april fools day...and are we ever.

Spring Break on the North Shore, 2014.

Miz Susan felt the need to get away during her richly deserved Spring Break from the St. Paul Public Schools.  As much as she adores her bosses, both in her building and down the street at district headquarters, and as tempted as she was to volunteer 10 hours a day during her break to pitch in on some deep cleaning at Monroe, she recognized the value of a change of scenery and a little away-time.  Even if the price of that included being stuck in a small motel room or a small car with me for two and a half straight days.  We booked two nights at Blue Fin on the cheap (referred to, euphemistically on www.bluefinbay.com, as a hillside view though, in our case, actually a parking lot and Highway 61 view.  but what the hell, we could catch sight of a little sliver of the lake out the bathroom window if we were willing to kneel on top of the toilet tank.) and away we went on Sunday morning.

Weather forecasts had St. Paul penciled in for pushing the first 60° reading of the season.  How much worse than that could it possibly be a mere 225 miles north by northeast?

On Sunday, not bad at all.  Temps in Tofte in the 40s, some nice sunshine, scenic wind-jammed piles of ice sheets out on the lake.  Miz Susan snapped some great pics including one of me whining when she wouldn't play tether-ball with me.  You can check those out on her Facebook site.

Monday morning, however, was much more cold and raw.  A stiff breeze from the northeast picked up and God only knows what happened to the sun.  I forced Susan to check out some of the shops on the side of the highway that we'd seen seen only in passing by at 60 mph during previous North Shore trips.  She was unimpressed and couldn't get back to the room fast enough for another nap.  She wouldn't even take me up on my offer to check out one or two of the liquor stores which dot the roadside every six to eight miles.

By early evening, the sullen gray clouds opened up for a couple of hours of stinging rain with a noticeable sideways directional component.  It was a good thing that we'd opted for the hotel room at Blue Fin rather than a first try at winter camping.  We'd cooked food ahead and dragged it along with us.  Saved us a few bucks and kept us from braving the elements for an overpriced burger at the restaurant.  My signature seafood mac and cheese (well, OK, Martha Stewart's signature seafood mac and cheese) was great as was a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc which we chilled in a snowbank outside our unit's front door.  The stinging rain let up and we started figuring that we'd dodged the bullet that was splashed all over the WeatherNation channel which had Minnesota getting hammered by blizzard conditions all up and down the Dakota borders.  Are we a couple of idiot tourists or what?

The near-horizontal rain returned by about 7 the next morning but colder; cold enough to coat most of the Camry with a quarter inch of ice within the next hour or so.  I suppose that this kiss from the heavens pretty much qualified as a textbook example of freezing rain.  And if it coated most of the Camry with ice, it also did a damn efficient job of coating most of the other surfaces unlucky enough to be outside.  One of which was the entire stretch of Highway 61 from Tofte down to Duluth.

Being cooped up in a small car with me for several hours is definitely not Miz Susan's idea of a good time but, even more, she despises being cooped up in a small car with me in dicey driving conditions.  Which can stretch those several hours into several more hours.  I'll give her credit though.  She managed to keep her uneasiness under control and didn't try to snatch the steering wheel out of my hands more than two or three times during the drive home.  She contented herself with a running commentary and tally of the dead deer which dotted the roadside every six to eight miles.

Despite our ability to turn a sunny spring break road trip into an exercise in white-knuckled and muttered-curses road rage, we made it home safe and sound.  Susan reserved her worst complaints for the potholes on Hamline Avenue between I-94 and Marshall.  All in all, it was another in a long string of dream vacations. I'd go back in a minute although I'd need to figure out what hot dish to cook up this time.  Maybe my signature cheeseburger chili mac.  Alright, alright.  Rachael Ray's signature cheeseburger chili mac.

five sure-fire signs that spring can't be more than eight weeks away.

Well, maybe ten.  Despite the Channel 11 morning news team stealing my "Worst. Winter. Ever." line three or four times an hour, I've gotten over it.  Yeah, I regret not not having asserted my intellectual property rights for that language right away.  But I've become resigned to my life being full of regrets over stupid stuff I've done and smart stuff I never quite got around to doing.  It's time to move on to greener pastures.  Like the signs of an imminent spring.

