past. Or maybe doing the ice dancing competitions on the bobsled run? I'm even working on ideas to successfully combine the ski aerials, snowboard-cross and the biathlon. This could make for some major league fantastic reality TV. And the ratings. Just imagine the ratings!!
Both Miz Susan and I were disappointed when the U.S. women's hockey team didn't grab the gold last night. Heck of a game though, eh? If the USAers didn't claim the top step of the podium they at least caught Susan's attention to the point that she watched the entire game from the time that she got home. We missed the early scoring--her, because she works for a living and me, because I was boiling eggs in the kitchen for another of Susan's nummy salads (translation: meatless meals) for dinner. I shouldn't be kicking since all I had to do was stand around in the kitchen waiting for the water to boil while she had to brave the Mississippi Market to get salad greens and more half+half.
Despite the loss, Susan's willingness to watch the game last night might just mark the opening up of whole new worlds of possibilities for us. I doubt that, in her entire life, apart from her niece Marcy's youth league games, Susan has watched enough minutes to patch together a full hockey game. You'll hear the hockey announcers talk about a star defenseman racking up 40+ minutes of ice time in a big game but that's about where Susan stands for her viewing career. In her defense, I sense that ice hockey was not a way of life down in Lamberton, MN. I'm not saying that there wasn't talent for the game out west on Hwy 14 but it would appear that whatever talent there was got scooped up early and hustled of to the top Junior A leagues. It's tough to run a grade-A high school hockey program when your best kids keep getting sent north to Montreal and Toronto.
Susan was very disappointed that our ladies (didn't you want to strangle Mike Milbury every time he used that word last night? I'd forgotten how much I despised him when he played for the Bruins.) fell short but I tend to the philosophical in these things. As the puckheads are want to say, "You've got to put the biscuit in the basket if you wanna win." Do puckheads really say that? Anyway, our skaters didn't really come close to lighting the lamp except for maybe once off of a scramble in the second period and the Canuckers played plenty well enough to make it stand up. Hats off to the Canadiennes. I'm happy to join in on Oh, Canada! most any time.
But we do need to remember the real purpose of the Olympics and who invented them. The Americans and NBC-TV, right? C'mon, everyone knows that. And when I say "Americans", I'm not willing to get all inclusive to bunch Canada and Mexico in with us. Both of those countries have made plenty of contributions to the world at large but, by god, the Olympics are ours. And with an eye to avoiding future disappointments to households all over this great land and to maintain the potential for ad revenue growth for NBC, I have a few suggestions (the "modest proposals" mentioned in the title above) on how to improve the game of Olympic hockey.
What we really need to understand is that we can't have the U.S. teams in ice hockey losing to anybody. The rest of the world can have all the curling and team Nordic combined skiing medals that they can bear to drape around their necks but the integrity of U.S. viewership needs to be protected at nearly all costs. So, with that in mind, I'm going to throw out these few simple suggestions. Get back to me and tell me what you think.
I'm perfectly willing to let the first period of any future hockey game get played on an even keel. But if Team USA (and this is for women's and men's teams alike) is losing after the first period then the second period will need to be with the other team playing without skates. Broomball shoes would be OK but no skates. And if we're still down after two, then the other guys will have to pull their goalie. For the whole period. Oh, we'll let them have a sixth player but he or she would be restricted to staying inside the center face-off circle. Oh yeah, and that sixth player wouldn't get a stick. These few simple rules modifications should be enough to give our U.S. team a fighting chance to win in most games.
I came up with these ideas last night after Team USA's loss but I'd been thinking hard about ways to improve the Olympics even before that. How about, for example, running the downhill skiing events at night? The cameras could be equipped with infra-red lenses to pick up the body heat from the skiers as they go bouncing past. Or maybe doing the ice dancing competitions on the bobsled run? I'm even working on ideas to successfully combine the ski aerials, snowboard-cross and the biathlon. This could make for some major league fantastic reality TV. And the ratings. Just imagine the ratings!!
Thursday, February 25, 2010
back from the doctor's office
02/25/10
That was actually this past Monday. Miz Susan took a day off of work despite her concerns that some less-than-handpicked sub might undo all of the progress her 4th graders had made since last September. She's more worried about me undoing all of the progress I've made since Christmas Day and she wouldn't let me go by myself. Something about ice and crutches and about how stupid I am. Something along those lines. Hard to argue with her given the evidence she's collected.
It's a good thing that she came with me. I'd never have thought to bake cupcakes to take to the staff at the Specialty Clinic. And if I had thought of it, those cupcakes sure as hell would not have made it out of the car and up to the third floor. You'd be surprised at how many cupcakes you can eat in an 18 minute car ride. Not as many as White Castles but still quite a few. City driving allows for better productivity in the speed eating department since you can usually catch a few stoplights along the way to line things up for maximum efficiency.
They made like they were happy to see us down at 435 Phalen. I suppose they were since we've kept them fully employed since last July. No worries about layoffs in the local medical workforce when I'm in town. And they all brightened up even more when Susan handed over the cupcakes. I tried to keep up a brave front as the last of my birthday booty disappeared into the staff break room. Almost the last anyway; there are still a few pieces of Jill and MaryAnn's pecan pie left and I ain't giving those up to anyone.
The doc poked and prodded and made me hop around the exam room on one leg for a few minutes. He told us that he was pleased at seeing better progress than he would have expected. I doubt that he had any concept as to just how easy I've been taking it for the last six weeks. My knee and all of its assorted muscles and tendons and whatnot have really had no opportunity to do anything but make progress. He told us to come back and see him in four weeks and to keep on doing whatever it was that I had been doing.
That wasn't all though. He called in for the delivery of my old friend, the CPM (Continuous Passive Movement) machine. That arrived Tuesday afternoon and I've already logged a few sessions in its healing clutches. In fact, I'm headed back that way soon. I'm glad to have the thing back as it's a concrete reminder that I might be able to walk again someday and also because I haven't done nearly the amount of reading I did last fall. Maybe I'll get through a couple of books that I was looking forward to.
The CPM even got delivered by the same guy as last time. He was also happy to see me. Here's a guy who spends his workdays on the freeways with a minivan full of medical equipment making deliveries and doing set-ups. He said his route map on Tuesday was Plymouth to Cottage Grove to Regions and me in the Midway to Coon Rapids and then home to Chisago City. But no matter how crazy his days must sometimes feel, he's gladdened by the fact that he's not me. He, at least, gets to get out of the house once in a while.
I am starting to feel that there might be light at the end of the tunnel. Miz Susan and I went off to see Kate perform in Hopkins High's adaptation of Talking With last night. The highlight of the evening was Kate (live snake and all--ask her, not me) and the rest of the cast but I also shone in my supporting role as driver; my first driving since being rendered hors de combat in the Great Christmas Snow Shovel War of 2009. Miz Susan graciously accepted my offer that I drive to Minnetonka and I made the most of it, weaving in and out of traffic like a regular suburbanite on the way home from happy hour. I'm on the way back.
I realized that I maybe should have grabbed the wheel for the return leg when Susan announced that she was suffering from night blindness just as she started down the long twisting entrance ramp onto Hwy 169. We did make it home safely despite the best efforts of some for-real suburbanite doing his for-real happy hour induced weave on 94 just past the 280 exit. I thought that it was touching that he wanted to share the lane with us at 55 mph but Susan took a dimmer view of his advances. She asked me what in the hell he was doing. As if I knew. I don't have the faintest idea what I'm doing most of the time let alone some idiot who would easily have blown a .15 on any passing cop's drunk-o-meter.
I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to driving every day again.
That was actually this past Monday. Miz Susan took a day off of work despite her concerns that some less-than-handpicked sub might undo all of the progress her 4th graders had made since last September. She's more worried about me undoing all of the progress I've made since Christmas Day and she wouldn't let me go by myself. Something about ice and crutches and about how stupid I am. Something along those lines. Hard to argue with her given the evidence she's collected.
It's a good thing that she came with me. I'd never have thought to bake cupcakes to take to the staff at the Specialty Clinic. And if I had thought of it, those cupcakes sure as hell would not have made it out of the car and up to the third floor. You'd be surprised at how many cupcakes you can eat in an 18 minute car ride. Not as many as White Castles but still quite a few. City driving allows for better productivity in the speed eating department since you can usually catch a few stoplights along the way to line things up for maximum efficiency.
They made like they were happy to see us down at 435 Phalen. I suppose they were since we've kept them fully employed since last July. No worries about layoffs in the local medical workforce when I'm in town. And they all brightened up even more when Susan handed over the cupcakes. I tried to keep up a brave front as the last of my birthday booty disappeared into the staff break room. Almost the last anyway; there are still a few pieces of Jill and MaryAnn's pecan pie left and I ain't giving those up to anyone.
The doc poked and prodded and made me hop around the exam room on one leg for a few minutes. He told us that he was pleased at seeing better progress than he would have expected. I doubt that he had any concept as to just how easy I've been taking it for the last six weeks. My knee and all of its assorted muscles and tendons and whatnot have really had no opportunity to do anything but make progress. He told us to come back and see him in four weeks and to keep on doing whatever it was that I had been doing.
That wasn't all though. He called in for the delivery of my old friend, the CPM (Continuous Passive Movement) machine. That arrived Tuesday afternoon and I've already logged a few sessions in its healing clutches. In fact, I'm headed back that way soon. I'm glad to have the thing back as it's a concrete reminder that I might be able to walk again someday and also because I haven't done nearly the amount of reading I did last fall. Maybe I'll get through a couple of books that I was looking forward to.
The CPM even got delivered by the same guy as last time. He was also happy to see me. Here's a guy who spends his workdays on the freeways with a minivan full of medical equipment making deliveries and doing set-ups. He said his route map on Tuesday was Plymouth to Cottage Grove to Regions and me in the Midway to Coon Rapids and then home to Chisago City. But no matter how crazy his days must sometimes feel, he's gladdened by the fact that he's not me. He, at least, gets to get out of the house once in a while.
I am starting to feel that there might be light at the end of the tunnel. Miz Susan and I went off to see Kate perform in Hopkins High's adaptation of Talking With last night. The highlight of the evening was Kate (live snake and all--ask her, not me) and the rest of the cast but I also shone in my supporting role as driver; my first driving since being rendered hors de combat in the Great Christmas Snow Shovel War of 2009. Miz Susan graciously accepted my offer that I drive to Minnetonka and I made the most of it, weaving in and out of traffic like a regular suburbanite on the way home from happy hour. I'm on the way back.
I realized that I maybe should have grabbed the wheel for the return leg when Susan announced that she was suffering from night blindness just as she started down the long twisting entrance ramp onto Hwy 169. We did make it home safely despite the best efforts of some for-real suburbanite doing his for-real happy hour induced weave on 94 just past the 280 exit. I thought that it was touching that he wanted to share the lane with us at 55 mph but Susan took a dimmer view of his advances. She asked me what in the hell he was doing. As if I knew. I don't have the faintest idea what I'm doing most of the time let alone some idiot who would easily have blown a .15 on any passing cop's drunk-o-meter.
I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to driving every day again.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Valentine's Day with me as target practice for cupid and his little bow and arrows
Valentine's Day is upon us. I thought it would never get here. The last three months of the NFL season definitely slow down the passage of time to a crawl and are an unhappy reminder of just how long it is between late-October and late-February. I suppose that winter and its short days, long (and generally uneventful) nights, low sun angle (is that redundant?), and all of its many varieties of noxious weather conditions also play their parts in making the clock and calendar seem like they're standing still. But we're past all of that now. The days are getting longer and, if the nights are still pretty uneventful, there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon marked by Valentine's Day and my birthday, a mere week later. Twins pitchers and catchers report on February 21, my special day. Coincidence? Maybe. But I like to think that we all deserve a break and a sense of hope that, soon, we'll have major league baseball to ease us through the still otherwise unevevtful evenings.
But we do need to get past this Valentine's Day thing first. I've never been the biggest fan in the world of Valentine's Day and have tended to see it as a contrived event to benefit the manufacturers of schmaltzy red and pink tinted cards and the retail outlets that sell the damn things. I'm all for getting tons of chocolate dumped in my lap but mostly what I've gotten instead are those rock-hard, heart-shaped little instant tooth decay pellets with the stupid messages on them. Seriously---Q-T-π? Those things are even more deadly than the sugar-coated marshmallow lumps that get sold during the Easter season. But I'll admit that there are a few silver linings in the Valentine's clouds and those have to do with...surprise!!...food and drink.
And I'm not just talking chocolate. I'm talking pizza from Carbone's on Randolph. Heart-shaped, no less. And unlike the little heart-shaped sugar jaw breakers, this stuff--though it might still kill you--will at least make the trip to the hereafter worthwhile.
We first discovered the concept of heart-shapizza a feww years back at Carbone's on Randolph, my old stomping grounds from way back in high school and even before that. I would have been far too cool to have submitted to such an emotions-on-the-sleeve thing back when I was 17. Moot point though; I'm almost positive that this beauty wasn't on the menu back in the day. No, I'd somehow convinced Miz Susan that what we really needed for Valentine's Day dinner was pizza from Carbone's. Imagine my shock when she actually agreed. Then imagine my pathetic little man-brain spinning feverishly when I ordered and they asked if I wanted it in the shape of the day. Who was I to say anything but, "Hell yes, I want it it heart-shaped!"? Particularly since I'd undoubtedly done my usual half-assed job of paying due respect to the holiday and was probably coming home with, at best, a more than half-wilted bunch of daisies from the floral department at Cub. Long story short, we loved it (hard not to love a Carbone's pizza) and we've been stuck on it ever since. A tradition had been born.
I mentioned drink as well. Miz Susan got hooked on the bubbly a couple of New Year's Eves ago down at the University Club. One of the waiters who was probably looking to pad our bill gave her a free sip of the stuff and she fell right into his trap. Before I knew it we had a whole bottle to kill and now she's always taking a detour past the champagne rack whenever we go to the liquor store. Sadly, the weather and the trials of the week conspired to keep her from that one last stop on Friday afternoon and we were left without any Schramsberg Blanc de Blanc. We've given up on any ideas of ever tasting Dom Perignon, let alone buying a bottle. I talked her into beer instead and she was more than happy to help polish off the last of the Schell's Octoberfest after I pointed out that if she really needed to drink imported she could start putting a dent in the Amstel Lights that had gotten shoved to the back of the fridge.
