At last. We've reached the final day of 2008. There are a few exceptions, but I think most of us will be quite happy to see '08 over and done with.
Some things were good. I made some new friends, both in the blogosphere and in real life. I lost a cat but gained two more. My wife and I got over a little crisis that unexpectedly popped up a couple months ago.
In 2009 ... well, who knows? I want to visit some friends and see some new places. I always say that, don't I? Whether I make it happen this year remains to be seen. The biggest impediment is the demands that my job puts on me. And I must say, just having had another birthday, that I'm looking forward to/hoping for less work and more free time in the future. Read that however you want.
Our plans for tonight are extremely quiet. Maybe we'll watch a movie. Maybe we'll go out for supper. We'll probably watch the ball drop at Times Square (at 11 p.m. local time) and then head upstairs to end the new year right. Most likely we'll be asleep by the time 2009 actually starts.
Sooner or later they will play Auld Lang Syne, and I will get nostalgic about friends who have ... gotten away from me. Friends who are out there somewhere -- somewhere I don't know. Somewhere over the rainbow.
In many cases, it's not due to a falling out or illness or even death. It's due to efx2's ongoing problems over the last two years. Several times efx2 had seemlingly gone down for the last time--but a couple weeks later, it was back up and running (after a fashion). Backups were lost. How many times have we had to restart/reogranize our blogs here? A new efx2blogs.info was formed. Haven't heard a progress report on that for some time now.
Along the way, many gave up and either set up sites at Blogger or Vox or Facebook or elsewhere ... or else simply gave up on blogging altogether. It's understandable, if unfortunate.
So as I hear Auld Lang Syne this year, I'll be thinking of Squilla and Zarafa and Honeychild and Honeyvizer and Miss_T and grnidlady and Vampyre and a few others who don't write so often any more. I think about them as lost friends, and I wonder what they are doing and how they are doing, and I wish that, wherever they are, that they are happy.
Because they were dear to me. And I miss them.
****
We got back home from a fast trip to Oshkosh late yesterday afternoon. In all, we were gone for only 26 hours or so.
We got away much later than planned Monday afternoon, finally driving south as still another cold front blew into the area. Hardly any snow was falling, but a lot of it was blowing around and around, from west to east--crosswise, from right to left, as I drove. One section of road (which works well as a shortcut most of the time) was icy because snow had been drifting across it and was mashed down by car tires. Some places were just plain icy, and we had to cut our speeds accordingly.
For that reason, we didn't get to Oshkosh until about 6 p.m. Then things happened quickly. S, her husband and her 4-year-old grandson came to the motel, and we left for a restaurant with a big buffet selection. We ate well. Yumm.
From there, we went to the motel, changed into swimsuits and enjoyed the motel's pool for an hour or so. We started in the pool, then went to the whirlpool. (The last time we had been together, back in August, we were camping at a small farm and didn't have to bother with swimsuits.)
At first we were the only people there. Then, a big group of high school kids--30 or 40 of them--invaded. Several busloads of kids were at the motel, too. For a while, I shared the whirlpool with four or five nubile young ladies. But that was about the time we had to go back to the motel room. S, her husband and the grandchild changed clothes and left.
We rejoined them (minus the grandson) on Tuesday morning at their house, for breakfast. A nice meal--omelettes, bacon, toast and a homemade Orange Julius. We met their newest cat, who seems to be bipolar. He can be very sweet when you hold him, but he also is a little devil--very destructive, according to S. He used to be called Helen Wheels. Then they discovered she was a he, so now he's officially known as Trouble.
We exchanged some gifts. S gave us cookies and other baked treats. We gave them some blueberry muffins and poppyseed cake that my wife made. I gave S's husband a Three Stooges DVD set--we have many similar tastes, and the Stooges are one of them.