Every one around here (me included) is giddy at the thought of 40+° temps today.  But really?  It's gonna take quite a few 40° days (in a row) to melt the glaciers that have formed over the last three months.  I'm looking for surer signs.

1.)  Baseball.  Pitchers and catchers reported like three weeks ago and the rest of the rosters within a week after that.  We're already getting the injury reports out of Fort Myers that are early guarantees that the Twins are destined for another 90 (or more) loss season.  It might be shaping up to be a late spring but even a late spring holds the promise of being followed by a miserable summer.

If the injury reports aren't enough, there's more tied to the approach of baseball. I've gotten my hands on a copy of the 2014 edition of Who's Who in Baseball.  This is an annual event for me and by the end of the baseball season it will be dog-eared and ragged from me trying to memorize player statistics that I used to know by heart from playing Strat-O-Matic baseball..  I picked it up at the Barnes and Noble down in Highland (hmmmm; that doesn't sound right, does it?) after Miz Susan sent me out to find a couple copies of a kid's novel for a reading group in her classroom.  I paid for the two Lizzie Brights and my WWinBB with a Barnes and Noble gift card Miz Susan found on the floor of one of her school's halls.  Ashes to ashes, etc.

2.) Gas prices.  Gas prices have shot up over the last few weeks, up to $3.59 at my two-station barometer north of the Lowry Hill tunnel.  I've heard reports that the refineries are retooling for summer blends, hence shortages and higher prices; pure ECON 101.  Last fall, gas prices jumped on the same stupid-ass excuse.  Translation: the Koch Bros. and the other oil barons are feeling the need to finance a few more vacation destination properties for their worthless children.  It sucks that prices are up but it means that spring is soon to follow.  Why is it, though, that this seasonal blend retooling is something which seems to have sprung up out of nowhere?  It's not possible that those great patriot oil barons are lying to us, is it?

3) Parking restrictions.  As reported earlier, the City of St. Paul has restricted parking on the even-numbered sides of its residential streets.  This is particularly unfair to us on the even-numbered south side of Laurel because much of the far side of the street is taken up by entrances to driveways and there ain't a single one of those on our side (credits to Miz Susan for pointing that out).  Those driveway cutouts easily chew up at least a third of the oherwise available parking over there.  Yeah, sure, lots of the north side cars end up getting parked in owners' driveways but not enough.  Not to mention (but I'm going to anyway) that both Michael across the street and I busted our butts to clear our street frontages to the curb following the city's so-called plowing.  If the city had done a proper job of plowing from the get-go, the streets wouldn't have narrowed to the width of dirt roads in unincorporated towns out in the sticks.

The city clearly has no idea of how to handle snow removal to ensure safe and speedy passage for emergency vehicles.  Further showing off its lack of savvy, the city enacted restrictions just as the worst of the winter was passing (read: spring's about to get sprung.).  Hey municipal workers, don't take this too personally.  The dummies in Smallsville across the river declared their parking ban even earlier than St. Paul's.

4) Cats on the loose.  Olive and Gray, our two totally-without-merit-except-for-cute cats have developed bad cases of cabin fever.  Who hasn't in our neighborhood?  For eight months a year, Miz Susan and I keep ourselves in trim by responding to their demands to be let out and then back in about 39 times a day.  Miz Susan and I have gotten fat and lazy without that workout routine in our days.  The cats want to go out but have been turned back by the icy blasts when they've stuck their noses out the door.  Poor kittens; they don't understand this cruel joke any better than the household help does.

This might be changing.  When I got home on Friday night from my beloved EnHenn, Olive was out on the front porch.  She was nervously pacing, hoping to be let back in.  She had to wait until I was done schlepping groceries in from the trunk of the car (yes, parked illegally in front of the house) and she was in like a shot when I finally got the door open.  But she had gone out when Susan got home (presumably willingly; I never asked) and she stayed out.  Both cats went out this morning on my 9th try to see if our Sunday paper had been delivered yet (this was at 9; a story for another day) and if they didn't stay out for long and never got farther than the top porch step, I'm seeing this as a sign that their internal cat season sensors are telling them that warmer days are coming.  Which is OK.  Both Miz Susan and I can stand the exercise of doing door attendant duties for our cute but otherwise useless cats.

