Anyone living around St. Paul or Smallsville (that suburb across the river) this past week or so might have bet that winter was in full-blown, panicked retreat. We had temps up over 50º, snow melting like crazy, grass reappearing where we'd never expected to see it again. Ever. I enjoyed it as much as the next guy but I suspected that if winter was in retreat then it was, at most, a strategic one and that we'd get our booties kicked for thinking that spring might come early this year.
I had a couple of run-ins with winter's shock troops before the February thaw that deserve to be remembered. A couple of beloved family members fell victim to the cold and ice and at least one person whom I've never met, other than in passing, very well could have.
The neighbor across the street shares my near-obsession (OK, outright obsession) with keeping not only our sidewalks cleared during the snowy months but as much as possible of the street fronting our houses too. Michael's got a huge technological edge over me in so far as he owns a honkin' huge-ass snowblower. He'll run that bad boy up and down his side of the street for hours to do what our city workers seem not to be allowed to do. That is, actually clear the street of snow. I think that snow emergency regulations ban car owners from parking on an east-west residential street during emergency plowing until that job is completed "curb to curb". Like that's ever happened. If Michael and I hadn't been so busy shoveling out the street, I swear that the banked snow on both boulevards would have spread until they met in the middle and created a perfect half-pipe for the snowboard crowd.
I have to resort to old-fashioned technology to allow Miz Susan and I to park our cars at something less than a 45º angle from the horizontal. By this I mean shovels. I've driven our shovels at a killing pace this winter and I've killed off more than couple of them. A good general has to be willing to sacrifice troops in a righteous cause and I see this as a just war. It's pretty easy not to form any emotional attachments to the plastic and lightweight metal junk that the hardware stores are peddling these days. But a solid shovel takes on a life of its own. A lesser loss than the function of my left leg on Christmas Day of 2009 was an old standby, a heavy aluminum-bladed coal shovel that could chop thru mounds of snow effortlessly. I'd left it on the boulevard and someone stole it from us as we were calling Urgent Care.
I had a tougher time with the war wounds suffered by another couple of veteran snow warriors. I've had two old 40's era shovels that I bought 30 years ago at a house sale in the neighborhood, literally just a couple of blocks from here. These were rugged old beasts, heavy and unwieldy and clumsy. Miz Susan hates them and tells me so on a regular schedule and that, further, I'm an idiot for keeping them. Whatever. They were the best we had for getting right down to the pavement in icy conditions and I'm not one to repay loyalty by sending old friends off to the landfill. At any rate, during one of my last attempts to excavate the curbstones, both of these guys succumbed to the strain. When the first one bit the dust I figured, "OK, you've lived a good life and you deserve some rest.". But when the second one fell victim to identical damages, I dug in my heels. These shovels are candidates for repair. Isn't that why we can buy progressively bigger nuts and bolts and washers? These two are going to go thru a brief rehab period and they're gonna be out there scraping loud and proud right down to the sidewalk. And besides, Susan hates them. I can't let her win that battle.
The aspiring unknown solder was someone I met in passing (literally if slowly) on Marshall Avenue shortly after dark a couple of weeks ago. I was on the way home from work and was headed up that long grade from the Lake Street Bridge in the Cretin/Cleveland neighborhood. I was still relatively alert after a day of energizing paper-pushing at my slacker state employees union job and so I was able to stop in time and avoid running this dope under the wheels of the Tahoe, bicycle and all. He or she (gender's a tough call what with all of the layering) was slogging up Marshall pretty much in the middle of the lane. And making a good 3-4 mph. Really moving right along.
I hate the summertime spandex-wrapped bicyclists who go up and down Summit Avenue three and four abreast as they admire the Victorian architecture and pass the time of day. But generally, I tip my hat to urban bicyclists and I've got a few friends and acquaintances who do the bike-commute thing right thru the winter. I've had times in my life when my bike was my main transport but I drew the line at riding between the first and last snowfalls of any winter. The one time that I went down on wet pavement (that time in the rain) was enough to make me realize how stupid I'd been that day and how lucky I'd been that I hadn't gotten ground up by the traffic behind me, all of which outweighed me and my bike many times over. Nevermore. But this dummy on Marshall was not only hogging the single passable lane on the road but he wasn't showing anything in the way of warning lights off the back end of either the bike or him/herself. No reflectors, no flashing red lights, no nothing.
