02/26/10
Both Miz Susan and I were disappointed when the U.S. women's hockey team didn't grab the gold last night. Heck of a game though, eh? If the USAers didn't claim the top step of the podium they at least caught Susan's attention to the point that she watched the entire game from the time that she got home. We missed the early scoring--her, because she works for a living and me, because I was boiling eggs in the kitchen for another of Susan's nummy salads (translation: meatless meals) for dinner. I shouldn't be kicking since all I had to do was stand around in the kitchen waiting for the water to boil while she had to brave the Mississippi Market to get salad greens and more half+half.
Despite the loss, Susan's willingness to watch the game last night might just mark the opening up of whole new worlds of possibilities for us. I doubt that, in her entire life, apart from her niece Marcy's youth league games, Susan has watched enough minutes to patch together a full hockey game. You'll hear the hockey announcers talk about a star defenseman racking up 40+ minutes of ice time in a big game but that's about where Susan stands for her viewing career. In her defense, I sense that ice hockey was not a way of life down in Lamberton, MN. I'm not saying that there wasn't talent for the game out west on Hwy 14 but it would appear that whatever talent there was got scooped up early and hustled of to the top Junior A leagues. It's tough to run a grade-A high school hockey program when your best kids keep getting sent north to Montreal and Toronto.
Susan was very disappointed that our ladies (didn't you want to strangle Mike Milbury every time he used that word last night? I'd forgotten how much I despised him when he played for the Bruins.) fell short but I tend to the philosophical in these things. As the puckheads are want to say, "You've got to put the biscuit in the basket if you wanna win." Do puckheads really say that? Anyway, our skaters didn't really come close to lighting the lamp except for maybe once off of a scramble in the second period and the Canuckers played plenty well enough to make it stand up. Hats off to the Canadiennes. I'm happy to join in on Oh, Canada! most any time.
But we do need to remember the real purpose of the Olympics and who invented them. The Americans and NBC-TV, right? C'mon, everyone knows that. And when I say "Americans", I'm not willing to get all inclusive to bunch Canada and Mexico in with us. Both of those countries have made plenty of contributions to the world at large but, by god, the Olympics are ours. And with an eye to avoiding future disappointments to households all over this great land and to maintain the potential for ad revenue growth for NBC, I have a few suggestions (the "modest proposals" mentioned in the title above) on how to improve the game of Olympic hockey.
What we really need to understand is that we can't have the U.S. teams in ice hockey losing to anybody. The rest of the world can have all the curling and team Nordic combined skiing medals that they can bear to drape around their necks but the integrity of U.S. viewership needs to be protected at nearly all costs. So, with that in mind, I'm going to throw out these few simple suggestions. Get back to me and tell me what you think.
I'm perfectly willing to let the first period of any future hockey game get played on an even keel. But if Team USA (and this is for women's and men's teams alike) is losing after the first period then the second period will need to be with the other team playing without skates. Broomball shoes would be OK but no skates. And if we're still down after two, then the other guys will have to pull their goalie. For the whole period. Oh, we'll let them have a sixth player but he or she would be restricted to staying inside the center face-off circle. Oh yeah, and that sixth player wouldn't get a stick. These few simple rules modifications should be enough to give our U.S. team a fighting chance to win in most games.
I came up with these ideas last night after Team USA's loss but I'd been thinking hard about ways to improve the Olympics even before that. How about, for example, running the downhill skiing events at night? The cameras could be equipped with infra-red lenses to pick up the body heat from the skiers as they go bouncing past. Or maybe doing the ice dancing competitions on the bobsled run? I'm even working on ideas to successfully combine the ski aerials, snowboard-cross and the biathlon. This could make for some major league fantastic reality TV. And the ratings. Just imagine the ratings!!
Friday, February 26, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
back from the doctor's office
02/25/10
That was actually this past Monday. Miz Susan took a day off of work despite her concerns that some less-than-handpicked sub might undo all of the progress her 4th graders had made since last September. She's more worried about me undoing all of the progress I've made since Christmas Day and she wouldn't let me go by myself. Something about ice and crutches and about how stupid I am. Something along those lines. Hard to argue with her given the evidence she's collected.
It's a good thing that she came with me. I'd never have thought to bake cupcakes to take to the staff at the Specialty Clinic. And if I had thought of it, those cupcakes sure as hell would not have made it out of the car and up to the third floor. You'd be surprised at how many cupcakes you can eat in an 18 minute car ride. Not as many as White Castles but still quite a few. City driving allows for better productivity in the speed eating department since you can usually catch a few stoplights along the way to line things up for maximum efficiency.
They made like they were happy to see us down at 435 Phalen. I suppose they were since we've kept them fully employed since last July. No worries about layoffs in the local medical workforce when I'm in town. And they all brightened up even more when Susan handed over the cupcakes. I tried to keep up a brave front as the last of my birthday booty disappeared into the staff break room. Almost the last anyway; there are still a few pieces of Jill and MaryAnn's pecan pie left and I ain't giving those up to anyone.
The doc poked and prodded and made me hop around the exam room on one leg for a few minutes. He told us that he was pleased at seeing better progress than he would have expected. I doubt that he had any concept as to just how easy I've been taking it for the last six weeks. My knee and all of its assorted muscles and tendons and whatnot have really had no opportunity to do anything but make progress. He told us to come back and see him in four weeks and to keep on doing whatever it was that I had been doing.
That wasn't all though. He called in for the delivery of my old friend, the CPM (Continuous Passive Movement) machine. That arrived Tuesday afternoon and I've already logged a few sessions in its healing clutches. In fact, I'm headed back that way soon. I'm glad to have the thing back as it's a concrete reminder that I might be able to walk again someday and also because I haven't done nearly the amount of reading I did last fall. Maybe I'll get through a couple of books that I was looking forward to.
The CPM even got delivered by the same guy as last time. He was also happy to see me. Here's a guy who spends his workdays on the freeways with a minivan full of medical equipment making deliveries and doing set-ups. He said his route map on Tuesday was Plymouth to Cottage Grove to Regions and me in the Midway to Coon Rapids and then home to Chisago City. But no matter how crazy his days must sometimes feel, he's gladdened by the fact that he's not me. He, at least, gets to get out of the house once in a while.
I am starting to feel that there might be light at the end of the tunnel. Miz Susan and I went off to see Kate perform in Hopkins High's adaptation of Talking With last night. The highlight of the evening was Kate (live snake and all--ask her, not me) and the rest of the cast but I also shone in my supporting role as driver; my first driving since being rendered hors de combat in the Great Christmas Snow Shovel War of 2009. Miz Susan graciously accepted my offer that I drive to Minnetonka and I made the most of it, weaving in and out of traffic like a regular suburbanite on the way home from happy hour. I'm on the way back.
I realized that I maybe should have grabbed the wheel for the return leg when Susan announced that she was suffering from night blindness just as she started down the long twisting entrance ramp onto Hwy 169. We did make it home safely despite the best efforts of some for-real suburbanite doing his for-real happy hour induced weave on 94 just past the 280 exit. I thought that it was touching that he wanted to share the lane with us at 55 mph but Susan took a dimmer view of his advances. She asked me what in the hell he was doing. As if I knew. I don't have the faintest idea what I'm doing most of the time let alone some idiot who would easily have blown a .15 on any passing cop's drunk-o-meter.
I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to driving every day again.