5) Dreams of our backyard decked out in its midsummer garden finery.  It doesn't make any sense to me but, as early as February, Miz Susan's thoughts turn to gardening and turning our backyard into an English country garden riot of color and a near commercial-grade tomato farm.  Yeah, you read that right: February.  There have been past St. Patrick's Days when I've had to physically restrain her from from grabbing a rake and heading out to the yard to "just clear away a little" of the piles of leaves we'd (I'd) covered our annuals with the fall before.  Despite the history of physical restraint and the repeated warnings of Belinda and Bobby Jensen Saturday mornings  to stay the hell off the lawn and out of the garden until things have dried out a little, she's still always going to be determined to get outside and start mucking around.  Maybe the insidious influence of Downton Abbey has driven her a little crazier over the last couple of years.  She's already making me address her as M'Lady so I know there's been some effect on her.

I cringe when the time for her to start gardening can't be reasonably postponed any longer.  That's the time when she and our friend Molly will spend long hours of planning what's going to get planted and where.  My involvement in the process consists of being handed a shovel of one sort or another, being pointed in the direction of a stretch of real estate and told to start digging.  For a rest break, I'm allowed to haul 40 lb. bags of cow manure in from the car (into which I'd loaded them shortly before) or to empty the compost bin and work the contents into the dug up real estate.  Or to reconnect hundreds of feet of hose to the spigot on the side of the house.  I know it's unreasonable to cringe at these prospect but...there you have it.

Maybe it's the longer stretch of daylit hours (which just picked up a bonus at 2 this morning) but Miz Susan has started to stir into that pre-planting twitchiness.  Another sure sign that spring is on its way to getting sprung.  Full disclosure: I feel the need to play wet blanket just a little bit.  The state high school boys' and girls' basketball tournaments are coming up soon and established Minnesota folk wisdom says that those are always accompanied by blizzards.  Don't put the shovels away just yet.

Hey, notwithstanding the current snow cover and the absolute certainty that it's gonna get added to, there's worse things to look forward to than spring.  Like the income tax filing deadline.  Good thing that's still months away, right?

ok, ok. it turns out that it could be worse.

One (maybe all) of the local TV stations' news teams have taken to calling this the worst winter ever.  As in, "Worst.  Winter.  Ever."  Maybe this means it's now official.  Not that anyone who's living here is gonna be surprised by that.  And you people who used to live here but wised up and headed off for warmer climes aren't gonna be surprised either since your friends and family have been bombarding you with horror stories and gruesome pictures of the Minnesota version of Global Climate Change.  I figure we've got a legitimate right to bitch about the weather.  It's gotten pretty miserable.

If anyone had said a week or so ago that it couldn't possibly get any worse, I might have been inclined to agree.  The newscasters had already tagged this winter as the worst ever.  But we'd've been wrong.  It's gotten worse.  Even much worse.

The street maintenance crowd of the City of Saint Paul has washed its hands of the pure-d horseshit job it had been doing when it came to plowing residential streets.  Having never once come even close to clearing the streets curb to curb (despite the multiple opportunities of umpteen earlier snow emergencies), City Hall threw up its hands in surrender on Friday and declared that parking is forbidden on the even-numbered sides of residential streets for the duration of the winter.  Which could end on April 1 (so says the declaration) or maybe Memorial Day or maybe in time for the ceremonial first pitch of the All Star Game across the river.  That would be something.  I remember watching Nolan Ryan stride angrily in from the right field bullpen at old Metropolitan Stadium to pitch for the Angels in a Twins home opener back in the 70's.  Ryan sported a long olive-drab trench coat which could have come from a Kaplan Brothers surplus store.  That was probably his statement of protest at being forced to pitch on a day when there were still 25'-tall piles of snow out in the parking lots.  Ryan owned the Twins that day.

