It can't be breaking news for anyone living around here that winter has arrived. Officially on the 21st but effectively way back before Thanksgiving when we got hit with the first of a yet-to-be-interrupted string of major winter weather events. I can't keep track of them any more nor of the peculiarities of each storm. We're into a state of perpetual snow emergency. I wonder if Opening Day at Target Field will even be fully accessible or if Mpls will still be enforcing its quaint and totally incomprehensible winter parking regulations.
A sure sign of the approach of winter around the Young household is the annual Linwood Monroe Silent Auction Benefit. If you don't have it on your social calendar into the middle of the next decade...well then, just too bad for you. It's the brainchild of an unknown con artist who must have had a fleeting association with the Linwood PTA and has since been serving time in a federal penitentiary for some stock derivative arbitrage conviction. This thing is that insidious.
It works like this. The Linwood Monroe PTA sends its activists out into the St. Paul marketplace to beg for donations from local merchants. Parents and teachers and whomever else gets sucked in will donate goods and services. The individual grade levels work on collecting items for theme baskets. This effort always nets a high-quality haul of stuff to get auctioned or raffled off and pulls in a decent chunk of change for various school beautification projects. Probably not as much as might get raised out in Edina or North Oaks. But still a serious chunk of change for a humble St. Paul operation. Serious enough, anyway, to hire an off-duty St. Paul cop to keep the cash box safe and sound. And all in the name of keeping the kids from having to be out on the streets while hawking frozen pizzas and holiday wrapping paper.
Lately, the staff has been asked to contribute to a "Wall of Wine" by chipping in a bottle of hooch. Yeah, this is for a K-8 school; don't ask me how this gets justified. It's put me and Miz Susan in the interesting position of donating goods and then bidding on them to buy them back. I got hooked last year when one of the teachers sent her husband out for a bottle of wine and he came home with a bottle of premium tequila. I couldn't very well let someone else take that home, could I? We barely touched last year's bottle but that didn't stop me from bidding on this year's lot. Anyone up for a marguerita party?
Susan and I try to stick together to coordinate our bidding activity and keep an eye on the budget. That usually lasts for eight or ten minutes. After that, I just count on hooking up with her at the end of the evening. She tends to go for the highbrow stuff, jewelry and fabrics and artwork. I'm more inclined to the booze and chocolate. So far, I haven't given in to the urge to get into a bidding war over the 10-lb Pearson's Nut Roll but that's about the limit to my restraint. Anything else goes.
At the end of the night, I wander around and collect all of the stuff we've won and the bid sheets that get tallied up at auction central. This year, Susan's and my diverse bidding patterns drew more than the usual notice from the PTA bosses when it came time to ante up. Some catty comment came up about about her bidding on the month's membership to a health club and me bidding on the three homemade cheesecakes. And I thought the school was supposed to be all about celebrating our diversity.
All in all, a nice milestone to pass and a warning that the Christmas insanity wasn't far behind. As a precursor to winter though, the Silent Auction ran late this year. I had to claw my way home from B'lyn Park in the middle of the the December 3 snowstorm in order to get to the darn thing. A normal 35-40 minute trip got stretched out to nearly two hours. It's a good thing that we both enjoy the event so much because this year's version must have missed the news flash that winter had already arrived.
Happy holidays to all. And to all a good night!
Friday, December 24, 2010
Saturday, November 13, 2010
mixed messages: a recurring theme
A week and a half or so ago, Miz Susan made the mistake of leaving me home alone for a night. She was off to some party where husbands were frowned upon and she, always the gracious guest, was quick to tell me that I couldn't come and that I'd better stay out of the leftover Halloween candy.
This is usually cause for minor celebration; even the Halloween candy part semed a small price to pay. I'm always looking forward to the half a dozen or so nights a year that I'm left unguarded at home. I plan out unhealthy eating excursions for months in advance. Local pizza and rib joints' owners may still be scratching their heads over spikes in same-store sales over the last year's numbers but they're never likely to figure out that these were solely because a certain someone was away from home and not serving up another meatless meal.
I thought hard this time about the appeal of an extra 3-5 thousand calories and damn hard about all the various ways I could make that happen. But it turned out to be a no-go. I think that all the possibilities froze me into indecision.
This is what comes from living in a vibrant metropolitan area with a lively restaurant scene. There are so many spots within 7-10 minutes which serve food that's both totally delicious and totally bad for me; it's godawful painful to narrow things down. I've even been getting daring lately and have started thinking about...gasp!...Lake Street. Yeah, I know; dangerous for an innocent St. Paul kid like me but, my god, the food. The food, I tell you! So anyway---Thai, Italian, burgers, ribs, Friday night fish fries and more. It's tough to pull the trigger when there are so many targets of opportunity.
OK, so I wimped out on the illicit food thing. Call me what you want but I decided I couldn't let a night alone go completely to waste. I decided to get really demented and I walked up to Cheapo/Applause or whatever they call themselves these days. I hit both the CD store on the far side of Snelling and the record store back across the street. And if I didn't actually buy anything other than a lottery ticket at SA (a loser, it turns out), that doesn't make me anything less of a rebel and a man's man. Does it?
Just as I was browsing the Nancy Wilson LP's, looking for a record that I'll never actually see even after multiple reincarnations, Miz Susan called. Where am I, what am I doing, how soon am I going to be home and you do know that it had better be damn soon, right? Yes ma'am, I'm on the way.
I wrapped up my business at the record store (does grabbing a free City Pages on the way out count as business?) and headed home. The front storm door was hooked on the inside. I already had a feeling where this was headed but I played dutiful and went around to the back where I found that door burglar- (and husband-) proofed as well, keys be damned. Back to the front porch where I wondered just how many blankets were in whichever car I had a key to. I called on my cell phone and, in my very meekest voice, asked: please, could I be allowed into the house? Please?
I saw this as a classic case of mixed messages. I'd been told to get my worthless, dead ass home, stat. But, when I got there, the doors were all locked. In her defense, Susan seemed genuinely happy to see me, said it was all reflex action that had led her to lock me out of the house. Maybe she wouldn't have been quite so happy if she'd known then what I know now about that lottery ticket.
Election night left me feeling pretty much the same way. Minnesota has got to be the mixed messages heavyweight champ of the Republic when it comes to voting to ensure zero-sum government. This, after all, is the state that sent Paul Wellstone and Rod Grams to the U.S. Senate. At the same time. Minnesota seems to have loved Tim Pawlenty (yeah, I don't get it either) despite stacking the Legislature solidly against him. Now, to even up that score, we find ourselves with a Legislature in the hands of the Republicans for the first time since Alexander Ramsey's second term but with Mark Dayton as our presumptive guv-elect. Mixed messages on a heavyweight championship scale.
It's been a struggle to watch the GOPers strut and preen and spout their "The people have spoken." blather, ad nauseum. Hell, the people spoke two years ago. And these sanctimonious cockroaches did nothing but sit on their hands and state publicly that they weren't going to do anything to acknowledge the voices that had been raised. And, further, that they were, by God, going to do everything they could to obstruct and sabotage any and all efforts to respond to those voices.
