I'm almost looking forward to the political campaigns swinging into high gear. It's the prospect of the onslaught of abrasive nonstop TV ads which brainless glued-to-the-tube morons like me have inflicted on us. It's hard to imagine that I can actually be looking forward to Michele Bachmann spots. You know; the ones in which she contemptuously spits out the mantra of the evils of Obama-care in her very best Minnesota church-basement, nasal whine. I probably should have my head examined.
But I swear that the onslaught of abrasive nonstop Christmas season TV ads from the auto industry has got me on the verge of dreaming of more face time with the likes of the Congresswoman. When you think about it though, the car ads and the Bachmann ads are really cut from just about the same cloth. I doubt that anyone who's bothering to read this needs any additional convincing that she's a truly heinous political boor. Stupid, smug, smarmy, sacrosanct, small-minded, self-important...I could go on. And that's just a few adjectives out of the S section of the dictionary. She is truly the ugly American in ways that Marlon Brando couldn't have come close to bringing to the big screen back in the day.
But the car ads that are making my stomach lurch every morning and have me knocking shit off the kitchen counters in my haste to grab the remote are every bit as ugly and embarrassingly American. Who on God's green earth would seriously be moved to go out and drop something in excess of a middle class annual income on a new holiday Lexus or BMW? Jeez, ya got me. Oh, wait...I know! It's the same heinous boors who are funding Michele Bachmann's run up the flagpole and the same boors who are doing their damnedest to keep anyone with a middle class annual income a permanent part of the lower middle class.
The ideal that these ads paint of a warped, demented, Mercedes-driven American elite is pure fuel for the Occupy crowd. And enough to gag most anyone even a tiny smidge to the left of the GOP boors, louts and oafs who strut their stuff on Capitol Hill these days. Like I said, it's enough to make me wish for grating attack ads from the campaign trail. In those media-bites, you can at least see the actual faces of the ugly Americans instead of the repulsively sanitized models we see in the holiday ads. And this is all the more bitter as the last of the St. Paul Ford Plant workers ponder their futures from the barstools at Tiffany's.
Maybe I'm just feeling a little jaded from too many hours of chasing down used textbooks and checking on an unending supply of just-invented ISBN's attached to textbooks which I will never in a million years chase down as used copies. Maybe I'm jealous that the velvet-collared overcoat crowd can afford new Infinitis (or so we're led to believe) while I can't even afford the cover charge to get onto a dealer's showroom floor to smudge the wax job on one of those damned things.
It must be a seasonal affective thing. I'm even getting tired of hearing Burl Ives's take on Holly Jolly Christmas and Bruce Springsteen's on Santa Claus is Comin'. How un-American is that?
Happy Holidays to all. Count your blessings.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Sunday, December 4, 2011
thanks have been given
There's always plenty to give thanks for here on Laurel Avenue, even during the seasons when giving thanks isn't officially recognized with paid days off work. There's usually enough to eat and drink around here and the two new cats give us plenty of laughs. I'm sure that I give Miz Susan plenty of laughs, too, even if some of those are the rueful what-in-the-hell-was-I-thinking sort.
We've moved in and out of the 4-day Thanksgiving season (6 or 7 days if you count the pre-frenzy housekeeping and food-shopping work that the season demands) and we may have slid irretrievably into winter. I suspect this because I just spent a couple of hours shoveling sidewalks and sweeping off cars. I cleaned off 3-4" of the 1-2" which we'd been told to expect from the latest Gulf moisture-sucking low pressure system meets northern cold front event. I ignored that first little blast we had a couple of weeks ago which turned every street in St. Paul into a multi-car pileup just waiting to happen. I didn't bust out the shovels back then; by rights, all of that first snow should have melted off, what with temps getting up into the 40's. But the weather people keep muttering about sun angles and cloud cover and other weather jargon. All this technical talk just seems like lame excuse-making but it might explain why there was still snow on the ground (and our sidewalk) when it snowed again yesterday.
I even cleared off the back deck which is usually Susan's responsibility. That falls to her because I don't really give a good goddamn about clearing off the back deck. It's not like it's warm enough to have dinner out there for awhile, is it? But she seems to think that it makes sense to keep a path clear to get the trash out to the alley. I thought we did just fine last year when we had to drive our garbage up the block and then down the alley because we had like four feet of snow in the back yard. But she's like that and besides she's got certain entertainments out on the deck which require access. Like confirming that rabbits are nasty and messy in all sorts of ways and that we should figure out how to get rid of all of them. If anyone needs rabbits, c'mon over. I don't have any ideas on how to cull the herd legally but I'll take notes if anyone else does.
I guess I'll know it's winter for good when the commutes to and from Brooklyn Park and EnHenn start nudging the hour-plus marker on the dashboard clock. Can't hardly wait. I'm still dabbling with the idea of checking motel rates out there in the NW suburbs. This could come in handy for the nights when the roads are impassable to the point that anyone with enough smarts will wonder if they don't really have to drive home to St. Paul. Let's see: $2.50 in gas in the Toyota vs. $40 for a room at the Motel 6 plus $15 for the big-ass pizza which would cover dinner and breakfast expenses. Not to mention a twelver of MGD. Probably not such a good idea.
At any rate, the back deck is definitely cleared off to the point where I can grill a steak out there. Last winter, the grill got iced over sometime in January and, even if every once in a while I could clear a path to it, it was mostly out of commission for a couple of months. Grilled steak every so often seems like something else to give thanks for.
I also feel like I owe gratitude to someone or something for our lively political scene. My favorite local Republican bigshot, Tony Sutton, just recently announced that he he's quitting his job as state GOP chair and planning to spend more time with his family. That's a nice sentiment though I haven't heard how the family feels about that. Every time I suggest to Miz Susan that I quit my job so as to spend more time with her, she reminds me that I've already tried that and that she thinks that she's still caught up on one-on-one time with me. I will miss Tony though. His conspiracy theorizing after every lost election was always thought-provoking. He'll be missed but, thankfully, Michele Bachmann doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon; her family's possibly made it clear how they feel about her spending more time with them. Just this morning, she was on the GOP-TV Network, oops...I meant the Fox News Network, and she was still promising us that she's going to hold that nasty little Barack Obama accountable for his policies and principles, as if he has any. I love that kind of talk. And I love the thought of her as our President. I'm sort of wondering how she's going to parlay the solid 3% of support she's got (and that's among the party faithful, some of whom can still recognize a nutball when they see one) into a set of keys of her very own to the White House. I know that might make me sound like something of a naysayer. But I am counting on the "suspension" of the Cain campaign to send a surge of energy and money and prospective voters her way. If only Rick Santorum doesn't grab all that swag up first. Hmmmm, Bachmann-Santorum, Santorum-Bachmann. So many candidates and only one spot on the ballot; how's a right-thinking Republican going to make up his or her mind? I guess that, sometimes, there can be too much (or too many) of a good thing. Maybe this is a bounty that we don't have to be all that thankful for.
You know where to find us. Drop us a line about the things you're thankful for.
We've moved in and out of the 4-day Thanksgiving season (6 or 7 days if you count the pre-frenzy housekeeping and food-shopping work that the season demands) and we may have slid irretrievably into winter. I suspect this because I just spent a couple of hours shoveling sidewalks and sweeping off cars. I cleaned off 3-4" of the 1-2" which we'd been told to expect from the latest Gulf moisture-sucking low pressure system meets northern cold front event. I ignored that first little blast we had a couple of weeks ago which turned every street in St. Paul into a multi-car pileup just waiting to happen. I didn't bust out the shovels back then; by rights, all of that first snow should have melted off, what with temps getting up into the 40's. But the weather people keep muttering about sun angles and cloud cover and other weather jargon. All this technical talk just seems like lame excuse-making but it might explain why there was still snow on the ground (and our sidewalk) when it snowed again yesterday.
I even cleared off the back deck which is usually Susan's responsibility. That falls to her because I don't really give a good goddamn about clearing off the back deck. It's not like it's warm enough to have dinner out there for awhile, is it? But she seems to think that it makes sense to keep a path clear to get the trash out to the alley. I thought we did just fine last year when we had to drive our garbage up the block and then down the alley because we had like four feet of snow in the back yard. But she's like that and besides she's got certain entertainments out on the deck which require access. Like confirming that rabbits are nasty and messy in all sorts of ways and that we should figure out how to get rid of all of them. If anyone needs rabbits, c'mon over. I don't have any ideas on how to cull the herd legally but I'll take notes if anyone else does.