But that was on like April 10th.  This year's All Star Game at Target Field will come about three months later on the calendar.  While it's not too likely that there'll still be snow in the shadows down in the right field corner, I still like the mental picture.

What this newly-announced even-numbered parking ban amounts to for me and Miz Susan is that we risk getting tagged and towed if we park our cars in front of our house.  Our very own house, the Laurel Avenue Estates.  I'm willing to swear that we paid the city a couple of hefty curbside parking spot license fees back when we moved in.  Or did the paper-pusher at the closing just tell us that we had and then pocketed the cash herself?  Jeez, what a couple of saps we are.

I'm now forced to look for parking for the Camry and the Tahoe a half a block west down on Fry.  It's as if I've been forced into Mr. Peabody's Way-Back Machine for a return to Laurel Avenue, circa 1977.  Back then, I was parking a light blue Ford Galaxy station wagon along that same stretch while I was living in the corner duplex at 1630.  Golldarn, am I a small town boy or what?  It's not like the extra half block walk from the cars is gonna kill either one of us but it's still annoying.  And now that I think about it, the dope on the corner of our block didn't bother to shovel his walk all last winter and his sidewalks turned into 6" thick sheets of ice.  I'd know cuz I was the good neighbor who spent hours chopping that ice up in April and maybe even May.  Am I still a good neighbor if I'm cursing under my breath the whole time that I'm doing good-neighborly deeds?   I'm surprised that the ice didn't claim a couple of victims last spring; now I'm worried that it'll get one of us this year.

I'll grant that moving half of the parked cars off of the streets has opened things up nicely.  They've taken on this wide Haussmannesque Parisian boulevard look.  If it would only warm up about 70°, I can imagine a lively sidewalk cafe society springing up, complete with little umbrellaed tables and aspiring hipsters with berets and laptops.  Too bad that some of the other worst-winter-ever features forced on us aren't quite so cheerful.

People are exhausted and they're stumbling around like extras on The Walking Dead.  But instead of dried blood all over faces and hands and clothes, our zombies are showing off salt-stained boots and shoes and pants cuffs and overcoats.  Chapped and cracked cheeks and lips and hands along with permanent cases of hat hair are the war wounds that we've suffered during this WWE..  The cars that are still allowed to park on the odd-numbered sides of streets are often left halfway up snowbanks with decided lists to port.  The city streets are caked with ice and some of the intersections are worn so smooth from spinning and skidding tires that they could easily pass as competition-ready ice rinks fresh from Zamboni runs.  The ice on the streets might not be all bad as much of it covers up a nightmare-in-waiting of potholes and broken pavement.  And the freeways aren't much better.  It's been so damn cold that there are still ice patches from the storm a week ago under bridges where the sun don't shine and MNDOT's chemicals are ineffective.  I've seen more crashes and spinouts on my scenic commutes up and down I-94 over the last week than I remember from the previous four winters.

Like I was saying, anybody who was thinking a week ago that it couldn't get worse has been proven more wrong than Mitt Romney strategists on Monday night before the 2012 election.   It has gotten worse and apparently we ain't done yet.  The predictions are for 17° and 15° below zero for tonite and tomorrow night.

It's looking as if there should be plenty of room for corned beef and cabbage in the fridge for St.Patrick's Day.  The Guinness and the Harp should do quite nicely in the snowbanks outside.  I'm not sure how O'Gara's is going to handle its overflow parking though.

snowbirds, eat your hearts out!

February 21, 2014, Saint Paul, MN.   A promo shot from Minnesota's fabled
 Theater of the Seasons, shows daily through June.  Good seats still available.

meeting new friends on a day off

Miz Susan and I were patting ourselves on the backs as we approached the third day of our three-day weekend.  There were forecasts of snow for Monday which firmed up into warnings of 3-5 inches during AM drive-time.  Which, normally, would be bad news.  Except that we (mostly me) wouldn't be be a part of the AM drive-time freeway parking lot snarl.  That's the one which can add an hour of clenched fists, gritted teeth and muttered obscenities to my usual 40-minute drive up scenic I-94 north by westbound.  Yay for our side!  Dodged a bullet there.