It's going to be a tough two years of watching Mitch McConnell drool his morning Cream of Wheat down his tie and listening to Minnesota GOP mouthpiece Tony Sutton drone his endless recount conspiracy theory schtick between bites of jelly donut. The entertainment value of that kind of stuff has a pretty limited shelf-life.
Maybe I'll see if Tony and some of the other Repub wonks want to go restaurant-hopping with me the next time Miz Susan goes out and forgets to hire the kids across the street to track my movements. I'll even offer to pick up the tab. That has all the makings of a helluva mixed message.
This is usually cause for minor celebration; even the Halloween candy part semed a small price to pay. I'm always looking forward to the half a dozen or so nights a year that I'm left unguarded at home. I plan out unhealthy eating excursions for months in advance. Local pizza and rib joints' owners may still be scratching their heads over spikes in same-store sales over the last year's numbers but they're never likely to figure out that these were solely because a certain someone was away from home and not serving up another meatless meal.
I thought hard this time about the appeal of an extra 3-5 thousand calories and damn hard about all the various ways I could make that happen. But it turned out to be a no-go. I think that all the possibilities froze me into indecision.
This is what comes from living in a vibrant metropolitan area with a lively restaurant scene. There are so many spots within 7-10 minutes which serve food that's both totally delicious and totally bad for me; it's godawful painful to narrow things down. I've even been getting daring lately and have started thinking about...gasp!...Lake Street. Yeah, I know; dangerous for an innocent St. Paul kid like me but, my god, the food. The food, I tell you! So anyway---Thai, Italian, burgers, ribs, Friday night fish fries and more. It's tough to pull the trigger when there are so many targets of opportunity.
OK, so I wimped out on the illicit food thing. Call me what you want but I decided I couldn't let a night alone go completely to waste. I decided to get really demented and I walked up to Cheapo/Applause or whatever they call themselves these days. I hit both the CD store on the far side of Snelling and the record store back across the street. And if I didn't actually buy anything other than a lottery ticket at SA (a loser, it turns out), that doesn't make me anything less of a rebel and a man's man. Does it?
Just as I was browsing the Nancy Wilson LP's, looking for a record that I'll never actually see even after multiple reincarnations, Miz Susan called. Where am I, what am I doing, how soon am I going to be home and you do know that it had better be damn soon, right? Yes ma'am, I'm on the way.
I wrapped up my business at the record store (does grabbing a free City Pages on the way out count as business?) and headed home. The front storm door was hooked on the inside. I already had a feeling where this was headed but I played dutiful and went around to the back where I found that door burglar- (and husband-) proofed as well, keys be damned. Back to the front porch where I wondered just how many blankets were in whichever car I had a key to. I called on my cell phone and, in my very meekest voice, asked: please, could I be allowed into the house? Please?
I saw this as a classic case of mixed messages. I'd been told to get my worthless, dead ass home, stat. But, when I got there, the doors were all locked. In her defense, Susan seemed genuinely happy to see me, said it was all reflex action that had led her to lock me out of the house. Maybe she wouldn't have been quite so happy if she'd known then what I know now about that lottery ticket.
Election night left me feeling pretty much the same way. Minnesota has got to be the mixed messages heavyweight champ of the Republic when it comes to voting to ensure zero-sum government. This, after all, is the state that sent Paul Wellstone and Rod Grams to the U.S. Senate. At the same time. Minnesota seems to have loved Tim Pawlenty (yeah, I don't get it either) despite stacking the Legislature solidly against him. Now, to even up that score, we find ourselves with a Legislature in the hands of the Republicans for the first time since Alexander Ramsey's second term but with Mark Dayton as our presumptive guv-elect. Mixed messages on a heavyweight championship scale.
It's been a struggle to watch the GOPers strut and preen and spout their "The people have spoken." blather, ad nauseum. Hell, the people spoke two years ago. And these sanctimonious cockroaches did nothing but sit on their hands and state publicly that they weren't going to do anything to acknowledge the voices that had been raised. And, further, that they were, by God, going to do everything they could to obstruct and sabotage any and all efforts to respond to those voices.
It's going to be a tough two years of watching Mitch McConnell drool his morning Cream of Wheat down his tie and listening to Minnesota GOP mouthpiece Tony Sutton drone his endless recount conspiracy theory schtick between bites of jelly donut. The entertainment value of that kind of stuff has a pretty limited shelf-life.
Maybe I'll see if Tony and some of the other Repub wonks want to go restaurant-hopping with me the next time Miz Susan goes out and forgets to hire the kids across the street to track my movements. I'll even offer to pick up the tab. That has all the makings of a helluva mixed message.
Friday, February 26, 2010
some observations and modest proposals for the iooc...
02/26/10
Both Miz Susan and I were disappointed when the U.S. women's hockey team didn't grab the gold last night. Heck of a game though, eh? If the USAers didn't claim the top step of the podium they at least caught Susan's attention to the point that she watched the entire game from the time that she got home. We missed the early scoring--her, because she works for a living and me, because I was boiling eggs in the kitchen for another of Susan's nummy salads (translation: meatless meals) for dinner. I shouldn't be kicking since all I had to do was stand around in the kitchen waiting for the water to boil while she had to brave the Mississippi Market to get salad greens and more half+half.
Despite the loss, Susan's willingness to watch the game last night might just mark the opening up of whole new worlds of possibilities for us. I doubt that, in her entire life, apart from her niece Marcy's youth league games, Susan has watched enough minutes to patch together a full hockey game. You'll hear the hockey announcers talk about a star defenseman racking up 40+ minutes of ice time in a big game but that's about where Susan stands for her viewing career. In her defense, I sense that ice hockey was not a way of life down in Lamberton, MN. I'm not saying that there wasn't talent for the game out west on Hwy 14 but it would appear that whatever talent there was got scooped up early and hustled of to the top Junior A leagues. It's tough to run a grade-A high school hockey program when your best kids keep getting sent north to Montreal and Toronto.
Susan was very disappointed that our ladies (didn't you want to strangle Mike Milbury every time he used that word last night? I'd forgotten how much I despised him when he played for the Bruins.) fell short but I tend to the philosophical in these things. As the puckheads are want to say, "You've got to put the biscuit in the basket if you wanna win." Do puckheads really say that? Anyway, our skaters didn't really come close to lighting the lamp except for maybe once off of a scramble in the second period and the Canuckers played plenty well enough to make it stand up. Hats off to the Canadiennes. I'm happy to join in on Oh, Canada! most any time.
But we do need to remember the real purpose of the Olympics and who invented them. The Americans and NBC-TV, right? C'mon, everyone knows that. And when I say "Americans", I'm not willing to get all inclusive to bunch Canada and Mexico in with us. Both of those countries have made plenty of contributions to the world at large but, by god, the Olympics are ours. And with an eye to avoiding future disappointments to households all over this great land and to maintain the potential for ad revenue growth for NBC, I have a few suggestions (the "modest proposals" mentioned in the title above) on how to improve the game of Olympic hockey.
What we really need to understand is that we can't have the U.S. teams in ice hockey losing to anybody. The rest of the world can have all the curling and team Nordic combined skiing medals that they can bear to drape around their necks but the integrity of U.S. viewership needs to be protected at nearly all costs. So, with that in mind, I'm going to throw out these few simple suggestions. Get back to me and tell me what you think.