When I was able, after a couple of blocks of funeral cortege pace, to slide past this person I took a quick look in the rearview mirror. I suppose I was curious to see if anyone else had run him down and was relieved to see that no one had. Yet. I did notice that he had a light on the front of the bicycle. I'm still hard-pressed to see the logic in that one.
That light on the front of the bike might have provided a valuable warning to a driver ahead that it was time to speed up in case the bike rider was trying to hook onto the rear bumper for a free ride. It would have made more sense to me to turn the whole dam contraption around and ride it backwards. It wouldn't have been a whole helluva lot slower than the 3-4 mph that it was making in forward speed. And then, the only working light in the whole operation would have actually warned following drivers that they were tailing a complete idiot.
As I write this on Saturday night we're hunkering down for the next savage wintry blast. I'm hearing anywhere from 6-14" before it winds down on Monday morning. Miz Susan and I were out for a few quick errands today including a quick stop at Trader Joe's along with about half of the population of St. Paul, Mendota Heights and Eagan. All busily stocking up for hunkering down. I think we'll make it through the weekend. After all, I've still got a few functioning shovels left and we've got a case of beer in the basement plus all those goodies from TJ's.. We should be good to survive the return of winter.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Monday, January 31, 2011
umpteen rounds with old man winter and still counting
I like to believe that I'm holding my own against the nasty winter that's got us by the collective throat. I'm probably fooling myself but I really think that, at worst, it's a split decision in what's shaping up to be a heavyweight death match. I do know that Old Man Winter and I were slugging it out toe to toe last weekend.
Winter was probably proud of the sucker punch he landed last Saturday. I'd been hacking away at the escape tunnel from the alley up to the back deck. We haven't had a clear shot at our garbage can since before Christmas what with the all the snow that's piled up back there. Miz Susan has kept a little patch of the deck cleared off for star-gazing and shaking out the kitchen rugs and whatever else she does out there when I'm not looking. But as far as being able to haul the trash out through the back yard, well...that just ain't been happening. We've been driving the garbage up the block and down the alley to get rid of it. I'm almost positive that the neighbors are starting to gossip about us taking on airs what with our treating our garbage like it was royalty.
Anyway, I'd made a half-assed start at working northbound from the alley over the past few weeks. I'd managed to hack out a trench maybe 20 feet long but the house still looked like it was miles away. I made some nice progress on Saturday and had cut the remaining distance in half. Satisfied with that little bit of work (being a firm believer in never finishing today what I can put off until tomorrow), I slung my two shovels over my shoulder and headed down the alley and back to the front of the house. I was going to play around in the street a little bit and try to shovel some of the slop up onto the boulevard. As I was shifting my hold on the shovels, the nice red plastic grain scoop that I'd bought at Seven Corners Hardware manged to work it's way loose, spin out of my control and somehow land a jab to my upper lip. I was spitting out blood in no time. I managed to subdue the shovels and went to work on the street. It was perfectly fitting that my lifeblood was dripping down into the slush that I was shoveling.
As this was going on, Jasper--the incredibly handsome and intelligent American Standard poodle across the street--made one of his occasional breaks for freedom from inside his house. Maybe he's really not all that intelligent or maybe he was having a bad day because he bought into my act of playing indifferent and he let me lasso him and take him home. Where I let Jasper's owner guilt me into heading off down the block where another of our neighbors was out chipping ice all by herself. Something about maybe we should all pitch in to help her since her husband was serving overseas. Not a bad idea though I seemed to be the only one who was offering any volunteer help that day. Maybe others had beat me to it because her sidewalk looked a hell of a lot clearer than mine.
My lip didn't get swollen up nearly as much as I'd hoped so I got robbed of any possibility of sympathy attention. On the other hand, I was well enough the next day to get out into the backyard and to finish the path to the deck. We can now take out our garbage without looking all snooty and we've got an extra escape route from the house in case of fire or bill collectors knocking at the front door.
Who knows? I may even try to run a path over to the compost barrel or the bird feeder. We've been feeling guilty about throwing our compost-eligible garbage away (even factoring in chauffeur service). And feeling guiltier about not keeping the bird feeder full. Never too late to start feeding the sparrows and occasional cardinals and chickadees.