Not so fast, buck-o.  I'd planned a quick run over to the Health Partners clinic which keeps track of my health or what passes for my health.  I'd gotten a threatening letter from the clinic recently which said that I was overdue for blood tests and various other chem-lab analyses of what rotten shape I'm in.  The clinic and my doctor and I are involved in this complex dance around each other in which the trained medical professionals try to keep tabs on me while I want to pretend that I'm still 27 and not old, overweight and afflicted with a variety of conditions owing to the generally dissolute lifestyle I've adopted.  It's not like I'm a 3-pack a day smoker or a smack freak but, given the appropriate circumstances, I'm not ruling anything out.  Other than that which my shrinking bank balance won't allow.  I can't afford any of the really dangerous vices that are available to those with wads of disposable income.  Professional athletes or politicians on the take, for example.

So, despite my suspicion that the clinic isn't so much interested in my well-being as it is in collecting evidence of me being a bad insurance risk and ripe for some gouging premium jumps or outright coverage cancellation, I headed out the door fully intending to get over to West St. Paul, get my tests conducted and be back home in an hour.  Susan and I had big plans for the rest of the day.  We're due for new phones on our Verizon plans and this was to be the long-awaited day (for me, anyway) for the upgrades.

I shoveled snow and cleared off cars for a good 30-45 minutes, a small price to price to pay for being let off the hook from the morning slog into the jaws of white, wintery hell. I finally was able to head down Selby in the big Tahoe which Miz Susan had insisted that I drive.  For its inherent safety factor, according to her.  Hah!!  About two blocks west of Dale, the car died.  I noticed this when I stepped on the gas and the big V-8 engine (yes, I'm ashamed) didn't respond.  Hmmmm, what the f---?  Coasted over to the curb to restart the damn thing.  The engine roared to life.  God bless Detroit.  I made it to Dale and turned left for University Avenue.  If pressed, I might (might) admit that I was going to sneak in a stop at the Salvation Army's thrift store at Dale and University.  That store's nearness to a Wendy's drive thru window had absolutely no bearing on my possible (repeat: possible) plans.  We'll never know.  The car died again and I brought it in for a dead stick landing in the middle lane of northbound Dale, about thirty feet shy of Marshall.  Goddamnit, what the f---ing hell?  This time, there was no start left in the Tahoe.  She was as dead as a doornail and wasn't going anywhere without a jump or a tow or a rear end collision courtesy of a northbound vehicle (most likely an MTC bus) piloted by an inattentive driver.

First thought, in a panic.  Call Miz Susan and scream at her about the state of HER car and tell her to get over here and save my sorry ass.  One problem with that.  Other than Susan not answering the phone until like my fourth call, my phone wouldn't work while I was in the car.  It was as if I was in some bad, third rate sci-fi movie where all power magically disappears.  Oh wait, NBC has been passing that plotline off as primetime TV for the last couple of years.  But for me, it wasn't sci-fi, it was happening.  Or not happening.  The phone wouldn't work; I could dial a call and connect but then it would sputter out and die, much like the Tahoe itself.  It was as if the insides of that big ass SUV had become a miniature blackhole from which no energy could escape.  I felt like I'd been cast in an episode of The Twilight Zone.  And I'd just recharged that phone the night before.

I managed to stagger out of the car and made it to the nearest street corner where my phone came back to life.  Cue the TZ soundtrack.  Susan and I had been trying to call each other and we could finally talk without my phone spitting out a quick three beeps and disconnecting.  I told her where I was and to come and rescue me.  And to bring the jumper cables.

Which she did as quickly as she could, I guess, but it seemed like hours.  I also called 911 and reported the problems I was causing.  While I waited for Susan, a St. Paul cop showed up and planted his squad car in a way that provided a better warning to those stupid northbound drivers than the meager (and undoubtedly battery-draining) flashers.  The cop, without a doubt one of St. Paul's nicest, told me that I wasn't anywhere near as stupid as the semi driver he'd just left who'd tried to turn his truck into a snow-clogged alley and managed to block most of Marion Avenue.