So Valentine's Day dinner was a relatively low-key operation despite Miz Susan having to venture out to pick up the pizza, Carbone's one major failing being that they don't deliver. Never have, doubt they ever will. But it's not like I didn't have to pay a steep price for the beer and pizza. I wonder if Miz Susan would have even allowed me this much if I hadn't played the part of Valentines Lackey for her fourth grade class.
For whatever reason, political correctness has not yet done away with the exchange of Valentines in at least a few of our public schools. The kids probably still like it and I know that Miz Susan always brings home a wad of the things every February. For her students, she (meaning me) has sometimes copped her cards off of the internet but this year she decided to throw some of our hard earned dollars at Target in exchange for a box of 32 of the cutest, glossiest, heartiest little monkey Valentines you can imagine. Complete with matching rub on tattoos. She even ponied up for a couple of bags of M&M minis to go with each card. About five minutes into the process of separating and addressing and folding and taping and M&Ming she told me that this really wasn't a very efficient use of her time. She was right, of course. She's making good money and I don't even qualify for unemployment so I offered to take over for her. I separated the perforated sheets of the little monkeys and turned them over to her for addresses and her initials. Then she threw them back at me for the rest of the minimum wage work. I tucked the matching tattoos into their little slots and taped packages of M&M minis and folded and sealed them all up with the little red heart stickers that came with the pack. An hour later, with my hands throbbing from the picky-ass work and Miz Susan smirking and basking in the glow of having Tom Sawyered another chunk of her work-related tedium off on me, I wrapped things up. After a last count to make sure that no 4Y student was going to be scarred for life due to a missing Valentine monkey card which had slipped under the bed, I poured the things back into the Target bag. To rub my nose in my low-life status even further, Miz Susan grabbed the bag with the untaped M&M's and took that away from me too. She threw me one measly little package for my troubles but that was all. I figured that I could bide my time, that maybe there'd be a few leftovers after the mayhem on Friday that would come back home. I should have known better. Those most likely got handed over to the Desk Fairy for future positive reinforcement purposes because I sure as hell never saw them again.
Can't hardly wait for Valentine's to roll around again next year.
But we do need to get past this Valentine's Day thing first. I've never been the biggest fan in the world of Valentine's Day and have tended to see it as a contrived event to benefit the manufacturers of schmaltzy red and pink tinted cards and the retail outlets that sell the damn things. I'm all for getting tons of chocolate dumped in my lap but mostly what I've gotten instead are those rock-hard, heart-shaped little instant tooth decay pellets with the stupid messages on them. Seriously---Q-T-π? Those things are even more deadly than the sugar-coated marshmallow lumps that get sold during the Easter season. But I'll admit that there are a few silver linings in the Valentine's clouds and those have to do with...surprise!!...food and drink.
And I'm not just talking chocolate. I'm talking pizza from Carbone's on Randolph. Heart-shaped, no less. And unlike the little heart-shaped sugar jaw breakers, this stuff--though it might still kill you--will at least make the trip to the hereafter worthwhile.
We first discovered the concept of heart-shapizza a feww years back at Carbone's on Randolph, my old stomping grounds from way back in high school and even before that. I would have been far too cool to have submitted to such an emotions-on-the-sleeve thing back when I was 17. Moot point though; I'm almost positive that this beauty wasn't on the menu back in the day. No, I'd somehow convinced Miz Susan that what we really needed for Valentine's Day dinner was pizza from Carbone's. Imagine my shock when she actually agreed. Then imagine my pathetic little man-brain spinning feverishly when I ordered and they asked if I wanted it in the shape of the day. Who was I to say anything but, "Hell yes, I want it it heart-shaped!"? Particularly since I'd undoubtedly done my usual half-assed job of paying due respect to the holiday and was probably coming home with, at best, a more than half-wilted bunch of daisies from the floral department at Cub. Long story short, we loved it (hard not to love a Carbone's pizza) and we've been stuck on it ever since. A tradition had been born.
I mentioned drink as well. Miz Susan got hooked on the bubbly a couple of New Year's Eves ago down at the University Club. One of the waiters who was probably looking to pad our bill gave her a free sip of the stuff and she fell right into his trap. Before I knew it we had a whole bottle to kill and now she's always taking a detour past the champagne rack whenever we go to the liquor store. Sadly, the weather and the trials of the week conspired to keep her from that one last stop on Friday afternoon and we were left without any Schramsberg Blanc de Blanc. We've given up on any ideas of ever tasting Dom Perignon, let alone buying a bottle. I talked her into beer instead and she was more than happy to help polish off the last of the Schell's Octoberfest after I pointed out that if she really needed to drink imported she could start putting a dent in the Amstel Lights that had gotten shoved to the back of the fridge.
So Valentine's Day dinner was a relatively low-key operation despite Miz Susan having to venture out to pick up the pizza, Carbone's one major failing being that they don't deliver. Never have, doubt they ever will. But it's not like I didn't have to pay a steep price for the beer and pizza. I wonder if Miz Susan would have even allowed me this much if I hadn't played the part of Valentines Lackey for her fourth grade class.
For whatever reason, political correctness has not yet done away with the exchange of Valentines in at least a few of our public schools. The kids probably still like it and I know that Miz Susan always brings home a wad of the things every February. For her students, she (meaning me) has sometimes copped her cards off of the internet but this year she decided to throw some of our hard earned dollars at Target in exchange for a box of 32 of the cutest, glossiest, heartiest little monkey Valentines you can imagine. Complete with matching rub on tattoos. She even ponied up for a couple of bags of M&M minis to go with each card. About five minutes into the process of separating and addressing and folding and taping and M&Ming she told me that this really wasn't a very efficient use of her time. She was right, of course. She's making good money and I don't even qualify for unemployment so I offered to take over for her. I separated the perforated sheets of the little monkeys and turned them over to her for addresses and her initials. Then she threw them back at me for the rest of the minimum wage work. I tucked the matching tattoos into their little slots and taped packages of M&M minis and folded and sealed them all up with the little red heart stickers that came with the pack. An hour later, with my hands throbbing from the picky-ass work and Miz Susan smirking and basking in the glow of having Tom Sawyered another chunk of her work-related tedium off on me, I wrapped things up. After a last count to make sure that no 4Y student was going to be scarred for life due to a missing Valentine monkey card which had slipped under the bed, I poured the things back into the Target bag. To rub my nose in my low-life status even further, Miz Susan grabbed the bag with the untaped M&M's and took that away from me too. She threw me one measly little package for my troubles but that was all. I figured that I could bide my time, that maybe there'd be a few leftovers after the mayhem on Friday that would come back home. I should have known better. Those most likely got handed over to the Desk Fairy for future positive reinforcement purposes because I sure as hell never saw them again.
Can't hardly wait for Valentine's to roll around again next year.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
super bowl? there's a super bowl again this year?
01/26/10
A good friend who still checks in every now and then checked in today and consoled me on how rotten I must be feeling in the wake of the Vikings game this past Sunday. Well, it probably hurts more than my busted up leg but since my leg doesn't hardly hurt at all that's really not much of gauge. The real pain from the leg comes from not being able to get to the liquor store on my own but that's a topic for another day. No, I wasn't too broken up by the locals' loss down N'Awluhns. But don't think for a second that I let that keep me from rattling off another way-too-long reply which I later recognized as a chance to do a little double dip for a ready made post here. With a few minor edits to protect the innocent and those guilty of victimless crimes, voila!!
I pretty much cut the emotional ties to the Vikings quite awhile ago. Not that they paid much attention and who would blame them? So Sunday's loss didn't hurt all that much. For the last several years I've kept a running mental tally to make sure that I didn't watch the cumulative equivalent of a full game per any single season. A play here, a play there (usually while raiding the refrigerator or the cookie jar while Miz Susan wasn't watching), that was OK so long as it didn't cut and paste to 60 minutes on the game clock. But I'd never sit down and watch a a whole quarter from start to finish, much less a full game. I did pretty well thru the first ten or twelve games or so.
Then Miz Susan got interested. So we started watching and I think we watched 3 of the last 4 from opening kickoff to the final gun. Bears, Cowboys, Saints---right? Even saw a good chunk of the Giants game. I'd already gotten to like quite a few of the Viking's players from reading the paper and catching the video clips on the 10 o'clock news. Favre's presence seemed to help build a team presence that I hadn't noticed of late. I hate the thought of getting all sentimental about the good old days when Dale Hackbart was roaming the secondary looking for wide receivers to clothesline but recent versions of the Vikings made me wonder if these guys were looking to set all-time NFL records for DUI's and domestic disturbance calls. I think that one of the things that can murder any NFL team is a lack of cohesion and Favre (as well as a crew of emerging team leaders---Shiancoe, Leber, Allen, Herrera, Rice among others) seemed to make a big difference that way. We haven't seen such a unity of purpose up here since Fred Smoot and Daunte Culpepper took half the team out on the boat ride with the hookers a few years back. Seeing the team playing together to win football games has been a refreshing change from the news coverage of them yachting on Lake Minnetonka to get high and/or lap danced by high-buck, out-of-state exotic dancers. I'm all for a rockin' team party but not when the boat right alongside is full of kids on a Sunday school outing.
It was a hell of a game. Not real pretty, almost Shakespearean in it's tragic aspects where the flaws of the characters are at war with their better natures. But isn't that what we watch sports for? Along with coaxing that 3½ point edge in for the win. Don't tell me you weren't sweating out Brees hitting one of his long guys behind the Vikes secondary for a 6-pointer in OT.
So I didn't really have much invested in the game other than having to talk Susan in off of the ledge when it was all over. Her quote just before she climbed out the window was something like, "They just flipp'n' lost this game, didn't they?" Well, yeah honey, someone had to and they pretty much set themselves up for it. Yeah the Vikes got screwed on some OT refereeing incompetence but that didn't screw them nearly so much as all their turnovers and a lack of pressure on Brees. Hand it to the Saints for making it look like Jerrod Allen had stayed back in Eden Prairie to watch the game on the weight room big screen and to let me go down to NO wearing #69. Susan sez that we will watch the Super Bowl but that she won't care about it. I think it's more likely that we'll be tuning in Channel 2 to watch Masterpiece Theatre.
I'll admit that the game got me stirred up and that I didn't sleep all that well Sunday night. That could have been the 3 Diet Cokes I had during and after the game though. I should have stuck to beer. You wanna talk heartbreak--try the Twins games against the Yankees in October. Those had me on the verge of suicide and I really didn't sleep well for a week afterwards. I haven't been so affected by any sporting event since Staubach underthrew that wobbler and Drew Pearson pushed off to come back and get it as some idiot ref sat 3 yards away taking notes. That was back in the days when the NFL's refs held down day jobs as high school AD's and insurance adjusters. It's comforting to know that the refs who are screwing your team now are working at it as full-time professionals.
My friend raved about Favre and I'd agree that it was awful hard to dislike Brett Favre this year---once he got here. He was a star on the field and humble off of it and a great interview when he did talk. I loved the electronics ads that Sears ran up here with Favre that were absolutely hilarious.
We'll never know if a Vikings win might have been that mystical healing force that would have had me casting aside my crutches and walking again. Failing that, it's back to the physical healing process for the knee. It's still faith healing cuz I just sit around and try to have faith that it's healing. The doctor has told me to make sure that I don't bend the knee any more than 20º. That suits me just fine. The less work the better as far as I'm concerned.
I'm glad for all my friends who had the Vikes with 3½; if I'd have set the line it would have been 4 but that's why nobody asks me to set the line. And if any of you think that your wives and kids don't know who it is that you're calling at half-time to lay off a little, well---keep dreaming.
There's definitely a silver lining to all of this. We can start concentrating on the things that really are important in our lives. Pitchers and catchers report in less than a month. And the Twins have signed Jim Thome which has got to be worth a win or two just on account of having him in our dugout instead of hitting against us. As they were quick to point out on the six o'clock, just 328 down the right field line in the new ball park. Not that Thome is a dead pull hitter anymore but you never know. Another 20 for him this coming year and maybe he'll go into the Hall with a Twins cap on his plaque.
A good friend who still checks in every now and then checked in today and consoled me on how rotten I must be feeling in the wake of the Vikings game this past Sunday. Well, it probably hurts more than my busted up leg but since my leg doesn't hardly hurt at all that's really not much of gauge. The real pain from the leg comes from not being able to get to the liquor store on my own but that's a topic for another day. No, I wasn't too broken up by the locals' loss down N'Awluhns. But don't think for a second that I let that keep me from rattling off another way-too-long reply which I later recognized as a chance to do a little double dip for a ready made post here. With a few minor edits to protect the innocent and those guilty of victimless crimes, voila!!
I pretty much cut the emotional ties to the Vikings quite awhile ago. Not that they paid much attention and who would blame them? So Sunday's loss didn't hurt all that much. For the last several years I've kept a running mental tally to make sure that I didn't watch the cumulative equivalent of a full game per any single season. A play here, a play there (usually while raiding the refrigerator or the cookie jar while Miz Susan wasn't watching), that was OK so long as it didn't cut and paste to 60 minutes on the game clock. But I'd never sit down and watch a a whole quarter from start to finish, much less a full game. I did pretty well thru the first ten or twelve games or so.
Then Miz Susan got interested. So we started watching and I think we watched 3 of the last 4 from opening kickoff to the final gun. Bears, Cowboys, Saints---right? Even saw a good chunk of the Giants game. I'd already gotten to like quite a few of the Viking's players from reading the paper and catching the video clips on the 10 o'clock news. Favre's presence seemed to help build a team presence that I hadn't noticed of late. I hate the thought of getting all sentimental about the good old days when Dale Hackbart was roaming the secondary looking for wide receivers to clothesline but recent versions of the Vikings made me wonder if these guys were looking to set all-time NFL records for DUI's and domestic disturbance calls. I think that one of the things that can murder any NFL team is a lack of cohesion and Favre (as well as a crew of emerging team leaders---Shiancoe, Leber, Allen, Herrera, Rice among others) seemed to make a big difference that way. We haven't seen such a unity of purpose up here since Fred Smoot and Daunte Culpepper took half the team out on the boat ride with the hookers a few years back. Seeing the team playing together to win football games has been a refreshing change from the news coverage of them yachting on Lake Minnetonka to get high and/or lap danced by high-buck, out-of-state exotic dancers. I'm all for a rockin' team party but not when the boat right alongside is full of kids on a Sunday school outing.