I'm perfectly willing to let the first period of any future hockey game get played on an even keel. But if Team USA (and this is for women's and men's teams alike) is losing after the first period then the second period will need to be with the other team playing without skates. Broomball shoes would be OK but no skates. And if we're still down after two, then the other guys will have to pull their goalie. For the whole period. Oh, we'll let them have a sixth player but he or she would be restricted to staying inside the center face-off circle. Oh yeah, and that sixth player wouldn't get a stick. These few simple rules modifications should be enough to give our U.S. team a fighting chance to win in most games.
I came up with these ideas last night after Team USA's loss but I'd been thinking hard about ways to improve the Olympics even before that. How about, for example, running the downhill skiing events at night? The cameras could be equipped with infra-red lenses to pick up the body heat from the skiers as they go bouncing past. Or maybe doing the ice dancing competitions on the bobsled run? I'm even working on ideas to successfully combine the ski aerials, snowboard-cross and the biathlon. This could make for some major league fantastic reality TV. And the ratings. Just imagine the ratings!!
Both Miz Susan and I were disappointed when the U.S. women's hockey team didn't grab the gold last night. Heck of a game though, eh? If the USAers didn't claim the top step of the podium they at least caught Susan's attention to the point that she watched the entire game from the time that she got home. We missed the early scoring--her, because she works for a living and me, because I was boiling eggs in the kitchen for another of Susan's nummy salads (translation: meatless meals) for dinner. I shouldn't be kicking since all I had to do was stand around in the kitchen waiting for the water to boil while she had to brave the Mississippi Market to get salad greens and more half+half.
Despite the loss, Susan's willingness to watch the game last night might just mark the opening up of whole new worlds of possibilities for us. I doubt that, in her entire life, apart from her niece Marcy's youth league games, Susan has watched enough minutes to patch together a full hockey game. You'll hear the hockey announcers talk about a star defenseman racking up 40+ minutes of ice time in a big game but that's about where Susan stands for her viewing career. In her defense, I sense that ice hockey was not a way of life down in Lamberton, MN. I'm not saying that there wasn't talent for the game out west on Hwy 14 but it would appear that whatever talent there was got scooped up early and hustled of to the top Junior A leagues. It's tough to run a grade-A high school hockey program when your best kids keep getting sent north to Montreal and Toronto.
Susan was very disappointed that our ladies (didn't you want to strangle Mike Milbury every time he used that word last night? I'd forgotten how much I despised him when he played for the Bruins.) fell short but I tend to the philosophical in these things. As the puckheads are want to say, "You've got to put the biscuit in the basket if you wanna win." Do puckheads really say that? Anyway, our skaters didn't really come close to lighting the lamp except for maybe once off of a scramble in the second period and the Canuckers played plenty well enough to make it stand up. Hats off to the Canadiennes. I'm happy to join in on Oh, Canada! most any time.
But we do need to remember the real purpose of the Olympics and who invented them. The Americans and NBC-TV, right? C'mon, everyone knows that. And when I say "Americans", I'm not willing to get all inclusive to bunch Canada and Mexico in with us. Both of those countries have made plenty of contributions to the world at large but, by god, the Olympics are ours. And with an eye to avoiding future disappointments to households all over this great land and to maintain the potential for ad revenue growth for NBC, I have a few suggestions (the "modest proposals" mentioned in the title above) on how to improve the game of Olympic hockey.
What we really need to understand is that we can't have the U.S. teams in ice hockey losing to anybody. The rest of the world can have all the curling and team Nordic combined skiing medals that they can bear to drape around their necks but the integrity of U.S. viewership needs to be protected at nearly all costs. So, with that in mind, I'm going to throw out these few simple suggestions. Get back to me and tell me what you think.
I'm perfectly willing to let the first period of any future hockey game get played on an even keel. But if Team USA (and this is for women's and men's teams alike) is losing after the first period then the second period will need to be with the other team playing without skates. Broomball shoes would be OK but no skates. And if we're still down after two, then the other guys will have to pull their goalie. For the whole period. Oh, we'll let them have a sixth player but he or she would be restricted to staying inside the center face-off circle. Oh yeah, and that sixth player wouldn't get a stick. These few simple rules modifications should be enough to give our U.S. team a fighting chance to win in most games.
I came up with these ideas last night after Team USA's loss but I'd been thinking hard about ways to improve the Olympics even before that. How about, for example, running the downhill skiing events at night? The cameras could be equipped with infra-red lenses to pick up the body heat from the skiers as they go bouncing past. Or maybe doing the ice dancing competitions on the bobsled run? I'm even working on ideas to successfully combine the ski aerials, snowboard-cross and the biathlon. This could make for some major league fantastic reality TV. And the ratings. Just imagine the ratings!!
Thursday, February 25, 2010
back from the doctor's office
02/25/10
That was actually this past Monday. Miz Susan took a day off of work despite her concerns that some less-than-handpicked sub might undo all of the progress her 4th graders had made since last September. She's more worried about me undoing all of the progress I've made since Christmas Day and she wouldn't let me go by myself. Something about ice and crutches and about how stupid I am. Something along those lines. Hard to argue with her given the evidence she's collected.
It's a good thing that she came with me. I'd never have thought to bake cupcakes to take to the staff at the Specialty Clinic. And if I had thought of it, those cupcakes sure as hell would not have made it out of the car and up to the third floor. You'd be surprised at how many cupcakes you can eat in an 18 minute car ride. Not as many as White Castles but still quite a few. City driving allows for better productivity in the speed eating department since you can usually catch a few stoplights along the way to line things up for maximum efficiency.
They made like they were happy to see us down at 435 Phalen. I suppose they were since we've kept them fully employed since last July. No worries about layoffs in the local medical workforce when I'm in town. And they all brightened up even more when Susan handed over the cupcakes. I tried to keep up a brave front as the last of my birthday booty disappeared into the staff break room. Almost the last anyway; there are still a few pieces of Jill and MaryAnn's pecan pie left and I ain't giving those up to anyone.
The doc poked and prodded and made me hop around the exam room on one leg for a few minutes. He told us that he was pleased at seeing better progress than he would have expected. I doubt that he had any concept as to just how easy I've been taking it for the last six weeks. My knee and all of its assorted muscles and tendons and whatnot have really had no opportunity to do anything but make progress. He told us to come back and see him in four weeks and to keep on doing whatever it was that I had been doing.
That wasn't all though. He called in for the delivery of my old friend, the CPM (Continuous Passive Movement) machine. That arrived Tuesday afternoon and I've already logged a few sessions in its healing clutches. In fact, I'm headed back that way soon. I'm glad to have the thing back as it's a concrete reminder that I might be able to walk again someday and also because I haven't done nearly the amount of reading I did last fall. Maybe I'll get through a couple of books that I was looking forward to.
The CPM even got delivered by the same guy as last time. He was also happy to see me. Here's a guy who spends his workdays on the freeways with a minivan full of medical equipment making deliveries and doing set-ups. He said his route map on Tuesday was Plymouth to Cottage Grove to Regions and me in the Midway to Coon Rapids and then home to Chisago City. But no matter how crazy his days must sometimes feel, he's gladdened by the fact that he's not me. He, at least, gets to get out of the house once in a while.