Susan showed up eventually in the Camry (God bless Tokyo!) and we tried to jump the Tahoe.  Which was having none of it.  We had to call the Grand Wheeler auto shop and beg for a tow and then wait again.  When the tow truck got there (driven by one of St. Paul's nicest tow truck drivers even if he looked like he was only 15), he ramped our truck up onto the bed of his hauler and left the two of us to follow along behind.  The guy at Grand Wheeler said they'd try and figure out what was wrong.

We had to go to work on Tuesday.  I drove the Toyota and Susan got a friend from school to pick her up.  My drive up 94 between the Lowry Hill tunnel and 694 was slowed to about 20 mph by icy pavement and a dozen or so cars strewn along the shoulder and up against the center barrier as testaments to just how icy that pavement really was.  I called the garage later that morning.  They'd tried the Tahoe later the afternoon before and it had started right up.  And they'd tried it again that morning and it had started right up.  They couldn't figure out what was wrong with it but would I pleased come and get it the hell off their lot..

Susan and I picked up the truck that afternoon.  I'd gotten her at her school and we'd gone down Jefferson to go to a St. Paul Federation of Teachers rally at school district headquarters.  Teachers and parents were rallying to protest the stupidity of district administration for not having settled a 9-month long contract negotiation.  Susan was cold and wet and bruised after her boots got soaked and she slipped and fell on the ice.  She was glad to see her Tahoe again but she made me drive it home.

We're now $105 lighter in our household fund (coulda been worse, right?) but we're also now filled with doubt and dread about the reliability of our previously reliable Tahoe.  There's no telling when it will cut out on us again and I don't think we'll be able to count on the help of one of St. Paul's nicest cops and one of St. Paul's nicest tow truck drivers.  We'll probably be pretty much on our own.  Like I tell Miz Susan all the time, "You and me against the world, babe."

home sick

I've taken a rare day off and called in sick.  The groundwork for this got laid yesterday when I was sneezing like a fiend and my nose was running like a dripping faucet.  I know, I know; gross, huh?  And I almost fell asleep at my keyboard before noon.  I usually hold that stunt off until 2 or 3 in the afternoon.  It might have been the less-than-exhilarating job of updating projected enrollments for classes which start later on in the term.  Normally, I'd be all over that work; I must have been off.

Miz Susan approved my sick leave but only with a few conditions attached.  Incuded among those conditions:
   1) that I'd iron a bunch of the shirts that have piled up in the front bedroom.
   2) that I'd check with Wet Paint to see if they've restocked the Stabilo markers she uses to deface her 4th graders' written work and which she's demanded as her Valentine's Day gift.  She'll pick out her own flowers but thanks for asking.
   3) that I'd customize the "St. Paul Kids Deserve" sign which will soon grace our front lawn.  Or the snow banks that cover it, anyway.  More on this later.
   4) that I'd pull ingredients together for the big-ass salad that's on the menu for tonite's dinner.
   5) that I take a nap and take it easy. And that I not leave the house.

Well, I've already left the house to start her car and sweep it off for her commute to Monroe Arts Plus.  And I'll probably have to get out at least once more for the Wet Paint stock check and salad ingredients.  She'll be disappointed that I didn't follow her advice to the letter but she's probably used to that by now.

Miz Susan might be in for a few unscheduled (but unpaid) days at home herself.  The higher-ups of the Saint Paul Federation of Teachers (her union) voted to authorize a strike vote and set February 24th as the date for this.  It's been a long time coming.

Her employer and her union have been negotiating a new contract for teachers since sometime last May.  I  recall reading or hearing that the two sides have settled on less than half of the points under discussion.  Now both sides have got their heels dug in.  At stake are classroom sizes, additional staffing (both in the teaching and support ranks: social workers, librarians, school nurses among others), the heinous emphasis by administration on standardized testing and the huge blocs of time dedicated to preparing for and taking them, addressing special needs in the classroom: language, remedial learning, behavior, etc. and, not least of all (though administration loves to put it at the top of the list: translation: greedy teachers.  some media outlets have been quick to forward this practically rote), teacher compensation.