That was actually this past Monday. Miz Susan took a day off of work despite her concerns that some less-than-handpicked sub might undo all of the progress her 4th graders had made since last September. She's more worried about me undoing all of the progress I've made since Christmas Day and she wouldn't let me go by myself. Something about ice and crutches and about how stupid I am. Something along those lines. Hard to argue with her given the evidence she's collected.
It's a good thing that she came with me. I'd never have thought to bake cupcakes to take to the staff at the Specialty Clinic. And if I had thought of it, those cupcakes sure as hell would not have made it out of the car and up to the third floor. You'd be surprised at how many cupcakes you can eat in an 18 minute car ride. Not as many as White Castles but still quite a few. City driving allows for better productivity in the speed eating department since you can usually catch a few stoplights along the way to line things up for maximum efficiency.
They made like they were happy to see us down at 435 Phalen. I suppose they were since we've kept them fully employed since last July. No worries about layoffs in the local medical workforce when I'm in town. And they all brightened up even more when Susan handed over the cupcakes. I tried to keep up a brave front as the last of my birthday booty disappeared into the staff break room. Almost the last anyway; there are still a few pieces of Jill and MaryAnn's pecan pie left and I ain't giving those up to anyone.
The doc poked and prodded and made me hop around the exam room on one leg for a few minutes. He told us that he was pleased at seeing better progress than he would have expected. I doubt that he had any concept as to just how easy I've been taking it for the last six weeks. My knee and all of its assorted muscles and tendons and whatnot have really had no opportunity to do anything but make progress. He told us to come back and see him in four weeks and to keep on doing whatever it was that I had been doing.
That wasn't all though. He called in for the delivery of my old friend, the CPM (Continuous Passive Movement) machine. That arrived Tuesday afternoon and I've already logged a few sessions in its healing clutches. In fact, I'm headed back that way soon. I'm glad to have the thing back as it's a concrete reminder that I might be able to walk again someday and also because I haven't done nearly the amount of reading I did last fall. Maybe I'll get through a couple of books that I was looking forward to.
The CPM even got delivered by the same guy as last time. He was also happy to see me. Here's a guy who spends his workdays on the freeways with a minivan full of medical equipment making deliveries and doing set-ups. He said his route map on Tuesday was Plymouth to Cottage Grove to Regions and me in the Midway to Coon Rapids and then home to Chisago City. But no matter how crazy his days must sometimes feel, he's gladdened by the fact that he's not me. He, at least, gets to get out of the house once in a while.
I am starting to feel that there might be light at the end of the tunnel. Miz Susan and I went off to see Kate perform in Hopkins High's adaptation of Talking With last night. The highlight of the evening was Kate (live snake and all--ask her, not me) and the rest of the cast but I also shone in my supporting role as driver; my first driving since being rendered hors de combat in the Great Christmas Snow Shovel War of 2009. Miz Susan graciously accepted my offer that I drive to Minnetonka and I made the most of it, weaving in and out of traffic like a regular suburbanite on the way home from happy hour. I'm on the way back.
I realized that I maybe should have grabbed the wheel for the return leg when Susan announced that she was suffering from night blindness just as she started down the long twisting entrance ramp onto Hwy 169. We did make it home safely despite the best efforts of some for-real suburbanite doing his for-real happy hour induced weave on 94 just past the 280 exit. I thought that it was touching that he wanted to share the lane with us at 55 mph but Susan took a dimmer view of his advances. She asked me what in the hell he was doing. As if I knew. I don't have the faintest idea what I'm doing most of the time let alone some idiot who would easily have blown a .15 on any passing cop's drunk-o-meter.
I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to driving every day again.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Valentine's Day with me as target practice for cupid and his little bow and arrows
Valentine's Day is upon us. I thought it would never get here. The last three months of the NFL season definitely slow down the passage of time to a crawl and are an unhappy reminder of just how long it is between late-October and late-February. I suppose that winter and its short days, long (and generally uneventful) nights, low sun angle (is that redundant?), and all of its many varieties of noxious weather conditions also play their parts in making the clock and calendar seem like they're standing still. But we're past all of that now. The days are getting longer and, if the nights are still pretty uneventful, there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon marked by Valentine's Day and my birthday, a mere week later. Twins pitchers and catchers report on February 21, my special day. Coincidence? Maybe. But I like to think that we all deserve a break and a sense of hope that, soon, we'll have major league baseball to ease us through the still otherwise unevevtful evenings.
But we do need to get past this Valentine's Day thing first. I've never been the biggest fan in the world of Valentine's Day and have tended to see it as a contrived event to benefit the manufacturers of schmaltzy red and pink tinted cards and the retail outlets that sell the damn things. I'm all for getting tons of chocolate dumped in my lap but mostly what I've gotten instead are those rock-hard, heart-shaped little instant tooth decay pellets with the stupid messages on them. Seriously---Q-T-π? Those things are even more deadly than the sugar-coated marshmallow lumps that get sold during the Easter season. But I'll admit that there are a few silver linings in the Valentine's clouds and those have to do with...surprise!!...food and drink.
And I'm not just talking chocolate. I'm talking pizza from Carbone's on Randolph. Heart-shaped, no less. And unlike the little heart-shaped sugar jaw breakers, this stuff--though it might still kill you--will at least make the trip to the hereafter worthwhile.
We first discovered the concept of heart-shapizza a feww years back at Carbone's on Randolph, my old stomping grounds from way back in high school and even before that. I would have been far too cool to have submitted to such an emotions-on-the-sleeve thing back when I was 17. Moot point though; I'm almost positive that this beauty wasn't on the menu back in the day. No, I'd somehow convinced Miz Susan that what we really needed for Valentine's Day dinner was pizza from Carbone's. Imagine my shock when she actually agreed. Then imagine my pathetic little man-brain spinning feverishly when I ordered and they asked if I wanted it in the shape of the day. Who was I to say anything but, "Hell yes, I want it it heart-shaped!"? Particularly since I'd undoubtedly done my usual half-assed job of paying due respect to the holiday and was probably coming home with, at best, a more than half-wilted bunch of daisies from the floral department at Cub. Long story short, we loved it (hard not to love a Carbone's pizza) and we've been stuck on it ever since. A tradition had been born.
I mentioned drink as well. Miz Susan got hooked on the bubbly a couple of New Year's Eves ago down at the University Club. One of the waiters who was probably looking to pad our bill gave her a free sip of the stuff and she fell right into his trap. Before I knew it we had a whole bottle to kill and now she's always taking a detour past the champagne rack whenever we go to the liquor store. Sadly, the weather and the trials of the week conspired to keep her from that one last stop on Friday afternoon and we were left without any Schramsberg Blanc de Blanc. We've given up on any ideas of ever tasting Dom Perignon, let alone buying a bottle. I talked her into beer instead and she was more than happy to help polish off the last of the Schell's Octoberfest after I pointed out that if she really needed to drink imported she could start putting a dent in the Amstel Lights that had gotten shoved to the back of the fridge.
So Valentine's Day dinner was a relatively low-key operation despite Miz Susan having to venture out to pick up the pizza, Carbone's one major failing being that they don't deliver. Never have, doubt they ever will. But it's not like I didn't have to pay a steep price for the beer and pizza. I wonder if Miz Susan would have even allowed me this much if I hadn't played the part of Valentines Lackey for her fourth grade class.