It was a hell of a game. Not real pretty, almost Shakespearean in it's tragic aspects where the flaws of the characters are at war with their better natures. But isn't that what we watch sports for? Along with coaxing that 3½ point edge in for the win. Don't tell me you weren't sweating out Brees hitting one of his long guys behind the Vikes secondary for a 6-pointer in OT.
So I didn't really have much invested in the game other than having to talk Susan in off of the ledge when it was all over. Her quote just before she climbed out the window was something like, "They just flipp'n' lost this game, didn't they?" Well, yeah honey, someone had to and they pretty much set themselves up for it. Yeah the Vikes got screwed on some OT refereeing incompetence but that didn't screw them nearly so much as all their turnovers and a lack of pressure on Brees. Hand it to the Saints for making it look like Jerrod Allen had stayed back in Eden Prairie to watch the game on the weight room big screen and to let me go down to NO wearing #69. Susan sez that we will watch the Super Bowl but that she won't care about it. I think it's more likely that we'll be tuning in Channel 2 to watch Masterpiece Theatre.
I'll admit that the game got me stirred up and that I didn't sleep all that well Sunday night. That could have been the 3 Diet Cokes I had during and after the game though. I should have stuck to beer. You wanna talk heartbreak--try the Twins games against the Yankees in October. Those had me on the verge of suicide and I really didn't sleep well for a week afterwards. I haven't been so affected by any sporting event since Staubach underthrew that wobbler and Drew Pearson pushed off to come back and get it as some idiot ref sat 3 yards away taking notes. That was back in the days when the NFL's refs held down day jobs as high school AD's and insurance adjusters. It's comforting to know that the refs who are screwing your team now are working at it as full-time professionals.
My friend raved about Favre and I'd agree that it was awful hard to dislike Brett Favre this year---once he got here. He was a star on the field and humble off of it and a great interview when he did talk. I loved the electronics ads that Sears ran up here with Favre that were absolutely hilarious.
We'll never know if a Vikings win might have been that mystical healing force that would have had me casting aside my crutches and walking again. Failing that, it's back to the physical healing process for the knee. It's still faith healing cuz I just sit around and try to have faith that it's healing. The doctor has told me to make sure that I don't bend the knee any more than 20º. That suits me just fine. The less work the better as far as I'm concerned.
I'm glad for all my friends who had the Vikes with 3½; if I'd have set the line it would have been 4 but that's why nobody asks me to set the line. And if any of you think that your wives and kids don't know who it is that you're calling at half-time to lay off a little, well---keep dreaming.
There's definitely a silver lining to all of this. We can start concentrating on the things that really are important in our lives. Pitchers and catchers report in less than a month. And the Twins have signed Jim Thome which has got to be worth a win or two just on account of having him in our dugout instead of hitting against us. As they were quick to point out on the six o'clock, just 328 down the right field line in the new ball park. Not that Thome is a dead pull hitter anymore but you never know. Another 20 for him this coming year and maybe he'll go into the Hall with a Twins cap on his plaque.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
valuable life lessons and the euro sign...
01/23/10
I've learned a thing or two over the past few days. Nothing so valuable as to drag me up and out of this abject poverty of wealth and wit that I've fallen into; that would be hoping for a little too much.
But I have learned that this damned thing isn't about to up and write itself. Or if it is able to, I haven't learned which buttons to press to fire that up. I could be spending a little more time looking for the auto-write features that this website is sure to have but I've found other entertainments that have been alot more fun. Such as looking for a way to enter the sign for the euro. You know what that is, the epsilon-y looking character for the standardized European currency. Bunch of starry-eyed one-worlders. Is this why America won World War II? The hell it is. We won World War II to make Europe and the rest of the world safe for American dollars and markets. Yeah, OK, there was this element of defeating a couple of the most evil and oppressive governments in the history of the planet. Though last time I checked, we were in cahoots up to our eyeballs in that venture with another from the all-time top 3 or 4 list of evil and oppressive governments. Go figure.
It hasn't been a total waste though. € !! See how easy that is. I actually found this whole list of Alt comands that now allows me to make not only the euro sign but a whole bunch of others as well. ¢ ♪ ♫ ¶ ░ « I don't know when, if ever, I might need to use most of these characters but I'm definitely gonna keep track of the ¼-note symbols for when I get around to writing my symphony. It turns out that you can also produce letters of the alphabet using Alt commands. I'm at a total loss as to why anyone would choose not to use the letters on the keyboard. I suppose that you might need the Alt commands if you've poured a beer into most of the left-hand side of your keyboard and shorted out the letters but how often is that gonna happen?
Some of you might be scratching your heads and wondering to yourselves why this dumb cluck needs the € symbol anyway. Good question. Because I've decided to expand the pool for adding items to the western hemisphere's (well, maybe Ramsey County's) greatest collection of postcards of Strasbourg's Pont du Corbeau. I've been relying almost exclusively on eBay vendors in the U.S. but the thought struck me that since the bridge in question lives in a town that practically straddles the French/German border, maybe I could shop some of the eBayers a little closer to source. Talk about a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Unfortunately, winning auctions on eBay.fr means that I have to communicate with French sellers. Some of these vendeurs have the nerve to pretend that they don't all speak English over there after the American tourists have gone back to their hotels for the night. This leaves me to stumble along in my horrible 30-year old college French. It's plenty horrible enough without looking even worse by having to type out "euro". My 30-year old college French didn't serve me all that well 30 years ago when I was trying to fool Mme Peters into believing that I had even the tiniest ability to parler, ecrire ou comprendre le francais. She encouraged me in as many ways as she could come up with not to compound my mistakes in French 51 by moving onto French 52. I think that part of the plea agreement included her giving me a C if I promised to never, ever, set foot again in the Modern Languages wing of the Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center. She kept her part of the deal and I kept mine. Just another building block in that solid 3.13 GPA I put together at Macalester. She probably wasn't the only prof who saw through my act and took pity on me. Took pity on me and allowed me to keep up the charade of going to school while actually drinking beer, sleeping through swim tean practices and shifts at the food service and hoping that the Draft Board wouldn't find me and come waving the number 15 in my face.
Even before I learned the Alt 0128 (€) command I could almost scrape by in French with a little help from the handful of French dictionaries that had previously been cluttering up the bookshelves. But, oh my god, when I've had to try to compose a little two-line message in German, I can guarantee you that Langenscheidt hasn't even begun to publish enough dictionaries to make that easy. Last time I tried to send off a note in German there were a couple of career diplomats from the State Department who showed up a day or so later asking why in hell was I threatening the Germans with a renewal of the 1917 Declaration of War. I really didn't mean any harm. I was just swept away by the prospects of buying even more cards of the Rabensplatz and the Rabensbrucke and the Munster. You can look those up in your German-English distionaries.
I did make good on my promise to stay out of the French Department but I'd still pass by the building every once in awhile. I remember one of those times when I ran into my high school French teacher, Mr. Therrien, as he was leaving some L'Alliance Francaise production at the other end of the Fine Arts complex. I got the feeling that Mr. Therrien didn't entertain illusions as to my French proficiencies any more than Mme Peters. But it was nice to see him and he seemed generally pleased, if somewhat taken aback, when I told him that I thought about him and his classes often. And fondly. I wonder if he'd be generally pleased to know that the groundwork he laid back in 1968 was partly responsible for my correspondence, if somewhat halting, with all of those various French post card merchants.
I guess I'll never have an answer to that one as it seems that Mr. Therrien has passed on. I tried to find mention of him on the internet last week and among the scattered cites for his graduate thesis on learning French via shortwave I found a memorial site put up by his kids. This saddened me, particularly coming so close on the heels of my dad's passing. He used to tell us stories of his time as a paratrooper during the Battle of the Bulge and then as an impoverished college student in Paris after the war. He wriggled those stories in under the loose heading of French Culture. I have no idea what he'd have thought about the whole concept of the E.U and euros but I doubt that he'd have objected.
I've learned a thing or two over the past few days. Nothing so valuable as to drag me up and out of this abject poverty of wealth and wit that I've fallen into; that would be hoping for a little too much.
But I have learned that this damned thing isn't about to up and write itself. Or if it is able to, I haven't learned which buttons to press to fire that up. I could be spending a little more time looking for the auto-write features that this website is sure to have but I've found other entertainments that have been alot more fun. Such as looking for a way to enter the sign for the euro. You know what that is, the epsilon-y looking character for the standardized European currency. Bunch of starry-eyed one-worlders. Is this why America won World War II? The hell it is. We won World War II to make Europe and the rest of the world safe for American dollars and markets. Yeah, OK, there was this element of defeating a couple of the most evil and oppressive governments in the history of the planet. Though last time I checked, we were in cahoots up to our eyeballs in that venture with another from the all-time top 3 or 4 list of evil and oppressive governments. Go figure.
It hasn't been a total waste though. € !! See how easy that is. I actually found this whole list of Alt comands that now allows me to make not only the euro sign but a whole bunch of others as well. ¢ ♪ ♫ ¶ ░ « I don't know when, if ever, I might need to use most of these characters but I'm definitely gonna keep track of the ¼-note symbols for when I get around to writing my symphony. It turns out that you can also produce letters of the alphabet using Alt commands. I'm at a total loss as to why anyone would choose not to use the letters on the keyboard. I suppose that you might need the Alt commands if you've poured a beer into most of the left-hand side of your keyboard and shorted out the letters but how often is that gonna happen?
Some of you might be scratching your heads and wondering to yourselves why this dumb cluck needs the € symbol anyway. Good question. Because I've decided to expand the pool for adding items to the western hemisphere's (well, maybe Ramsey County's) greatest collection of postcards of Strasbourg's Pont du Corbeau. I've been relying almost exclusively on eBay vendors in the U.S. but the thought struck me that since the bridge in question lives in a town that practically straddles the French/German border, maybe I could shop some of the eBayers a little closer to source. Talk about a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Unfortunately, winning auctions on eBay.fr means that I have to communicate with French sellers. Some of these vendeurs have the nerve to pretend that they don't all speak English over there after the American tourists have gone back to their hotels for the night. This leaves me to stumble along in my horrible 30-year old college French. It's plenty horrible enough without looking even worse by having to type out "euro". My 30-year old college French didn't serve me all that well 30 years ago when I was trying to fool Mme Peters into believing that I had even the tiniest ability to parler, ecrire ou comprendre le francais. She encouraged me in as many ways as she could come up with not to compound my mistakes in French 51 by moving onto French 52. I think that part of the plea agreement included her giving me a C if I promised to never, ever, set foot again in the Modern Languages wing of the Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center. She kept her part of the deal and I kept mine. Just another building block in that solid 3.13 GPA I put together at Macalester. She probably wasn't the only prof who saw through my act and took pity on me. Took pity on me and allowed me to keep up the charade of going to school while actually drinking beer, sleeping through swim tean practices and shifts at the food service and hoping that the Draft Board wouldn't find me and come waving the number 15 in my face.
Even before I learned the Alt 0128 (€) command I could almost scrape by in French with a little help from the handful of French dictionaries that had previously been cluttering up the bookshelves. But, oh my god, when I've had to try to compose a little two-line message in German, I can guarantee you that Langenscheidt hasn't even begun to publish enough dictionaries to make that easy. Last time I tried to send off a note in German there were a couple of career diplomats from the State Department who showed up a day or so later asking why in hell was I threatening the Germans with a renewal of the 1917 Declaration of War. I really didn't mean any harm. I was just swept away by the prospects of buying even more cards of the Rabensplatz and the Rabensbrucke and the Munster. You can look those up in your German-English distionaries.
I did make good on my promise to stay out of the French Department but I'd still pass by the building every once in awhile. I remember one of those times when I ran into my high school French teacher, Mr. Therrien, as he was leaving some L'Alliance Francaise production at the other end of the Fine Arts complex. I got the feeling that Mr. Therrien didn't entertain illusions as to my French proficiencies any more than Mme Peters. But it was nice to see him and he seemed generally pleased, if somewhat taken aback, when I told him that I thought about him and his classes often. And fondly. I wonder if he'd be generally pleased to know that the groundwork he laid back in 1968 was partly responsible for my correspondence, if somewhat halting, with all of those various French post card merchants.
I guess I'll never have an answer to that one as it seems that Mr. Therrien has passed on. I tried to find mention of him on the internet last week and among the scattered cites for his graduate thesis on learning French via shortwave I found a memorial site put up by his kids. This saddened me, particularly coming so close on the heels of my dad's passing. He used to tell us stories of his time as a paratrooper during the Battle of the Bulge and then as an impoverished college student in Paris after the war. He wriggled those stories in under the loose heading of French Culture. I have no idea what he'd have thought about the whole concept of the E.U and euros but I doubt that he'd have objected.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
someone's always stealing my best ideas...
01/17/10
Miz Jill,
Apologies for not having seen your comment on one of my recent postings until last night. Surgical procedures on dogs in public? How could I possibly not have known about this? Is Minnesota the greatest state in the nation or what?
I'll admit to being intrigued by this long handled roller thing you're talking about but I've got to warn you to move gently on this. This sounds pretty much like a prima facie case of patent infringement and I'd hate for you to become a party to that. I'm telling you, my legal team is ruthless. They wouldn't care if you are family.
I suppose the fact the I don't actually hold any patents for this kind of thing might be a stumbling block to any claims of infringement. Last time I checked the only patent I held was on complete stupidity. But hell, I never knew about this thing at the Fair until you mentioned it and I think that writing about my idea in this public (well, sort of public) forum should comprise a full assertion of all of my rights both explicit and tacit. God, I should have gone to law school. Can you even begin to imagine the shambles the country would be in if I had?
OK, I may have to let this one go. I feel pretty bad about it cuz it's another example of how all my best ideas get stolen to line the pockets of corporate America. Maybe I'm better off directing all of my creative energy into planning meals. On to dinner.
Miz Susan is downstairs throwing chunks of one of the racks of ribs that's been clogging up the bottom shelf of our freezer into the crockpot. I did some digging for recipes on the internet last night and came up with a couple that call for par-baking for a half hour (with or w/o rub) and then slow cooking for 6-8 hours in the crockpot. She sez to tell you that she's using your Reliable Rub Recipe. (I'd advise that you get a patent registered on it right away unless you stole it from somebody else.) This sounds almost exactly like how my mother used to make ribs when I was a kid. Even Miz Susan grants that it may just work out. This is way cool. I get to bathe in this warm wash of nostalgia and pick up some points for the here and now, all at the same time. Until after dinner, when Miz Susan has eaten way too many way too fast and starts to gripe about her poor upset little tummy. What a lightweight.