I am starting to feel that there might be light at the end of the tunnel. Miz Susan and I went off to see Kate perform in Hopkins High's adaptation of Talking With last night. The highlight of the evening was Kate (live snake and all--ask her, not me) and the rest of the cast but I also shone in my supporting role as driver; my first driving since being rendered hors de combat in the Great Christmas Snow Shovel War of 2009. Miz Susan graciously accepted my offer that I drive to Minnetonka and I made the most of it, weaving in and out of traffic like a regular suburbanite on the way home from happy hour. I'm on the way back.
I realized that I maybe should have grabbed the wheel for the return leg when Susan announced that she was suffering from night blindness just as she started down the long twisting entrance ramp onto Hwy 169. We did make it home safely despite the best efforts of some for-real suburbanite doing his for-real happy hour induced weave on 94 just past the 280 exit. I thought that it was touching that he wanted to share the lane with us at 55 mph but Susan took a dimmer view of his advances. She asked me what in the hell he was doing. As if I knew. I don't have the faintest idea what I'm doing most of the time let alone some idiot who would easily have blown a .15 on any passing cop's drunk-o-meter.
I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to driving every day again.
That was actually this past Monday. Miz Susan took a day off of work despite her concerns that some less-than-handpicked sub might undo all of the progress her 4th graders had made since last September. She's more worried about me undoing all of the progress I've made since Christmas Day and she wouldn't let me go by myself. Something about ice and crutches and about how stupid I am. Something along those lines. Hard to argue with her given the evidence she's collected.
It's a good thing that she came with me. I'd never have thought to bake cupcakes to take to the staff at the Specialty Clinic. And if I had thought of it, those cupcakes sure as hell would not have made it out of the car and up to the third floor. You'd be surprised at how many cupcakes you can eat in an 18 minute car ride. Not as many as White Castles but still quite a few. City driving allows for better productivity in the speed eating department since you can usually catch a few stoplights along the way to line things up for maximum efficiency.
They made like they were happy to see us down at 435 Phalen. I suppose they were since we've kept them fully employed since last July. No worries about layoffs in the local medical workforce when I'm in town. And they all brightened up even more when Susan handed over the cupcakes. I tried to keep up a brave front as the last of my birthday booty disappeared into the staff break room. Almost the last anyway; there are still a few pieces of Jill and MaryAnn's pecan pie left and I ain't giving those up to anyone.
The doc poked and prodded and made me hop around the exam room on one leg for a few minutes. He told us that he was pleased at seeing better progress than he would have expected. I doubt that he had any concept as to just how easy I've been taking it for the last six weeks. My knee and all of its assorted muscles and tendons and whatnot have really had no opportunity to do anything but make progress. He told us to come back and see him in four weeks and to keep on doing whatever it was that I had been doing.
That wasn't all though. He called in for the delivery of my old friend, the CPM (Continuous Passive Movement) machine. That arrived Tuesday afternoon and I've already logged a few sessions in its healing clutches. In fact, I'm headed back that way soon. I'm glad to have the thing back as it's a concrete reminder that I might be able to walk again someday and also because I haven't done nearly the amount of reading I did last fall. Maybe I'll get through a couple of books that I was looking forward to.
The CPM even got delivered by the same guy as last time. He was also happy to see me. Here's a guy who spends his workdays on the freeways with a minivan full of medical equipment making deliveries and doing set-ups. He said his route map on Tuesday was Plymouth to Cottage Grove to Regions and me in the Midway to Coon Rapids and then home to Chisago City. But no matter how crazy his days must sometimes feel, he's gladdened by the fact that he's not me. He, at least, gets to get out of the house once in a while.
I am starting to feel that there might be light at the end of the tunnel. Miz Susan and I went off to see Kate perform in Hopkins High's adaptation of Talking With last night. The highlight of the evening was Kate (live snake and all--ask her, not me) and the rest of the cast but I also shone in my supporting role as driver; my first driving since being rendered hors de combat in the Great Christmas Snow Shovel War of 2009. Miz Susan graciously accepted my offer that I drive to Minnetonka and I made the most of it, weaving in and out of traffic like a regular suburbanite on the way home from happy hour. I'm on the way back.
I realized that I maybe should have grabbed the wheel for the return leg when Susan announced that she was suffering from night blindness just as she started down the long twisting entrance ramp onto Hwy 169. We did make it home safely despite the best efforts of some for-real suburbanite doing his for-real happy hour induced weave on 94 just past the 280 exit. I thought that it was touching that he wanted to share the lane with us at 55 mph but Susan took a dimmer view of his advances. She asked me what in the hell he was doing. As if I knew. I don't have the faintest idea what I'm doing most of the time let alone some idiot who would easily have blown a .15 on any passing cop's drunk-o-meter.
I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to driving every day again.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Valentine's Day with me as target practice for cupid and his little bow and arrows
Valentine's Day is upon us. I thought it would never get here. The last three months of the NFL season definitely slow down the passage of time to a crawl and are an unhappy reminder of just how long it is between late-October and late-February. I suppose that winter and its short days, long (and generally uneventful) nights, low sun angle (is that redundant?), and all of its many varieties of noxious weather conditions also play their parts in making the clock and calendar seem like they're standing still. But we're past all of that now. The days are getting longer and, if the nights are still pretty uneventful, there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon marked by Valentine's Day and my birthday, a mere week later. Twins pitchers and catchers report on February 21, my special day. Coincidence? Maybe. But I like to think that we all deserve a break and a sense of hope that, soon, we'll have major league baseball to ease us through the still otherwise unevevtful evenings.
But we do need to get past this Valentine's Day thing first. I've never been the biggest fan in the world of Valentine's Day and have tended to see it as a contrived event to benefit the manufacturers of schmaltzy red and pink tinted cards and the retail outlets that sell the damn things. I'm all for getting tons of chocolate dumped in my lap but mostly what I've gotten instead are those rock-hard, heart-shaped little instant tooth decay pellets with the stupid messages on them. Seriously---Q-T-π? Those things are even more deadly than the sugar-coated marshmallow lumps that get sold during the Easter season. But I'll admit that there are a few silver linings in the Valentine's clouds and those have to do with...surprise!!...food and drink.
And I'm not just talking chocolate. I'm talking pizza from Carbone's on Randolph. Heart-shaped, no less. And unlike the little heart-shaped sugar jaw breakers, this stuff--though it might still kill you--will at least make the trip to the hereafter worthwhile.
We first discovered the concept of heart-shapizza a feww years back at Carbone's on Randolph, my old stomping grounds from way back in high school and even before that. I would have been far too cool to have submitted to such an emotions-on-the-sleeve thing back when I was 17. Moot point though; I'm almost positive that this beauty wasn't on the menu back in the day. No, I'd somehow convinced Miz Susan that what we really needed for Valentine's Day dinner was pizza from Carbone's. Imagine my shock when she actually agreed. Then imagine my pathetic little man-brain spinning feverishly when I ordered and they asked if I wanted it in the shape of the day. Who was I to say anything but, "Hell yes, I want it it heart-shaped!"? Particularly since I'd undoubtedly done my usual half-assed job of paying due respect to the holiday and was probably coming home with, at best, a more than half-wilted bunch of daisies from the floral department at Cub. Long story short, we loved it (hard not to love a Carbone's pizza) and we've been stuck on it ever since. A tradition had been born.