I guess I'll know it's winter for good when the commutes to and from Brooklyn Park and EnHenn start nudging the hour-plus marker on the dashboard clock. Can't hardly wait. I'm still dabbling with the idea of checking motel rates out there in the NW suburbs. This could come in handy for the nights when the roads are impassable to the point that anyone with enough smarts will wonder if they don't really have to drive home to St. Paul. Let's see: $2.50 in gas in the Toyota vs. $40 for a room at the Motel 6 plus $15 for the big-ass pizza which would cover dinner and breakfast expenses. Not to mention a twelver of MGD. Probably not such a good idea.
At any rate, the back deck is definitely cleared off to the point where I can grill a steak out there. Last winter, the grill got iced over sometime in January and, even if every once in a while I could clear a path to it, it was mostly out of commission for a couple of months. Grilled steak every so often seems like something else to give thanks for.
I also feel like I owe gratitude to someone or something for our lively political scene. My favorite local Republican bigshot, Tony Sutton, just recently announced that he he's quitting his job as state GOP chair and planning to spend more time with his family. That's a nice sentiment though I haven't heard how the family feels about that. Every time I suggest to Miz Susan that I quit my job so as to spend more time with her, she reminds me that I've already tried that and that she thinks that she's still caught up on one-on-one time with me. I will miss Tony though. His conspiracy theorizing after every lost election was always thought-provoking. He'll be missed but, thankfully, Michele Bachmann doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon; her family's possibly made it clear how they feel about her spending more time with them. Just this morning, she was on the GOP-TV Network, oops...I meant the Fox News Network, and she was still promising us that she's going to hold that nasty little Barack Obama accountable for his policies and principles, as if he has any. I love that kind of talk. And I love the thought of her as our President. I'm sort of wondering how she's going to parlay the solid 3% of support she's got (and that's among the party faithful, some of whom can still recognize a nutball when they see one) into a set of keys of her very own to the White House. I know that might make me sound like something of a naysayer. But I am counting on the "suspension" of the Cain campaign to send a surge of energy and money and prospective voters her way. If only Rick Santorum doesn't grab all that swag up first. Hmmmm, Bachmann-Santorum, Santorum-Bachmann. So many candidates and only one spot on the ballot; how's a right-thinking Republican going to make up his or her mind? I guess that, sometimes, there can be too much (or too many) of a good thing. Maybe this is a bounty that we don't have to be all that thankful for.
You know where to find us. Drop us a line about the things you're thankful for.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
summer's upon us
We've pretty much gone into excessive heat alert lockdown here at the Laurel Avenue summer estate. Which consists mainly of shutting all the windows, turning on our three pathetic window air conditioners and then pointing fans in all sorts of random directions. This in the hope that at least a little bit of cool air will collect in some corner, any corner, of the house. If that's actually happened, I haven't yet been able to figure out which corner it's hiding in.
I'm thinking about working up the energy to make a dash for the kiddie pool we've got filled up in the back yard. It looks like it's sitting in a nice puddle of shade from the little tree out there. But that would mean going out into that inferno and it's going to take some convincing before I decide that's worthwhile. My only other idea for beating the heat is to walk (or maybe drive) up to Snelling Avenue and do some circuit training between the Dairy Queen and a barstool at O'Gara's just across the street. But that would also involve enduring the Turkish bath conditions outside. I just don't know.
It could be worse. I could be at work and forced to unload pallets of cartons of textbooks onto a small cart and then schlep them into the store. I managed to duck that work detail this past week and I'm still trying to reconstruct whatever it was I did to avoid that. It would be worth remembering for the next time we get massive deliveries dropped at our doorstep. I did bring home a shopping bag full of paperwork from the store that needs to be pushed into various piles and marked up in ways that will guarantee that I won't remember what the markings mean when i get back to work. I think that I'm expressly forbidden from even thinking about my job during my off hours but I've had a tough time dumbing down to that extent. I'll probably never be the ideal government employee.
I, for one, am definitely grateful to be working. Plenty of other state employees aren't. I feel particularly bad for Kurt Zellers and Amy Koch, our GOP legislative honchos. Daily, these poor, humble servant leaders have to scuttle out into the bright, hot glare of the media spotlight and come up with new ways to call Mark Dayton a low-life dirtball who's intent on sabotaging the will of the people. GOPers love talking about the will of the people. Well, you didn't hear much of that will of the people stuff in late 2008 and into 2009 after they got their ears pinned back by that pesky Obamma and his evil ACORNers.
I don't give much credit to those carping lefty critics who accuse these hardworking Repubs of being dupes and lackeys of the corporate big money financiers and string pullers. Hey, hasn't anyone heard of trickle down economics? Doesn't everyone realize that if we just let the millionaires alone to run their businesses as they see fit, we'll see thousands of subsistence-wage, service industry jobs opening up for recession-plagued middle America? Why, some of those very jobs might be food service and swimming pool maintenance gigs at the country clubs of the upper crust. Or, for the most fortunate, jobs right on-site at the Lake Minnetonka and North Oaks mansions of the trickler-downers. Jeez, guys. Wise up.
I don't know about Speaker Zellers but Majority Leader Koch is reported to have refused her paycheck during the shutdown. She deserves tips of hats if this is the case. Maybe she's got some money stashed away at home or there's a second income in the family. At any rate, I'm thinking of taking up a collection to make things a little easier for the Speaker and the ML during these tough times. I was thinking that maybe we could pool our nickels and dimes and buy a new bowl for Kurt Zellers's haircuts. He's been looking a little more stylin' since he got his promotion last November but it couldn't hurt to have that extra bowl on hand if the evil DFL retakes the House in oh-twelve. I'm at a loss as to what to get for Senator Koch. The first things that come to mind are mean-spirited and, despite what people have come to expect from me, I'm going to resist those. I am open to suggestions, however.
OK, time to get serious about watching the tail end of the the Twins game and that shopping bagful of paper work (don't tell my boss). Maybe the Twinks can cling to their 5-0 lead over the hated Southsiders and maybe I'll actually push some of that paper into sensible piles. And there's always Dairy Queen calling.
I'm thinking about working up the energy to make a dash for the kiddie pool we've got filled up in the back yard. It looks like it's sitting in a nice puddle of shade from the little tree out there. But that would mean going out into that inferno and it's going to take some convincing before I decide that's worthwhile. My only other idea for beating the heat is to walk (or maybe drive) up to Snelling Avenue and do some circuit training between the Dairy Queen and a barstool at O'Gara's just across the street. But that would also involve enduring the Turkish bath conditions outside. I just don't know.
It could be worse. I could be at work and forced to unload pallets of cartons of textbooks onto a small cart and then schlep them into the store. I managed to duck that work detail this past week and I'm still trying to reconstruct whatever it was I did to avoid that. It would be worth remembering for the next time we get massive deliveries dropped at our doorstep. I did bring home a shopping bag full of paperwork from the store that needs to be pushed into various piles and marked up in ways that will guarantee that I won't remember what the markings mean when i get back to work. I think that I'm expressly forbidden from even thinking about my job during my off hours but I've had a tough time dumbing down to that extent. I'll probably never be the ideal government employee.
I, for one, am definitely grateful to be working. Plenty of other state employees aren't. I feel particularly bad for Kurt Zellers and Amy Koch, our GOP legislative honchos. Daily, these poor, humble servant leaders have to scuttle out into the bright, hot glare of the media spotlight and come up with new ways to call Mark Dayton a low-life dirtball who's intent on sabotaging the will of the people. GOPers love talking about the will of the people. Well, you didn't hear much of that will of the people stuff in late 2008 and into 2009 after they got their ears pinned back by that pesky Obamma and his evil ACORNers.
I don't give much credit to those carping lefty critics who accuse these hardworking Repubs of being dupes and lackeys of the corporate big money financiers and string pullers. Hey, hasn't anyone heard of trickle down economics? Doesn't everyone realize that if we just let the millionaires alone to run their businesses as they see fit, we'll see thousands of subsistence-wage, service industry jobs opening up for recession-plagued middle America? Why, some of those very jobs might be food service and swimming pool maintenance gigs at the country clubs of the upper crust. Or, for the most fortunate, jobs right on-site at the Lake Minnetonka and North Oaks mansions of the trickler-downers. Jeez, guys. Wise up.