The overriding issue was the weather. I had resigned myself to facing some weather problems--yet another system was blowing through Wisconsin. It left about an inch of snow on my car overnight, but it seemed to be moving away Tuesday morning--no snow was falling as I drove to their place and no snow was falling later as we drove back north towards Green Bay and then Iron Mountain. Packerland was quiet with very light snow. It snowed harder about 40 miles north of Lambeau Field, but just for maybe a half hour--we drove out of it as we got closer to Iron Mountain. We arrived back home about 5 p.m.
At about 6:30, I called S to let them know we were back home safely. She reported they were having a blizzard back at their place.
****
To start the new year, we plan to sleep late, watch the Rose Parade from Pasadena and then the outdoor hockey game between the Red Wings and Blackhawks from Wrigley Field. That ought to be cool!
Nothing more to say this year except this: Despite everything that seems to be happening with the economy, I hope all of you have a happy new year and that 2009 will be better to you than 2008 was.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Sunday, December 28, 2008
The unplanned holiday
Well, for not having a plan, our ad-libbed holiday observance went pretty well.
For one thing, we can thank the Midwest's stormy weather for keeping my older son, Phil, around for one extra day. His original plan was to leave us Friday morning and drive back to Detroit via Chicago--he likes the improv comedy clubs in Chi-Town and was going to stay there that night.
But though he doesn't follow the weather closely, he was still aware of the big storms bearing down on the Second City. Forecasts called for much warmer than normal temperatures, bringing in very heavy rain and a good chance of flooding. That was enough to change his itinerary. As he put it, "Chicago traffic is bad enough the way it is."
So he spent much of his Friday playing games at his brother's apartment. In the evening, he, my wife and I went out for a pizza. Then he went out to meet some classmates at a local restaurant--just four, I guess. It was arranged through Facebook. He got back home, we watched some stuff for a little while, and then he went up to bed.
He left for home Saturday at about 6 a.m.--had something going down in Detroit that night involving the new Jim Carrey movie. He made it home OK--had to deal with rain and a lot of fog along the way, but he didn't have any trouble with it.
Back here, I had to do some work on the paper Saturday. Then, some shopping. Some work assignments. Chipping ice off the back porch, in preparation for the freezing rain forecast that night, just before a snowstorm. The freezing rain never developed, and the heaviest snow went east of us. It just got windy.
As for Christmas Day itself: We all got up late. Dave came over late in the morning, and we gathered in the living room to watch some stuff on TV. We had decided to do a giftless Christmas, but I had some "late birthday gifts" for the two boys.
After lunch, we drove down to see my mom at the nursing home. As luck would have it, she was having a good day, and her face positively lit up when she saw Phil again for the first time in a year. (She sees the rest of us fairly often, and I'm there to visit nearly every week.) Very happy. We visited for the better part of two hours and drove back home. That night, we watched "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull" together.
Another adventure awaits my wife and I on Monday. We plan to drive down to visit S and her husband. Just a short visit--I'm taking them out to dinner, and then we're going to enjoy the pool at our motel. The visit has been tentative for a while due to the very iffy weather and her husband's back problems--he hurt something while shoveling snow a few weeks ago and has been out of work with back pain. S's letter on Saturday says he is doing better.
Still, I phoned her tonight to make sure. We're also keeping an eye on the forecast--more snow is forecast for Tuesday, the day we would be driving back north. Doesn't seem too bad right now. The weather has been ugly all month, anyway.
I tried to do some writing on the computer last night after my wife went to bed. But Charlie had other priorities. You should know the story by now. She invited herself into my lap to get petted and cuddled. Purr, purr, purr. This time, I was able to take a couple pictures--with one hand!--of the big, happy kitty. And here you are ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/CharlieA-12-08.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/CharlieB-12-08.jpg[/IMG]
After a while, my leg started falling asleep. I started fidgeting, and she hopped off ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/CharlieC-12-08.jpg[/IMG]
About five minutes later, I was sitting quietly again, and Charlie came back. This time, she faced the other way ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/CharlieD-12-08.jpg[/IMG]
One more thing about the cats: They seemed a little confused when the bedroom was closed during Phil's visit. That is usually Max's domain--he liked to lie down on the bed and look out the window--and they aren't used to closed doors.