For whatever reason, political correctness has not yet done away with the exchange of Valentines in at least a few of our public schools. The kids probably still like it and I know that Miz Susan always brings home a wad of the things every February. For her students, she (meaning me) has sometimes copped her cards off of the internet but this year she decided to throw some of our hard earned dollars at Target in exchange for a box of 32 of the cutest, glossiest, heartiest little monkey Valentines you can imagine. Complete with matching rub on tattoos. She even ponied up for a couple of bags of M&M minis to go with each card. About five minutes into the process of separating and addressing and folding and taping and M&Ming she told me that this really wasn't a very efficient use of her time. She was right, of course. She's making good money and I don't even qualify for unemployment so I offered to take over for her. I separated the perforated sheets of the little monkeys and turned them over to her for addresses and her initials. Then she threw them back at me for the rest of the minimum wage work. I tucked the matching tattoos into their little slots and taped packages of M&M minis and folded and sealed them all up with the little red heart stickers that came with the pack. An hour later, with my hands throbbing from the picky-ass work and Miz Susan smirking and basking in the glow of having Tom Sawyered another chunk of her work-related tedium off on me, I wrapped things up. After a last count to make sure that no 4Y student was going to be scarred for life due to a missing Valentine monkey card which had slipped under the bed, I poured the things back into the Target bag. To rub my nose in my low-life status even further, Miz Susan grabbed the bag with the untaped M&M's and took that away from me too. She threw me one measly little package for my troubles but that was all. I figured that I could bide my time, that maybe there'd be a few leftovers after the mayhem on Friday that would come back home. I should have known better. Those most likely got handed over to the Desk Fairy for future positive reinforcement purposes because I sure as hell never saw them again.
Can't hardly wait for Valentine's to roll around again next year.
But we do need to get past this Valentine's Day thing first. I've never been the biggest fan in the world of Valentine's Day and have tended to see it as a contrived event to benefit the manufacturers of schmaltzy red and pink tinted cards and the retail outlets that sell the damn things. I'm all for getting tons of chocolate dumped in my lap but mostly what I've gotten instead are those rock-hard, heart-shaped little instant tooth decay pellets with the stupid messages on them. Seriously---Q-T-π? Those things are even more deadly than the sugar-coated marshmallow lumps that get sold during the Easter season. But I'll admit that there are a few silver linings in the Valentine's clouds and those have to do with...surprise!!...food and drink.
And I'm not just talking chocolate. I'm talking pizza from Carbone's on Randolph. Heart-shaped, no less. And unlike the little heart-shaped sugar jaw breakers, this stuff--though it might still kill you--will at least make the trip to the hereafter worthwhile.
We first discovered the concept of heart-shapizza a feww years back at Carbone's on Randolph, my old stomping grounds from way back in high school and even before that. I would have been far too cool to have submitted to such an emotions-on-the-sleeve thing back when I was 17. Moot point though; I'm almost positive that this beauty wasn't on the menu back in the day. No, I'd somehow convinced Miz Susan that what we really needed for Valentine's Day dinner was pizza from Carbone's. Imagine my shock when she actually agreed. Then imagine my pathetic little man-brain spinning feverishly when I ordered and they asked if I wanted it in the shape of the day. Who was I to say anything but, "Hell yes, I want it it heart-shaped!"? Particularly since I'd undoubtedly done my usual half-assed job of paying due respect to the holiday and was probably coming home with, at best, a more than half-wilted bunch of daisies from the floral department at Cub. Long story short, we loved it (hard not to love a Carbone's pizza) and we've been stuck on it ever since. A tradition had been born.
I mentioned drink as well. Miz Susan got hooked on the bubbly a couple of New Year's Eves ago down at the University Club. One of the waiters who was probably looking to pad our bill gave her a free sip of the stuff and she fell right into his trap. Before I knew it we had a whole bottle to kill and now she's always taking a detour past the champagne rack whenever we go to the liquor store. Sadly, the weather and the trials of the week conspired to keep her from that one last stop on Friday afternoon and we were left without any Schramsberg Blanc de Blanc. We've given up on any ideas of ever tasting Dom Perignon, let alone buying a bottle. I talked her into beer instead and she was more than happy to help polish off the last of the Schell's Octoberfest after I pointed out that if she really needed to drink imported she could start putting a dent in the Amstel Lights that had gotten shoved to the back of the fridge.
So Valentine's Day dinner was a relatively low-key operation despite Miz Susan having to venture out to pick up the pizza, Carbone's one major failing being that they don't deliver. Never have, doubt they ever will. But it's not like I didn't have to pay a steep price for the beer and pizza. I wonder if Miz Susan would have even allowed me this much if I hadn't played the part of Valentines Lackey for her fourth grade class.
For whatever reason, political correctness has not yet done away with the exchange of Valentines in at least a few of our public schools. The kids probably still like it and I know that Miz Susan always brings home a wad of the things every February. For her students, she (meaning me) has sometimes copped her cards off of the internet but this year she decided to throw some of our hard earned dollars at Target in exchange for a box of 32 of the cutest, glossiest, heartiest little monkey Valentines you can imagine. Complete with matching rub on tattoos. She even ponied up for a couple of bags of M&M minis to go with each card. About five minutes into the process of separating and addressing and folding and taping and M&Ming she told me that this really wasn't a very efficient use of her time. She was right, of course. She's making good money and I don't even qualify for unemployment so I offered to take over for her. I separated the perforated sheets of the little monkeys and turned them over to her for addresses and her initials. Then she threw them back at me for the rest of the minimum wage work. I tucked the matching tattoos into their little slots and taped packages of M&M minis and folded and sealed them all up with the little red heart stickers that came with the pack. An hour later, with my hands throbbing from the picky-ass work and Miz Susan smirking and basking in the glow of having Tom Sawyered another chunk of her work-related tedium off on me, I wrapped things up. After a last count to make sure that no 4Y student was going to be scarred for life due to a missing Valentine monkey card which had slipped under the bed, I poured the things back into the Target bag. To rub my nose in my low-life status even further, Miz Susan grabbed the bag with the untaped M&M's and took that away from me too. She threw me one measly little package for my troubles but that was all. I figured that I could bide my time, that maybe there'd be a few leftovers after the mayhem on Friday that would come back home. I should have known better. Those most likely got handed over to the Desk Fairy for future positive reinforcement purposes because I sure as hell never saw them again.
Can't hardly wait for Valentine's to roll around again next year.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
super bowl? there's a super bowl again this year?
01/26/10
A good friend who still checks in every now and then checked in today and consoled me on how rotten I must be feeling in the wake of the Vikings game this past Sunday. Well, it probably hurts more than my busted up leg but since my leg doesn't hardly hurt at all that's really not much of gauge. The real pain from the leg comes from not being able to get to the liquor store on my own but that's a topic for another day. No, I wasn't too broken up by the locals' loss down N'Awluhns. But don't think for a second that I let that keep me from rattling off another way-too-long reply which I later recognized as a chance to do a little double dip for a ready made post here. With a few minor edits to protect the innocent and those guilty of victimless crimes, voila!!
I pretty much cut the emotional ties to the Vikings quite awhile ago. Not that they paid much attention and who would blame them? So Sunday's loss didn't hurt all that much. For the last several years I've kept a running mental tally to make sure that I didn't watch the cumulative equivalent of a full game per any single season. A play here, a play there (usually while raiding the refrigerator or the cookie jar while Miz Susan wasn't watching), that was OK so long as it didn't cut and paste to 60 minutes on the game clock. But I'd never sit down and watch a a whole quarter from start to finish, much less a full game. I did pretty well thru the first ten or twelve games or so.