I don't know about Speaker Zellers but Majority Leader Koch is reported to have refused her paycheck during the shutdown. She deserves tips of hats if this is the case. Maybe she's got some money stashed away at home or there's a second income in the family. At any rate, I'm thinking of taking up a collection to make things a little easier for the Speaker and the ML during these tough times. I was thinking that maybe we could pool our nickels and dimes and buy a new bowl for Kurt Zellers's haircuts. He's been looking a little more stylin' since he got his promotion last November but it couldn't hurt to have that extra bowl on hand if the evil DFL retakes the House in oh-twelve. I'm at a loss as to what to get for Senator Koch. The first things that come to mind are mean-spirited and, despite what people have come to expect from me, I'm going to resist those. I am open to suggestions, however.
OK, time to get serious about watching the tail end of the the Twins game and that shopping bagful of paper work (don't tell my boss). Maybe the Twinks can cling to their 5-0 lead over the hated Southsiders and maybe I'll actually push some of that paper into sensible piles. And there's always Dairy Queen calling.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
waking up the day after the end of days
The Sunday newspaper has a date of May 22nd this morning. From this I’m guessing that the world didn’t really end yesterday. For further confirmation, there don’t seem to be any second-coming sized headlines above the fold of the first section. We did get some dime-sized hail after dinner last night but that was as close as we came to earth shattering, life-as-we-know-it ending natural disaster type shit. No earthquakes, no floods of biblical proportion, no cracks opening up in the back yard and swallowing up me and Miz Susan and all of the trappings of our sinful and decadent middle class life style. It's been kind of a letdown.
Not that I was actually expecting much in the way of Old Testament fireworks. I walked over to Great Clips for a haircut at about two yesterday afternoon and on the way home I stopped at Super America to buy a couple of quick picks on the Powerball. Not exactly the actions of someone who was planning on starting in on the eternal burning in hell thing within the next five hours or so. And of course I took a swing through Cheapo (both sides of the street) on the way home. I didn’t buy anything but if I had, it’s unlikely that I’d have rushed home to slap it into the CD player or onto the turntable to give it a spin.
On the way across the Cheapo parking lot, I found a crumpled up dollar bill. Taking this as a sure sign from one god or another, I walked back to SA to buy another Powerball ticket. What the hell? If I was doing the heretical non-believer schtick, I might as well jump all over it with both feet. I could have run home, popped the buck into an envelope and then run back up to the mailbox to send it off to the Harold Camping Ministry. I think that I probably could have made the afternoon pickup. But that’s not me. Even staring into the fiery depths, I’m not about to prop up some 90-year old quack who thinks he can count up to 7,000.
Good sweet Jesus above, Miz Susan told me that some of the more anxious of her 4th graders had said that they were a little worried about the potential for unpleasantness. Don’t these end of the world nut-cases have anything better to do than frighten 10-year olds? If they’d wanted to do some worthwhile doom and gloom predicting, why hadn’t they warned me well in advance that the Twins would get bit by the injury bug big time and suck as bad as they have? That would have been something I’d have paid attention to. For a tip like that, I might even have sent a few bucks Camping’s way for his predictions on individual game results. Hey, no harm in laying a little off, just in case, is there?
I suppose that it’s possible that the world truly did end yesterday and that I just didn’t notice the transition from my previous hell-on-earth existence to the real live fire and brimstone stuff. But I’m not buying that. My life wasn’t (and still isn’t, apparently) anywhere near a hell on earth. I’ll admit that a few others might have believed that theirs were, just from the effects of having had to deal with me on a regular basis. But as my old friend Laura Prail used to say, “F--- ‘em if they can’t take a joke.”
No, friends and family, there aren’t going to be any easy outs for us courtesy of some wack-job who’s spent a little too much time staring at the small print in his Bible. We’re in it for the long run and we should try to make the best of things. Keep up the good work.
Not that I was actually expecting much in the way of Old Testament fireworks. I walked over to Great Clips for a haircut at about two yesterday afternoon and on the way home I stopped at Super America to buy a couple of quick picks on the Powerball. Not exactly the actions of someone who was planning on starting in on the eternal burning in hell thing within the next five hours or so. And of course I took a swing through Cheapo (both sides of the street) on the way home. I didn’t buy anything but if I had, it’s unlikely that I’d have rushed home to slap it into the CD player or onto the turntable to give it a spin.
On the way across the Cheapo parking lot, I found a crumpled up dollar bill. Taking this as a sure sign from one god or another, I walked back to SA to buy another Powerball ticket. What the hell? If I was doing the heretical non-believer schtick, I might as well jump all over it with both feet. I could have run home, popped the buck into an envelope and then run back up to the mailbox to send it off to the Harold Camping Ministry. I think that I probably could have made the afternoon pickup. But that’s not me. Even staring into the fiery depths, I’m not about to prop up some 90-year old quack who thinks he can count up to 7,000.
Good sweet Jesus above, Miz Susan told me that some of the more anxious of her 4th graders had said that they were a little worried about the potential for unpleasantness. Don’t these end of the world nut-cases have anything better to do than frighten 10-year olds? If they’d wanted to do some worthwhile doom and gloom predicting, why hadn’t they warned me well in advance that the Twins would get bit by the injury bug big time and suck as bad as they have? That would have been something I’d have paid attention to. For a tip like that, I might even have sent a few bucks Camping’s way for his predictions on individual game results. Hey, no harm in laying a little off, just in case, is there?
I suppose that it’s possible that the world truly did end yesterday and that I just didn’t notice the transition from my previous hell-on-earth existence to the real live fire and brimstone stuff. But I’m not buying that. My life wasn’t (and still isn’t, apparently) anywhere near a hell on earth. I’ll admit that a few others might have believed that theirs were, just from the effects of having had to deal with me on a regular basis. But as my old friend Laura Prail used to say, “F--- ‘em if they can’t take a joke.”
No, friends and family, there aren’t going to be any easy outs for us courtesy of some wack-job who’s spent a little too much time staring at the small print in his Bible. We’re in it for the long run and we should try to make the best of things. Keep up the good work.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
harmon killebrew then and now
I had a dream over the weekend in which Jim Lemon was called into a Twins game to pinch hit against a tough left-hander. Lemon homered, an opposite field line drive that snuck just over the right field wall and inside the foul pole.
Don't ask me where that came from. I suppose I think about Jim Lemon every once in a while as my fevered little brain goes over archival footage from my so-called life. But still. Lemon moved out to Minnesota when Calvin Griffith packed up the Washington Senators in the middle of the night and high-tailed it for the upper Midwest. He was coming off of back to back 30+ homer and 100 RBI seasons but he must have missed the muggy tropical nights in DC. He dropped off to 14 homeruns for the Twins in '61 and he was out of the game by 1964.
I have no idea how often Jim Lemon went the opposite way with any of his 71 long balls in 1959 and '60. But however many it was is probably more than teammate Harmon Killebrew did in all of his 573 lifetime homeruns. Harmon hit 'em high and he hit 'em to left field. And as much as Jim Lemon seemed to miss hot and sweaty Griffith Stadium, Harmon seemed to love it here. You got the feeling that he wasn't looking back. And now, only in our memories.
I'm sure that I saw dozens of Killebrew homers on TV Twins games or during the 10:25 sports wraps after those games. And probably listened to announcers' calls of many more on WCCO over the years. I only recall seeing two in person and both came at old Metropolitan Stadium.
The first was when I was 10 or 11. The Twins lost but Killebrew homered, one of his high soaring shots. When I went to games in those days I'd keep score and then try to finish up my scorecard in the lighted tunnel under Ft. Snelling on the way home. I begged Doug to slow down so that I could tally the last RBI's but I doubt that he ever did.
I also saw what turned out to be his last homerun, a straight-line bullet shot to the left-center field seats. This was in 1975 and I was unemployed to the point that I could ride my bike out to Metropolitan Stadium for a day game. Harmon was sporting the powder-blue double knits of the Kansas City Royals on that day. It still doesn't seem right. He hit 14 for KC that year but finished with a batting average of .199. Everybody gets old.
And, despite the aspirations of four billion souls currently hoping to be the one who lives forever, I suspect that every one of us is going to die sooner or later. Harmon Killebrew passed that way today and it does make me a little sad.
I drafted Harmon Killebrew for my Strat-O-Matic team in 1976. He never saw the light of day on the big team until September call-ups and even then he had pretty limited value. A little pop and a little on-base against lefties but that was about it. Lou Jungbauer had offered me all sorts of mid-level talent for Harmon, his boyhood hero. But I resisited and Harm's day of glory finally came. I pinch hit with him to lead off an inning in a game which had gone into extras. Jim Barber, the opposing manager, ooh-ed and ahh-ed over Harmon's pathetic card and intentionally walked him. There was a pinch runner waiting for Harmon when he arrived at first base and I somehow managed to push that runner around to score the winning run. Chalk up another one in the W column for the Duluth Gabbro.