Well, we'll get a day to recover since tomorrow is a school holiday. MLKJ Day will be marked this year by our visit to the Specialty Clinic to see the surgeon and hopefully have the 20 staples taken out of my knee. These damn staples have made it impossible for me to fly anywhere since I can't get past the metal detectors at the airport. I don't even remember the number of creative development sessions I've had to skip in the last week alone. Thank heavens that I just keep cranking out the ideas. I'll catch up one of these days.
Miz Jill,
Apologies for not having seen your comment on one of my recent postings until last night. Surgical procedures on dogs in public? How could I possibly not have known about this? Is Minnesota the greatest state in the nation or what?
I'll admit to being intrigued by this long handled roller thing you're talking about but I've got to warn you to move gently on this. This sounds pretty much like a prima facie case of patent infringement and I'd hate for you to become a party to that. I'm telling you, my legal team is ruthless. They wouldn't care if you are family.
I suppose the fact the I don't actually hold any patents for this kind of thing might be a stumbling block to any claims of infringement. Last time I checked the only patent I held was on complete stupidity. But hell, I never knew about this thing at the Fair until you mentioned it and I think that writing about my idea in this public (well, sort of public) forum should comprise a full assertion of all of my rights both explicit and tacit. God, I should have gone to law school. Can you even begin to imagine the shambles the country would be in if I had?
OK, I may have to let this one go. I feel pretty bad about it cuz it's another example of how all my best ideas get stolen to line the pockets of corporate America. Maybe I'm better off directing all of my creative energy into planning meals. On to dinner.
Miz Susan is downstairs throwing chunks of one of the racks of ribs that's been clogging up the bottom shelf of our freezer into the crockpot. I did some digging for recipes on the internet last night and came up with a couple that call for par-baking for a half hour (with or w/o rub) and then slow cooking for 6-8 hours in the crockpot. She sez to tell you that she's using your Reliable Rub Recipe. (I'd advise that you get a patent registered on it right away unless you stole it from somebody else.) This sounds almost exactly like how my mother used to make ribs when I was a kid. Even Miz Susan grants that it may just work out. This is way cool. I get to bathe in this warm wash of nostalgia and pick up some points for the here and now, all at the same time. Until after dinner, when Miz Susan has eaten way too many way too fast and starts to gripe about her poor upset little tummy. What a lightweight.
Well, we'll get a day to recover since tomorrow is a school holiday. MLKJ Day will be marked this year by our visit to the Specialty Clinic to see the surgeon and hopefully have the 20 staples taken out of my knee. These damn staples have made it impossible for me to fly anywhere since I can't get past the metal detectors at the airport. I don't even remember the number of creative development sessions I've had to skip in the last week alone. Thank heavens that I just keep cranking out the ideas. I'll catch up one of these days.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
despatches from the frontlines of the jobhunt front
01/16/10
I haven't had a regular paying job for 2 1/2 years now. I probably hadn't deserved to have a regular paying job for longer than that but up until late-July of 2007 I'd been managing to pass as a semi-productive member of the middle class, providing some valuable services to the marketplace and the community while paying most of my taxes and all of my mortgage installments. And I pride myself on the fact that it took one way-shrewd group of new administrators at a local university to see through my bullshit and cut me loose. Hell, that school is suffering along this year under the burden of needing to pare about two million dollars out of its FY10 budget (try looking at administrative compensation, ya yutzes) so just think how much worse it would have been if I'd still been there. Any resemblence to the current president's previous stop on the lecture tour out in New Mexico is purely coincidental.
I'd probably feel much worse about things if the corporate contractor that got brought in by those crack university administrators hadn't done such a magnificent job of replacing me and the bookstore I ran. Odds are that this new bookstore operation is not the absolute worst one in the country; there are still quite a few that I haven't gotten into to check yet. Really, donchya think that there are probably more than even a few that are just as miserably run as the one that replaced mine? If not worse? After all, this new contractor does run 250+ other stores and that makes for a whole world of possibilities in that sample alone.
I may not get around to visiting all those other stores to do my comparison shopping. Money's tight right now even if I have been relieved of any incentive (not to mention the means) to be throwing away my cash in gaudy displays of foolish charitable giving. I used to do that but my motto has now become, "Let 'em eat cake."
The word about what a slacker I am must have spread pretty effectively. I haven't been able to land one of the rarely available jobs that pops up in the industry I'm most familiar with. That even includes one on a nearby campus where I have a little bit of previous history. This is a school that's allowed something approaching a million bucks to go swirling down the toilet from its bookstore operation over the last several years. I guess I'd have to agree; there's no way that I can run in that kind of fast company. My store always made money.
Oh well, something will turn up sometime soon. I continue to receive daily reports from this genius little dotcom called Monster. A family member recommended that I get signed up on it and I'll tell you, it's been eye-opening. There have been alot of features that have shown up in my inbox reminding me to keep my resume down to something under three pages and to tailor my cover letters to the specifics of any particular job that I'm applying for and to not let on that I'd been turned down as a contestant on Biggest Loser and that to spite them I'd let my weight drop to 525 pounds all by myself. And to be damn sure that I don't let on as to how I did that, exactly. Proprietary trade secrets, right? Really pretty elementary stuff.
But the totally best thing thing about Monster.com has to be the daily job postings that show up regular as clockwork somewhere between 1 and 10 in the morning. I figure on the days that they come in late it's because some desperately unhappy Monster employee has been cherry-picking the best opportunities for him/herself. Heck, there was even a posting for the store manager's job at the Hamline University Bookstore. I thnk that was somewhere between manager #1 (tenure:5 months) and manager #2 (tenure:10 months). But it could have been in one of the gaps bookended by #3 (tenure:2 months---honest, I can't possibly make shit like this up) or even #4 (tenure from May '09 to date and counting). I decided that my skills were almost up to the lofty standards demanded buy this astute chain store entity but that it was looking like upward mobility within the company was whisking all of the previous managers right on up the corporate ladder. I just wasn't ready to commit to the life of an itinerant company man and didn't want to subject my kids to a new school district every few years. Or months, apparently. Pay no attention to the fact that my kids, our kids, are already pretty much grown and out of the house. Yeah, we've even changed the locks. Thank you.
So, the Hamline gig tugged at my heartstrings a little bit but they were casting their recruitment nets pretty wide. I think I even tracked down a classified ad in one of the Mankato papers. Like I said, lofty standards and I wasn't about to get into a tussle over a job with one of my would-be homies from Mankato. I was born there, after all. Thank god there's been a steady flow of other career opportunities courtesy of the Monster auto-mailer.
I'd have never guessed that there could be such turnover in management level positions for some of our region's finest service-segment companies such as PetCo, McDonald's (@the airport---duh!!!, can you spell travel opportunities?), American Income Life, Toys'R'Us and Little Caesar's (both their Midway Center and Highland shops!!). How to choose?
I've held a grudge against PetCo ever since they pulled their shop out of the Midway. That was PetCo, wasn't it? Well, I shouldn't judge. Paper Warehouse or Party City or whatever is gone too. I figured that it was gonna be a tough sled for that strip mall when Mervyn's boarded up the windows. And besides, PetCo wasn't automatically offering manager's jobs. They were also posting "Groomer's" positions. Not sure what that is exactly but definitely don't want to.
Some idiot at one of the WorkForce Centers referred me to American Income Life awhile back, touting a union enroller's job. I fired off my resume and then spent a couple of days calling their various local offices in what turned out to be the foolish hope that someone might actually answer the phone. The company must have some pretty liberal lunch hour allowances which seemed like a feather in its cap. I also did some internet research to no avail and asked my long-time insurance agent if he'd ever heard of American Income Life. N, couldn't say that he had. About a month (yes, that would be four weeks or more) later some nimrod who sounded like he was 16 called looking to set up an appointment to discuss the opening. I think he was calling from a public phone outside of one of the remaining PetCo stores. Scratch that one off the list and scratch the WorkForce Center off the list while I'm at it. I'm glad to know that Minnesota tax dollars are hard at work in at least one of those centers.
Toys'R'Us has lost all of its charms for me ever since the Rax went out of business out there on B2. My ex and I spent a good chunk of our disposable income there (at Toys and then at Rax afterwards) trying to keep our kids invested in the Santy Claus Myth but those two wised up on that one a few years back. Two strikes. Oh yeah, Shinders isn't open out there anymore and neither is the Loehmann Plaza Theater Mega-Plex. Yer outta there!!
That leaves it to Lil Caesar's and Mac and D's. I've got a niece who's already employed at Little C's though she keeps casting covetous glances at the curly fries and jamocha shakes at the Arby's across the street. I'm not about to risk any nepotism charges. Besides which I've worked with family before and it's everything it's cracked up to be. I'll admit that I admire the Little Caesar's business model: your large cheese or pepperoni pizza, hot and ready for you guaranteed for $5.00. But still, I'd rather be a customer than an employee.
The list is down to the McDonald's at the airport. Lots of plusses. Food discounts, duty-free shops, the automated walkways. Did I mention food discounts? But then I got to thinking. Did I really want the possible responsibility of being the purveyor of the last supper on this earthly plane (no pun intended) to some lunatic-fringe underwear bomber? No thanks. My sins are already weighing heavily enough.
I haven't had a regular paying job for 2 1/2 years now. I probably hadn't deserved to have a regular paying job for longer than that but up until late-July of 2007 I'd been managing to pass as a semi-productive member of the middle class, providing some valuable services to the marketplace and the community while paying most of my taxes and all of my mortgage installments. And I pride myself on the fact that it took one way-shrewd group of new administrators at a local university to see through my bullshit and cut me loose. Hell, that school is suffering along this year under the burden of needing to pare about two million dollars out of its FY10 budget (try looking at administrative compensation, ya yutzes) so just think how much worse it would have been if I'd still been there. Any resemblence to the current president's previous stop on the lecture tour out in New Mexico is purely coincidental.
I'd probably feel much worse about things if the corporate contractor that got brought in by those crack university administrators hadn't done such a magnificent job of replacing me and the bookstore I ran. Odds are that this new bookstore operation is not the absolute worst one in the country; there are still quite a few that I haven't gotten into to check yet. Really, donchya think that there are probably more than even a few that are just as miserably run as the one that replaced mine? If not worse? After all, this new contractor does run 250+ other stores and that makes for a whole world of possibilities in that sample alone.
I may not get around to visiting all those other stores to do my comparison shopping. Money's tight right now even if I have been relieved of any incentive (not to mention the means) to be throwing away my cash in gaudy displays of foolish charitable giving. I used to do that but my motto has now become, "Let 'em eat cake."
The word about what a slacker I am must have spread pretty effectively. I haven't been able to land one of the rarely available jobs that pops up in the industry I'm most familiar with. That even includes one on a nearby campus where I have a little bit of previous history. This is a school that's allowed something approaching a million bucks to go swirling down the toilet from its bookstore operation over the last several years. I guess I'd have to agree; there's no way that I can run in that kind of fast company. My store always made money.
Oh well, something will turn up sometime soon. I continue to receive daily reports from this genius little dotcom called Monster. A family member recommended that I get signed up on it and I'll tell you, it's been eye-opening. There have been alot of features that have shown up in my inbox reminding me to keep my resume down to something under three pages and to tailor my cover letters to the specifics of any particular job that I'm applying for and to not let on that I'd been turned down as a contestant on Biggest Loser and that to spite them I'd let my weight drop to 525 pounds all by myself. And to be damn sure that I don't let on as to how I did that, exactly. Proprietary trade secrets, right? Really pretty elementary stuff.
But the totally best thing thing about Monster.com has to be the daily job postings that show up regular as clockwork somewhere between 1 and 10 in the morning. I figure on the days that they come in late it's because some desperately unhappy Monster employee has been cherry-picking the best opportunities for him/herself. Heck, there was even a posting for the store manager's job at the Hamline University Bookstore. I thnk that was somewhere between manager #1 (tenure:5 months) and manager #2 (tenure:10 months). But it could have been in one of the gaps bookended by #3 (tenure:2 months---honest, I can't possibly make shit like this up) or even #4 (tenure from May '09 to date and counting). I decided that my skills were almost up to the lofty standards demanded buy this astute chain store entity but that it was looking like upward mobility within the company was whisking all of the previous managers right on up the corporate ladder. I just wasn't ready to commit to the life of an itinerant company man and didn't want to subject my kids to a new school district every few years. Or months, apparently. Pay no attention to the fact that my kids, our kids, are already pretty much grown and out of the house. Yeah, we've even changed the locks. Thank you.
So, the Hamline gig tugged at my heartstrings a little bit but they were casting their recruitment nets pretty wide. I think I even tracked down a classified ad in one of the Mankato papers. Like I said, lofty standards and I wasn't about to get into a tussle over a job with one of my would-be homies from Mankato. I was born there, after all. Thank god there's been a steady flow of other career opportunities courtesy of the Monster auto-mailer.
I'd have never guessed that there could be such turnover in management level positions for some of our region's finest service-segment companies such as PetCo, McDonald's (@the airport---duh!!!, can you spell travel opportunities?), American Income Life, Toys'R'Us and Little Caesar's (both their Midway Center and Highland shops!!). How to choose?
I've held a grudge against PetCo ever since they pulled their shop out of the Midway. That was PetCo, wasn't it? Well, I shouldn't judge. Paper Warehouse or Party City or whatever is gone too. I figured that it was gonna be a tough sled for that strip mall when Mervyn's boarded up the windows. And besides, PetCo wasn't automatically offering manager's jobs. They were also posting "Groomer's" positions. Not sure what that is exactly but definitely don't want to.
Some idiot at one of the WorkForce Centers referred me to American Income Life awhile back, touting a union enroller's job. I fired off my resume and then spent a couple of days calling their various local offices in what turned out to be the foolish hope that someone might actually answer the phone. The company must have some pretty liberal lunch hour allowances which seemed like a feather in its cap. I also did some internet research to no avail and asked my long-time insurance agent if he'd ever heard of American Income Life. N, couldn't say that he had. About a month (yes, that would be four weeks or more) later some nimrod who sounded like he was 16 called looking to set up an appointment to discuss the opening. I think he was calling from a public phone outside of one of the remaining PetCo stores. Scratch that one off the list and scratch the WorkForce Center off the list while I'm at it. I'm glad to know that Minnesota tax dollars are hard at work in at least one of those centers.