Maybe they'll spread the word to some of the other birds and we'll be rewarded with a few more goldfinches and even a hummingbird or two in a few months. Spring is going to come again and, between me and winter, I'm going to make sure that I'm the last one standing. I don't care how many rounds this goes.
Winter was probably proud of the sucker punch he landed last Saturday. I'd been hacking away at the escape tunnel from the alley up to the back deck. We haven't had a clear shot at our garbage can since before Christmas what with the all the snow that's piled up back there. Miz Susan has kept a little patch of the deck cleared off for star-gazing and shaking out the kitchen rugs and whatever else she does out there when I'm not looking. But as far as being able to haul the trash out through the back yard, well...that just ain't been happening. We've been driving the garbage up the block and down the alley to get rid of it. I'm almost positive that the neighbors are starting to gossip about us taking on airs what with our treating our garbage like it was royalty.
Anyway, I'd made a half-assed start at working northbound from the alley over the past few weeks. I'd managed to hack out a trench maybe 20 feet long but the house still looked like it was miles away. I made some nice progress on Saturday and had cut the remaining distance in half. Satisfied with that little bit of work (being a firm believer in never finishing today what I can put off until tomorrow), I slung my two shovels over my shoulder and headed down the alley and back to the front of the house. I was going to play around in the street a little bit and try to shovel some of the slop up onto the boulevard. As I was shifting my hold on the shovels, the nice red plastic grain scoop that I'd bought at Seven Corners Hardware manged to work it's way loose, spin out of my control and somehow land a jab to my upper lip. I was spitting out blood in no time. I managed to subdue the shovels and went to work on the street. It was perfectly fitting that my lifeblood was dripping down into the slush that I was shoveling.
As this was going on, Jasper--the incredibly handsome and intelligent American Standard poodle across the street--made one of his occasional breaks for freedom from inside his house. Maybe he's really not all that intelligent or maybe he was having a bad day because he bought into my act of playing indifferent and he let me lasso him and take him home. Where I let Jasper's owner guilt me into heading off down the block where another of our neighbors was out chipping ice all by herself. Something about maybe we should all pitch in to help her since her husband was serving overseas. Not a bad idea though I seemed to be the only one who was offering any volunteer help that day. Maybe others had beat me to it because her sidewalk looked a hell of a lot clearer than mine.
My lip didn't get swollen up nearly as much as I'd hoped so I got robbed of any possibility of sympathy attention. On the other hand, I was well enough the next day to get out into the backyard and to finish the path to the deck. We can now take out our garbage without looking all snooty and we've got an extra escape route from the house in case of fire or bill collectors knocking at the front door.
Who knows? I may even try to run a path over to the compost barrel or the bird feeder. We've been feeling guilty about throwing our compost-eligible garbage away (even factoring in chauffeur service). And feeling guiltier about not keeping the bird feeder full. Never too late to start feeding the sparrows and occasional cardinals and chickadees.
Maybe they'll spread the word to some of the other birds and we'll be rewarded with a few more goldfinches and even a hummingbird or two in a few months. Spring is going to come again and, between me and winter, I'm going to make sure that I'm the last one standing. I don't care how many rounds this goes.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
off-target
Miz Susan and I make a thing out of Sunday mornings. Drink some coffee, eat a little breakfast, choke down our handfuls of prescription and over-the-counter drugs, check out the Sunday paper. And sometimes the Thursday, Friday and Saturday papers if the pace of the week has gotten a little too frenzied for us.
There's not much joy for me in the Sunday paper between late-October and early-March. I've fallen away from following football and hockey and never was much for basketball in the first place so the sports section doesn't hold much allure. Think about it, a quick check of high school boys' swimming results (to remind me of just how bad I was, even 40 years ago) and three sentences on Joe Crede's free agent deal with the Rockies don't chew up more than three or four minutes. The Sunday obits page has gotten gigantic but that doesn't take long either. Once I've confirmed that I'm not featured among the recently departed, there isn't much left but to scan the news sections to confirm what terrible shape the world, country, state and neighborhood are in with an occasional rowser from Michelle Bachmann. After that, it gets down to arm-wrestling with Susan over the advertising sections.