Then Miz Susan got interested. So we started watching and I think we watched 3 of the last 4 from opening kickoff to the final gun. Bears, Cowboys, Saints---right? Even saw a good chunk of the Giants game. I'd already gotten to like quite a few of the Viking's players from reading the paper and catching the video clips on the 10 o'clock news. Favre's presence seemed to help build a team presence that I hadn't noticed of late. I hate the thought of getting all sentimental about the good old days when Dale Hackbart was roaming the secondary looking for wide receivers to clothesline but recent versions of the Vikings made me wonder if these guys were looking to set all-time NFL records for DUI's and domestic disturbance calls. I think that one of the things that can murder any NFL team is a lack of cohesion and Favre (as well as a crew of emerging team leaders---Shiancoe, Leber, Allen, Herrera, Rice among others) seemed to make a big difference that way. We haven't seen such a unity of purpose up here since Fred Smoot and Daunte Culpepper took half the team out on the boat ride with the hookers a few years back. Seeing the team playing together to win football games has been a refreshing change from the news coverage of them yachting on Lake Minnetonka to get high and/or lap danced by high-buck, out-of-state exotic dancers. I'm all for a rockin' team party but not when the boat right alongside is full of kids on a Sunday school outing.
It was a hell of a game. Not real pretty, almost Shakespearean in it's tragic aspects where the flaws of the characters are at war with their better natures. But isn't that what we watch sports for? Along with coaxing that 3½ point edge in for the win. Don't tell me you weren't sweating out Brees hitting one of his long guys behind the Vikes secondary for a 6-pointer in OT.
So I didn't really have much invested in the game other than having to talk Susan in off of the ledge when it was all over. Her quote just before she climbed out the window was something like, "They just flipp'n' lost this game, didn't they?" Well, yeah honey, someone had to and they pretty much set themselves up for it. Yeah the Vikes got screwed on some OT refereeing incompetence but that didn't screw them nearly so much as all their turnovers and a lack of pressure on Brees. Hand it to the Saints for making it look like Jerrod Allen had stayed back in Eden Prairie to watch the game on the weight room big screen and to let me go down to NO wearing #69. Susan sez that we will watch the Super Bowl but that she won't care about it. I think it's more likely that we'll be tuning in Channel 2 to watch Masterpiece Theatre.
I'll admit that the game got me stirred up and that I didn't sleep all that well Sunday night. That could have been the 3 Diet Cokes I had during and after the game though. I should have stuck to beer. You wanna talk heartbreak--try the Twins games against the Yankees in October. Those had me on the verge of suicide and I really didn't sleep well for a week afterwards. I haven't been so affected by any sporting event since Staubach underthrew that wobbler and Drew Pearson pushed off to come back and get it as some idiot ref sat 3 yards away taking notes. That was back in the days when the NFL's refs held down day jobs as high school AD's and insurance adjusters. It's comforting to know that the refs who are screwing your team now are working at it as full-time professionals.
My friend raved about Favre and I'd agree that it was awful hard to dislike Brett Favre this year---once he got here. He was a star on the field and humble off of it and a great interview when he did talk. I loved the electronics ads that Sears ran up here with Favre that were absolutely hilarious.
We'll never know if a Vikings win might have been that mystical healing force that would have had me casting aside my crutches and walking again. Failing that, it's back to the physical healing process for the knee. It's still faith healing cuz I just sit around and try to have faith that it's healing. The doctor has told me to make sure that I don't bend the knee any more than 20º. That suits me just fine. The less work the better as far as I'm concerned.
I'm glad for all my friends who had the Vikes with 3½; if I'd have set the line it would have been 4 but that's why nobody asks me to set the line. And if any of you think that your wives and kids don't know who it is that you're calling at half-time to lay off a little, well---keep dreaming.
There's definitely a silver lining to all of this. We can start concentrating on the things that really are important in our lives. Pitchers and catchers report in less than a month. And the Twins have signed Jim Thome which has got to be worth a win or two just on account of having him in our dugout instead of hitting against us. As they were quick to point out on the six o'clock, just 328 down the right field line in the new ball park. Not that Thome is a dead pull hitter anymore but you never know. Another 20 for him this coming year and maybe he'll go into the Hall with a Twins cap on his plaque.
A good friend who still checks in every now and then checked in today and consoled me on how rotten I must be feeling in the wake of the Vikings game this past Sunday. Well, it probably hurts more than my busted up leg but since my leg doesn't hardly hurt at all that's really not much of gauge. The real pain from the leg comes from not being able to get to the liquor store on my own but that's a topic for another day. No, I wasn't too broken up by the locals' loss down N'Awluhns. But don't think for a second that I let that keep me from rattling off another way-too-long reply which I later recognized as a chance to do a little double dip for a ready made post here. With a few minor edits to protect the innocent and those guilty of victimless crimes, voila!!
I pretty much cut the emotional ties to the Vikings quite awhile ago. Not that they paid much attention and who would blame them? So Sunday's loss didn't hurt all that much. For the last several years I've kept a running mental tally to make sure that I didn't watch the cumulative equivalent of a full game per any single season. A play here, a play there (usually while raiding the refrigerator or the cookie jar while Miz Susan wasn't watching), that was OK so long as it didn't cut and paste to 60 minutes on the game clock. But I'd never sit down and watch a a whole quarter from start to finish, much less a full game. I did pretty well thru the first ten or twelve games or so.
Then Miz Susan got interested. So we started watching and I think we watched 3 of the last 4 from opening kickoff to the final gun. Bears, Cowboys, Saints---right? Even saw a good chunk of the Giants game. I'd already gotten to like quite a few of the Viking's players from reading the paper and catching the video clips on the 10 o'clock news. Favre's presence seemed to help build a team presence that I hadn't noticed of late. I hate the thought of getting all sentimental about the good old days when Dale Hackbart was roaming the secondary looking for wide receivers to clothesline but recent versions of the Vikings made me wonder if these guys were looking to set all-time NFL records for DUI's and domestic disturbance calls. I think that one of the things that can murder any NFL team is a lack of cohesion and Favre (as well as a crew of emerging team leaders---Shiancoe, Leber, Allen, Herrera, Rice among others) seemed to make a big difference that way. We haven't seen such a unity of purpose up here since Fred Smoot and Daunte Culpepper took half the team out on the boat ride with the hookers a few years back. Seeing the team playing together to win football games has been a refreshing change from the news coverage of them yachting on Lake Minnetonka to get high and/or lap danced by high-buck, out-of-state exotic dancers. I'm all for a rockin' team party but not when the boat right alongside is full of kids on a Sunday school outing.
It was a hell of a game. Not real pretty, almost Shakespearean in it's tragic aspects where the flaws of the characters are at war with their better natures. But isn't that what we watch sports for? Along with coaxing that 3½ point edge in for the win. Don't tell me you weren't sweating out Brees hitting one of his long guys behind the Vikes secondary for a 6-pointer in OT.
So I didn't really have much invested in the game other than having to talk Susan in off of the ledge when it was all over. Her quote just before she climbed out the window was something like, "They just flipp'n' lost this game, didn't they?" Well, yeah honey, someone had to and they pretty much set themselves up for it. Yeah the Vikes got screwed on some OT refereeing incompetence but that didn't screw them nearly so much as all their turnovers and a lack of pressure on Brees. Hand it to the Saints for making it look like Jerrod Allen had stayed back in Eden Prairie to watch the game on the weight room big screen and to let me go down to NO wearing #69. Susan sez that we will watch the Super Bowl but that she won't care about it. I think it's more likely that we'll be tuning in Channel 2 to watch Masterpiece Theatre.