Honest to God, I rememember it like it was yesterday and that was in 1976 or '77. It happened just down the street from where we live now, in the big duplex at 1630 Laurel.
There you have it, from boyhood hero to figment of the imagination of a reluctant adult's baseball dream life. Pretty much the same things, I suppose.
Thanks very much for everything.
Don't ask me where that came from. I suppose I think about Jim Lemon every once in a while as my fevered little brain goes over archival footage from my so-called life. But still. Lemon moved out to Minnesota when Calvin Griffith packed up the Washington Senators in the middle of the night and high-tailed it for the upper Midwest. He was coming off of back to back 30+ homer and 100 RBI seasons but he must have missed the muggy tropical nights in DC. He dropped off to 14 homeruns for the Twins in '61 and he was out of the game by 1964.
I have no idea how often Jim Lemon went the opposite way with any of his 71 long balls in 1959 and '60. But however many it was is probably more than teammate Harmon Killebrew did in all of his 573 lifetime homeruns. Harmon hit 'em high and he hit 'em to left field. And as much as Jim Lemon seemed to miss hot and sweaty Griffith Stadium, Harmon seemed to love it here. You got the feeling that he wasn't looking back. And now, only in our memories.
I'm sure that I saw dozens of Killebrew homers on TV Twins games or during the 10:25 sports wraps after those games. And probably listened to announcers' calls of many more on WCCO over the years. I only recall seeing two in person and both came at old Metropolitan Stadium.
The first was when I was 10 or 11. The Twins lost but Killebrew homered, one of his high soaring shots. When I went to games in those days I'd keep score and then try to finish up my scorecard in the lighted tunnel under Ft. Snelling on the way home. I begged Doug to slow down so that I could tally the last RBI's but I doubt that he ever did.
I also saw what turned out to be his last homerun, a straight-line bullet shot to the left-center field seats. This was in 1975 and I was unemployed to the point that I could ride my bike out to Metropolitan Stadium for a day game. Harmon was sporting the powder-blue double knits of the Kansas City Royals on that day. It still doesn't seem right. He hit 14 for KC that year but finished with a batting average of .199. Everybody gets old.
And, despite the aspirations of four billion souls currently hoping to be the one who lives forever, I suspect that every one of us is going to die sooner or later. Harmon Killebrew passed that way today and it does make me a little sad.
I drafted Harmon Killebrew for my Strat-O-Matic team in 1976. He never saw the light of day on the big team until September call-ups and even then he had pretty limited value. A little pop and a little on-base against lefties but that was about it. Lou Jungbauer had offered me all sorts of mid-level talent for Harmon, his boyhood hero. But I resisited and Harm's day of glory finally came. I pinch hit with him to lead off an inning in a game which had gone into extras. Jim Barber, the opposing manager, ooh-ed and ahh-ed over Harmon's pathetic card and intentionally walked him. There was a pinch runner waiting for Harmon when he arrived at first base and I somehow managed to push that runner around to score the winning run. Chalk up another one in the W column for the Duluth Gabbro.
Honest to God, I rememember it like it was yesterday and that was in 1976 or '77. It happened just down the street from where we live now, in the big duplex at 1630 Laurel.
There you have it, from boyhood hero to figment of the imagination of a reluctant adult's baseball dream life. Pretty much the same things, I suppose.
Thanks very much for everything.
Friday, April 1, 2011
We've waited 'til next year
Good sweet Lord above. Miz Susan and I put up with this godawful winter which we've barely survived to see the Twins break out of the gate like this? To trail 10-3 after 6 1/2 to the frickin' Blue Jays? What the hell!?!
In all fairness, I've been predicting for the past few days (and I hope I'm wrong) that the locals will open at Target Field sporting a less than gawdy 2-4 record. To the unfamiliar, that's two wins against four losses. The Twinks stunk against the Jays last year. They even singlehandedly, in a manner of speaking, prolonged by a couple of seasons the major league career of no-talent bum Edward Encarnacion by serving up 7 of his season's 21 homers. Take away those 7 homers and you're left with a poor man's Casey Blake. And with a worse beard to boot. And the Twins recent lack of success against the hated Yankees (boooo, hissss!!) is well documented. In short, a bad way to have to start the season and I think they'll pay for it.
During the pre-game, Miz Susan had wondered about some of her unenlightened friends at work who'd bad-mouthed baseball for a dull, slow-moving coma inducer. She knew they were wrong and told them so and told them why. But, by about the 4th inning of this nonsense, she was bouncing coarse expletives off the wall and heading back to the kitchen for another hot dog.
Just like any single game of baseball, any single season of baseball has to be relished for what it is. American tradition at its best, a symbolic playing out of Acts I through III of the theater of seasons, a reason to get up in the morning and check the box scores over coffee and to stay up late at night to watch the 8th inning of the game against the Mariners.
Games like tonight's will have me bouncing coarse expletives off the walls by July, probably even by June. But you gotta take the long view. So f'---in' what if the Blues Jays are on pace to hit 36 homers in 9 games (someone please tell me that we don't have to play these guys 9 times this year) as opposed to the measly 25 they managed to hit against us last season. Yeah, the Twins in the first inning looked like the JV tryouts for an 8-man high school baseball team.
But for right now, I'm as happy as can be that we've got baseball back in our lives for the next 7 months. Play ball. It is next year.
In all fairness, I've been predicting for the past few days (and I hope I'm wrong) that the locals will open at Target Field sporting a less than gawdy 2-4 record. To the unfamiliar, that's two wins against four losses. The Twinks stunk against the Jays last year. They even singlehandedly, in a manner of speaking, prolonged by a couple of seasons the major league career of no-talent bum Edward Encarnacion by serving up 7 of his season's 21 homers. Take away those 7 homers and you're left with a poor man's Casey Blake. And with a worse beard to boot. And the Twins recent lack of success against the hated Yankees (boooo, hissss!!) is well documented. In short, a bad way to have to start the season and I think they'll pay for it.
During the pre-game, Miz Susan had wondered about some of her unenlightened friends at work who'd bad-mouthed baseball for a dull, slow-moving coma inducer. She knew they were wrong and told them so and told them why. But, by about the 4th inning of this nonsense, she was bouncing coarse expletives off the wall and heading back to the kitchen for another hot dog.
Just like any single game of baseball, any single season of baseball has to be relished for what it is. American tradition at its best, a symbolic playing out of Acts I through III of the theater of seasons, a reason to get up in the morning and check the box scores over coffee and to stay up late at night to watch the 8th inning of the game against the Mariners.
Games like tonight's will have me bouncing coarse expletives off the walls by July, probably even by June. But you gotta take the long view. So f'---in' what if the Blues Jays are on pace to hit 36 homers in 9 games (someone please tell me that we don't have to play these guys 9 times this year) as opposed to the measly 25 they managed to hit against us last season. Yeah, the Twins in the first inning looked like the JV tryouts for an 8-man high school baseball team.
But for right now, I'm as happy as can be that we've got baseball back in our lives for the next 7 months. Play ball. It is next year.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
are we there yet?
Last week's 5" or so of snow on Monday (or Tuesday or whenever) made for the worst road conditions between St. Paul and Brooklyn Park that I've had to navigate for the whole winter driving season. And that's saying something, given the winter we've had.
The worst part of that latest blast and the follow-up big chill wasn't the way it forced the interstate system back to oxcart conditions. It was the way that it's delayed the arrival of spring. Yeah, sure, we've gone past March 21st which qualifies us as having survived the winter but winter clings in a number of annoying ways. After finally finishing carving out a path to our snow-bound gas grill last weekend, we were actually able to fire that bad boy up and broil up some chicken thighs. Those gains got wiped out by the 6" (did I say 5" earlier?) of hard crusty rain/snow mix that again marooned the poor grill out on the far corner of the deck. It took all week to clear a new passage. Hopefully, that'll be the last time.
A friend across the street nearly sent Miz Susan into full clinical seasonal affective depression this afternoon by asking us if we'd heard about the 12" we were going to get rocked with this coming Tuesday. The friend freely admitted to an afternoon of beer-drinking but stood by the prediction. This drove Susan back into the house, shouting over her shoulder as she went, "C'mon!! We've gotta watch the Weather Channel!! What's that station number again?!?" I'm hoping this turns out to be a false alarm but I wouldn't be surprised by anything.