So at night, Charlie and Max would camp out in front of that door for a while--since it is next to the computer room, I could keep an eye on things. Then they chase each other downstairs. Their usual exercise just before bed.
For one thing, we can thank the Midwest's stormy weather for keeping my older son, Phil, around for one extra day. His original plan was to leave us Friday morning and drive back to Detroit via Chicago--he likes the improv comedy clubs in Chi-Town and was going to stay there that night.
But though he doesn't follow the weather closely, he was still aware of the big storms bearing down on the Second City. Forecasts called for much warmer than normal temperatures, bringing in very heavy rain and a good chance of flooding. That was enough to change his itinerary. As he put it, "Chicago traffic is bad enough the way it is."
So he spent much of his Friday playing games at his brother's apartment. In the evening, he, my wife and I went out for a pizza. Then he went out to meet some classmates at a local restaurant--just four, I guess. It was arranged through Facebook. He got back home, we watched some stuff for a little while, and then he went up to bed.
He left for home Saturday at about 6 a.m.--had something going down in Detroit that night involving the new Jim Carrey movie. He made it home OK--had to deal with rain and a lot of fog along the way, but he didn't have any trouble with it.
Back here, I had to do some work on the paper Saturday. Then, some shopping. Some work assignments. Chipping ice off the back porch, in preparation for the freezing rain forecast that night, just before a snowstorm. The freezing rain never developed, and the heaviest snow went east of us. It just got windy.
As for Christmas Day itself: We all got up late. Dave came over late in the morning, and we gathered in the living room to watch some stuff on TV. We had decided to do a giftless Christmas, but I had some "late birthday gifts" for the two boys.
After lunch, we drove down to see my mom at the nursing home. As luck would have it, she was having a good day, and her face positively lit up when she saw Phil again for the first time in a year. (She sees the rest of us fairly often, and I'm there to visit nearly every week.) Very happy. We visited for the better part of two hours and drove back home. That night, we watched "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull" together.
Another adventure awaits my wife and I on Monday. We plan to drive down to visit S and her husband. Just a short visit--I'm taking them out to dinner, and then we're going to enjoy the pool at our motel. The visit has been tentative for a while due to the very iffy weather and her husband's back problems--he hurt something while shoveling snow a few weeks ago and has been out of work with back pain. S's letter on Saturday says he is doing better.
Still, I phoned her tonight to make sure. We're also keeping an eye on the forecast--more snow is forecast for Tuesday, the day we would be driving back north. Doesn't seem too bad right now. The weather has been ugly all month, anyway.
I tried to do some writing on the computer last night after my wife went to bed. But Charlie had other priorities. You should know the story by now. She invited herself into my lap to get petted and cuddled. Purr, purr, purr. This time, I was able to take a couple pictures--with one hand!--of the big, happy kitty. And here you are ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/CharlieA-12-08.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/CharlieB-12-08.jpg[/IMG]
After a while, my leg started falling asleep. I started fidgeting, and she hopped off ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/CharlieC-12-08.jpg[/IMG]
About five minutes later, I was sitting quietly again, and Charlie came back. This time, she faced the other way ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/CharlieD-12-08.jpg[/IMG]
One more thing about the cats: They seemed a little confused when the bedroom was closed during Phil's visit. That is usually Max's domain--he liked to lie down on the bed and look out the window--and they aren't used to closed doors.
So at night, Charlie and Max would camp out in front of that door for a while--since it is next to the computer room, I could keep an eye on things. Then they chase each other downstairs. Their usual exercise just before bed.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
In search of a plan
I have been wanting to write for a while, but dang it, life just keeps on getting in the way. But I've got a chance now, so I'm going for it.
The main purpose of this entry is simply to wish one and all a happy holiday season, whatever the holiday of your choosing is. May you enjoy it and may it bring you the happiness and peace that it should.