I'll admit that the game got me stirred up and that I didn't sleep all that well Sunday night. That could have been the 3 Diet Cokes I had during and after the game though. I should have stuck to beer. You wanna talk heartbreak--try the Twins games against the Yankees in October. Those had me on the verge of suicide and I really didn't sleep well for a week afterwards. I haven't been so affected by any sporting event since Staubach underthrew that wobbler and Drew Pearson pushed off to come back and get it as some idiot ref sat 3 yards away taking notes. That was back in the days when the NFL's refs held down day jobs as high school AD's and insurance adjusters. It's comforting to know that the refs who are screwing your team now are working at it as full-time professionals.
My friend raved about Favre and I'd agree that it was awful hard to dislike Brett Favre this year---once he got here. He was a star on the field and humble off of it and a great interview when he did talk. I loved the electronics ads that Sears ran up here with Favre that were absolutely hilarious.
We'll never know if a Vikings win might have been that mystical healing force that would have had me casting aside my crutches and walking again. Failing that, it's back to the physical healing process for the knee. It's still faith healing cuz I just sit around and try to have faith that it's healing. The doctor has told me to make sure that I don't bend the knee any more than 20º. That suits me just fine. The less work the better as far as I'm concerned.
I'm glad for all my friends who had the Vikes with 3½; if I'd have set the line it would have been 4 but that's why nobody asks me to set the line. And if any of you think that your wives and kids don't know who it is that you're calling at half-time to lay off a little, well---keep dreaming.
There's definitely a silver lining to all of this. We can start concentrating on the things that really are important in our lives. Pitchers and catchers report in less than a month. And the Twins have signed Jim Thome which has got to be worth a win or two just on account of having him in our dugout instead of hitting against us. As they were quick to point out on the six o'clock, just 328 down the right field line in the new ball park. Not that Thome is a dead pull hitter anymore but you never know. Another 20 for him this coming year and maybe he'll go into the Hall with a Twins cap on his plaque.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
valuable life lessons and the euro sign...
01/23/10
I've learned a thing or two over the past few days. Nothing so valuable as to drag me up and out of this abject poverty of wealth and wit that I've fallen into; that would be hoping for a little too much.
But I have learned that this damned thing isn't about to up and write itself. Or if it is able to, I haven't learned which buttons to press to fire that up. I could be spending a little more time looking for the auto-write features that this website is sure to have but I've found other entertainments that have been alot more fun. Such as looking for a way to enter the sign for the euro. You know what that is, the epsilon-y looking character for the standardized European currency. Bunch of starry-eyed one-worlders. Is this why America won World War II? The hell it is. We won World War II to make Europe and the rest of the world safe for American dollars and markets. Yeah, OK, there was this element of defeating a couple of the most evil and oppressive governments in the history of the planet. Though last time I checked, we were in cahoots up to our eyeballs in that venture with another from the all-time top 3 or 4 list of evil and oppressive governments. Go figure.
It hasn't been a total waste though. € !! See how easy that is. I actually found this whole list of Alt comands that now allows me to make not only the euro sign but a whole bunch of others as well. ¢ ♪ ♫ ¶ ░ « I don't know when, if ever, I might need to use most of these characters but I'm definitely gonna keep track of the ¼-note symbols for when I get around to writing my symphony. It turns out that you can also produce letters of the alphabet using Alt commands. I'm at a total loss as to why anyone would choose not to use the letters on the keyboard. I suppose that you might need the Alt commands if you've poured a beer into most of the left-hand side of your keyboard and shorted out the letters but how often is that gonna happen?
Some of you might be scratching your heads and wondering to yourselves why this dumb cluck needs the € symbol anyway. Good question. Because I've decided to expand the pool for adding items to the western hemisphere's (well, maybe Ramsey County's) greatest collection of postcards of Strasbourg's Pont du Corbeau. I've been relying almost exclusively on eBay vendors in the U.S. but the thought struck me that since the bridge in question lives in a town that practically straddles the French/German border, maybe I could shop some of the eBayers a little closer to source. Talk about a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Unfortunately, winning auctions on eBay.fr means that I have to communicate with French sellers. Some of these vendeurs have the nerve to pretend that they don't all speak English over there after the American tourists have gone back to their hotels for the night. This leaves me to stumble along in my horrible 30-year old college French. It's plenty horrible enough without looking even worse by having to type out "euro". My 30-year old college French didn't serve me all that well 30 years ago when I was trying to fool Mme Peters into believing that I had even the tiniest ability to parler, ecrire ou comprendre le francais. She encouraged me in as many ways as she could come up with not to compound my mistakes in French 51 by moving onto French 52. I think that part of the plea agreement included her giving me a C if I promised to never, ever, set foot again in the Modern Languages wing of the Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center. She kept her part of the deal and I kept mine. Just another building block in that solid 3.13 GPA I put together at Macalester. She probably wasn't the only prof who saw through my act and took pity on me. Took pity on me and allowed me to keep up the charade of going to school while actually drinking beer, sleeping through swim tean practices and shifts at the food service and hoping that the Draft Board wouldn't find me and come waving the number 15 in my face.
Even before I learned the Alt 0128 (€) command I could almost scrape by in French with a little help from the handful of French dictionaries that had previously been cluttering up the bookshelves. But, oh my god, when I've had to try to compose a little two-line message in German, I can guarantee you that Langenscheidt hasn't even begun to publish enough dictionaries to make that easy. Last time I tried to send off a note in German there were a couple of career diplomats from the State Department who showed up a day or so later asking why in hell was I threatening the Germans with a renewal of the 1917 Declaration of War. I really didn't mean any harm. I was just swept away by the prospects of buying even more cards of the Rabensplatz and the Rabensbrucke and the Munster. You can look those up in your German-English distionaries.
I did make good on my promise to stay out of the French Department but I'd still pass by the building every once in awhile. I remember one of those times when I ran into my high school French teacher, Mr. Therrien, as he was leaving some L'Alliance Francaise production at the other end of the Fine Arts complex. I got the feeling that Mr. Therrien didn't entertain illusions as to my French proficiencies any more than Mme Peters. But it was nice to see him and he seemed generally pleased, if somewhat taken aback, when I told him that I thought about him and his classes often. And fondly. I wonder if he'd be generally pleased to know that the groundwork he laid back in 1968 was partly responsible for my correspondence, if somewhat halting, with all of those various French post card merchants.
I guess I'll never have an answer to that one as it seems that Mr. Therrien has passed on. I tried to find mention of him on the internet last week and among the scattered cites for his graduate thesis on learning French via shortwave I found a memorial site put up by his kids. This saddened me, particularly coming so close on the heels of my dad's passing. He used to tell us stories of his time as a paratrooper during the Battle of the Bulge and then as an impoverished college student in Paris after the war. He wriggled those stories in under the loose heading of French Culture. I have no idea what he'd have thought about the whole concept of the E.U and euros but I doubt that he'd have objected.
I've learned a thing or two over the past few days. Nothing so valuable as to drag me up and out of this abject poverty of wealth and wit that I've fallen into; that would be hoping for a little too much.