I mentioned drink as well. Miz Susan got hooked on the bubbly a couple of New Year's Eves ago down at the University Club. One of the waiters who was probably looking to pad our bill gave her a free sip of the stuff and she fell right into his trap. Before I knew it we had a whole bottle to kill and now she's always taking a detour past the champagne rack whenever we go to the liquor store. Sadly, the weather and the trials of the week conspired to keep her from that one last stop on Friday afternoon and we were left without any Schramsberg Blanc de Blanc. We've given up on any ideas of ever tasting Dom Perignon, let alone buying a bottle. I talked her into beer instead and she was more than happy to help polish off the last of the Schell's Octoberfest after I pointed out that if she really needed to drink imported she could start putting a dent in the Amstel Lights that had gotten shoved to the back of the fridge.
So Valentine's Day dinner was a relatively low-key operation despite Miz Susan having to venture out to pick up the pizza, Carbone's one major failing being that they don't deliver. Never have, doubt they ever will. But it's not like I didn't have to pay a steep price for the beer and pizza. I wonder if Miz Susan would have even allowed me this much if I hadn't played the part of Valentines Lackey for her fourth grade class.
For whatever reason, political correctness has not yet done away with the exchange of Valentines in at least a few of our public schools. The kids probably still like it and I know that Miz Susan always brings home a wad of the things every February. For her students, she (meaning me) has sometimes copped her cards off of the internet but this year she decided to throw some of our hard earned dollars at Target in exchange for a box of 32 of the cutest, glossiest, heartiest little monkey Valentines you can imagine. Complete with matching rub on tattoos. She even ponied up for a couple of bags of M&M minis to go with each card. About five minutes into the process of separating and addressing and folding and taping and M&Ming she told me that this really wasn't a very efficient use of her time. She was right, of course. She's making good money and I don't even qualify for unemployment so I offered to take over for her. I separated the perforated sheets of the little monkeys and turned them over to her for addresses and her initials. Then she threw them back at me for the rest of the minimum wage work. I tucked the matching tattoos into their little slots and taped packages of M&M minis and folded and sealed them all up with the little red heart stickers that came with the pack. An hour later, with my hands throbbing from the picky-ass work and Miz Susan smirking and basking in the glow of having Tom Sawyered another chunk of her work-related tedium off on me, I wrapped things up. After a last count to make sure that no 4Y student was going to be scarred for life due to a missing Valentine monkey card which had slipped under the bed, I poured the things back into the Target bag. To rub my nose in my low-life status even further, Miz Susan grabbed the bag with the untaped M&M's and took that away from me too. She threw me one measly little package for my troubles but that was all. I figured that I could bide my time, that maybe there'd be a few leftovers after the mayhem on Friday that would come back home. I should have known better. Those most likely got handed over to the Desk Fairy for future positive reinforcement purposes because I sure as hell never saw them again.
Can't hardly wait for Valentine's to roll around again next year.
But we do need to get past this Valentine's Day thing first. I've never been the biggest fan in the world of Valentine's Day and have tended to see it as a contrived event to benefit the manufacturers of schmaltzy red and pink tinted cards and the retail outlets that sell the damn things. I'm all for getting tons of chocolate dumped in my lap but mostly what I've gotten instead are those rock-hard, heart-shaped little instant tooth decay pellets with the stupid messages on them. Seriously---Q-T-π? Those things are even more deadly than the sugar-coated marshmallow lumps that get sold during the Easter season. But I'll admit that there are a few silver linings in the Valentine's clouds and those have to do with...surprise!!...food and drink.
And I'm not just talking chocolate. I'm talking pizza from Carbone's on Randolph. Heart-shaped, no less. And unlike the little heart-shaped sugar jaw breakers, this stuff--though it might still kill you--will at least make the trip to the hereafter worthwhile.
We first discovered the concept of heart-shapizza a feww years back at Carbone's on Randolph, my old stomping grounds from way back in high school and even before that. I would have been far too cool to have submitted to such an emotions-on-the-sleeve thing back when I was 17. Moot point though; I'm almost positive that this beauty wasn't on the menu back in the day. No, I'd somehow convinced Miz Susan that what we really needed for Valentine's Day dinner was pizza from Carbone's. Imagine my shock when she actually agreed. Then imagine my pathetic little man-brain spinning feverishly when I ordered and they asked if I wanted it in the shape of the day. Who was I to say anything but, "Hell yes, I want it it heart-shaped!"? Particularly since I'd undoubtedly done my usual half-assed job of paying due respect to the holiday and was probably coming home with, at best, a more than half-wilted bunch of daisies from the floral department at Cub. Long story short, we loved it (hard not to love a Carbone's pizza) and we've been stuck on it ever since. A tradition had been born.
I mentioned drink as well. Miz Susan got hooked on the bubbly a couple of New Year's Eves ago down at the University Club. One of the waiters who was probably looking to pad our bill gave her a free sip of the stuff and she fell right into his trap. Before I knew it we had a whole bottle to kill and now she's always taking a detour past the champagne rack whenever we go to the liquor store. Sadly, the weather and the trials of the week conspired to keep her from that one last stop on Friday afternoon and we were left without any Schramsberg Blanc de Blanc. We've given up on any ideas of ever tasting Dom Perignon, let alone buying a bottle. I talked her into beer instead and she was more than happy to help polish off the last of the Schell's Octoberfest after I pointed out that if she really needed to drink imported she could start putting a dent in the Amstel Lights that had gotten shoved to the back of the fridge.
So Valentine's Day dinner was a relatively low-key operation despite Miz Susan having to venture out to pick up the pizza, Carbone's one major failing being that they don't deliver. Never have, doubt they ever will. But it's not like I didn't have to pay a steep price for the beer and pizza. I wonder if Miz Susan would have even allowed me this much if I hadn't played the part of Valentines Lackey for her fourth grade class.
For whatever reason, political correctness has not yet done away with the exchange of Valentines in at least a few of our public schools. The kids probably still like it and I know that Miz Susan always brings home a wad of the things every February. For her students, she (meaning me) has sometimes copped her cards off of the internet but this year she decided to throw some of our hard earned dollars at Target in exchange for a box of 32 of the cutest, glossiest, heartiest little monkey Valentines you can imagine. Complete with matching rub on tattoos. She even ponied up for a couple of bags of M&M minis to go with each card. About five minutes into the process of separating and addressing and folding and taping and M&Ming she told me that this really wasn't a very efficient use of her time. She was right, of course. She's making good money and I don't even qualify for unemployment so I offered to take over for her. I separated the perforated sheets of the little monkeys and turned them over to her for addresses and her initials. Then she threw them back at me for the rest of the minimum wage work. I tucked the matching tattoos into their little slots and taped packages of M&M minis and folded and sealed them all up with the little red heart stickers that came with the pack. An hour later, with my hands throbbing from the picky-ass work and Miz Susan smirking and basking in the glow of having Tom Sawyered another chunk of her work-related tedium off on me, I wrapped things up. After a last count to make sure that no 4Y student was going to be scarred for life due to a missing Valentine monkey card which had slipped under the bed, I poured the things back into the Target bag. To rub my nose in my low-life status even further, Miz Susan grabbed the bag with the untaped M&M's and took that away from me too. She threw me one measly little package for my troubles but that was all. I figured that I could bide my time, that maybe there'd be a few leftovers after the mayhem on Friday that would come back home. I should have known better. Those most likely got handed over to the Desk Fairy for future positive reinforcement purposes because I sure as hell never saw them again.