We use the grocery ads to plan out our dinner menus for the week. I'm partial to the Cub ads but Susan, even if she won't always admit it but usually does, hates the place. She'll come up with almost any excuse as to why I shouldn't go there. Like, "Oh, it's OK hon. I was gonna stop at the coop, Trader Joe's, Kowalski's, Widmer's and Baker's Square after school tomorrow anyway." Right. She even thinks that Target qualifies as a full-fledged grocery store and yesterday somehow sweet-talked me into going there instead of Cub. I think that it was the turkey breast that Target was advertising at 79¢ a pound (half of Cub's price) that she used as Exhibit A. Made sense to me.
Our trip to Target last weekend was a disaster. I had this horrid grim feeling almost the whole time I was there. It was as if I knew that a bunch of the other shoppers were serial killers and that they were all feeling the itch again. Nobody actually threatened to kill either of us but I repeatedly got cut off and run into and forced to do long detours to bypass aisles that looked more like cart storage areas than retail spaces, all of this so many times that I started to get the creepy paranoid feeling. To top it off, somebody made off with our cart full of 45 minutes worth of middle-American consumerism and Miz Susan's favorite winter gloves which had probably originally been bought at Target. We were so thrown off by that disaster that we couldn't reconstruct what we needed (yeah, our list was in the stolen cart, too) and ended up forgetting half the stuff we'd come to buy.
Shrugging off that recent defeat, I headed for Target with my list in hand and my mouth watering at the thought of 79¢ a pound turkey breast in the crockpot. I'd also been given an auxiliary to-do list, most of which centered around service issues for the Chevy Tahoe at Holiday. Which was mostly a ploy to get the car washed. Who in their right mind washes a car when it's 8º outside? But, what the hell, there are certain standards we need to make a pretence at maintaining and I love being inside the car when it's getting washed. I was deprived of so many things as a child.
Target pretty much overwhelms me whenever I go with a long list of must-haves. I've been reduced to tears of frustration and shame while looking fruitlessly for square cotton pads for makeup removal. This time I got most of what I needed without having to double back over the entire store more than four or five times. It was the two-pack of re-usable lunch totes that nearly did me in this trip. I asked like five different redshirts where they were and I actually got what turned out to be helpful advice but it took me about four passes through the bargain section back by the seasonals before I found the damn things. And when I got them home, I got chewed out for not buying them in patterns rather than in basic black and purple. Sigh.
Oh yeah, the turkey breast. They hadn't gotten their shipment in, something about their distributor being out. Distributor, schmischtributor. They own the distributor, for God's sake. I was told that the shipment was on a truck due for arrival later that night. Check back tomorrow. Which I did today from work. Still no turkey breast at 79¢ a pound. Sigh again. Walgreen's didn't have the special Anniversary Edition of Uno back in stock either, another of the hopeless grails that I've been assigned by this sadistic woman I live with.
You can probably guess where this is headed. After Miz Susan told me in no uncertain terms not to, I stopped tonight at Cub out in Brooklyn Park for their turkey breast. It was more expensive than Target's alleged turkey breast but at least it was in stock. And I wasn't about to miss out on hot turkey sandwiches out of the crockpot on Wednesday night.
There's not much joy for me in the Sunday paper between late-October and early-March. I've fallen away from following football and hockey and never was much for basketball in the first place so the sports section doesn't hold much allure. Think about it, a quick check of high school boys' swimming results (to remind me of just how bad I was, even 40 years ago) and three sentences on Joe Crede's free agent deal with the Rockies don't chew up more than three or four minutes. The Sunday obits page has gotten gigantic but that doesn't take long either. Once I've confirmed that I'm not featured among the recently departed, there isn't much left but to scan the news sections to confirm what terrible shape the world, country, state and neighborhood are in with an occasional rowser from Michelle Bachmann. After that, it gets down to arm-wrestling with Susan over the advertising sections.
We use the grocery ads to plan out our dinner menus for the week. I'm partial to the Cub ads but Susan, even if she won't always admit it but usually does, hates the place. She'll come up with almost any excuse as to why I shouldn't go there. Like, "Oh, it's OK hon. I was gonna stop at the coop, Trader Joe's, Kowalski's, Widmer's and Baker's Square after school tomorrow anyway." Right. She even thinks that Target qualifies as a full-fledged grocery store and yesterday somehow sweet-talked me into going there instead of Cub. I think that it was the turkey breast that Target was advertising at 79¢ a pound (half of Cub's price) that she used as Exhibit A. Made sense to me.