But I have learned that this damned thing isn't about to up and write itself. Or if it is able to, I haven't learned which buttons to press to fire that up. I could be spending a little more time looking for the auto-write features that this website is sure to have but I've found other entertainments that have been alot more fun. Such as looking for a way to enter the sign for the euro. You know what that is, the epsilon-y looking character for the standardized European currency. Bunch of starry-eyed one-worlders. Is this why America won World War II? The hell it is. We won World War II to make Europe and the rest of the world safe for American dollars and markets. Yeah, OK, there was this element of defeating a couple of the most evil and oppressive governments in the history of the planet. Though last time I checked, we were in cahoots up to our eyeballs in that venture with another from the all-time top 3 or 4 list of evil and oppressive governments. Go figure.
It hasn't been a total waste though. € !! See how easy that is. I actually found this whole list of Alt comands that now allows me to make not only the euro sign but a whole bunch of others as well. ¢ ♪ ♫ ¶ ░ « I don't know when, if ever, I might need to use most of these characters but I'm definitely gonna keep track of the ¼-note symbols for when I get around to writing my symphony. It turns out that you can also produce letters of the alphabet using Alt commands. I'm at a total loss as to why anyone would choose not to use the letters on the keyboard. I suppose that you might need the Alt commands if you've poured a beer into most of the left-hand side of your keyboard and shorted out the letters but how often is that gonna happen?
Some of you might be scratching your heads and wondering to yourselves why this dumb cluck needs the € symbol anyway. Good question. Because I've decided to expand the pool for adding items to the western hemisphere's (well, maybe Ramsey County's) greatest collection of postcards of Strasbourg's Pont du Corbeau. I've been relying almost exclusively on eBay vendors in the U.S. but the thought struck me that since the bridge in question lives in a town that practically straddles the French/German border, maybe I could shop some of the eBayers a little closer to source. Talk about a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Unfortunately, winning auctions on eBay.fr means that I have to communicate with French sellers. Some of these vendeurs have the nerve to pretend that they don't all speak English over there after the American tourists have gone back to their hotels for the night. This leaves me to stumble along in my horrible 30-year old college French. It's plenty horrible enough without looking even worse by having to type out "euro". My 30-year old college French didn't serve me all that well 30 years ago when I was trying to fool Mme Peters into believing that I had even the tiniest ability to parler, ecrire ou comprendre le francais. She encouraged me in as many ways as she could come up with not to compound my mistakes in French 51 by moving onto French 52. I think that part of the plea agreement included her giving me a C if I promised to never, ever, set foot again in the Modern Languages wing of the Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center. She kept her part of the deal and I kept mine. Just another building block in that solid 3.13 GPA I put together at Macalester. She probably wasn't the only prof who saw through my act and took pity on me. Took pity on me and allowed me to keep up the charade of going to school while actually drinking beer, sleeping through swim tean practices and shifts at the food service and hoping that the Draft Board wouldn't find me and come waving the number 15 in my face.
Even before I learned the Alt 0128 (€) command I could almost scrape by in French with a little help from the handful of French dictionaries that had previously been cluttering up the bookshelves. But, oh my god, when I've had to try to compose a little two-line message in German, I can guarantee you that Langenscheidt hasn't even begun to publish enough dictionaries to make that easy. Last time I tried to send off a note in German there were a couple of career diplomats from the State Department who showed up a day or so later asking why in hell was I threatening the Germans with a renewal of the 1917 Declaration of War. I really didn't mean any harm. I was just swept away by the prospects of buying even more cards of the Rabensplatz and the Rabensbrucke and the Munster. You can look those up in your German-English distionaries.
I did make good on my promise to stay out of the French Department but I'd still pass by the building every once in awhile. I remember one of those times when I ran into my high school French teacher, Mr. Therrien, as he was leaving some L'Alliance Francaise production at the other end of the Fine Arts complex. I got the feeling that Mr. Therrien didn't entertain illusions as to my French proficiencies any more than Mme Peters. But it was nice to see him and he seemed generally pleased, if somewhat taken aback, when I told him that I thought about him and his classes often. And fondly. I wonder if he'd be generally pleased to know that the groundwork he laid back in 1968 was partly responsible for my correspondence, if somewhat halting, with all of those various French post card merchants.
I guess I'll never have an answer to that one as it seems that Mr. Therrien has passed on. I tried to find mention of him on the internet last week and among the scattered cites for his graduate thesis on learning French via shortwave I found a memorial site put up by his kids. This saddened me, particularly coming so close on the heels of my dad's passing. He used to tell us stories of his time as a paratrooper during the Battle of the Bulge and then as an impoverished college student in Paris after the war. He wriggled those stories in under the loose heading of French Culture. I have no idea what he'd have thought about the whole concept of the E.U and euros but I doubt that he'd have objected.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
someone's always stealing my best ideas...
01/17/10
Miz Jill,
Apologies for not having seen your comment on one of my recent postings until last night. Surgical procedures on dogs in public? How could I possibly not have known about this? Is Minnesota the greatest state in the nation or what?
I'll admit to being intrigued by this long handled roller thing you're talking about but I've got to warn you to move gently on this. This sounds pretty much like a prima facie case of patent infringement and I'd hate for you to become a party to that. I'm telling you, my legal team is ruthless. They wouldn't care if you are family.
I suppose the fact the I don't actually hold any patents for this kind of thing might be a stumbling block to any claims of infringement. Last time I checked the only patent I held was on complete stupidity. But hell, I never knew about this thing at the Fair until you mentioned it and I think that writing about my idea in this public (well, sort of public) forum should comprise a full assertion of all of my rights both explicit and tacit. God, I should have gone to law school. Can you even begin to imagine the shambles the country would be in if I had?
OK, I may have to let this one go. I feel pretty bad about it cuz it's another example of how all my best ideas get stolen to line the pockets of corporate America. Maybe I'm better off directing all of my creative energy into planning meals. On to dinner.
Miz Susan is downstairs throwing chunks of one of the racks of ribs that's been clogging up the bottom shelf of our freezer into the crockpot. I did some digging for recipes on the internet last night and came up with a couple that call for par-baking for a half hour (with or w/o rub) and then slow cooking for 6-8 hours in the crockpot. She sez to tell you that she's using your Reliable Rub Recipe. (I'd advise that you get a patent registered on it right away unless you stole it from somebody else.) This sounds almost exactly like how my mother used to make ribs when I was a kid. Even Miz Susan grants that it may just work out. This is way cool. I get to bathe in this warm wash of nostalgia and pick up some points for the here and now, all at the same time. Until after dinner, when Miz Susan has eaten way too many way too fast and starts to gripe about her poor upset little tummy. What a lightweight.
Well, we'll get a day to recover since tomorrow is a school holiday. MLKJ Day will be marked this year by our visit to the Specialty Clinic to see the surgeon and hopefully have the 20 staples taken out of my knee. These damn staples have made it impossible for me to fly anywhere since I can't get past the metal detectors at the airport. I don't even remember the number of creative development sessions I've had to skip in the last week alone. Thank heavens that I just keep cranking out the ideas. I'll catch up one of these days.
Miz Jill,
Apologies for not having seen your comment on one of my recent postings until last night. Surgical procedures on dogs in public? How could I possibly not have known about this? Is Minnesota the greatest state in the nation or what?
I'll admit to being intrigued by this long handled roller thing you're talking about but I've got to warn you to move gently on this. This sounds pretty much like a prima facie case of patent infringement and I'd hate for you to become a party to that. I'm telling you, my legal team is ruthless. They wouldn't care if you are family.