As little as two or three weeks ago I'd have sworn that the snow banks out on the boulevard we're starting to quiver and give off an eerie blue glow from their depths. I pictured them heating up from the pressue of all that weight and reaching the critical mass necessary to transform them into living, flowing glaciers. I imagined waking up one morning and finding that our house had been scooped up in a new Ice Age migration and that we'd have to re-register to vote as residents of Owatonna.
I'm willing to admit in my more lucid moments that that's not all that likely and that spring is going to have sprung soon. Certainly by Easter which we're counting on since Susan again signed us up to host the annual ham feed. Won't that girl ever learn? And the stakes are even higher for us now. I don't know if I can handle an Easter Egg Hunt for the kids and and an Easter Beer Hunt for the alleged grown ups if I have to go out in advance and hide the booty in various snowdrifts.
So what if it snowed 7" (what's with this namby-pamby 5 or 6"?) within the last week? The Twins are about to break camp and head north, even if it's only to Atlanta. I caught the 9th inning in today's win over the Yankees (boooooo, hisssssssss) and John Gordon told me that the Twinkles have now won 5 in a row in Grapefruit League action and have moved to 18-11 for the preseason. Opening Day's a week away. Spring's gotta be coming soon. Bring it on; let's play ball.
The worst part of that latest blast and the follow-up big chill wasn't the way it forced the interstate system back to oxcart conditions. It was the way that it's delayed the arrival of spring. Yeah, sure, we've gone past March 21st which qualifies us as having survived the winter but winter clings in a number of annoying ways. After finally finishing carving out a path to our snow-bound gas grill last weekend, we were actually able to fire that bad boy up and broil up some chicken thighs. Those gains got wiped out by the 6" (did I say 5" earlier?) of hard crusty rain/snow mix that again marooned the poor grill out on the far corner of the deck. It took all week to clear a new passage. Hopefully, that'll be the last time.
A friend across the street nearly sent Miz Susan into full clinical seasonal affective depression this afternoon by asking us if we'd heard about the 12" we were going to get rocked with this coming Tuesday. The friend freely admitted to an afternoon of beer-drinking but stood by the prediction. This drove Susan back into the house, shouting over her shoulder as she went, "C'mon!! We've gotta watch the Weather Channel!! What's that station number again?!?" I'm hoping this turns out to be a false alarm but I wouldn't be surprised by anything.
As little as two or three weeks ago I'd have sworn that the snow banks out on the boulevard we're starting to quiver and give off an eerie blue glow from their depths. I pictured them heating up from the pressue of all that weight and reaching the critical mass necessary to transform them into living, flowing glaciers. I imagined waking up one morning and finding that our house had been scooped up in a new Ice Age migration and that we'd have to re-register to vote as residents of Owatonna.
I'm willing to admit in my more lucid moments that that's not all that likely and that spring is going to have sprung soon. Certainly by Easter which we're counting on since Susan again signed us up to host the annual ham feed. Won't that girl ever learn? And the stakes are even higher for us now. I don't know if I can handle an Easter Egg Hunt for the kids and and an Easter Beer Hunt for the alleged grown ups if I have to go out in advance and hide the booty in various snowdrifts.
So what if it snowed 7" (what's with this namby-pamby 5 or 6"?) within the last week? The Twins are about to break camp and head north, even if it's only to Atlanta. I caught the 9th inning in today's win over the Yankees (boooooo, hisssssssss) and John Gordon told me that the Twinkles have now won 5 in a row in Grapefruit League action and have moved to 18-11 for the preseason. Opening Day's a week away. Spring's gotta be coming soon. Bring it on; let's play ball.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
winter's icy grip...and not about to let go.
Anyone living around St. Paul or Smallsville (that suburb across the river) this past week or so might have bet that winter was in full-blown, panicked retreat. We had temps up over 50º, snow melting like crazy, grass reappearing where we'd never expected to see it again. Ever. I enjoyed it as much as the next guy but I suspected that if winter was in retreat then it was, at most, a strategic one and that we'd get our booties kicked for thinking that spring might come early this year.
I had a couple of run-ins with winter's shock troops before the February thaw that deserve to be remembered. A couple of beloved family members fell victim to the cold and ice and at least one person whom I've never met, other than in passing, very well could have.
The neighbor across the street shares my near-obsession (OK, outright obsession) with keeping not only our sidewalks cleared during the snowy months but as much as possible of the street fronting our houses too. Michael's got a huge technological edge over me in so far as he owns a honkin' huge-ass snowblower. He'll run that bad boy up and down his side of the street for hours to do what our city workers seem not to be allowed to do. That is, actually clear the street of snow. I think that snow emergency regulations ban car owners from parking on an east-west residential street during emergency plowing until that job is completed "curb to curb". Like that's ever happened. If Michael and I hadn't been so busy shoveling out the street, I swear that the banked snow on both boulevards would have spread until they met in the middle and created a perfect half-pipe for the snowboard crowd.
I have to resort to old-fashioned technology to allow Miz Susan and I to park our cars at something less than a 45º angle from the horizontal. By this I mean shovels. I've driven our shovels at a killing pace this winter and I've killed off more than couple of them. A good general has to be willing to sacrifice troops in a righteous cause and I see this as a just war. It's pretty easy not to form any emotional attachments to the plastic and lightweight metal junk that the hardware stores are peddling these days. But a solid shovel takes on a life of its own. A lesser loss than the function of my left leg on Christmas Day of 2009 was an old standby, a heavy aluminum-bladed coal shovel that could chop thru mounds of snow effortlessly. I'd left it on the boulevard and someone stole it from us as we were calling Urgent Care.
I had a tougher time with the war wounds suffered by another couple of veteran snow warriors. I've had two old 40's era shovels that I bought 30 years ago at a house sale in the neighborhood, literally just a couple of blocks from here. These were rugged old beasts, heavy and unwieldy and clumsy. Miz Susan hates them and tells me so on a regular schedule and that, further, I'm an idiot for keeping them. Whatever. They were the best we had for getting right down to the pavement in icy conditions and I'm not one to repay loyalty by sending old friends off to the landfill. At any rate, during one of my last attempts to excavate the curbstones, both of these guys succumbed to the strain. When the first one bit the dust I figured, "OK, you've lived a good life and you deserve some rest.". But when the second one fell victim to identical damages, I dug in my heels. These shovels are candidates for repair. Isn't that why we can buy progressively bigger nuts and bolts and washers? These two are going to go thru a brief rehab period and they're gonna be out there scraping loud and proud right down to the sidewalk. And besides, Susan hates them. I can't let her win that battle.
The aspiring unknown solder was someone I met in passing (literally if slowly) on Marshall Avenue shortly after dark a couple of weeks ago. I was on the way home from work and was headed up that long grade from the Lake Street Bridge in the Cretin/Cleveland neighborhood. I was still relatively alert after a day of energizing paper-pushing at my slacker state employees union job and so I was able to stop in time and avoid running this dope under the wheels of the Tahoe, bicycle and all. He or she (gender's a tough call what with all of the layering) was slogging up Marshall pretty much in the middle of the lane. And making a good 3-4 mph. Really moving right along.
I hate the summertime spandex-wrapped bicyclists who go up and down Summit Avenue three and four abreast as they admire the Victorian architecture and pass the time of day. But generally, I tip my hat to urban bicyclists and I've got a few friends and acquaintances who do the bike-commute thing right thru the winter. I've had times in my life when my bike was my main transport but I drew the line at riding between the first and last snowfalls of any winter. The one time that I went down on wet pavement (that time in the rain) was enough to make me realize how stupid I'd been that day and how lucky I'd been that I hadn't gotten ground up by the traffic behind me, all of which outweighed me and my bike many times over. Nevermore. But this dummy on Marshall was not only hogging the single passable lane on the road but he wasn't showing anything in the way of warning lights off the back end of either the bike or him/herself. No reflectors, no flashing red lights, no nothing.
When I was able, after a couple of blocks of funeral cortege pace, to slide past this person I took a quick look in the rearview mirror. I suppose I was curious to see if anyone else had run him down and was relieved to see that no one had. Yet. I did notice that he had a light on the front of the bicycle. I'm still hard-pressed to see the logic in that one.
That light on the front of the bike might have provided a valuable warning to a driver ahead that it was time to speed up in case the bike rider was trying to hook onto the rear bumper for a free ride. It would have made more sense to me to turn the whole dam contraption around and ride it backwards. It wouldn't have been a whole helluva lot slower than the 3-4 mph that it was making in forward speed. And then, the only working light in the whole operation would have actually warned following drivers that they were tailing a complete idiot.