Can't hardly wait for Valentine's to roll around again next year.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
super bowl? there's a super bowl again this year?
01/26/10
A good friend who still checks in every now and then checked in today and consoled me on how rotten I must be feeling in the wake of the Vikings game this past Sunday. Well, it probably hurts more than my busted up leg but since my leg doesn't hardly hurt at all that's really not much of gauge. The real pain from the leg comes from not being able to get to the liquor store on my own but that's a topic for another day. No, I wasn't too broken up by the locals' loss down N'Awluhns. But don't think for a second that I let that keep me from rattling off another way-too-long reply which I later recognized as a chance to do a little double dip for a ready made post here. With a few minor edits to protect the innocent and those guilty of victimless crimes, voila!!
I pretty much cut the emotional ties to the Vikings quite awhile ago. Not that they paid much attention and who would blame them? So Sunday's loss didn't hurt all that much. For the last several years I've kept a running mental tally to make sure that I didn't watch the cumulative equivalent of a full game per any single season. A play here, a play there (usually while raiding the refrigerator or the cookie jar while Miz Susan wasn't watching), that was OK so long as it didn't cut and paste to 60 minutes on the game clock. But I'd never sit down and watch a a whole quarter from start to finish, much less a full game. I did pretty well thru the first ten or twelve games or so.
Then Miz Susan got interested. So we started watching and I think we watched 3 of the last 4 from opening kickoff to the final gun. Bears, Cowboys, Saints---right? Even saw a good chunk of the Giants game. I'd already gotten to like quite a few of the Viking's players from reading the paper and catching the video clips on the 10 o'clock news. Favre's presence seemed to help build a team presence that I hadn't noticed of late. I hate the thought of getting all sentimental about the good old days when Dale Hackbart was roaming the secondary looking for wide receivers to clothesline but recent versions of the Vikings made me wonder if these guys were looking to set all-time NFL records for DUI's and domestic disturbance calls. I think that one of the things that can murder any NFL team is a lack of cohesion and Favre (as well as a crew of emerging team leaders---Shiancoe, Leber, Allen, Herrera, Rice among others) seemed to make a big difference that way. We haven't seen such a unity of purpose up here since Fred Smoot and Daunte Culpepper took half the team out on the boat ride with the hookers a few years back. Seeing the team playing together to win football games has been a refreshing change from the news coverage of them yachting on Lake Minnetonka to get high and/or lap danced by high-buck, out-of-state exotic dancers. I'm all for a rockin' team party but not when the boat right alongside is full of kids on a Sunday school outing.
It was a hell of a game. Not real pretty, almost Shakespearean in it's tragic aspects where the flaws of the characters are at war with their better natures. But isn't that what we watch sports for? Along with coaxing that 3½ point edge in for the win. Don't tell me you weren't sweating out Brees hitting one of his long guys behind the Vikes secondary for a 6-pointer in OT.
So I didn't really have much invested in the game other than having to talk Susan in off of the ledge when it was all over. Her quote just before she climbed out the window was something like, "They just flipp'n' lost this game, didn't they?" Well, yeah honey, someone had to and they pretty much set themselves up for it. Yeah the Vikes got screwed on some OT refereeing incompetence but that didn't screw them nearly so much as all their turnovers and a lack of pressure on Brees. Hand it to the Saints for making it look like Jerrod Allen had stayed back in Eden Prairie to watch the game on the weight room big screen and to let me go down to NO wearing #69. Susan sez that we will watch the Super Bowl but that she won't care about it. I think it's more likely that we'll be tuning in Channel 2 to watch Masterpiece Theatre.
I'll admit that the game got me stirred up and that I didn't sleep all that well Sunday night. That could have been the 3 Diet Cokes I had during and after the game though. I should have stuck to beer. You wanna talk heartbreak--try the Twins games against the Yankees in October. Those had me on the verge of suicide and I really didn't sleep well for a week afterwards. I haven't been so affected by any sporting event since Staubach underthrew that wobbler and Drew Pearson pushed off to come back and get it as some idiot ref sat 3 yards away taking notes. That was back in the days when the NFL's refs held down day jobs as high school AD's and insurance adjusters. It's comforting to know that the refs who are screwing your team now are working at it as full-time professionals.
My friend raved about Favre and I'd agree that it was awful hard to dislike Brett Favre this year---once he got here. He was a star on the field and humble off of it and a great interview when he did talk. I loved the electronics ads that Sears ran up here with Favre that were absolutely hilarious.
We'll never know if a Vikings win might have been that mystical healing force that would have had me casting aside my crutches and walking again. Failing that, it's back to the physical healing process for the knee. It's still faith healing cuz I just sit around and try to have faith that it's healing. The doctor has told me to make sure that I don't bend the knee any more than 20º. That suits me just fine. The less work the better as far as I'm concerned.
I'm glad for all my friends who had the Vikes with 3½; if I'd have set the line it would have been 4 but that's why nobody asks me to set the line. And if any of you think that your wives and kids don't know who it is that you're calling at half-time to lay off a little, well---keep dreaming.
There's definitely a silver lining to all of this. We can start concentrating on the things that really are important in our lives. Pitchers and catchers report in less than a month. And the Twins have signed Jim Thome which has got to be worth a win or two just on account of having him in our dugout instead of hitting against us. As they were quick to point out on the six o'clock, just 328 down the right field line in the new ball park. Not that Thome is a dead pull hitter anymore but you never know. Another 20 for him this coming year and maybe he'll go into the Hall with a Twins cap on his plaque.
A good friend who still checks in every now and then checked in today and consoled me on how rotten I must be feeling in the wake of the Vikings game this past Sunday. Well, it probably hurts more than my busted up leg but since my leg doesn't hardly hurt at all that's really not much of gauge. The real pain from the leg comes from not being able to get to the liquor store on my own but that's a topic for another day. No, I wasn't too broken up by the locals' loss down N'Awluhns. But don't think for a second that I let that keep me from rattling off another way-too-long reply which I later recognized as a chance to do a little double dip for a ready made post here. With a few minor edits to protect the innocent and those guilty of victimless crimes, voila!!
I pretty much cut the emotional ties to the Vikings quite awhile ago. Not that they paid much attention and who would blame them? So Sunday's loss didn't hurt all that much. For the last several years I've kept a running mental tally to make sure that I didn't watch the cumulative equivalent of a full game per any single season. A play here, a play there (usually while raiding the refrigerator or the cookie jar while Miz Susan wasn't watching), that was OK so long as it didn't cut and paste to 60 minutes on the game clock. But I'd never sit down and watch a a whole quarter from start to finish, much less a full game. I did pretty well thru the first ten or twelve games or so.