I suppose the fact the I don't actually hold any patents for this kind of thing might be a stumbling block to any claims of infringement. Last time I checked the only patent I held was on complete stupidity. But hell, I never knew about this thing at the Fair until you mentioned it and I think that writing about my idea in this public (well, sort of public) forum should comprise a full assertion of all of my rights both explicit and tacit. God, I should have gone to law school. Can you even begin to imagine the shambles the country would be in if I had?
OK, I may have to let this one go. I feel pretty bad about it cuz it's another example of how all my best ideas get stolen to line the pockets of corporate America. Maybe I'm better off directing all of my creative energy into planning meals. On to dinner.
Miz Susan is downstairs throwing chunks of one of the racks of ribs that's been clogging up the bottom shelf of our freezer into the crockpot. I did some digging for recipes on the internet last night and came up with a couple that call for par-baking for a half hour (with or w/o rub) and then slow cooking for 6-8 hours in the crockpot. She sez to tell you that she's using your Reliable Rub Recipe. (I'd advise that you get a patent registered on it right away unless you stole it from somebody else.) This sounds almost exactly like how my mother used to make ribs when I was a kid. Even Miz Susan grants that it may just work out. This is way cool. I get to bathe in this warm wash of nostalgia and pick up some points for the here and now, all at the same time. Until after dinner, when Miz Susan has eaten way too many way too fast and starts to gripe about her poor upset little tummy. What a lightweight.
Well, we'll get a day to recover since tomorrow is a school holiday. MLKJ Day will be marked this year by our visit to the Specialty Clinic to see the surgeon and hopefully have the 20 staples taken out of my knee. These damn staples have made it impossible for me to fly anywhere since I can't get past the metal detectors at the airport. I don't even remember the number of creative development sessions I've had to skip in the last week alone. Thank heavens that I just keep cranking out the ideas. I'll catch up one of these days.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
despatches from the frontlines of the jobhunt front
01/16/10
I haven't had a regular paying job for 2 1/2 years now. I probably hadn't deserved to have a regular paying job for longer than that but up until late-July of 2007 I'd been managing to pass as a semi-productive member of the middle class, providing some valuable services to the marketplace and the community while paying most of my taxes and all of my mortgage installments. And I pride myself on the fact that it took one way-shrewd group of new administrators at a local university to see through my bullshit and cut me loose. Hell, that school is suffering along this year under the burden of needing to pare about two million dollars out of its FY10 budget (try looking at administrative compensation, ya yutzes) so just think how much worse it would have been if I'd still been there. Any resemblence to the current president's previous stop on the lecture tour out in New Mexico is purely coincidental.
I'd probably feel much worse about things if the corporate contractor that got brought in by those crack university administrators hadn't done such a magnificent job of replacing me and the bookstore I ran. Odds are that this new bookstore operation is not the absolute worst one in the country; there are still quite a few that I haven't gotten into to check yet. Really, donchya think that there are probably more than even a few that are just as miserably run as the one that replaced mine? If not worse? After all, this new contractor does run 250+ other stores and that makes for a whole world of possibilities in that sample alone.
I may not get around to visiting all those other stores to do my comparison shopping. Money's tight right now even if I have been relieved of any incentive (not to mention the means) to be throwing away my cash in gaudy displays of foolish charitable giving. I used to do that but my motto has now become, "Let 'em eat cake."
The word about what a slacker I am must have spread pretty effectively. I haven't been able to land one of the rarely available jobs that pops up in the industry I'm most familiar with. That even includes one on a nearby campus where I have a little bit of previous history. This is a school that's allowed something approaching a million bucks to go swirling down the toilet from its bookstore operation over the last several years. I guess I'd have to agree; there's no way that I can run in that kind of fast company. My store always made money.
Oh well, something will turn up sometime soon. I continue to receive daily reports from this genius little dotcom called Monster. A family member recommended that I get signed up on it and I'll tell you, it's been eye-opening. There have been alot of features that have shown up in my inbox reminding me to keep my resume down to something under three pages and to tailor my cover letters to the specifics of any particular job that I'm applying for and to not let on that I'd been turned down as a contestant on Biggest Loser and that to spite them I'd let my weight drop to 525 pounds all by myself. And to be damn sure that I don't let on as to how I did that, exactly. Proprietary trade secrets, right? Really pretty elementary stuff.
But the totally best thing thing about Monster.com has to be the daily job postings that show up regular as clockwork somewhere between 1 and 10 in the morning. I figure on the days that they come in late it's because some desperately unhappy Monster employee has been cherry-picking the best opportunities for him/herself. Heck, there was even a posting for the store manager's job at the Hamline University Bookstore. I thnk that was somewhere between manager #1 (tenure:5 months) and manager #2 (tenure:10 months). But it could have been in one of the gaps bookended by #3 (tenure:2 months---honest, I can't possibly make shit like this up) or even #4 (tenure from May '09 to date and counting). I decided that my skills were almost up to the lofty standards demanded buy this astute chain store entity but that it was looking like upward mobility within the company was whisking all of the previous managers right on up the corporate ladder. I just wasn't ready to commit to the life of an itinerant company man and didn't want to subject my kids to a new school district every few years. Or months, apparently. Pay no attention to the fact that my kids, our kids, are already pretty much grown and out of the house. Yeah, we've even changed the locks. Thank you.
So, the Hamline gig tugged at my heartstrings a little bit but they were casting their recruitment nets pretty wide. I think I even tracked down a classified ad in one of the Mankato papers. Like I said, lofty standards and I wasn't about to get into a tussle over a job with one of my would-be homies from Mankato. I was born there, after all. Thank god there's been a steady flow of other career opportunities courtesy of the Monster auto-mailer.
I'd have never guessed that there could be such turnover in management level positions for some of our region's finest service-segment companies such as PetCo, McDonald's (@the airport---duh!!!, can you spell travel opportunities?), American Income Life, Toys'R'Us and Little Caesar's (both their Midway Center and Highland shops!!). How to choose?
I've held a grudge against PetCo ever since they pulled their shop out of the Midway. That was PetCo, wasn't it? Well, I shouldn't judge. Paper Warehouse or Party City or whatever is gone too. I figured that it was gonna be a tough sled for that strip mall when Mervyn's boarded up the windows. And besides, PetCo wasn't automatically offering manager's jobs. They were also posting "Groomer's" positions. Not sure what that is exactly but definitely don't want to.
Some idiot at one of the WorkForce Centers referred me to American Income Life awhile back, touting a union enroller's job. I fired off my resume and then spent a couple of days calling their various local offices in what turned out to be the foolish hope that someone might actually answer the phone. The company must have some pretty liberal lunch hour allowances which seemed like a feather in its cap. I also did some internet research to no avail and asked my long-time insurance agent if he'd ever heard of American Income Life. N, couldn't say that he had. About a month (yes, that would be four weeks or more) later some nimrod who sounded like he was 16 called looking to set up an appointment to discuss the opening. I think he was calling from a public phone outside of one of the remaining PetCo stores. Scratch that one off the list and scratch the WorkForce Center off the list while I'm at it. I'm glad to know that Minnesota tax dollars are hard at work in at least one of those centers.
Toys'R'Us has lost all of its charms for me ever since the Rax went out of business out there on B2. My ex and I spent a good chunk of our disposable income there (at Toys and then at Rax afterwards) trying to keep our kids invested in the Santy Claus Myth but those two wised up on that one a few years back. Two strikes. Oh yeah, Shinders isn't open out there anymore and neither is the Loehmann Plaza Theater Mega-Plex. Yer outta there!!