This standoff comes about after years of the St. Paul Public Schools ruling class slashing budgets, cutting back on staffing in the separate classrooms and buildings, increasing class sizes, ignoring the increasing challenges of the necessity to meet special needs of students.  And all the while slyly intimating with a wink-wink and a nudge-nudge that the teachers and other front line staff aren't doing their utmost to provide a top flight education for the district's students and families.  Nothing of the of current negotiations deadlock should be much of a surprise to anyone who's been paying attention to to the system's upper tier's previous program of denial, cutbacks, duck and cover and deliberate spreading of misleading quasi-information.  And I'd fall over in a dead faint if I were to learn that administration's budgets have suffered cuts at the same levels as the classrooms' and support functions'.

It was particularly stomach-turning to read SPPS Superintendent Valeria Silva's quotes in the paper today.  If she was quoted accurately, she pretty much laid the blame for the situation squarely on the teachers and their union.  If rank and file votes to approve a strike and goes out onto the picket lines, Superintendent Silva knows that all the negative consequences of a strike (closed schools and the pre- and post-school day programs, the district's food services, forced layoffs for non-union employees, a likely lengthening of the school year into the summer, the general collapse of western civilization as we know it) will be solely on the shoulders of those greedy and lazy slacker teachers.  I'll give her credit for keeping a straight face as she slopped this pap out into the microphones and cameras and reporter's notebooks of an attentive media.  She may have been engrossed in calculating the savings the district will realize if the System shuts down for one or two or three weeks and the effects that those savings will have on her annual performance bonus.  That'd be some high-powered arithmetic and enough to keep a smile off anyone's lips.  Until, of course, the check arrives.

So, despite administration's longstanding war against teachers and the work they do (and, by extension, against kids and families), the Superintendent's conscience is clear.  She and the rest of the inhabitants of 360 Colborne (many of who are honest and honorable and hardworking) bear no responsibility for this impasse.  Here's another fine mess you've gotten us into.

There's a comforting continuity in this empty, amoral rhetoric of the current Superintendent. Her predecessors Patricia Harvey and Meria Carstarphen were shameless bullies and blowhards and elitists.  Ms Silva has either dug up some of their old scripts or she comes by her behavior naturally.  Is this a great country or what?

I actually stuck pretty close to the conditions that Miz Susan laid down before she went off to work at her low-intensity and overpaid job.  I ironed and I checked on markers at Wet Paint (beware 4th graders, your slacker teacher is rearmed), the St. Paul Kids Deserve sign is now customized and graces a snow bank on what is hopefully still our lawn underneath and I pulled salad ingredients together which led to a rave review.  I even took a short nap though I couldn't do the markers without venturing abroad to Grand Avenue and Wet Paint and over to the Midway for General Tso's chicken wings and peapods at Cub.  And I might (might) even  have swung through the Goodwill but, if I did, I didn't buy anything.  To quote Miz Susan, "You can stay home sick any day."

it's already 2014 and the Winter Games are on? where does the time go?

The media, both print and electronic, are full of news of the impending start of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games.  NBC has the Opening Ceremony tonight.  Which actually already happened 7 or 8 hours ago.  Ho hum.

Once again, I've been skipped over for a spot, any spot, on the U.S. Olympic team.  I guess I could still be asked to fly in as a replacement if one of our athletes gets thrown into a modern-day gulag for over-enthusiastically hugging up on one of their like-sexed teammates.  Apparently the Russians frown on that sort of behavior on a par with the Texas legislature.

I shouldn't be all that surprised to have been ignored since I have absolutely no talent or skill for any of the games or sports that turn this event into one mongo marketing and advertising (ka-CHING!!!) extravaganza.  If any of the scouts had been watching me round the clock (talk about a boring assignment), they might have seen me take two spills on the ice and pop up unhurt.  But falling down and not killing myself or tearing up my knee again probably doesn't count as much of a qualification to compete in one of the luge events.  But boy oh boy, I could really do some damage on one of those little speed-racer death traps.