Toys'R'Us has lost all of its charms for me ever since the Rax went out of business out there on B2. My ex and I spent a good chunk of our disposable income there (at Toys and then at Rax afterwards) trying to keep our kids invested in the Santy Claus Myth but those two wised up on that one a few years back. Two strikes. Oh yeah, Shinders isn't open out there anymore and neither is the Loehmann Plaza Theater Mega-Plex. Yer outta there!!
That leaves it to Lil Caesar's and Mac and D's. I've got a niece who's already employed at Little C's though she keeps casting covetous glances at the curly fries and jamocha shakes at the Arby's across the street. I'm not about to risk any nepotism charges. Besides which I've worked with family before and it's everything it's cracked up to be. I'll admit that I admire the Little Caesar's business model: your large cheese or pepperoni pizza, hot and ready for you guaranteed for $5.00. But still, I'd rather be a customer than an employee.
The list is down to the McDonald's at the airport. Lots of plusses. Food discounts, duty-free shops, the automated walkways. Did I mention food discounts? But then I got to thinking. Did I really want the possible responsibility of being the purveyor of the last supper on this earthly plane (no pun intended) to some lunatic-fringe underwear bomber? No thanks. My sins are already weighing heavily enough.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
hopes and dreams
01/13/10
I'd like to thank all of you who have taken the time to sign up as followers and even taken the extra step of posting your comments. It's got to take a certain amount of bravery to acknowledge being associated with this nonsense. I'm plenty embarassed any time I look at it. I doubt that your career could suffer as much from this as from your boss checking your Facebook page and seeing the pics of you and your friends doing jello shots at a party wearing t-shirts that read "I HATE MY F-in' JOB" but still.
I'm astonished that there are so many of you who have signed on here. There's a nice mix of friends, family and my oldest daughter's pals for whom I used to provide chauffeur service to Backstreet Boys concerts. I'll tell ya, those were the days.
I'm willing to admit that my motives in starting this thing weren't totally charitable. Yeah, I'm happy to provide tips and little lessons on how not to live your own lives. And the feel-good benefits for those who take comfort in telling themselves that they're nowheres near in as bad shape as I am is have to count for something. But I don't mind letting it be known that I'm not averse to having this thing take off and attract a wider circle of readership. I know it's too early to have realistically expected a flood of offers for personal gain. But if they do come I'm not going to be declining any invitations to meet with the editors at Random House or some ad agency pitching a seven figure ad deal to hype their client's products on my site here. I haven't checked in with Google on any of this but that kind of publicity would have to be good for them too. Wouldn't it?
One of the many things that might get in the way of fame and fortune (being a no-talent bum would also be one) is the difficulties I face just getting into the computer room to add to the blahg. First, I have to strap this damn brace onto my leg whenever I leave my sick bed. I'm under strict orders from the doctor to wear this thing whenever I'm up which makes a world of sense. If I'd been wearing it on Christmas morning I probably wouldn't have ripped the knee up again. Who knows though; maybe it would have been the other knee this time. So I'm not opposed to wearing it but I wish it wasn't so uncomfortable. I don't remember it digging into my flabby thigh quite as bad last fall.
And I don't mind the crutches either. I recognize their purpose and they're incredibly handy for flicking on the light switch without getting up or for pulling the box of Cheezits off the shelf accoss the room and dragging it over to the bed. As long as we can't afford a fulltime PCA the crutches are just going to have to double up. An added bonus is that they are much easier to keep track of and not lose as opposed to, say..., my car keys which go missing several times a week when I'm allowed to drive.
But the worst thing about moving from one room to the other on our second floor is having to see what a god-awful mess our cat has made of the rug with his pathological shedding. If we'd been looking at houses four years ago based on carpeting being able to blend in with the massive amounts of white and orange fur that Miles leaves in his wake, we definitely would have passed on this one. Or insisted that removing the oppressive burgundy carpeting from the staircase and landings be a condition of purchase. It's not like we had a long list of demands; I think we asked them to repair a broken screen from a combination window and to leave us a set of keys. Yeah, we're a pair of hard-nosed negotiators. But in retrospect, we're always regretting not having torn up the carpet last summer or spring. Pick your year. Miz Susan's mantra has become, "That damn ugly maroon carpeting is coming up as soon as the weather turns nice again." Joining my other personal favorite, "No, you can't have any pecan pie and I don't care how many times you ask."
Since Miles has entered, with a vengeance, what seem to be his declining years, his hair is coming off in handfuls. I try to brush him whenever I can get my hands on him and remember where I left his brush last but that's just not enough. He still insists on rolling around in the hallway and leaving a light frosting of his coat on whatever ground he's covered. Susan goes ape when it's even a little bit bad and I get caught between these two forces of nature, her need for order and the appearance (ha!) of a well maintained household and Miles's deteriorating condition. I end up playing the enabler and postpone my writing until the enabling is over.
I'm proud of myself for having invented a new use for our lint roller. It makes a great spot cleaner for carpet. Yeah, I might have to use four or five sheets of the sticky stuff but it beats dragging the vacuum cleaner out. Especially for me now. I can handle the vacuum, as I alluded to in an earlier chapter, but it's definitely tougher on one leg than on two. The problem with the lint roller is that I have to do this precarious balancing act on one leg, a toe-touch (which I'm allowed per the doctor's orders), a crutch and whatever support I can get from the lint roller. Now that I've written it down I can't even begin to imagine why I haven't tipped over yet. A worst-case scenario would be tipping over and rolling down the stairs head first. This has got to be stupider than playing Twister while drunk. Or playing Twister at all.
So, even though it's effective, if marginally, it is a bigger production while convalescing than while healthy. And it does make getting from here to there and back again tougher. Once I get done with my enabling and into the swivel chair with my legged propped up, the writing comes easily enough. Even if it's only marginally writing.
Getting back to my earlier mention of having some self-serving interests for this thing; don't be afraid to mention me to your friends and associates. Especially if you think they might be conned into throwing large amounts of money my way. Even small amounts would be a boost for my ego. And maybe enough for seed money for my next invention. The two-foot long lint roller!! Enough of this namby pamby three-inch lint roller silliness. Coming soon to a Target near you. See ya there!!
I'd like to thank all of you who have taken the time to sign up as followers and even taken the extra step of posting your comments. It's got to take a certain amount of bravery to acknowledge being associated with this nonsense. I'm plenty embarassed any time I look at it. I doubt that your career could suffer as much from this as from your boss checking your Facebook page and seeing the pics of you and your friends doing jello shots at a party wearing t-shirts that read "I HATE MY F-in' JOB" but still.
I'm astonished that there are so many of you who have signed on here. There's a nice mix of friends, family and my oldest daughter's pals for whom I used to provide chauffeur service to Backstreet Boys concerts. I'll tell ya, those were the days.
I'm willing to admit that my motives in starting this thing weren't totally charitable. Yeah, I'm happy to provide tips and little lessons on how not to live your own lives. And the feel-good benefits for those who take comfort in telling themselves that they're nowheres near in as bad shape as I am is have to count for something. But I don't mind letting it be known that I'm not averse to having this thing take off and attract a wider circle of readership. I know it's too early to have realistically expected a flood of offers for personal gain. But if they do come I'm not going to be declining any invitations to meet with the editors at Random House or some ad agency pitching a seven figure ad deal to hype their client's products on my site here. I haven't checked in with Google on any of this but that kind of publicity would have to be good for them too. Wouldn't it?
One of the many things that might get in the way of fame and fortune (being a no-talent bum would also be one) is the difficulties I face just getting into the computer room to add to the blahg. First, I have to strap this damn brace onto my leg whenever I leave my sick bed. I'm under strict orders from the doctor to wear this thing whenever I'm up which makes a world of sense. If I'd been wearing it on Christmas morning I probably wouldn't have ripped the knee up again. Who knows though; maybe it would have been the other knee this time. So I'm not opposed to wearing it but I wish it wasn't so uncomfortable. I don't remember it digging into my flabby thigh quite as bad last fall.
And I don't mind the crutches either. I recognize their purpose and they're incredibly handy for flicking on the light switch without getting up or for pulling the box of Cheezits off the shelf accoss the room and dragging it over to the bed. As long as we can't afford a fulltime PCA the crutches are just going to have to double up. An added bonus is that they are much easier to keep track of and not lose as opposed to, say..., my car keys which go missing several times a week when I'm allowed to drive.
But the worst thing about moving from one room to the other on our second floor is having to see what a god-awful mess our cat has made of the rug with his pathological shedding. If we'd been looking at houses four years ago based on carpeting being able to blend in with the massive amounts of white and orange fur that Miles leaves in his wake, we definitely would have passed on this one. Or insisted that removing the oppressive burgundy carpeting from the staircase and landings be a condition of purchase. It's not like we had a long list of demands; I think we asked them to repair a broken screen from a combination window and to leave us a set of keys. Yeah, we're a pair of hard-nosed negotiators. But in retrospect, we're always regretting not having torn up the carpet last summer or spring. Pick your year. Miz Susan's mantra has become, "That damn ugly maroon carpeting is coming up as soon as the weather turns nice again." Joining my other personal favorite, "No, you can't have any pecan pie and I don't care how many times you ask."
Since Miles has entered, with a vengeance, what seem to be his declining years, his hair is coming off in handfuls. I try to brush him whenever I can get my hands on him and remember where I left his brush last but that's just not enough. He still insists on rolling around in the hallway and leaving a light frosting of his coat on whatever ground he's covered. Susan goes ape when it's even a little bit bad and I get caught between these two forces of nature, her need for order and the appearance (ha!) of a well maintained household and Miles's deteriorating condition. I end up playing the enabler and postpone my writing until the enabling is over.
I'm proud of myself for having invented a new use for our lint roller. It makes a great spot cleaner for carpet. Yeah, I might have to use four or five sheets of the sticky stuff but it beats dragging the vacuum cleaner out. Especially for me now. I can handle the vacuum, as I alluded to in an earlier chapter, but it's definitely tougher on one leg than on two. The problem with the lint roller is that I have to do this precarious balancing act on one leg, a toe-touch (which I'm allowed per the doctor's orders), a crutch and whatever support I can get from the lint roller. Now that I've written it down I can't even begin to imagine why I haven't tipped over yet. A worst-case scenario would be tipping over and rolling down the stairs head first. This has got to be stupider than playing Twister while drunk. Or playing Twister at all.
So, even though it's effective, if marginally, it is a bigger production while convalescing than while healthy. And it does make getting from here to there and back again tougher. Once I get done with my enabling and into the swivel chair with my legged propped up, the writing comes easily enough. Even if it's only marginally writing.
Getting back to my earlier mention of having some self-serving interests for this thing; don't be afraid to mention me to your friends and associates. Especially if you think they might be conned into throwing large amounts of money my way. Even small amounts would be a boost for my ego. And maybe enough for seed money for my next invention. The two-foot long lint roller!! Enough of this namby pamby three-inch lint roller silliness. Coming soon to a Target near you. See ya there!!
Sunday, January 10, 2010
up and around on a limited basis
01/10/10
I'm up and around again but, I gotta warn you, I'm sure not feeling all that inspired. And I bring back no little nuggets of inspiration from the netherworld in which I spent several hours this past Thursday. But it's done and I say God bless to that. I think I'm well on the road to recovery but it's not likely that I'll be the only judge with an opinion.
The doctor who cut me open and sewed me back together might see me as a challenge and a threat to his good name since, in a few moments of Christmas Day ice ballet, I managed to undo all of his good work of last July. And Miz Susan is certainly going to have something to say about my progress. Oh wait, she's already had plenty to say.
But for all of you who helped during either of the two recoveries (and there's plenty more of this second one), thanks very much; keep thinking good thoughts. And if you're feeling like I got what I deserve (schmuck that I am) keep in mind that the ways of the universe are many and mysterious and that all that mental trash talking may be just the sort of burden you don't want to be carrying around with you. I, for example, worry that there's some sort of payback in place for my hating Mark Teixeira so much. God, I hope that the payback isn't tied into my left knee thing because it feels so right to despise him. C'mon, I hated him when he played for the Rangers and the Braves and the Angels before he went over to the Yankees. Leave me a little something here.
Thursday went by in a blur. We got out of the house and into the car and down to Regions in good time even with a light dusting of snow hiding every little patch of ice between our front porch and the car (or, say Hibbing) and turning them all into malevolent death traps. And we may even have been making progress for a future day when Susan, once behind the wheel of the car, allowed as to how she maybe didn't really need to have given the house a quick once over with the vacuum cleaner before we left for the hospital. Who am I to argue?
Regions treated us just as well as last time and the staff didn't seem to be sneering at me too often. At least not that I was able to catch. We were on our way to surgery by 1:30 which was about the point at which I was checking out for my little nap. I vaguely remember the clock showing something in the neighborhood of 5:15 when I came to. I remember that and the sensation that my knee was the size and consistency of a bushel basket of quickset concrete. They'd done such a nice job of giving me a nerve block for the leg as well as conking me out with a general anesthetic that I wasn't feeling any horrible pain, just a sense of moving in very slow motion. Maybe others of you have noticed that about me before. Keep it to yourselves.
Thursday night and Friday were pretty much a write-off. We did manage two episodes of The West Wing and I'm eager for the show where Jean Luc Picard comes in the Enterprise to escort President Bartlett to his his new digs in the Intergalactic Imperial Palace. By Saturday I was feeling much more lively and even entertained visitors. Well, family but they didn't stay so they must have been visiting. Both of my charming daughters put in appearances, Liz on her way to work, and Kate, on her way home from an info session for some foo-foo women's school out east. I approve of these activities. Liz needs to go to work every once in awhile so she can go back to collecting unemployment during the political dry seasons and if Kate wants to go to college, then so be it. I personally thought her future pro softball career was shaping up nicely: state champions, nice development in her secondary power numbers plus real progress in her diamond smarts. Aren't there a ton of kids going straight to the pros out of high school these days? These are her prime income earning years but if she wants to go off to some college library and read Jane Austen and study molecular biology and work in the food service, fine.