That leaves it to Lil Caesar's and Mac and D's. I've got a niece who's already employed at Little C's though she keeps casting covetous glances at the curly fries and jamocha shakes at the Arby's across the street. I'm not about to risk any nepotism charges. Besides which I've worked with family before and it's everything it's cracked up to be. I'll admit that I admire the Little Caesar's business model: your large cheese or pepperoni pizza, hot and ready for you guaranteed for $5.00. But still, I'd rather be a customer than an employee.
The list is down to the McDonald's at the airport. Lots of plusses. Food discounts, duty-free shops, the automated walkways. Did I mention food discounts? But then I got to thinking. Did I really want the possible responsibility of being the purveyor of the last supper on this earthly plane (no pun intended) to some lunatic-fringe underwear bomber? No thanks. My sins are already weighing heavily enough.
I haven't had a regular paying job for 2 1/2 years now. I probably hadn't deserved to have a regular paying job for longer than that but up until late-July of 2007 I'd been managing to pass as a semi-productive member of the middle class, providing some valuable services to the marketplace and the community while paying most of my taxes and all of my mortgage installments. And I pride myself on the fact that it took one way-shrewd group of new administrators at a local university to see through my bullshit and cut me loose. Hell, that school is suffering along this year under the burden of needing to pare about two million dollars out of its FY10 budget (try looking at administrative compensation, ya yutzes) so just think how much worse it would have been if I'd still been there. Any resemblence to the current president's previous stop on the lecture tour out in New Mexico is purely coincidental.
I'd probably feel much worse about things if the corporate contractor that got brought in by those crack university administrators hadn't done such a magnificent job of replacing me and the bookstore I ran. Odds are that this new bookstore operation is not the absolute worst one in the country; there are still quite a few that I haven't gotten into to check yet. Really, donchya think that there are probably more than even a few that are just as miserably run as the one that replaced mine? If not worse? After all, this new contractor does run 250+ other stores and that makes for a whole world of possibilities in that sample alone.
I may not get around to visiting all those other stores to do my comparison shopping. Money's tight right now even if I have been relieved of any incentive (not to mention the means) to be throwing away my cash in gaudy displays of foolish charitable giving. I used to do that but my motto has now become, "Let 'em eat cake."
The word about what a slacker I am must have spread pretty effectively. I haven't been able to land one of the rarely available jobs that pops up in the industry I'm most familiar with. That even includes one on a nearby campus where I have a little bit of previous history. This is a school that's allowed something approaching a million bucks to go swirling down the toilet from its bookstore operation over the last several years. I guess I'd have to agree; there's no way that I can run in that kind of fast company. My store always made money.
Oh well, something will turn up sometime soon. I continue to receive daily reports from this genius little dotcom called Monster. A family member recommended that I get signed up on it and I'll tell you, it's been eye-opening. There have been alot of features that have shown up in my inbox reminding me to keep my resume down to something under three pages and to tailor my cover letters to the specifics of any particular job that I'm applying for and to not let on that I'd been turned down as a contestant on Biggest Loser and that to spite them I'd let my weight drop to 525 pounds all by myself. And to be damn sure that I don't let on as to how I did that, exactly. Proprietary trade secrets, right? Really pretty elementary stuff.
But the totally best thing thing about Monster.com has to be the daily job postings that show up regular as clockwork somewhere between 1 and 10 in the morning. I figure on the days that they come in late it's because some desperately unhappy Monster employee has been cherry-picking the best opportunities for him/herself. Heck, there was even a posting for the store manager's job at the Hamline University Bookstore. I thnk that was somewhere between manager #1 (tenure:5 months) and manager #2 (tenure:10 months). But it could have been in one of the gaps bookended by #3 (tenure:2 months---honest, I can't possibly make shit like this up) or even #4 (tenure from May '09 to date and counting). I decided that my skills were almost up to the lofty standards demanded buy this astute chain store entity but that it was looking like upward mobility within the company was whisking all of the previous managers right on up the corporate ladder. I just wasn't ready to commit to the life of an itinerant company man and didn't want to subject my kids to a new school district every few years. Or months, apparently. Pay no attention to the fact that my kids, our kids, are already pretty much grown and out of the house. Yeah, we've even changed the locks. Thank you.
So, the Hamline gig tugged at my heartstrings a little bit but they were casting their recruitment nets pretty wide. I think I even tracked down a classified ad in one of the Mankato papers. Like I said, lofty standards and I wasn't about to get into a tussle over a job with one of my would-be homies from Mankato. I was born there, after all. Thank god there's been a steady flow of other career opportunities courtesy of the Monster auto-mailer.
I'd have never guessed that there could be such turnover in management level positions for some of our region's finest service-segment companies such as PetCo, McDonald's (@the airport---duh!!!, can you spell travel opportunities?), American Income Life, Toys'R'Us and Little Caesar's (both their Midway Center and Highland shops!!). How to choose?
I've held a grudge against PetCo ever since they pulled their shop out of the Midway. That was PetCo, wasn't it? Well, I shouldn't judge. Paper Warehouse or Party City or whatever is gone too. I figured that it was gonna be a tough sled for that strip mall when Mervyn's boarded up the windows. And besides, PetCo wasn't automatically offering manager's jobs. They were also posting "Groomer's" positions. Not sure what that is exactly but definitely don't want to.
Some idiot at one of the WorkForce Centers referred me to American Income Life awhile back, touting a union enroller's job. I fired off my resume and then spent a couple of days calling their various local offices in what turned out to be the foolish hope that someone might actually answer the phone. The company must have some pretty liberal lunch hour allowances which seemed like a feather in its cap. I also did some internet research to no avail and asked my long-time insurance agent if he'd ever heard of American Income Life. N, couldn't say that he had. About a month (yes, that would be four weeks or more) later some nimrod who sounded like he was 16 called looking to set up an appointment to discuss the opening. I think he was calling from a public phone outside of one of the remaining PetCo stores. Scratch that one off the list and scratch the WorkForce Center off the list while I'm at it. I'm glad to know that Minnesota tax dollars are hard at work in at least one of those centers.
Toys'R'Us has lost all of its charms for me ever since the Rax went out of business out there on B2. My ex and I spent a good chunk of our disposable income there (at Toys and then at Rax afterwards) trying to keep our kids invested in the Santy Claus Myth but those two wised up on that one a few years back. Two strikes. Oh yeah, Shinders isn't open out there anymore and neither is the Loehmann Plaza Theater Mega-Plex. Yer outta there!!
That leaves it to Lil Caesar's and Mac and D's. I've got a niece who's already employed at Little C's though she keeps casting covetous glances at the curly fries and jamocha shakes at the Arby's across the street. I'm not about to risk any nepotism charges. Besides which I've worked with family before and it's everything it's cracked up to be. I'll admit that I admire the Little Caesar's business model: your large cheese or pepperoni pizza, hot and ready for you guaranteed for $5.00. But still, I'd rather be a customer than an employee.
The list is down to the McDonald's at the airport. Lots of plusses. Food discounts, duty-free shops, the automated walkways. Did I mention food discounts? But then I got to thinking. Did I really want the possible responsibility of being the purveyor of the last supper on this earthly plane (no pun intended) to some lunatic-fringe underwear bomber? No thanks. My sins are already weighing heavily enough.
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