Our trip to Target last weekend was a disaster. I had this horrid grim feeling almost the whole time I was there. It was as if I knew that a bunch of the other shoppers were serial killers and that they were all feeling the itch again. Nobody actually threatened to kill either of us but I repeatedly got cut off and run into and forced to do long detours to bypass aisles that looked more like cart storage areas than retail spaces, all of this so many times that I started to get the creepy paranoid feeling. To top it off, somebody made off with our cart full of 45 minutes worth of middle-American consumerism and Miz Susan's favorite winter gloves which had probably originally been bought at Target. We were so thrown off by that disaster that we couldn't reconstruct what we needed (yeah, our list was in the stolen cart, too) and ended up forgetting half the stuff we'd come to buy.
Shrugging off that recent defeat, I headed for Target with my list in hand and my mouth watering at the thought of 79¢ a pound turkey breast in the crockpot. I'd also been given an auxiliary to-do list, most of which centered around service issues for the Chevy Tahoe at Holiday. Which was mostly a ploy to get the car washed. Who in their right mind washes a car when it's 8º outside? But, what the hell, there are certain standards we need to make a pretence at maintaining and I love being inside the car when it's getting washed. I was deprived of so many things as a child.
Target pretty much overwhelms me whenever I go with a long list of must-haves. I've been reduced to tears of frustration and shame while looking fruitlessly for square cotton pads for makeup removal. This time I got most of what I needed without having to double back over the entire store more than four or five times. It was the two-pack of re-usable lunch totes that nearly did me in this trip. I asked like five different redshirts where they were and I actually got what turned out to be helpful advice but it took me about four passes through the bargain section back by the seasonals before I found the damn things. And when I got them home, I got chewed out for not buying them in patterns rather than in basic black and purple. Sigh.
Oh yeah, the turkey breast. They hadn't gotten their shipment in, something about their distributor being out. Distributor, schmischtributor. They own the distributor, for God's sake. I was told that the shipment was on a truck due for arrival later that night. Check back tomorrow. Which I did today from work. Still no turkey breast at 79¢ a pound. Sigh again. Walgreen's didn't have the special Anniversary Edition of Uno back in stock either, another of the hopeless grails that I've been assigned by this sadistic woman I live with.
You can probably guess where this is headed. After Miz Susan told me in no uncertain terms not to, I stopped tonight at Cub out in Brooklyn Park for their turkey breast. It was more expensive than Target's alleged turkey breast but at least it was in stock. And I wasn't about to miss out on hot turkey sandwiches out of the crockpot on Wednesday night.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
season's greetings!!!
Another sure sign of the change of seasons besides the Linwood Monroe charity auction is the arrival of Christmas and other holiday greetings cards. We had a great collection this year and I enjoyed almost all of them. We're fortunate to live in a house that's hosted a number of homeowners over a relatively short timespan so we get not only the cards addressed to us but those intended for people several notches down the title opinion from us. Part of me wants to return the cards from people we don't know and tell them that their erstwhile friends have become even more erst. But Miz Susan won't let me and maybe that's for the best.
One of the departed who still gets cards here (as well as investment advice) is apparently alive and well to the point of having run for a Ramsey County office this past election season. A few of his lawn signs popped up in the front yards of some of the neighbors so he must have been an OK guy. I didn't vote for him. We tend to stick to straight party line voting and this guy didn't show up on my sample ballot. Our candidate actually won which seems like a rarity some years. That was enough to bind the wounds of not getting to live in the local version of the George-Washington-slept-here house.
A couple of years ago, we opened a card addressed to some long-gone tenant and discovered a Christmas letter which caught Miz Susan's fancy. It was a Christmas ABC letter and the damn thing ate at her for a couple of years before she finally gave up on trying to shame me into concocting one. She cranked one out during the uneventful hours of her jury duty stint. She did a considerably better than average job, better than I ever could have. She's a sucker for kids' illustrated ABC books so maybe there was some creative longing that finally found an outlet. Except for filling in the letter "F" which she'd forgotten (and what was that about?), I could only come up with a few minor tweaks and edits to make it production ready. We sent it out tucked in some 30 year old holiday cards that I'd probably bought home from the Hamline Bookstore in about 1988. No one's complained yet and we haven't had the postal inspectors at our door telling us to quit wasting the mail carriers' time with junk like that so I'm going to call it a success. If any of you missed out on this thing just let us know and we'll get one headed your way.