I did have one strange thing happen to me last night. As I was drifting off to sleep at 11:30 I'd had the radio on to catch some late night Bob Parlocha action on KBEM. I'm sure that almost all of you out there know full well who Bob Parlocha is but bear with me for the handful who don't. Bob Parlocha is a guy who gets played late-nights on KBEM, 88.5FM out of the Minneapolis Public Schools. I think that Mr. Parlocha has way too much common sense to be based out of the Twin Cities but the station picks up his syndicated "broadcasts" for the time slots when there's no one at home in the studios. I picture him recording two tune sets which include the music and then his commentaries to fill up approximately 15-minute blocks of time and then putting the "sets" into some random cyber shuffle player for the affiliates to spit out at a later date. He seems knowledgeable as hell, his website says he's knowledgeable as hell, he either owns or has access to a collection of recordings that kicks my ass (a tip of my hat on that one) and he's got a great late-night jazz radio voice. Every three or four minutes he refers to his mix as mainstream jazz which I don't like not being a fan of labels but, hey, that's a petty little beef on my part. He's got a great job and most days I'd probably be willing to lower myself to endorsing Alan Sickbert's fashion choices to have a gig like his. One of the last things that Parlocha played before I turned off the radio and fell asleep was an Ellington tune called "Stevie" from a CD by Harold Danko. I don't know Danko very well but this I liked, a recreation of the Ellington/Coltrane session on Impulse! from way back in the early '60's. Hmmmmm, check it out tomorrow morning.
When I'm not sleeping well I have this recurring dream thing that drives my crazy and then makes it even tougher to get any sleep. Maybe it's REM sleep getting interrupted and reinterrupted and my brain playing what would normally be a random access bit stream as an unending loop of decipherable nonsense. I woke up in one of these fits this morning at 5:30, choking on a clogged up throat that I couldn't clear even with a cpap assist. Not only was I unable to breathe but I was stuck in this terrible dream that wouldn't resolve itself and which featured a couple of guys in loud polyester suits selling something out of briefcases.
Once I was able to breath normally again I flicked the radio back on to catch the last few minutes of Parlocha before KBEM would switch over to its own locally produced music in a can for the time when they can't afford Bob Parlocha. And I'm damned if the same song wasn't cued up again. "Stevie" by Harold Danko. Ever so occasionally I've heard the local station play the same 1/2 hour student DJ pre-recorded segment twice in a morning. Bad planning but one of the things that gives KBEM its own gritty little funk. They're trying hard. But to hear this coming out of a professionally produced operation that's getting airplay on dozens of stations across the country, I was amazed. And to pinpoint my own psychosis so perfectly besides. How hard would it be to program the shuffler not to replay the same segment more than once a week? Maybe there's still hope for me in the world of jazz broadcasting.
On the other hand, some might wonder, "When are you going to get your shit together enough so that you can stop dreaming the same lame little dreams over and over again. And furthermore, if you're dreaming about guys in polyester suits maybe you're not even good enough to be commenting an anyone else's fashion sense."
I'm up and around again but, I gotta warn you, I'm sure not feeling all that inspired. And I bring back no little nuggets of inspiration from the netherworld in which I spent several hours this past Thursday. But it's done and I say God bless to that. I think I'm well on the road to recovery but it's not likely that I'll be the only judge with an opinion.
The doctor who cut me open and sewed me back together might see me as a challenge and a threat to his good name since, in a few moments of Christmas Day ice ballet, I managed to undo all of his good work of last July. And Miz Susan is certainly going to have something to say about my progress. Oh wait, she's already had plenty to say.
But for all of you who helped during either of the two recoveries (and there's plenty more of this second one), thanks very much; keep thinking good thoughts. And if you're feeling like I got what I deserve (schmuck that I am) keep in mind that the ways of the universe are many and mysterious and that all that mental trash talking may be just the sort of burden you don't want to be carrying around with you. I, for example, worry that there's some sort of payback in place for my hating Mark Teixeira so much. God, I hope that the payback isn't tied into my left knee thing because it feels so right to despise him. C'mon, I hated him when he played for the Rangers and the Braves and the Angels before he went over to the Yankees. Leave me a little something here.
Thursday went by in a blur. We got out of the house and into the car and down to Regions in good time even with a light dusting of snow hiding every little patch of ice between our front porch and the car (or, say Hibbing) and turning them all into malevolent death traps. And we may even have been making progress for a future day when Susan, once behind the wheel of the car, allowed as to how she maybe didn't really need to have given the house a quick once over with the vacuum cleaner before we left for the hospital. Who am I to argue?
Regions treated us just as well as last time and the staff didn't seem to be sneering at me too often. At least not that I was able to catch. We were on our way to surgery by 1:30 which was about the point at which I was checking out for my little nap. I vaguely remember the clock showing something in the neighborhood of 5:15 when I came to. I remember that and the sensation that my knee was the size and consistency of a bushel basket of quickset concrete. They'd done such a nice job of giving me a nerve block for the leg as well as conking me out with a general anesthetic that I wasn't feeling any horrible pain, just a sense of moving in very slow motion. Maybe others of you have noticed that about me before. Keep it to yourselves.
Thursday night and Friday were pretty much a write-off. We did manage two episodes of The West Wing and I'm eager for the show where Jean Luc Picard comes in the Enterprise to escort President Bartlett to his his new digs in the Intergalactic Imperial Palace. By Saturday I was feeling much more lively and even entertained visitors. Well, family but they didn't stay so they must have been visiting. Both of my charming daughters put in appearances, Liz on her way to work, and Kate, on her way home from an info session for some foo-foo women's school out east. I approve of these activities. Liz needs to go to work every once in awhile so she can go back to collecting unemployment during the political dry seasons and if Kate wants to go to college, then so be it. I personally thought her future pro softball career was shaping up nicely: state champions, nice development in her secondary power numbers plus real progress in her diamond smarts. Aren't there a ton of kids going straight to the pros out of high school these days? These are her prime income earning years but if she wants to go off to some college library and read Jane Austen and study molecular biology and work in the food service, fine.
I did have one strange thing happen to me last night. As I was drifting off to sleep at 11:30 I'd had the radio on to catch some late night Bob Parlocha action on KBEM. I'm sure that almost all of you out there know full well who Bob Parlocha is but bear with me for the handful who don't. Bob Parlocha is a guy who gets played late-nights on KBEM, 88.5FM out of the Minneapolis Public Schools. I think that Mr. Parlocha has way too much common sense to be based out of the Twin Cities but the station picks up his syndicated "broadcasts" for the time slots when there's no one at home in the studios. I picture him recording two tune sets which include the music and then his commentaries to fill up approximately 15-minute blocks of time and then putting the "sets" into some random cyber shuffle player for the affiliates to spit out at a later date. He seems knowledgeable as hell, his website says he's knowledgeable as hell, he either owns or has access to a collection of recordings that kicks my ass (a tip of my hat on that one) and he's got a great late-night jazz radio voice. Every three or four minutes he refers to his mix as mainstream jazz which I don't like not being a fan of labels but, hey, that's a petty little beef on my part. He's got a great job and most days I'd probably be willing to lower myself to endorsing Alan Sickbert's fashion choices to have a gig like his. One of the last things that Parlocha played before I turned off the radio and fell asleep was an Ellington tune called "Stevie" from a CD by Harold Danko. I don't know Danko very well but this I liked, a recreation of the Ellington/Coltrane session on Impulse! from way back in the early '60's. Hmmmmm, check it out tomorrow morning.
When I'm not sleeping well I have this recurring dream thing that drives my crazy and then makes it even tougher to get any sleep. Maybe it's REM sleep getting interrupted and reinterrupted and my brain playing what would normally be a random access bit stream as an unending loop of decipherable nonsense. I woke up in one of these fits this morning at 5:30, choking on a clogged up throat that I couldn't clear even with a cpap assist. Not only was I unable to breathe but I was stuck in this terrible dream that wouldn't resolve itself and which featured a couple of guys in loud polyester suits selling something out of briefcases.
Once I was able to breath normally again I flicked the radio back on to catch the last few minutes of Parlocha before KBEM would switch over to its own locally produced music in a can for the time when they can't afford Bob Parlocha. And I'm damned if the same song wasn't cued up again. "Stevie" by Harold Danko. Ever so occasionally I've heard the local station play the same 1/2 hour student DJ pre-recorded segment twice in a morning. Bad planning but one of the things that gives KBEM its own gritty little funk. They're trying hard. But to hear this coming out of a professionally produced operation that's getting airplay on dozens of stations across the country, I was amazed. And to pinpoint my own psychosis so perfectly besides. How hard would it be to program the shuffler not to replay the same segment more than once a week? Maybe there's still hope for me in the world of jazz broadcasting.
On the other hand, some might wonder, "When are you going to get your shit together enough so that you can stop dreaming the same lame little dreams over and over again. And furthermore, if you're dreaming about guys in polyester suits maybe you're not even good enough to be commenting an anyone else's fashion sense."
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
staring into the void
01/06/10
Miz Susan chided me for staying up late to write some of my recent entries. I tried some feeble line on her like needing to follow my muse and react when the creative sparks were hottest. I could have gone on to add that true artistes can't be bound to such bourgeois conventions as the clock and the need for sleep but I could tell that she wasn't buying any of it so I didn't risk any more of her contempt and disgust. I guess there are just some people you can't fool. Maybe her years in various 4th grade classrooms have developed her ear to detect patent nonsense like mine. I should have known better.
I'm not saying that I'm going to swear off staying up late doing the starving artist slaving by candlelight in the unheated garret room shtick but tonite I'll try to get to bed at a respectable time. I've got a big day ahead of me. The surgery has been moved up from 3:00 to 1:00 so with any luck we'll be able to hit the McDonald's drive up window just as they're making the changeover from breakfast to lunch. Mmmmm, fish sandwiches and french toast stix!!! What? You don't expect me to go into a surgical procedure under general anesthesia on an empty stomach do you? Geez!!
At any rate, I will probably get to bed early tonite and I may not be feeling frisky enough tomorrow to be cracking wise after I've had my knee sliced back open. So, I'm doing the day shift thing and getting an entry queued up to hold me over for a day or two. I know that it's important for some of you to be able to get a daily dose of reading about someone clearly stupider and more vapid than you. I'm here for you. For those who think there's actually the least bit of merit in my posts...well, there are probably walk-in hours at some of the crisis clinics around town. Get help soon.
I got most of my nesting chores done today as well as some of the domestic tedium. I've just realized that I should go write a few checks to cover some bills that these grubby little merchants keep sending our way. Like Xcel and Qwest are going to go under if they don't get our couple of hundred every month? But there's not much point in tempting fate since the corporations have all of the lawyers in their back pockets. The good ones anyway.
Miz Susan and I will send out an e-mail update tomorrow afternoon or evening when we get back from the hospital. If they let me come back that is. I keep thinking that they're going to keep me one of these days to study my brain in the interest of science. If they take your brain out to study it they can put it back in, right? That's what they've told me. And that I won't feel a thing.
Miz Susan chided me for staying up late to write some of my recent entries. I tried some feeble line on her like needing to follow my muse and react when the creative sparks were hottest. I could have gone on to add that true artistes can't be bound to such bourgeois conventions as the clock and the need for sleep but I could tell that she wasn't buying any of it so I didn't risk any more of her contempt and disgust. I guess there are just some people you can't fool. Maybe her years in various 4th grade classrooms have developed her ear to detect patent nonsense like mine. I should have known better.
I'm not saying that I'm going to swear off staying up late doing the starving artist slaving by candlelight in the unheated garret room shtick but tonite I'll try to get to bed at a respectable time. I've got a big day ahead of me. The surgery has been moved up from 3:00 to 1:00 so with any luck we'll be able to hit the McDonald's drive up window just as they're making the changeover from breakfast to lunch. Mmmmm, fish sandwiches and french toast stix!!! What? You don't expect me to go into a surgical procedure under general anesthesia on an empty stomach do you? Geez!!
At any rate, I will probably get to bed early tonite and I may not be feeling frisky enough tomorrow to be cracking wise after I've had my knee sliced back open. So, I'm doing the day shift thing and getting an entry queued up to hold me over for a day or two. I know that it's important for some of you to be able to get a daily dose of reading about someone clearly stupider and more vapid than you. I'm here for you. For those who think there's actually the least bit of merit in my posts...well, there are probably walk-in hours at some of the crisis clinics around town. Get help soon.
I got most of my nesting chores done today as well as some of the domestic tedium. I've just realized that I should go write a few checks to cover some bills that these grubby little merchants keep sending our way. Like Xcel and Qwest are going to go under if they don't get our couple of hundred every month? But there's not much point in tempting fate since the corporations have all of the lawyers in their back pockets. The good ones anyway.
Miz Susan and I will send out an e-mail update tomorrow afternoon or evening when we get back from the hospital. If they let me come back that is. I keep thinking that they're going to keep me one of these days to study my brain in the interest of science. If they take your brain out to study it they can put it back in, right? That's what they've told me. And that I won't feel a thing.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
wednesday's to-do list.
01/05/10
Tomorrow is the last full day before I go back under the surgeon's knife on Thursday. Doesn't that sound dramatic? Most of you who are reading this (and whatinthehell is wrong with you anyway?) know what's happened to me and feel a heck of a lot sorrier for the doctors and the rest of the O.R. team than you do for me. I probably deserve that. Regardless of how stupid I look right now, Wednesday is shaping up to be one busy day for livingsimpleton.
Susan has promised me excitement galore tomorrow night after she gets home from her day of radicalizing America's future leaders. We will, of course, tune in for another DVD chapter in the history of the Jed Bartlett presidency. We're up through episode 6 of season 1 of The West Wing and what with sparks just starting to fly between Zoe and Charlie I can't hardly wait. And Susan has hinted that we might spend a few hours taking ornaments off of the Christmas tree and storing them away until next year. I haven't really broached the subject with her yet but, really, isn't that what an artificial tree is all about? Why can't we just leave the damn thing up this year? There's only about 10 1/2 months to go before it would be seasonally appropriate again and it's not like we need to keep watering it. Yeah, dust might be an issue but I could finally haul that shop vac that I bought back in '06 out of the box and try it out in leaf blower mode. A couple of puffs from that baby and all the dust would roll up into little dust bunnies in the corners and under the couch for easy disposal at a later date. A much later date.