I have to take the good with the bad.  The good was worth waiting for.  Football season is finally over and I won't have to figure out ways to avoid football again until August.  Please don't anyone mention spring practice at the U of M.  I said a year ago that the amount of football I watched during the '12-'13 season didn't add up to a whole game's worth.  I think I pared it down to a half this year, maybe as little as a quarter.  That was a hell of an effort and I need a rest.

The bad will be that the Olympics will be clogging up NBC's airwaves for weeks (it'll seem longer).  As if  I'm interested in slope snowboarding or team figure skating.  Synchronized swimming, anyone?

I suggested some new events for the Winter Olympics when I first started writing this collection of random stupid back in 2010.  I'm too lazy to go back and read my old post to be reminded of my suggestions.  I think that they were somewhere along the lines of side-by-side tandem bobsled races with a marksmanship component tossed in for added spice. No more of that lighthearted nonsense for this year's Games.

I've decided instead to come up with a list of alternate activities to occupy myself with when I might otherwise be tempted to hang out in the kitchen watching the junk sports on TV and eating potato chips.  In no particular order:

   1) Check the air in the tires on the Tahoe.  Our fancy-ass big Chevy SUV has tire pressure sensors which display on the dashboard if we could only remember which buttons to push and in what order.  Both Miz Susan and I suspect that those sensors somehow become escape routes for the tires' air when the temperatures plunge.  Or maybe it's just 9th grade science at work along with 20th-century digital technology.  Cold temps reduce the volume that the air takes up and the tire pressures drop, regardless of the vintage of the car.  The fancy sensors call it to our attention in the semi-late model Tahoe though we were blithely unaware of the same phenomenon in something older, say my brown 1970 Buick LeSabre.  I've always been a sucker for GM products.

   2) Restack the shovels out by the front steps.  Winter here is shaping up to linger well past Easter and the arsenal of snow removal hardware needs to be scientifically arranged for maximum effectiveness.

   3) Clean up the house a little bit.  Pick a room, any room.  Start in any corner and work my way outwards.  Like the west side front bedroom.  I could iron shirts from the mountain of shirts that has built up there, casually strewn across the easy chair.  Perhaps then Miz Susan would stop asking me every other day what I was planning on doing with all those f---ing shirts.  I could put a new set of mounting clips on the picture that fell off the wall a few weeks (months?) back when the old set of mounting clips succumbed to a severe case of plastic fatigue and busted.  Don't you think that the manufacturer should put a warning on the box that those clips might not last more than 10 or 12 years?  I could clean up and organize the dozens of CDs that are stacked in piles all over the turntable and the CD player and the floor and...well...you get the picture.  Miz Susan snarled at me awhile ago that I couldn't hang any more junk on the walls in that room.  Shelves for all those CDs wouldn't qualify as junk, would they?  And that's just the one room.  Let's not even consider the basement.

   4) Take a quick spin up and own University Avenue.  I hear the bank and Menard's and the Goodwill and Cub and Target calling my name.  I might even be able to find a CD storage rack of some kind at the Goodwill to help me make some sense of the west side front bedroom.  I've almost talked Susan into going to the Goodwill with me next weekend; it would be her first trip ever.  She says she's going to look for costumes for the 4th Grade Opera but I know she's gonna love it.

   5) Talk Susan into watching an episode of Homeland or Foyle's War or, if it's Sunday night, Downton Abbey (note to self: pretend to be interested).  Those have been our TV entertainments lately but we're down to just four episodes of Homeland, Season 2 which we haven't watched and the Foyle's War shows run nearly two hours each.  That's alot of TV for two oldsters to stay awake thru on a school night.

Having just put this all to paper (digitally speaking), I wandered upstairs to see what Miz Susan was up to.  We'd planned on watching the first of the four remaining Homelands.  I'll be damned if she wasn't watching the Opening Ceremonies.  Sigh.