Then Miz Susan got interested. So we started watching and I think we watched 3 of the last 4 from opening kickoff to the final gun. Bears, Cowboys, Saints---right? Even saw a good chunk of the Giants game. I'd already gotten to like quite a few of the Viking's players from reading the paper and catching the video clips on the 10 o'clock news. Favre's presence seemed to help build a team presence that I hadn't noticed of late. I hate the thought of getting all sentimental about the good old days when Dale Hackbart was roaming the secondary looking for wide receivers to clothesline but recent versions of the Vikings made me wonder if these guys were looking to set all-time NFL records for DUI's and domestic disturbance calls. I think that one of the things that can murder any NFL team is a lack of cohesion and Favre (as well as a crew of emerging team leaders---Shiancoe, Leber, Allen, Herrera, Rice among others) seemed to make a big difference that way. We haven't seen such a unity of purpose up here since Fred Smoot and Daunte Culpepper took half the team out on the boat ride with the hookers a few years back. Seeing the team playing together to win football games has been a refreshing change from the news coverage of them yachting on Lake Minnetonka to get high and/or lap danced by high-buck, out-of-state exotic dancers. I'm all for a rockin' team party but not when the boat right alongside is full of kids on a Sunday school outing.
It was a hell of a game. Not real pretty, almost Shakespearean in it's tragic aspects where the flaws of the characters are at war with their better natures. But isn't that what we watch sports for? Along with coaxing that 3½ point edge in for the win. Don't tell me you weren't sweating out Brees hitting one of his long guys behind the Vikes secondary for a 6-pointer in OT.
So I didn't really have much invested in the game other than having to talk Susan in off of the ledge when it was all over. Her quote just before she climbed out the window was something like, "They just flipp'n' lost this game, didn't they?" Well, yeah honey, someone had to and they pretty much set themselves up for it. Yeah the Vikes got screwed on some OT refereeing incompetence but that didn't screw them nearly so much as all their turnovers and a lack of pressure on Brees. Hand it to the Saints for making it look like Jerrod Allen had stayed back in Eden Prairie to watch the game on the weight room big screen and to let me go down to NO wearing #69. Susan sez that we will watch the Super Bowl but that she won't care about it. I think it's more likely that we'll be tuning in Channel 2 to watch Masterpiece Theatre.
I'll admit that the game got me stirred up and that I didn't sleep all that well Sunday night. That could have been the 3 Diet Cokes I had during and after the game though. I should have stuck to beer. You wanna talk heartbreak--try the Twins games against the Yankees in October. Those had me on the verge of suicide and I really didn't sleep well for a week afterwards. I haven't been so affected by any sporting event since Staubach underthrew that wobbler and Drew Pearson pushed off to come back and get it as some idiot ref sat 3 yards away taking notes. That was back in the days when the NFL's refs held down day jobs as high school AD's and insurance adjusters. It's comforting to know that the refs who are screwing your team now are working at it as full-time professionals.
My friend raved about Favre and I'd agree that it was awful hard to dislike Brett Favre this year---once he got here. He was a star on the field and humble off of it and a great interview when he did talk. I loved the electronics ads that Sears ran up here with Favre that were absolutely hilarious.
We'll never know if a Vikings win might have been that mystical healing force that would have had me casting aside my crutches and walking again. Failing that, it's back to the physical healing process for the knee. It's still faith healing cuz I just sit around and try to have faith that it's healing. The doctor has told me to make sure that I don't bend the knee any more than 20º. That suits me just fine. The less work the better as far as I'm concerned.
I'm glad for all my friends who had the Vikes with 3½; if I'd have set the line it would have been 4 but that's why nobody asks me to set the line. And if any of you think that your wives and kids don't know who it is that you're calling at half-time to lay off a little, well---keep dreaming.
There's definitely a silver lining to all of this. We can start concentrating on the things that really are important in our lives. Pitchers and catchers report in less than a month. And the Twins have signed Jim Thome which has got to be worth a win or two just on account of having him in our dugout instead of hitting against us. As they were quick to point out on the six o'clock, just 328 down the right field line in the new ball park. Not that Thome is a dead pull hitter anymore but you never know. Another 20 for him this coming year and maybe he'll go into the Hall with a Twins cap on his plaque.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
valuable life lessons and the euro sign...
01/23/10
I've learned a thing or two over the past few days. Nothing so valuable as to drag me up and out of this abject poverty of wealth and wit that I've fallen into; that would be hoping for a little too much.
But I have learned that this damned thing isn't about to up and write itself. Or if it is able to, I haven't learned which buttons to press to fire that up. I could be spending a little more time looking for the auto-write features that this website is sure to have but I've found other entertainments that have been alot more fun. Such as looking for a way to enter the sign for the euro. You know what that is, the epsilon-y looking character for the standardized European currency. Bunch of starry-eyed one-worlders. Is this why America won World War II? The hell it is. We won World War II to make Europe and the rest of the world safe for American dollars and markets. Yeah, OK, there was this element of defeating a couple of the most evil and oppressive governments in the history of the planet. Though last time I checked, we were in cahoots up to our eyeballs in that venture with another from the all-time top 3 or 4 list of evil and oppressive governments. Go figure.
It hasn't been a total waste though. € !! See how easy that is. I actually found this whole list of Alt comands that now allows me to make not only the euro sign but a whole bunch of others as well. ¢ ♪ ♫ ¶ ░ « I don't know when, if ever, I might need to use most of these characters but I'm definitely gonna keep track of the ¼-note symbols for when I get around to writing my symphony. It turns out that you can also produce letters of the alphabet using Alt commands. I'm at a total loss as to why anyone would choose not to use the letters on the keyboard. I suppose that you might need the Alt commands if you've poured a beer into most of the left-hand side of your keyboard and shorted out the letters but how often is that gonna happen?
Some of you might be scratching your heads and wondering to yourselves why this dumb cluck needs the € symbol anyway. Good question. Because I've decided to expand the pool for adding items to the western hemisphere's (well, maybe Ramsey County's) greatest collection of postcards of Strasbourg's Pont du Corbeau. I've been relying almost exclusively on eBay vendors in the U.S. but the thought struck me that since the bridge in question lives in a town that practically straddles the French/German border, maybe I could shop some of the eBayers a little closer to source. Talk about a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Unfortunately, winning auctions on eBay.fr means that I have to communicate with French sellers. Some of these vendeurs have the nerve to pretend that they don't all speak English over there after the American tourists have gone back to their hotels for the night. This leaves me to stumble along in my horrible 30-year old college French. It's plenty horrible enough without looking even worse by having to type out "euro". My 30-year old college French didn't serve me all that well 30 years ago when I was trying to fool Mme Peters into believing that I had even the tiniest ability to parler, ecrire ou comprendre le francais. She encouraged me in as many ways as she could come up with not to compound my mistakes in French 51 by moving onto French 52. I think that part of the plea agreement included her giving me a C if I promised to never, ever, set foot again in the Modern Languages wing of the Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center. She kept her part of the deal and I kept mine. Just another building block in that solid 3.13 GPA I put together at Macalester. She probably wasn't the only prof who saw through my act and took pity on me. Took pity on me and allowed me to keep up the charade of going to school while actually drinking beer, sleeping through swim tean practices and shifts at the food service and hoping that the Draft Board wouldn't find me and come waving the number 15 in my face.