But I'm not going there. Despite the obvious common sense of it and the example that some of the neighbors set in not getting their holiday greenery and lighting down until Memorial Day, I won't fight putting away the Christmas tree. Even given the real likelihood that I won't be able to figure out which plugs to connect to which sockets to get the lights to work next year. It was a near thing this year and I'm pretty sure that I'm not gonna be a whole lot sharper come next Thanksgiving. But I'll man up and do what she tells me. This is almost always my MO when she's around to watch me and cuff me behind the ear if she catches me straying from the one true path.
It's going to make for a very busy day though. I need to call the closing agent and tell her that, OK, we'll cheerfully come up with the extra $3100 that we didn't expect to have to pony up at closing. And I need to call my insurance agent who will go through the provisions of the disability policy that I've been paying $2400 a year for, none of which provisions will entitle me to a red cent now that I am actually disabled since I'm also actually unemployed at this time. I'll also probably try and slog through the last of the latest batch of data entry paperwork that my friends at Micawbers have dropped off for me.
That's the mundane stuff necessary to pass as members-in-full of the middle class, a charade that we need to continue or risk getting thrown out of our house. Just because it's vital doesn't mean I have to embrace it but I will get it done. However, the really important stuff will be preparing my little cocoon for the next three months of enforced bed rest following the surgery.
I already hauled a half a dozen dvds upstairs. Actually Miz Susan did that. Sucker. I noticed while browsing the shelves of dvds that we actually own movies that I've never yet watched. Honest. I wouldn't make this stuff up. I figure two or three roundtrips and I'll have the film library split between the main floor and the recovery room on the second floor adequately enough to keep me partially entertained for most of my rehab.
Ditto for CD's. I plan to actually listen to some of the couple dozen or so (conservatively) CD's that I've bought with the best intentions over the years but then somehow didn't quite get around to getting cued up in the player. I listened to quite a bit of music last time around but I found myself logging alot of time on KBEM. Between bouts of gritting my teeth over the mispronunciations of musicians' names (the great Ellington alto saxman Johnny Hodges billed as Johnny Hogs. c'mon!) and the mangling of the news and sportscasts (no, the Twins don't trail the hated Tigers by four one two games, that's 4 and a half games. honest. i wouldn't make this stuff up.) I was making lists of music that I just had to buy, much to the delight of various third party sellers on Amazon and eBay. I'm even farther behind on stuff to listen to from last summer and fall. I plan to be better this time but I need to haul the darn things into the bedroom for easy access.
And books. I might try a quick skulk down to the basement to look for some of the books that I haven't seen since I brought them home from the Hungry Mind 25-plus years ago. No time like the present. I'm dying to find those two Brad Solomon mysteries that I never quite got through.
I wish that there was something that I could do about stockpiling food in the bedroom. I know that I could stuff tons of junk food between the box spring and the mattress and Susan would never even suspect it. I'm tempted to make a run to the local corner grocery to update Salieman on my latest relapse and to stock up on crackers and malted milk balls but it's going to be butt cold out there again tomorrow and the ice is actually cause for concern. Likewise with one last swing through the drive-thrus of the various fast food restaurants within a quick trip's radius. Goddamn, as I write this I'm staring at a little booklet of McDonald's coupons that she was taunting me with the other day. Buy one, get one free on Big Macs. Free fries and a drink with the purchase of an Angus Third Pounder. And if that's not tempting enough, how about the free Mac Snack Wrap. All of your favorite Big Mac ingredients (minus the sesame seed bun) conveniently wrapped in a white flour tortilla. You just know that's gonna cut way back on the calories and fat grams. I'm seriously weighing the risks of a ruptured quad on the other leg to get out there and try one of those little gems. Is this a great country or what?!
Tomorrow is the last full day before I go back under the surgeon's knife on Thursday. Doesn't that sound dramatic? Most of you who are reading this (and whatinthehell is wrong with you anyway?) know what's happened to me and feel a heck of a lot sorrier for the doctors and the rest of the O.R. team than you do for me. I probably deserve that. Regardless of how stupid I look right now, Wednesday is shaping up to be one busy day for livingsimpleton.
Susan has promised me excitement galore tomorrow night after she gets home from her day of radicalizing America's future leaders. We will, of course, tune in for another DVD chapter in the history of the Jed Bartlett presidency. We're up through episode 6 of season 1 of The West Wing and what with sparks just starting to fly between Zoe and Charlie I can't hardly wait. And Susan has hinted that we might spend a few hours taking ornaments off of the Christmas tree and storing them away until next year. I haven't really broached the subject with her yet but, really, isn't that what an artificial tree is all about? Why can't we just leave the damn thing up this year? There's only about 10 1/2 months to go before it would be seasonally appropriate again and it's not like we need to keep watering it. Yeah, dust might be an issue but I could finally haul that shop vac that I bought back in '06 out of the box and try it out in leaf blower mode. A couple of puffs from that baby and all the dust would roll up into little dust bunnies in the corners and under the couch for easy disposal at a later date. A much later date.
But I'm not going there. Despite the obvious common sense of it and the example that some of the neighbors set in not getting their holiday greenery and lighting down until Memorial Day, I won't fight putting away the Christmas tree. Even given the real likelihood that I won't be able to figure out which plugs to connect to which sockets to get the lights to work next year. It was a near thing this year and I'm pretty sure that I'm not gonna be a whole lot sharper come next Thanksgiving. But I'll man up and do what she tells me. This is almost always my MO when she's around to watch me and cuff me behind the ear if she catches me straying from the one true path.
It's going to make for a very busy day though. I need to call the closing agent and tell her that, OK, we'll cheerfully come up with the extra $3100 that we didn't expect to have to pony up at closing. And I need to call my insurance agent who will go through the provisions of the disability policy that I've been paying $2400 a year for, none of which provisions will entitle me to a red cent now that I am actually disabled since I'm also actually unemployed at this time. I'll also probably try and slog through the last of the latest batch of data entry paperwork that my friends at Micawbers have dropped off for me.
That's the mundane stuff necessary to pass as members-in-full of the middle class, a charade that we need to continue or risk getting thrown out of our house. Just because it's vital doesn't mean I have to embrace it but I will get it done. However, the really important stuff will be preparing my little cocoon for the next three months of enforced bed rest following the surgery.
I already hauled a half a dozen dvds upstairs. Actually Miz Susan did that. Sucker. I noticed while browsing the shelves of dvds that we actually own movies that I've never yet watched. Honest. I wouldn't make this stuff up. I figure two or three roundtrips and I'll have the film library split between the main floor and the recovery room on the second floor adequately enough to keep me partially entertained for most of my rehab.
Ditto for CD's. I plan to actually listen to some of the couple dozen or so (conservatively) CD's that I've bought with the best intentions over the years but then somehow didn't quite get around to getting cued up in the player. I listened to quite a bit of music last time around but I found myself logging alot of time on KBEM. Between bouts of gritting my teeth over the mispronunciations of musicians' names (the great Ellington alto saxman Johnny Hodges billed as Johnny Hogs. c'mon!) and the mangling of the news and sportscasts (no, the Twins don't trail the hated Tigers by four one two games, that's 4 and a half games. honest. i wouldn't make this stuff up.) I was making lists of music that I just had to buy, much to the delight of various third party sellers on Amazon and eBay. I'm even farther behind on stuff to listen to from last summer and fall. I plan to be better this time but I need to haul the darn things into the bedroom for easy access.
And books. I might try a quick skulk down to the basement to look for some of the books that I haven't seen since I brought them home from the Hungry Mind 25-plus years ago. No time like the present. I'm dying to find those two Brad Solomon mysteries that I never quite got through.
I wish that there was something that I could do about stockpiling food in the bedroom. I know that I could stuff tons of junk food between the box spring and the mattress and Susan would never even suspect it. I'm tempted to make a run to the local corner grocery to update Salieman on my latest relapse and to stock up on crackers and malted milk balls but it's going to be butt cold out there again tomorrow and the ice is actually cause for concern. Likewise with one last swing through the drive-thrus of the various fast food restaurants within a quick trip's radius. Goddamn, as I write this I'm staring at a little booklet of McDonald's coupons that she was taunting me with the other day. Buy one, get one free on Big Macs. Free fries and a drink with the purchase of an Angus Third Pounder. And if that's not tempting enough, how about the free Mac Snack Wrap. All of your favorite Big Mac ingredients (minus the sesame seed bun) conveniently wrapped in a white flour tortilla. You just know that's gonna cut way back on the calories and fat grams. I'm seriously weighing the risks of a ruptured quad on the other leg to get out there and try one of those little gems. Is this a great country or what?!
Monday, January 4, 2010
livingsimpleton does housecleaning on one leg
01/04/10
Last Friday's NYT crossword (which I attacked today) had as an answer to one of its clues "alegtostandon" as in "a leg to stand on" which sums me up pretty neatly these days. On a sunny day (or when when I've been drinking heavily) I might be tempted to think that I'm better on one leg than most people are on both legs but I'd be wrong. As I so often am though I'll admit to a certainty that I'm better on one leg than almost any number of college vice presidents are on however many legs they can steal or pad their vitaes with.
That said, I did figure out how to limp around the house on one good leg and a pair of crutches pretty well during my last convalescence. This got to a point where I could get up to the third floor for a clean t-shirt that I hadn't worn for awhile or out to the trash cans with the cat litter or all the way down to the basement to raid the freezer when Susan was out of sight and not likely to be home any time soon. I even managed a little vacuum cleaning on the level stretches.
This afternoon though I was faced with a situation that tried my patience so thoroughly that Miles was probably looking for a chair to hide under. I was frazzled from lack of sleep: up way past a sensible bedtime last night, up way too early this morning and what sleep I'd had interrupted by a near shutdown of all airways to my lungs courtesy of whatever bug has set up housekeeping in my upper respiratory lately. I'd also received an annoying email from the closer on our house loan re-fi telling me cheerily to expect to bring $3,600 to the closing rather than the $500 I'd been pitched in the first place. Throw in a call from Susan's hair salon and the heavy responsibility of being asked to call those folks back to reschedule her appointment and I wasn't in a particularly receptive mood for any extra bumps in the road.
I got through a reheated lunch of last night's leftovers. A tangy lemon chicken copped off the Today Show website with boxed wild rice and frozen mixed vegetables. Plenty good enough for the likes of me. My mistake was thinking that I deserved more. I went rummaging around in the dreaded baking supplies drawer for the dry roasted peanuts that Susan had brought back from her last grocery run. I went to pick the bag up and was lucky enough to spill only half of the peanuts out onto the floor and back into the dreaded baking supplies drawer. I've known for quite awhile that the plastic bags in the produce and bulk food sections at Cub are flimsy beyond imagination. I knew that the darn things start to biodegrade as soon as you pull them off the roll and that they have an effectiveness shorter than the attention span of the average chipmunk. However, I had never seen just how disastrously that could play out in my own personal life until the peanuts started pouring out of a gaping hole and bouncing around the kitchen floor like the little balls in a bingo hopper down in the church basement. Grrrr.
Normally this would have been a relatively easy fix. I'd have claimed a handful on the five second rule and then gotten the broom and dustpan and swept the rest up and into the trash can. Not so easy on one leg though. Hobble halfway down the basement stairs to the landing to get the broom and dustpan. Spend five minutes sweeping up the cat litter that Miles strews so carefully all over the floor as a vital part of his toilette. Pick up the plastic bags that have mysteriously settled to the stairway landing and stuff them into the recycling bag with the others where they belong. Hobble back up the stairs with broom and dustpan in tow. Sweep up the peanuts which have by then stopped bouncing around all over the floor. On to the dreaded baking supplies drawer.
Our house has several areas that would probably qualify out at Mt. Palomar as authentic black holes. At her surliest, Susan would contend that our entire house qualifies as the big bang grand-daddy of all black holes. The dreaded bakery supplies drawer has a life of its own. But what the hell, no time like the present. Start emptying the drawer of its contents. Pour the spilled peanuts out of the approximately two dozen measuring cups which had collected them as they spilled into the drawer. Find the two or three measuring cups which didn't have peanuts in them because they were buried so far back in the drawer as to avoid that and because they were already filled with flour that had escaped from its bag in some earlier cosmic upheaval. Empty the drawer of 1 1/2 bags each of brown sugar and coconut, one bag each of semisweet morsels, semisweet mini-morsels, butterscotch chips, peanut butter chips, three bars of Ghiardelli baking chocolate, four large squares of semisweet baking chocolate, two little containers of cinnamon sugar blend., two small half full bottles of chocolate flavored cookie decorations, a little tub of paper muffin cups, two strips of baking yeast packets, a half bag of craisins, a few pieces of rock-hard dried peaches (been wondering where those had gotten to), a small brown bag from the co-op with pancake flour about ready to disintegrate and spread its contents with the rest of the lose stuff in the drawer and, last but far from least, a small piece of paraffin that, as Susan reminds me every once in awhile, she and the sisters add to the melted chocolate dip for the peanut butter balls to give it some staying power. Honest to god. It could have been worse. I didn't come across any open bags of powdered sugar. I shudder to think.
Susan sensed the tension in my voice when she called to check on me after this brush with the infinite in the kitchen. When she got home she was gentle and gave me high marks for the way that I'd straightened up the now-not-nearly-so-dreaded baking supplies drawer. Just like when she gives me high marks for organizing the cupboard with the plastic storage containers, an area which may be the best single exhibit in this hemisphere for the validity of chaos theory. She gives me high marks but I know she's already looking forward to the days ahead when all of that hard-won order and discipline will again succumb to the inevitability of random distribution. Bring on the black holes.
Last Friday's NYT crossword (which I attacked today) had as an answer to one of its clues "alegtostandon" as in "a leg to stand on" which sums me up pretty neatly these days. On a sunny day (or when when I've been drinking heavily) I might be tempted to think that I'm better on one leg than most people are on both legs but I'd be wrong. As I so often am though I'll admit to a certainty that I'm better on one leg than almost any number of college vice presidents are on however many legs they can steal or pad their vitaes with.
That said, I did figure out how to limp around the house on one good leg and a pair of crutches pretty well during my last convalescence. This got to a point where I could get up to the third floor for a clean t-shirt that I hadn't worn for awhile or out to the trash cans with the cat litter or all the way down to the basement to raid the freezer when Susan was out of sight and not likely to be home any time soon. I even managed a little vacuum cleaning on the level stretches.