We're going to the Christmas Eve service at 10 p.m. tonight. It could be pretty cold when we get out again--it's supposed to dip to about -6F overnight. But that's just in keeping with the weather we have had lately. To condense it to so many words, this has been a brutal December over most of the U.S. Not only in terms of weather, either.
Today was also my birthday. The morning part was spent at the office, working on stories till noon, when it closed for the day. After lunch, I went out to the local football field, where I got pictures at the annual Xmas Eve Bowl, played between grads of the local high school. It was a fun game. They played for about two hours right on the varsity football field (buried under more than a foot of snow) in 20-degree weather.
Plans for the next few hours are very indefinite. I know we bought several bags of frozen ravioli last week--that's a favorite of both my older son and myself. My older son arrived back here last night about 8 p.m., driving up from the Detroit area and dealing with a lot of blowing snow along the way. He called me at the office Tuesday afternoon for an analysis of the weather still lying ahead of him. I was pleased to inform him that nearly all the bad stuff was now behind him.
Within two hours of his arrival, he managed to (A) hook up his laptop to my wireless router, (B) consume most of two pizzas (with our help), (C) made friends with the cats, (D) watched a couple Three Stooges films and then (E) went to his room to surf the net. The cats (two of whom--Charlie and Max--are spending their first Christmas with us) seemed confused--what's someone doing in that room? First time anyone has used that room since they joined the family.
The third cat, our 16-year-old cat, is named Maggie because of something she did with Phil long, long ago. When we first got Maggie, Phil would hold her in his lap, and she would suck on his T-shirt. The lightbulb ignited: In a moment of inspiration, I christened her Maggie, after the pacifier-sucking member of the Simpsons.
My friend, B, who lives in Alaska, told me that her two sons and a daughter-in-law all made it home safely--but not without some adversity. One of the sons lives in Portland, Ore., and she told me he had to walk 20 blocks--with his suitcase--to get to the train line that went to the Portland airport. About 10 inches of snow had shut down the city bus system. The other son and his wife came from New York City and had a long, long, long day at the airports. But they're home now, and that's what counts.
I hope B and her husband and the rest of their family have a happy holiday season. My friend S is having about 15 over for a nice Christmas dinner together, and I hope they have a happy time. And the same wish goes out to all of you, wherever you are, however you spend it.
As for us, we're going to visit my mom during the afternoon. Plans after that are highly indefinite. We'll come up with something. But sometimes just being together is enough.
The main purpose of this entry is simply to wish one and all a happy holiday season, whatever the holiday of your choosing is. May you enjoy it and may it bring you the happiness and peace that it should.
We're going to the Christmas Eve service at 10 p.m. tonight. It could be pretty cold when we get out again--it's supposed to dip to about -6F overnight. But that's just in keeping with the weather we have had lately. To condense it to so many words, this has been a brutal December over most of the U.S. Not only in terms of weather, either.
Today was also my birthday. The morning part was spent at the office, working on stories till noon, when it closed for the day. After lunch, I went out to the local football field, where I got pictures at the annual Xmas Eve Bowl, played between grads of the local high school. It was a fun game. They played for about two hours right on the varsity football field (buried under more than a foot of snow) in 20-degree weather.
Plans for the next few hours are very indefinite. I know we bought several bags of frozen ravioli last week--that's a favorite of both my older son and myself. My older son arrived back here last night about 8 p.m., driving up from the Detroit area and dealing with a lot of blowing snow along the way. He called me at the office Tuesday afternoon for an analysis of the weather still lying ahead of him. I was pleased to inform him that nearly all the bad stuff was now behind him.
Within two hours of his arrival, he managed to (A) hook up his laptop to my wireless router, (B) consume most of two pizzas (with our help), (C) made friends with the cats, (D) watched a couple Three Stooges films and then (E) went to his room to surf the net. The cats (two of whom--Charlie and Max--are spending their first Christmas with us) seemed confused--what's someone doing in that room? First time anyone has used that room since they joined the family.