As I write this on Saturday night we're hunkering down for the next savage wintry blast. I'm hearing anywhere from 6-14" before it winds down on Monday morning. Miz Susan and I were out for a few quick errands today including a quick stop at Trader Joe's along with about half of the population of St. Paul, Mendota Heights and Eagan. All busily stocking up for hunkering down. I think we'll make it through the weekend. After all, I've still got a few functioning shovels left and we've got a case of beer in the basement plus all those goodies from TJ's.. We should be good to survive the return of winter.
I had a couple of run-ins with winter's shock troops before the February thaw that deserve to be remembered. A couple of beloved family members fell victim to the cold and ice and at least one person whom I've never met, other than in passing, very well could have.
The neighbor across the street shares my near-obsession (OK, outright obsession) with keeping not only our sidewalks cleared during the snowy months but as much as possible of the street fronting our houses too. Michael's got a huge technological edge over me in so far as he owns a honkin' huge-ass snowblower. He'll run that bad boy up and down his side of the street for hours to do what our city workers seem not to be allowed to do. That is, actually clear the street of snow. I think that snow emergency regulations ban car owners from parking on an east-west residential street during emergency plowing until that job is completed "curb to curb". Like that's ever happened. If Michael and I hadn't been so busy shoveling out the street, I swear that the banked snow on both boulevards would have spread until they met in the middle and created a perfect half-pipe for the snowboard crowd.
I have to resort to old-fashioned technology to allow Miz Susan and I to park our cars at something less than a 45º angle from the horizontal. By this I mean shovels. I've driven our shovels at a killing pace this winter and I've killed off more than couple of them. A good general has to be willing to sacrifice troops in a righteous cause and I see this as a just war. It's pretty easy not to form any emotional attachments to the plastic and lightweight metal junk that the hardware stores are peddling these days. But a solid shovel takes on a life of its own. A lesser loss than the function of my left leg on Christmas Day of 2009 was an old standby, a heavy aluminum-bladed coal shovel that could chop thru mounds of snow effortlessly. I'd left it on the boulevard and someone stole it from us as we were calling Urgent Care.
I had a tougher time with the war wounds suffered by another couple of veteran snow warriors. I've had two old 40's era shovels that I bought 30 years ago at a house sale in the neighborhood, literally just a couple of blocks from here. These were rugged old beasts, heavy and unwieldy and clumsy. Miz Susan hates them and tells me so on a regular schedule and that, further, I'm an idiot for keeping them. Whatever. They were the best we had for getting right down to the pavement in icy conditions and I'm not one to repay loyalty by sending old friends off to the landfill. At any rate, during one of my last attempts to excavate the curbstones, both of these guys succumbed to the strain. When the first one bit the dust I figured, "OK, you've lived a good life and you deserve some rest.". But when the second one fell victim to identical damages, I dug in my heels. These shovels are candidates for repair. Isn't that why we can buy progressively bigger nuts and bolts and washers? These two are going to go thru a brief rehab period and they're gonna be out there scraping loud and proud right down to the sidewalk. And besides, Susan hates them. I can't let her win that battle.
The aspiring unknown solder was someone I met in passing (literally if slowly) on Marshall Avenue shortly after dark a couple of weeks ago. I was on the way home from work and was headed up that long grade from the Lake Street Bridge in the Cretin/Cleveland neighborhood. I was still relatively alert after a day of energizing paper-pushing at my slacker state employees union job and so I was able to stop in time and avoid running this dope under the wheels of the Tahoe, bicycle and all. He or she (gender's a tough call what with all of the layering) was slogging up Marshall pretty much in the middle of the lane. And making a good 3-4 mph. Really moving right along.
I hate the summertime spandex-wrapped bicyclists who go up and down Summit Avenue three and four abreast as they admire the Victorian architecture and pass the time of day. But generally, I tip my hat to urban bicyclists and I've got a few friends and acquaintances who do the bike-commute thing right thru the winter. I've had times in my life when my bike was my main transport but I drew the line at riding between the first and last snowfalls of any winter. The one time that I went down on wet pavement (that time in the rain) was enough to make me realize how stupid I'd been that day and how lucky I'd been that I hadn't gotten ground up by the traffic behind me, all of which outweighed me and my bike many times over. Nevermore. But this dummy on Marshall was not only hogging the single passable lane on the road but he wasn't showing anything in the way of warning lights off the back end of either the bike or him/herself. No reflectors, no flashing red lights, no nothing.
When I was able, after a couple of blocks of funeral cortege pace, to slide past this person I took a quick look in the rearview mirror. I suppose I was curious to see if anyone else had run him down and was relieved to see that no one had. Yet. I did notice that he had a light on the front of the bicycle. I'm still hard-pressed to see the logic in that one.
That light on the front of the bike might have provided a valuable warning to a driver ahead that it was time to speed up in case the bike rider was trying to hook onto the rear bumper for a free ride. It would have made more sense to me to turn the whole dam contraption around and ride it backwards. It wouldn't have been a whole helluva lot slower than the 3-4 mph that it was making in forward speed. And then, the only working light in the whole operation would have actually warned following drivers that they were tailing a complete idiot.
As I write this on Saturday night we're hunkering down for the next savage wintry blast. I'm hearing anywhere from 6-14" before it winds down on Monday morning. Miz Susan and I were out for a few quick errands today including a quick stop at Trader Joe's along with about half of the population of St. Paul, Mendota Heights and Eagan. All busily stocking up for hunkering down. I think we'll make it through the weekend. After all, I've still got a few functioning shovels left and we've got a case of beer in the basement plus all those goodies from TJ's.. We should be good to survive the return of winter.
Monday, January 31, 2011
umpteen rounds with old man winter and still counting
I like to believe that I'm holding my own against the nasty winter that's got us by the collective throat. I'm probably fooling myself but I really think that, at worst, it's a split decision in what's shaping up to be a heavyweight death match. I do know that Old Man Winter and I were slugging it out toe to toe last weekend.
Winter was probably proud of the sucker punch he landed last Saturday. I'd been hacking away at the escape tunnel from the alley up to the back deck. We haven't had a clear shot at our garbage can since before Christmas what with the all the snow that's piled up back there. Miz Susan has kept a little patch of the deck cleared off for star-gazing and shaking out the kitchen rugs and whatever else she does out there when I'm not looking. But as far as being able to haul the trash out through the back yard, well...that just ain't been happening. We've been driving the garbage up the block and down the alley to get rid of it. I'm almost positive that the neighbors are starting to gossip about us taking on airs what with our treating our garbage like it was royalty.
Anyway, I'd made a half-assed start at working northbound from the alley over the past few weeks. I'd managed to hack out a trench maybe 20 feet long but the house still looked like it was miles away. I made some nice progress on Saturday and had cut the remaining distance in half. Satisfied with that little bit of work (being a firm believer in never finishing today what I can put off until tomorrow), I slung my two shovels over my shoulder and headed down the alley and back to the front of the house. I was going to play around in the street a little bit and try to shovel some of the slop up onto the boulevard. As I was shifting my hold on the shovels, the nice red plastic grain scoop that I'd bought at Seven Corners Hardware manged to work it's way loose, spin out of my control and somehow land a jab to my upper lip. I was spitting out blood in no time. I managed to subdue the shovels and went to work on the street. It was perfectly fitting that my lifeblood was dripping down into the slush that I was shoveling.
As this was going on, Jasper--the incredibly handsome and intelligent American Standard poodle across the street--made one of his occasional breaks for freedom from inside his house. Maybe he's really not all that intelligent or maybe he was having a bad day because he bought into my act of playing indifferent and he let me lasso him and take him home. Where I let Jasper's owner guilt me into heading off down the block where another of our neighbors was out chipping ice all by herself. Something about maybe we should all pitch in to help her since her husband was serving overseas. Not a bad idea though I seemed to be the only one who was offering any volunteer help that day. Maybe others had beat me to it because her sidewalk looked a hell of a lot clearer than mine.
My lip didn't get swollen up nearly as much as I'd hoped so I got robbed of any possibility of sympathy attention. On the other hand, I was well enough the next day to get out into the backyard and to finish the path to the deck. We can now take out our garbage without looking all snooty and we've got an extra escape route from the house in case of fire or bill collectors knocking at the front door.
Who knows? I may even try to run a path over to the compost barrel or the bird feeder. We've been feeling guilty about throwing our compost-eligible garbage away (even factoring in chauffeur service). And feeling guiltier about not keeping the bird feeder full. Never too late to start feeding the sparrows and occasional cardinals and chickadees.