I don't usually feel sorry for our mail carrier. He sometimes gets the mail delivered to us before dark and he liked our cat Miles but other than that we're not all that crazy about him. We had a great carrier when we moved in but he didn't last the year before the geniuses downtown pulled him off his long-time route and turned our block over to a cast of characters which can only be described as a mixed bag. The nearest to regular guy hates to take advantage of the opportunity available to him for wholesome outdoor exercise and will tromp across our front and through Miz Susan's gardens shamelessly. About the only good thing to come from all the snow this winter is that it's piled so high next to our walk that he can't trailblaze his own shortcut and is forced to take the long way around to the next door neigbors.
About the most bizarre card we got this year was the one that showed up (after Santa's big day) from Linda and Laird Hanson of Hamline royalty fame. This card always sends Miz Susan into a seethe for a couple of hours and even I'm perplexed as to how I've stayed on that mailing list. I hate to think it, but maybe Linda doesn't realize that I still get the card or even remember who I am (or was). This year's version was particularly smarmy with L and L surrounded by a group of purported Hamline students who might have come straight from the Multicultural Modeling Agency. Mainly, I wonder why it was late in arriving. Probably the stress of the all-by-her-lonesome keeping Hamline propped up in the face of all the nay-sayers prevented her from getting to her cards as soon as she'd have liked. Hey, it's nice to still be counted among the inner circle. And it fills the void of not getting a card from the President out at North hennepin.
One of the departed who still gets cards here (as well as investment advice) is apparently alive and well to the point of having run for a Ramsey County office this past election season. A few of his lawn signs popped up in the front yards of some of the neighbors so he must have been an OK guy. I didn't vote for him. We tend to stick to straight party line voting and this guy didn't show up on my sample ballot. Our candidate actually won which seems like a rarity some years. That was enough to bind the wounds of not getting to live in the local version of the George-Washington-slept-here house.
A couple of years ago, we opened a card addressed to some long-gone tenant and discovered a Christmas letter which caught Miz Susan's fancy. It was a Christmas ABC letter and the damn thing ate at her for a couple of years before she finally gave up on trying to shame me into concocting one. She cranked one out during the uneventful hours of her jury duty stint. She did a considerably better than average job, better than I ever could have. She's a sucker for kids' illustrated ABC books so maybe there was some creative longing that finally found an outlet. Except for filling in the letter "F" which she'd forgotten (and what was that about?), I could only come up with a few minor tweaks and edits to make it production ready. We sent it out tucked in some 30 year old holiday cards that I'd probably bought home from the Hamline Bookstore in about 1988. No one's complained yet and we haven't had the postal inspectors at our door telling us to quit wasting the mail carriers' time with junk like that so I'm going to call it a success. If any of you missed out on this thing just let us know and we'll get one headed your way.
I don't usually feel sorry for our mail carrier. He sometimes gets the mail delivered to us before dark and he liked our cat Miles but other than that we're not all that crazy about him. We had a great carrier when we moved in but he didn't last the year before the geniuses downtown pulled him off his long-time route and turned our block over to a cast of characters which can only be described as a mixed bag. The nearest to regular guy hates to take advantage of the opportunity available to him for wholesome outdoor exercise and will tromp across our front and through Miz Susan's gardens shamelessly. About the only good thing to come from all the snow this winter is that it's piled so high next to our walk that he can't trailblaze his own shortcut and is forced to take the long way around to the next door neigbors.
About the most bizarre card we got this year was the one that showed up (after Santa's big day) from Linda and Laird Hanson of Hamline royalty fame. This card always sends Miz Susan into a seethe for a couple of hours and even I'm perplexed as to how I've stayed on that mailing list. I hate to think it, but maybe Linda doesn't realize that I still get the card or even remember who I am (or was). This year's version was particularly smarmy with L and L surrounded by a group of purported Hamline students who might have come straight from the Multicultural Modeling Agency. Mainly, I wonder why it was late in arriving. Probably the stress of the all-by-her-lonesome keeping Hamline propped up in the face of all the nay-sayers prevented her from getting to her cards as soon as she'd have liked. Hey, it's nice to still be counted among the inner circle. And it fills the void of not getting a card from the President out at North hennepin.
Friday, December 24, 2010
pallid, chill and drear
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!
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!
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!!
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