The third cat, our 16-year-old cat, is named Maggie because of something she did with Phil long, long ago. When we first got Maggie, Phil would hold her in his lap, and she would suck on his T-shirt. The lightbulb ignited: In a moment of inspiration, I christened her Maggie, after the pacifier-sucking member of the Simpsons.
My friend, B, who lives in Alaska, told me that her two sons and a daughter-in-law all made it home safely--but not without some adversity. One of the sons lives in Portland, Ore., and she told me he had to walk 20 blocks--with his suitcase--to get to the train line that went to the Portland airport. About 10 inches of snow had shut down the city bus system. The other son and his wife came from New York City and had a long, long, long day at the airports. But they're home now, and that's what counts.
I hope B and her husband and the rest of their family have a happy holiday season. My friend S is having about 15 over for a nice Christmas dinner together, and I hope they have a happy time. And the same wish goes out to all of you, wherever you are, however you spend it.
As for us, we're going to visit my mom during the afternoon. Plans after that are highly indefinite. We'll come up with something. But sometimes just being together is enough.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Bad boy
've been bad. I know I should have written last week. But I got busy with this and that, and the week went thataway. So it goes.
I've got the blahs. Maybe the blues. Not sure. Holidays are coming. Not in the spirit. Writing short sentences. Terse. Blunt. Enigmatic.
Different kind of holiday for us. My wife and I decided not to do gifts this year--and maybe not again. We've got the things we want. Just too much hassle and not enough need. I could use a new car, but we're not in the tie-a-ribbon-around-your-wife's-new-Lexus bracket. We've gotten a couple of things for the kids, but nothing major. And we told them not to get us anything. Just bring yourself: Your presence will be our presents. We can have fun together for a few days without all the gift-related stress. Don't need stress, don't want stress.
Lately, our weather here has been awful. Awful cold for December. This morning we woke up to -17F. We would expect that in mid-January, but this is really jumping the gun. And it's been seriously cold nearly all month. (As, indeed, most of the U.S. can say. Maybe the deep freeze that our economy is in has spread to the weather, too.)
I hope Santa has Old Man Winter on his Bad Boys list. Give him a chunk of coal.
My son will be coming up for the holidays. Not sure when. I was going to call this morning to try to coax him to divulge his travel schedule. But my cell phone is in my other jacket. On Monday, I was going to switch over to my long winter jacket. (It covers my butt, for one thing.) But the zipper wouldn't work. And I had only gotten the jacket last fall from a well-known national clothing distributor. Anyway, I had transferred all my stuff in the inner pockets to the other jacket, and that's probably where the cell phone is sleeping now. So I gotta run home to get it.
OK, the call has now been made. He'll be here for two whole days (not including his travel days--it's about 11 hours of driving from here to there--10 hours the way he drives). Two days better than none. He hasn't been up here since last Christmas, and we had to deal with a funeral then.
Some time between Christmas and New Year's or else right after New Year's, I/we (she hasn't decided yet) will go down to visit S and her husband. I'll stay at a motel with a pool, take them out to dinner and then we can enjoy the pool. Just an overnight trip--the next morning, I'll drive back home. It takes advantage of an extremely rare week when nothing is happening on the local sports scene. On Jan. 5, it all starts again and goes nonstop for another two months.
About two weeks ago, I sent S a gift card from ***-Mart. (I don't like the store, but S and her husband don't have much money. ***-Mart does, and they undercut every supermarket around. Where does the 800-pound gorilla sleep?) S wrote to me and said the card helped them buy the stuff they needed for a nice Christmas dinner--15 are coming over--and get gifts for the grandkids. She wrote, "I have been praying that the Divine would make a family gathering possible this year. Proof that prayers are answered. :) "
Also, their car seems to be dying. Apparently the problem is a cracked block; it's leaking coolant, but the coolant isn't dripping below the car. When she told me about that, I thought about my mom's car, still sitting in her garage, where it has been for the last three years.
I want to get down to my mom's place this week and talk to the local garage to see if they think it can be revived well enough for them to use after three years of non-use. It's an '86 Taurus. If it works out, I'd have to drive them up north to get it; it's about 130 miles.