Even before I learned the Alt 0128 (€) command I could almost scrape by in French with a little help from the handful of French dictionaries that had previously been cluttering up the bookshelves. But, oh my god, when I've had to try to compose a little two-line message in German, I can guarantee you that Langenscheidt hasn't even begun to publish enough dictionaries to make that easy. Last time I tried to send off a note in German there were a couple of career diplomats from the State Department who showed up a day or so later asking why in hell was I threatening the Germans with a renewal of the 1917 Declaration of War. I really didn't mean any harm. I was just swept away by the prospects of buying even more cards of the Rabensplatz and the Rabensbrucke and the Munster. You can look those up in your German-English distionaries.
I did make good on my promise to stay out of the French Department but I'd still pass by the building every once in awhile. I remember one of those times when I ran into my high school French teacher, Mr. Therrien, as he was leaving some L'Alliance Francaise production at the other end of the Fine Arts complex. I got the feeling that Mr. Therrien didn't entertain illusions as to my French proficiencies any more than Mme Peters. But it was nice to see him and he seemed generally pleased, if somewhat taken aback, when I told him that I thought about him and his classes often. And fondly. I wonder if he'd be generally pleased to know that the groundwork he laid back in 1968 was partly responsible for my correspondence, if somewhat halting, with all of those various French post card merchants.
I guess I'll never have an answer to that one as it seems that Mr. Therrien has passed on. I tried to find mention of him on the internet last week and among the scattered cites for his graduate thesis on learning French via shortwave I found a memorial site put up by his kids. This saddened me, particularly coming so close on the heels of my dad's passing. He used to tell us stories of his time as a paratrooper during the Battle of the Bulge and then as an impoverished college student in Paris after the war. He wriggled those stories in under the loose heading of French Culture. I have no idea what he'd have thought about the whole concept of the E.U and euros but I doubt that he'd have objected.
I've learned a thing or two over the past few days. Nothing so valuable as to drag me up and out of this abject poverty of wealth and wit that I've fallen into; that would be hoping for a little too much.
But I have learned that this damned thing isn't about to up and write itself. Or if it is able to, I haven't learned which buttons to press to fire that up. I could be spending a little more time looking for the auto-write features that this website is sure to have but I've found other entertainments that have been alot more fun. Such as looking for a way to enter the sign for the euro. You know what that is, the epsilon-y looking character for the standardized European currency. Bunch of starry-eyed one-worlders. Is this why America won World War II? The hell it is. We won World War II to make Europe and the rest of the world safe for American dollars and markets. Yeah, OK, there was this element of defeating a couple of the most evil and oppressive governments in the history of the planet. Though last time I checked, we were in cahoots up to our eyeballs in that venture with another from the all-time top 3 or 4 list of evil and oppressive governments. Go figure.
It hasn't been a total waste though. € !! See how easy that is. I actually found this whole list of Alt comands that now allows me to make not only the euro sign but a whole bunch of others as well. ¢ ♪ ♫ ¶ ░ « I don't know when, if ever, I might need to use most of these characters but I'm definitely gonna keep track of the ¼-note symbols for when I get around to writing my symphony. It turns out that you can also produce letters of the alphabet using Alt commands. I'm at a total loss as to why anyone would choose not to use the letters on the keyboard. I suppose that you might need the Alt commands if you've poured a beer into most of the left-hand side of your keyboard and shorted out the letters but how often is that gonna happen?
Some of you might be scratching your heads and wondering to yourselves why this dumb cluck needs the € symbol anyway. Good question. Because I've decided to expand the pool for adding items to the western hemisphere's (well, maybe Ramsey County's) greatest collection of postcards of Strasbourg's Pont du Corbeau. I've been relying almost exclusively on eBay vendors in the U.S. but the thought struck me that since the bridge in question lives in a town that practically straddles the French/German border, maybe I could shop some of the eBayers a little closer to source. Talk about a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Unfortunately, winning auctions on eBay.fr means that I have to communicate with French sellers. Some of these vendeurs have the nerve to pretend that they don't all speak English over there after the American tourists have gone back to their hotels for the night. This leaves me to stumble along in my horrible 30-year old college French. It's plenty horrible enough without looking even worse by having to type out "euro". My 30-year old college French didn't serve me all that well 30 years ago when I was trying to fool Mme Peters into believing that I had even the tiniest ability to parler, ecrire ou comprendre le francais. She encouraged me in as many ways as she could come up with not to compound my mistakes in French 51 by moving onto French 52. I think that part of the plea agreement included her giving me a C if I promised to never, ever, set foot again in the Modern Languages wing of the Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center. She kept her part of the deal and I kept mine. Just another building block in that solid 3.13 GPA I put together at Macalester. She probably wasn't the only prof who saw through my act and took pity on me. Took pity on me and allowed me to keep up the charade of going to school while actually drinking beer, sleeping through swim tean practices and shifts at the food service and hoping that the Draft Board wouldn't find me and come waving the number 15 in my face.
Even before I learned the Alt 0128 (€) command I could almost scrape by in French with a little help from the handful of French dictionaries that had previously been cluttering up the bookshelves. But, oh my god, when I've had to try to compose a little two-line message in German, I can guarantee you that Langenscheidt hasn't even begun to publish enough dictionaries to make that easy. Last time I tried to send off a note in German there were a couple of career diplomats from the State Department who showed up a day or so later asking why in hell was I threatening the Germans with a renewal of the 1917 Declaration of War. I really didn't mean any harm. I was just swept away by the prospects of buying even more cards of the Rabensplatz and the Rabensbrucke and the Munster. You can look those up in your German-English distionaries.
I did make good on my promise to stay out of the French Department but I'd still pass by the building every once in awhile. I remember one of those times when I ran into my high school French teacher, Mr. Therrien, as he was leaving some L'Alliance Francaise production at the other end of the Fine Arts complex. I got the feeling that Mr. Therrien didn't entertain illusions as to my French proficiencies any more than Mme Peters. But it was nice to see him and he seemed generally pleased, if somewhat taken aback, when I told him that I thought about him and his classes often. And fondly. I wonder if he'd be generally pleased to know that the groundwork he laid back in 1968 was partly responsible for my correspondence, if somewhat halting, with all of those various French post card merchants.
I guess I'll never have an answer to that one as it seems that Mr. Therrien has passed on. I tried to find mention of him on the internet last week and among the scattered cites for his graduate thesis on learning French via shortwave I found a memorial site put up by his kids. This saddened me, particularly coming so close on the heels of my dad's passing. He used to tell us stories of his time as a paratrooper during the Battle of the Bulge and then as an impoverished college student in Paris after the war. He wriggled those stories in under the loose heading of French Culture. I have no idea what he'd have thought about the whole concept of the E.U and euros but I doubt that he'd have objected.
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