Maybe they'll spread the word to some of the other birds and we'll be rewarded with a few more goldfinches and even a hummingbird or two in a few months. Spring is going to come again and, between me and winter, I'm going to make sure that I'm the last one standing. I don't care how many rounds this goes.
Winter was probably proud of the sucker punch he landed last Saturday. I'd been hacking away at the escape tunnel from the alley up to the back deck. We haven't had a clear shot at our garbage can since before Christmas what with the all the snow that's piled up back there. Miz Susan has kept a little patch of the deck cleared off for star-gazing and shaking out the kitchen rugs and whatever else she does out there when I'm not looking. But as far as being able to haul the trash out through the back yard, well...that just ain't been happening. We've been driving the garbage up the block and down the alley to get rid of it. I'm almost positive that the neighbors are starting to gossip about us taking on airs what with our treating our garbage like it was royalty.
Anyway, I'd made a half-assed start at working northbound from the alley over the past few weeks. I'd managed to hack out a trench maybe 20 feet long but the house still looked like it was miles away. I made some nice progress on Saturday and had cut the remaining distance in half. Satisfied with that little bit of work (being a firm believer in never finishing today what I can put off until tomorrow), I slung my two shovels over my shoulder and headed down the alley and back to the front of the house. I was going to play around in the street a little bit and try to shovel some of the slop up onto the boulevard. As I was shifting my hold on the shovels, the nice red plastic grain scoop that I'd bought at Seven Corners Hardware manged to work it's way loose, spin out of my control and somehow land a jab to my upper lip. I was spitting out blood in no time. I managed to subdue the shovels and went to work on the street. It was perfectly fitting that my lifeblood was dripping down into the slush that I was shoveling.
As this was going on, Jasper--the incredibly handsome and intelligent American Standard poodle across the street--made one of his occasional breaks for freedom from inside his house. Maybe he's really not all that intelligent or maybe he was having a bad day because he bought into my act of playing indifferent and he let me lasso him and take him home. Where I let Jasper's owner guilt me into heading off down the block where another of our neighbors was out chipping ice all by herself. Something about maybe we should all pitch in to help her since her husband was serving overseas. Not a bad idea though I seemed to be the only one who was offering any volunteer help that day. Maybe others had beat me to it because her sidewalk looked a hell of a lot clearer than mine.
My lip didn't get swollen up nearly as much as I'd hoped so I got robbed of any possibility of sympathy attention. On the other hand, I was well enough the next day to get out into the backyard and to finish the path to the deck. We can now take out our garbage without looking all snooty and we've got an extra escape route from the house in case of fire or bill collectors knocking at the front door.
Who knows? I may even try to run a path over to the compost barrel or the bird feeder. We've been feeling guilty about throwing our compost-eligible garbage away (even factoring in chauffeur service). And feeling guiltier about not keeping the bird feeder full. Never too late to start feeding the sparrows and occasional cardinals and chickadees.
Maybe they'll spread the word to some of the other birds and we'll be rewarded with a few more goldfinches and even a hummingbird or two in a few months. Spring is going to come again and, between me and winter, I'm going to make sure that I'm the last one standing. I don't care how many rounds this goes.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
off-target
Miz Susan and I make a thing out of Sunday mornings. Drink some coffee, eat a little breakfast, choke down our handfuls of prescription and over-the-counter drugs, check out the Sunday paper. And sometimes the Thursday, Friday and Saturday papers if the pace of the week has gotten a little too frenzied for us.
There's not much joy for me in the Sunday paper between late-October and early-March. I've fallen away from following football and hockey and never was much for basketball in the first place so the sports section doesn't hold much allure. Think about it, a quick check of high school boys' swimming results (to remind me of just how bad I was, even 40 years ago) and three sentences on Joe Crede's free agent deal with the Rockies don't chew up more than three or four minutes. The Sunday obits page has gotten gigantic but that doesn't take long either. Once I've confirmed that I'm not featured among the recently departed, there isn't much left but to scan the news sections to confirm what terrible shape the world, country, state and neighborhood are in with an occasional rowser from Michelle Bachmann. After that, it gets down to arm-wrestling with Susan over the advertising sections.
We use the grocery ads to plan out our dinner menus for the week. I'm partial to the Cub ads but Susan, even if she won't always admit it but usually does, hates the place. She'll come up with almost any excuse as to why I shouldn't go there. Like, "Oh, it's OK hon. I was gonna stop at the coop, Trader Joe's, Kowalski's, Widmer's and Baker's Square after school tomorrow anyway." Right. She even thinks that Target qualifies as a full-fledged grocery store and yesterday somehow sweet-talked me into going there instead of Cub. I think that it was the turkey breast that Target was advertising at 79¢ a pound (half of Cub's price) that she used as Exhibit A. Made sense to me.
Our trip to Target last weekend was a disaster. I had this horrid grim feeling almost the whole time I was there. It was as if I knew that a bunch of the other shoppers were serial killers and that they were all feeling the itch again. Nobody actually threatened to kill either of us but I repeatedly got cut off and run into and forced to do long detours to bypass aisles that looked more like cart storage areas than retail spaces, all of this so many times that I started to get the creepy paranoid feeling. To top it off, somebody made off with our cart full of 45 minutes worth of middle-American consumerism and Miz Susan's favorite winter gloves which had probably originally been bought at Target. We were so thrown off by that disaster that we couldn't reconstruct what we needed (yeah, our list was in the stolen cart, too) and ended up forgetting half the stuff we'd come to buy.
Shrugging off that recent defeat, I headed for Target with my list in hand and my mouth watering at the thought of 79¢ a pound turkey breast in the crockpot. I'd also been given an auxiliary to-do list, most of which centered around service issues for the Chevy Tahoe at Holiday. Which was mostly a ploy to get the car washed. Who in their right mind washes a car when it's 8º outside? But, what the hell, there are certain standards we need to make a pretence at maintaining and I love being inside the car when it's getting washed. I was deprived of so many things as a child.
Target pretty much overwhelms me whenever I go with a long list of must-haves. I've been reduced to tears of frustration and shame while looking fruitlessly for square cotton pads for makeup removal. This time I got most of what I needed without having to double back over the entire store more than four or five times. It was the two-pack of re-usable lunch totes that nearly did me in this trip. I asked like five different redshirts where they were and I actually got what turned out to be helpful advice but it took me about four passes through the bargain section back by the seasonals before I found the damn things. And when I got them home, I got chewed out for not buying them in patterns rather than in basic black and purple. Sigh.
Oh yeah, the turkey breast. They hadn't gotten their shipment in, something about their distributor being out. Distributor, schmischtributor. They own the distributor, for God's sake. I was told that the shipment was on a truck due for arrival later that night. Check back tomorrow. Which I did today from work. Still no turkey breast at 79¢ a pound. Sigh again. Walgreen's didn't have the special Anniversary Edition of Uno back in stock either, another of the hopeless grails that I've been assigned by this sadistic woman I live with.
You can probably guess where this is headed. After Miz Susan told me in no uncertain terms not to, I stopped tonight at Cub out in Brooklyn Park for their turkey breast. It was more expensive than Target's alleged turkey breast but at least it was in stock. And I wasn't about to miss out on hot turkey sandwiches out of the crockpot on Wednesday night.
There's not much joy for me in the Sunday paper between late-October and early-March. I've fallen away from following football and hockey and never was much for basketball in the first place so the sports section doesn't hold much allure. Think about it, a quick check of high school boys' swimming results (to remind me of just how bad I was, even 40 years ago) and three sentences on Joe Crede's free agent deal with the Rockies don't chew up more than three or four minutes. The Sunday obits page has gotten gigantic but that doesn't take long either. Once I've confirmed that I'm not featured among the recently departed, there isn't much left but to scan the news sections to confirm what terrible shape the world, country, state and neighborhood are in with an occasional rowser from Michelle Bachmann. After that, it gets down to arm-wrestling with Susan over the advertising sections.
We use the grocery ads to plan out our dinner menus for the week. I'm partial to the Cub ads but Susan, even if she won't always admit it but usually does, hates the place. She'll come up with almost any excuse as to why I shouldn't go there. Like, "Oh, it's OK hon. I was gonna stop at the coop, Trader Joe's, Kowalski's, Widmer's and Baker's Square after school tomorrow anyway." Right. She even thinks that Target qualifies as a full-fledged grocery store and yesterday somehow sweet-talked me into going there instead of Cub. I think that it was the turkey breast that Target was advertising at 79¢ a pound (half of Cub's price) that she used as Exhibit A. Made sense to me.