***
In mid-August, I mentioned in passing that I have been writing to a new female friend in Alaska. I don't think I have t mentioned her since, but we are still writing and have gotten to be pretty good friends. She has been telling me about their plans for spending the holidays with their two sons (coming up from the Lower 48), and I've been telling her about my sons visiting us for the holidays. Small world.
If I mention her in the future--and I may--she will be known as B.
I've got the blahs. Maybe the blues. Not sure. Holidays are coming. Not in the spirit. Writing short sentences. Terse. Blunt. Enigmatic.
Different kind of holiday for us. My wife and I decided not to do gifts this year--and maybe not again. We've got the things we want. Just too much hassle and not enough need. I could use a new car, but we're not in the tie-a-ribbon-around-your-wife's-new-Lexus bracket. We've gotten a couple of things for the kids, but nothing major. And we told them not to get us anything. Just bring yourself: Your presence will be our presents. We can have fun together for a few days without all the gift-related stress. Don't need stress, don't want stress.
Lately, our weather here has been awful. Awful cold for December. This morning we woke up to -17F. We would expect that in mid-January, but this is really jumping the gun. And it's been seriously cold nearly all month. (As, indeed, most of the U.S. can say. Maybe the deep freeze that our economy is in has spread to the weather, too.)
I hope Santa has Old Man Winter on his Bad Boys list. Give him a chunk of coal.
My son will be coming up for the holidays. Not sure when. I was going to call this morning to try to coax him to divulge his travel schedule. But my cell phone is in my other jacket. On Monday, I was going to switch over to my long winter jacket. (It covers my butt, for one thing.) But the zipper wouldn't work. And I had only gotten the jacket last fall from a well-known national clothing distributor. Anyway, I had transferred all my stuff in the inner pockets to the other jacket, and that's probably where the cell phone is sleeping now. So I gotta run home to get it.
OK, the call has now been made. He'll be here for two whole days (not including his travel days--it's about 11 hours of driving from here to there--10 hours the way he drives). Two days better than none. He hasn't been up here since last Christmas, and we had to deal with a funeral then.
Some time between Christmas and New Year's or else right after New Year's, I/we (she hasn't decided yet) will go down to visit S and her husband. I'll stay at a motel with a pool, take them out to dinner and then we can enjoy the pool. Just an overnight trip--the next morning, I'll drive back home. It takes advantage of an extremely rare week when nothing is happening on the local sports scene. On Jan. 5, it all starts again and goes nonstop for another two months.
About two weeks ago, I sent S a gift card from ***-Mart. (I don't like the store, but S and her husband don't have much money. ***-Mart does, and they undercut every supermarket around. Where does the 800-pound gorilla sleep?) S wrote to me and said the card helped them buy the stuff they needed for a nice Christmas dinner--15 are coming over--and get gifts for the grandkids. She wrote, "I have been praying that the Divine would make a family gathering possible this year. Proof that prayers are answered. :) "
Also, their car seems to be dying. Apparently the problem is a cracked block; it's leaking coolant, but the coolant isn't dripping below the car. When she told me about that, I thought about my mom's car, still sitting in her garage, where it has been for the last three years.
I want to get down to my mom's place this week and talk to the local garage to see if they think it can be revived well enough for them to use after three years of non-use. It's an '86 Taurus. If it works out, I'd have to drive them up north to get it; it's about 130 miles.
***
In mid-August, I mentioned in passing that I have been writing to a new female friend in Alaska. I don't think I have t mentioned her since, but we are still writing and have gotten to be pretty good friends. She has been telling me about their plans for spending the holidays with their two sons (coming up from the Lower 48), and I've been telling her about my sons visiting us for the holidays. Small world.
If I mention her in the future--and I may--she will be known as B.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Season transition
Last Friday morning, I covered the last football game of the season.
Tuesday night, I covered the first basketball game of the season. Four days later. So I guess you can see I'm not going to have too much idle time on my hands. At least for the next few months, the trips will be a lot shorter.