This afternoon though I was faced with a situation that tried my patience so thoroughly that Miles was probably looking for a chair to hide under. I was frazzled from lack of sleep: up way past a sensible bedtime last night, up way too early this morning and what sleep I'd had interrupted by a near shutdown of all airways to my lungs courtesy of whatever bug has set up housekeeping in my upper respiratory lately. I'd also received an annoying email from the closer on our house loan re-fi telling me cheerily to expect to bring $3,600 to the closing rather than the $500 I'd been pitched in the first place. Throw in a call from Susan's hair salon and the heavy responsibility of being asked to call those folks back to reschedule her appointment and I wasn't in a particularly receptive mood for any extra bumps in the road.
I got through a reheated lunch of last night's leftovers. A tangy lemon chicken copped off the Today Show website with boxed wild rice and frozen mixed vegetables. Plenty good enough for the likes of me. My mistake was thinking that I deserved more. I went rummaging around in the dreaded baking supplies drawer for the dry roasted peanuts that Susan had brought back from her last grocery run. I went to pick the bag up and was lucky enough to spill only half of the peanuts out onto the floor and back into the dreaded baking supplies drawer. I've known for quite awhile that the plastic bags in the produce and bulk food sections at Cub are flimsy beyond imagination. I knew that the darn things start to biodegrade as soon as you pull them off the roll and that they have an effectiveness shorter than the attention span of the average chipmunk. However, I had never seen just how disastrously that could play out in my own personal life until the peanuts started pouring out of a gaping hole and bouncing around the kitchen floor like the little balls in a bingo hopper down in the church basement. Grrrr.
Normally this would have been a relatively easy fix. I'd have claimed a handful on the five second rule and then gotten the broom and dustpan and swept the rest up and into the trash can. Not so easy on one leg though. Hobble halfway down the basement stairs to the landing to get the broom and dustpan. Spend five minutes sweeping up the cat litter that Miles strews so carefully all over the floor as a vital part of his toilette. Pick up the plastic bags that have mysteriously settled to the stairway landing and stuff them into the recycling bag with the others where they belong. Hobble back up the stairs with broom and dustpan in tow. Sweep up the peanuts which have by then stopped bouncing around all over the floor. On to the dreaded baking supplies drawer.
Our house has several areas that would probably qualify out at Mt. Palomar as authentic black holes. At her surliest, Susan would contend that our entire house qualifies as the big bang grand-daddy of all black holes. The dreaded bakery supplies drawer has a life of its own. But what the hell, no time like the present. Start emptying the drawer of its contents. Pour the spilled peanuts out of the approximately two dozen measuring cups which had collected them as they spilled into the drawer. Find the two or three measuring cups which didn't have peanuts in them because they were buried so far back in the drawer as to avoid that and because they were already filled with flour that had escaped from its bag in some earlier cosmic upheaval. Empty the drawer of 1 1/2 bags each of brown sugar and coconut, one bag each of semisweet morsels, semisweet mini-morsels, butterscotch chips, peanut butter chips, three bars of Ghiardelli baking chocolate, four large squares of semisweet baking chocolate, two little containers of cinnamon sugar blend., two small half full bottles of chocolate flavored cookie decorations, a little tub of paper muffin cups, two strips of baking yeast packets, a half bag of craisins, a few pieces of rock-hard dried peaches (been wondering where those had gotten to), a small brown bag from the co-op with pancake flour about ready to disintegrate and spread its contents with the rest of the lose stuff in the drawer and, last but far from least, a small piece of paraffin that, as Susan reminds me every once in awhile, she and the sisters add to the melted chocolate dip for the peanut butter balls to give it some staying power. Honest to god. It could have been worse. I didn't come across any open bags of powdered sugar. I shudder to think.
Susan sensed the tension in my voice when she called to check on me after this brush with the infinite in the kitchen. When she got home she was gentle and gave me high marks for the way that I'd straightened up the now-not-nearly-so-dreaded baking supplies drawer. Just like when she gives me high marks for organizing the cupboard with the plastic storage containers, an area which may be the best single exhibit in this hemisphere for the validity of chaos theory. She gives me high marks but I know she's already looking forward to the days ahead when all of that hard-won order and discipline will again succumb to the inevitability of random distribution. Bring on the black holes.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
livingsimpleton does the Vikings game. sort of.
01/03/10
Up until the past few weeks I've done my usual half-decent job of ignoring the NFL season in general and the Vikings in particular. I shoot for watching no more than a few plays per game and that's only for background noise when I'm in the kitchen cuz Miz Susan isn't watching. This is easier than you might think. Baseball lasts well into the football season and even when I'm not dedicating every surviving brain cell to the Twins' chances (as in '07 when they had absolutely no chances whatsoever) I can justify blowing off the purple and gold in the interest of letting the National Pasttime wind down into early November. I even justify this to myself when I have no actual stake in a Phillies/Rays or Bosox/Rocks matchup.
But of all the people in the world to take an interest in the Vikes, I couldn't have been more surprised to discover Susan reminding me when they played and on what channel. I'm half expecting her to be updating me next on the daily injury report out of Eden Prairie and asking just what the hell the odds mean and how can you possibly score 5 1/2 points in a football game. And I'll know I'm really in trouble when money starts disappearing out of the loose change dish after she's fired up a weekly football pool in her fourth grade classroom at school.
Whatever. I'm happy to spend any time I can with her since she usually counters my suggestions that we do something together with a suggestion of her own that I take a flying leap. Family bonding is a good thing, right? We've enjoyed some of the games we've watched even if the locals have been a little flat over the last few weeks. Having discarded all shreds of partisanship years ago, I was able to watch last Monday night's game with an air of detachment and concentrate on the game and the scope of its dramatic plot twists. I'm now free to reserve my situational depression exclusively for weightier matters such as the Twins losing to the Yankees this past October.
It may have been tempting to climb back on the bandwagon after today's romp over the hapless Giants. Was this some karmic turnabout to reward Minnesotans and punish NYCers in the wake of this past fall's tragedy? Maybe but I'm not buying into it. I want that retribution in the form of live coverage of Mark Texeira and AJ Burnett busting up water coolers and folding chairs with fungo bats after losing to the Twinks in post-season. Or news flashes about how MLB is going to start requiring monthly eye exams and random pop quizzes on rulebook familiarity for the most visibly incompetent of its umpires.
We'll probably be watching again at whatever point the Vikes play their first postseason game. I haven't paid any attention to what happened over the rest of the day's schedule and I have no idea whatsoever who plays tonite or tomorrow night or if these games have any ramifications for the survivors. (Note to self: find out if there's still such a thing as Monday Night Football.) I'll have to wait for the 10 o'clock news or tomorrow's PioneerPress to figure that out. And I'm not about to send Miz Susan out to buy me a purple T-shirt. I'm keeping my cool on this one.
On the other hand, my attention was grabbed when the announcers started talking about the possibility of a Vikings/Cowboys meeting next week. I'm still physically sick after having been witness to Drew Pearson pushing off of Nate Wright to grab Roger Staubach's floater and tippy-toe into the endzone back in the '75. Now here's a prospect for some real-live karmic retribution that I might get excited about. Not that I'm going to. Like I said, I'm keeping my cool on this one.
Up until the past few weeks I've done my usual half-decent job of ignoring the NFL season in general and the Vikings in particular. I shoot for watching no more than a few plays per game and that's only for background noise when I'm in the kitchen cuz Miz Susan isn't watching. This is easier than you might think. Baseball lasts well into the football season and even when I'm not dedicating every surviving brain cell to the Twins' chances (as in '07 when they had absolutely no chances whatsoever) I can justify blowing off the purple and gold in the interest of letting the National Pasttime wind down into early November. I even justify this to myself when I have no actual stake in a Phillies/Rays or Bosox/Rocks matchup.
But of all the people in the world to take an interest in the Vikes, I couldn't have been more surprised to discover Susan reminding me when they played and on what channel. I'm half expecting her to be updating me next on the daily injury report out of Eden Prairie and asking just what the hell the odds mean and how can you possibly score 5 1/2 points in a football game. And I'll know I'm really in trouble when money starts disappearing out of the loose change dish after she's fired up a weekly football pool in her fourth grade classroom at school.
Whatever. I'm happy to spend any time I can with her since she usually counters my suggestions that we do something together with a suggestion of her own that I take a flying leap. Family bonding is a good thing, right? We've enjoyed some of the games we've watched even if the locals have been a little flat over the last few weeks. Having discarded all shreds of partisanship years ago, I was able to watch last Monday night's game with an air of detachment and concentrate on the game and the scope of its dramatic plot twists. I'm now free to reserve my situational depression exclusively for weightier matters such as the Twins losing to the Yankees this past October.
It may have been tempting to climb back on the bandwagon after today's romp over the hapless Giants. Was this some karmic turnabout to reward Minnesotans and punish NYCers in the wake of this past fall's tragedy? Maybe but I'm not buying into it. I want that retribution in the form of live coverage of Mark Texeira and AJ Burnett busting up water coolers and folding chairs with fungo bats after losing to the Twinks in post-season. Or news flashes about how MLB is going to start requiring monthly eye exams and random pop quizzes on rulebook familiarity for the most visibly incompetent of its umpires.
We'll probably be watching again at whatever point the Vikes play their first postseason game. I haven't paid any attention to what happened over the rest of the day's schedule and I have no idea whatsoever who plays tonite or tomorrow night or if these games have any ramifications for the survivors. (Note to self: find out if there's still such a thing as Monday Night Football.) I'll have to wait for the 10 o'clock news or tomorrow's PioneerPress to figure that out. And I'm not about to send Miz Susan out to buy me a purple T-shirt. I'm keeping my cool on this one.
On the other hand, my attention was grabbed when the announcers started talking about the possibility of a Vikings/Cowboys meeting next week. I'm still physically sick after having been witness to Drew Pearson pushing off of Nate Wright to grab Roger Staubach's floater and tippy-toe into the endzone back in the '75. Now here's a prospect for some real-live karmic retribution that I might get excited about. Not that I'm going to. Like I said, I'm keeping my cool on this one.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
getting livingsimpleton off the ground
01/02/10
Encouraged by friends and family to use my latest enforced home confinement (more on that later) to advantage, I'm firing up this weblog. I hate the word blog. It sounds so...well, blah-g. Anyway, I've been particularly encouraged by my wife who probably figures that any time I spend pinned down to the keyboard hoping to be creative is time that she won't have to talk to me. Fine.
Actually, I'm excited about the prospects for this thing. I'll be able to formalize and sanitize some of my rants about things that stir me up: family, friends, my interrupted and now stagnant career in the college bookstore industry, Twins baseball, politics, jazz, movies, books, crosswords and the passing parade in general. I've got a few contacts at local law firms so I'll probably be able to find an attorney to defend me against the worst charges of libel and slander and enough friends (I think) to risk losing a few if sensitivities get bruised. My family has moved well past the point of even hoping that there's any redemption for me and now relies almost exclusively on rolling their collective eyes at whatever stupid thing I've done lately. Mostly though, it'll be me who'll be the laughing stock here. I've sensed for quite a while now that it's usually best to be quick with jokes at my own expense in order to beat anyone else to the punch.
I'm currently scheduled for surgery this coming Thursday to repair (ok, re-repair) a ruptured quad muscle of the left leg. I'd originally battered the poor thing back in July while up in the north woods. Getting out of that situation was tricky at best so I must have subconsciously decided to keep it a little more local this time around. Slipping and falling on the sidewalk in front of my house on Christmas day definitely made for an easier trip to urgent care than getting the Cook County first responders and ambulance out to the end of the Arrowhead Trail and back again. I'm sure that those folks up north are still getting plenty of laughs out of that stupid-tourist story and don't really need to see me any time soon anyway.
Here I sit with surgery a week away and another 3-4 month recovery period looming after that. What better way to while away the time than to do this on-line journal thing? Unless I can get my hands on a complete run of 30 Rock dvds on the cheap. My wife, Miz Susan, takes some credit for jinxing us with this latest fiasco. She bought me this cute forest green t-shirt with the motto "Live Simply". As if anything has ever been simple for me or for her since she met me. Our lives definitely took a sharp left hand veer away from the simple life with my Christmas morning acrobatics and maybe she did jinx us. Hence the weblog title, livingsimpleton. Da-da!!
Encouraged by friends and family to use my latest enforced home confinement (more on that later) to advantage, I'm firing up this weblog. I hate the word blog. It sounds so...well, blah-g. Anyway, I've been particularly encouraged by my wife who probably figures that any time I spend pinned down to the keyboard hoping to be creative is time that she won't have to talk to me. Fine.
Actually, I'm excited about the prospects for this thing. I'll be able to formalize and sanitize some of my rants about things that stir me up: family, friends, my interrupted and now stagnant career in the college bookstore industry, Twins baseball, politics, jazz, movies, books, crosswords and the passing parade in general. I've got a few contacts at local law firms so I'll probably be able to find an attorney to defend me against the worst charges of libel and slander and enough friends (I think) to risk losing a few if sensitivities get bruised. My family has moved well past the point of even hoping that there's any redemption for me and now relies almost exclusively on rolling their collective eyes at whatever stupid thing I've done lately. Mostly though, it'll be me who'll be the laughing stock here. I've sensed for quite a while now that it's usually best to be quick with jokes at my own expense in order to beat anyone else to the punch.
I'm currently scheduled for surgery this coming Thursday to repair (ok, re-repair) a ruptured quad muscle of the left leg. I'd originally battered the poor thing back in July while up in the north woods. Getting out of that situation was tricky at best so I must have subconsciously decided to keep it a little more local this time around. Slipping and falling on the sidewalk in front of my house on Christmas day definitely made for an easier trip to urgent care than getting the Cook County first responders and ambulance out to the end of the Arrowhead Trail and back again. I'm sure that those folks up north are still getting plenty of laughs out of that stupid-tourist story and don't really need to see me any time soon anyway.
Here I sit with surgery a week away and another 3-4 month recovery period looming after that. What better way to while away the time than to do this on-line journal thing? Unless I can get my hands on a complete run of 30 Rock dvds on the cheap. My wife, Miz Susan, takes some credit for jinxing us with this latest fiasco. She bought me this cute forest green t-shirt with the motto "Live Simply". As if anything has ever been simple for me or for her since she met me. Our lives definitely took a sharp left hand veer away from the simple life with my Christmas morning acrobatics and maybe she did jinx us. Hence the weblog title, livingsimpleton. Da-da!!
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