Our trip to Target last weekend was a disaster. I had this horrid grim feeling almost the whole time I was there. It was as if I knew that a bunch of the other shoppers were serial killers and that they were all feeling the itch again. Nobody actually threatened to kill either of us but I repeatedly got cut off and run into and forced to do long detours to bypass aisles that looked more like cart storage areas than retail spaces, all of this so many times that I started to get the creepy paranoid feeling. To top it off, somebody made off with our cart full of 45 minutes worth of middle-American consumerism and Miz Susan's favorite winter gloves which had probably originally been bought at Target. We were so thrown off by that disaster that we couldn't reconstruct what we needed (yeah, our list was in the stolen cart, too) and ended up forgetting half the stuff we'd come to buy.
Shrugging off that recent defeat, I headed for Target with my list in hand and my mouth watering at the thought of 79¢ a pound turkey breast in the crockpot. I'd also been given an auxiliary to-do list, most of which centered around service issues for the Chevy Tahoe at Holiday. Which was mostly a ploy to get the car washed. Who in their right mind washes a car when it's 8º outside? But, what the hell, there are certain standards we need to make a pretence at maintaining and I love being inside the car when it's getting washed. I was deprived of so many things as a child.
Target pretty much overwhelms me whenever I go with a long list of must-haves. I've been reduced to tears of frustration and shame while looking fruitlessly for square cotton pads for makeup removal. This time I got most of what I needed without having to double back over the entire store more than four or five times. It was the two-pack of re-usable lunch totes that nearly did me in this trip. I asked like five different redshirts where they were and I actually got what turned out to be helpful advice but it took me about four passes through the bargain section back by the seasonals before I found the damn things. And when I got them home, I got chewed out for not buying them in patterns rather than in basic black and purple. Sigh.
Oh yeah, the turkey breast. They hadn't gotten their shipment in, something about their distributor being out. Distributor, schmischtributor. They own the distributor, for God's sake. I was told that the shipment was on a truck due for arrival later that night. Check back tomorrow. Which I did today from work. Still no turkey breast at 79¢ a pound. Sigh again. Walgreen's didn't have the special Anniversary Edition of Uno back in stock either, another of the hopeless grails that I've been assigned by this sadistic woman I live with.
You can probably guess where this is headed. After Miz Susan told me in no uncertain terms not to, I stopped tonight at Cub out in Brooklyn Park for their turkey breast. It was more expensive than Target's alleged turkey breast but at least it was in stock. And I wasn't about to miss out on hot turkey sandwiches out of the crockpot on Wednesday night.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
season's greetings!!!
Another sure sign of the change of seasons besides the Linwood Monroe charity auction is the arrival of Christmas and other holiday greetings cards. We had a great collection this year and I enjoyed almost all of them. We're fortunate to live in a house that's hosted a number of homeowners over a relatively short timespan so we get not only the cards addressed to us but those intended for people several notches down the title opinion from us. Part of me wants to return the cards from people we don't know and tell them that their erstwhile friends have become even more erst. But Miz Susan won't let me and maybe that's for the best.
One of the departed who still gets cards here (as well as investment advice) is apparently alive and well to the point of having run for a Ramsey County office this past election season. A few of his lawn signs popped up in the front yards of some of the neighbors so he must have been an OK guy. I didn't vote for him. We tend to stick to straight party line voting and this guy didn't show up on my sample ballot. Our candidate actually won which seems like a rarity some years. That was enough to bind the wounds of not getting to live in the local version of the George-Washington-slept-here house.
A couple of years ago, we opened a card addressed to some long-gone tenant and discovered a Christmas letter which caught Miz Susan's fancy. It was a Christmas ABC letter and the damn thing ate at her for a couple of years before she finally gave up on trying to shame me into concocting one. She cranked one out during the uneventful hours of her jury duty stint. She did a considerably better than average job, better than I ever could have. She's a sucker for kids' illustrated ABC books so maybe there was some creative longing that finally found an outlet. Except for filling in the letter "F" which she'd forgotten (and what was that about?), I could only come up with a few minor tweaks and edits to make it production ready. We sent it out tucked in some 30 year old holiday cards that I'd probably bought home from the Hamline Bookstore in about 1988. No one's complained yet and we haven't had the postal inspectors at our door telling us to quit wasting the mail carriers' time with junk like that so I'm going to call it a success. If any of you missed out on this thing just let us know and we'll get one headed your way.
I don't usually feel sorry for our mail carrier. He sometimes gets the mail delivered to us before dark and he liked our cat Miles but other than that we're not all that crazy about him. We had a great carrier when we moved in but he didn't last the year before the geniuses downtown pulled him off his long-time route and turned our block over to a cast of characters which can only be described as a mixed bag. The nearest to regular guy hates to take advantage of the opportunity available to him for wholesome outdoor exercise and will tromp across our front and through Miz Susan's gardens shamelessly. About the only good thing to come from all the snow this winter is that it's piled so high next to our walk that he can't trailblaze his own shortcut and is forced to take the long way around to the next door neigbors.
About the most bizarre card we got this year was the one that showed up (after Santa's big day) from Linda and Laird Hanson of Hamline royalty fame. This card always sends Miz Susan into a seethe for a couple of hours and even I'm perplexed as to how I've stayed on that mailing list. I hate to think it, but maybe Linda doesn't realize that I still get the card or even remember who I am (or was). This year's version was particularly smarmy with L and L surrounded by a group of purported Hamline students who might have come straight from the Multicultural Modeling Agency. Mainly, I wonder why it was late in arriving. Probably the stress of the all-by-her-lonesome keeping Hamline propped up in the face of all the nay-sayers prevented her from getting to her cards as soon as she'd have liked. Hey, it's nice to still be counted among the inner circle. And it fills the void of not getting a card from the President out at North hennepin.
One of the departed who still gets cards here (as well as investment advice) is apparently alive and well to the point of having run for a Ramsey County office this past election season. A few of his lawn signs popped up in the front yards of some of the neighbors so he must have been an OK guy. I didn't vote for him. We tend to stick to straight party line voting and this guy didn't show up on my sample ballot. Our candidate actually won which seems like a rarity some years. That was enough to bind the wounds of not getting to live in the local version of the George-Washington-slept-here house.
A couple of years ago, we opened a card addressed to some long-gone tenant and discovered a Christmas letter which caught Miz Susan's fancy. It was a Christmas ABC letter and the damn thing ate at her for a couple of years before she finally gave up on trying to shame me into concocting one. She cranked one out during the uneventful hours of her jury duty stint. She did a considerably better than average job, better than I ever could have. She's a sucker for kids' illustrated ABC books so maybe there was some creative longing that finally found an outlet. Except for filling in the letter "F" which she'd forgotten (and what was that about?), I could only come up with a few minor tweaks and edits to make it production ready. We sent it out tucked in some 30 year old holiday cards that I'd probably bought home from the Hamline Bookstore in about 1988. No one's complained yet and we haven't had the postal inspectors at our door telling us to quit wasting the mail carriers' time with junk like that so I'm going to call it a success. If any of you missed out on this thing just let us know and we'll get one headed your way.
I don't usually feel sorry for our mail carrier. He sometimes gets the mail delivered to us before dark and he liked our cat Miles but other than that we're not all that crazy about him. We had a great carrier when we moved in but he didn't last the year before the geniuses downtown pulled him off his long-time route and turned our block over to a cast of characters which can only be described as a mixed bag. The nearest to regular guy hates to take advantage of the opportunity available to him for wholesome outdoor exercise and will tromp across our front and through Miz Susan's gardens shamelessly. About the only good thing to come from all the snow this winter is that it's piled so high next to our walk that he can't trailblaze his own shortcut and is forced to take the long way around to the next door neigbors.
About the most bizarre card we got this year was the one that showed up (after Santa's big day) from Linda and Laird Hanson of Hamline royalty fame. This card always sends Miz Susan into a seethe for a couple of hours and even I'm perplexed as to how I've stayed on that mailing list. I hate to think it, but maybe Linda doesn't realize that I still get the card or even remember who I am (or was). This year's version was particularly smarmy with L and L surrounded by a group of purported Hamline students who might have come straight from the Multicultural Modeling Agency. Mainly, I wonder why it was late in arriving. Probably the stress of the all-by-her-lonesome keeping Hamline propped up in the face of all the nay-sayers prevented her from getting to her cards as soon as she'd have liked. Hey, it's nice to still be counted among the inner circle. And it fills the void of not getting a card from the President out at North hennepin.
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