Facts about this trip:
--The only driving I had to do was to and from the school. From there, I rode buses down to Detroit and back.
--Hardly saw any snowflakes during the days we were gone. A few flakes on the way back, but not enough to get the road wet. Mr. Lake Effect was taking a few days off.
--Our team lost 40-0. It was expected. I won't get into everything, but they went up against a powerhouse private school. There is a basic unfairness when small public schools go against large private schools. I could say more about it.
--I road in the bus with the JV team and the cheerleaders. It was a fun time and a good experience. The kids are fun to be with.
--We stayed the first night at the Comfort Inn in Mount Pleasant. We stayed the second night at the Crown Royal Hotel in Auburn Hills, north of Detroit. The Crown Royal is a much more opulent place--but the beds at Comfort Inn were wider and the room a little larger.
--My wife stayed home--and yet I had someone else in my bed both nights! I'll let you ponder that for a minute or so.
--My older son was able to come over for Thanksgiving--he lives about 20 minutes away from the Crown Royal. We arrived about 3:30 p.m., and he came over about a half hour after I called. We had a pizza together in the hotel's bar and talked for about two hours. It was a good visit.
--On Thursday morning, the wake-up call came at 5:30 a.m. On Friday morning, it came at 4:45 a.m. We had to check out, get breakfast downstairs, get on the bus and ride to Ford Field in downtown Detroit. You will be happy to know that they had eliminated the big stink at the field left by the Detroit Lions the day before.
--There was a welcome-home celebration when the bus got back to town--at about 12:45 a.m. Saturday morning. Three police cars and two fire trucks, sirens blaring, escorted the buses back to town, and there was a crowd of about 100 welcoming the players back. From there, the bus went back to the school, where my car was parked. I got back home about 1:30 a.m. The next morning, I was back at the office, working on my story.
--I had my cell phone along, of course, and called home either twice or three times a day. My younger son spent Thanksgiving with my wife, and they watched a couple movies together.
--We had four people in our motel room: a team trainer, the athletic director, a statistician and me. I think the trainer is the youngest of the four, but not by much. One night (in Mount Pleasant) we sat around the coaches' room, enjoying pizza and beer (in most cases) and talking football. I shared the bed with the athletic director.
I'm glad I didn't have to do all that driving, even if the weather conditions were pretty good for Michigan in late November.
Anyway, I'm back now and getting into basketball season. The girls started tonight; the boys begin next week. I have to write preview articles for them--I did the girls on Sunday.
And it's nice to be back home again.
Tuesday night, I covered the first basketball game of the season. Four days later. So I guess you can see I'm not going to have too much idle time on my hands. At least for the next few months, the trips will be a lot shorter.
Facts about this trip:
--The only driving I had to do was to and from the school. From there, I rode buses down to Detroit and back.
--Hardly saw any snowflakes during the days we were gone. A few flakes on the way back, but not enough to get the road wet. Mr. Lake Effect was taking a few days off.
--Our team lost 40-0. It was expected. I won't get into everything, but they went up against a powerhouse private school. There is a basic unfairness when small public schools go against large private schools. I could say more about it.
--I road in the bus with the JV team and the cheerleaders. It was a fun time and a good experience. The kids are fun to be with.
--We stayed the first night at the Comfort Inn in Mount Pleasant. We stayed the second night at the Crown Royal Hotel in Auburn Hills, north of Detroit. The Crown Royal is a much more opulent place--but the beds at Comfort Inn were wider and the room a little larger.
--My wife stayed home--and yet I had someone else in my bed both nights! I'll let you ponder that for a minute or so.
--My older son was able to come over for Thanksgiving--he lives about 20 minutes away from the Crown Royal. We arrived about 3:30 p.m., and he came over about a half hour after I called. We had a pizza together in the hotel's bar and talked for about two hours. It was a good visit.
--On Thursday morning, the wake-up call came at 5:30 a.m. On Friday morning, it came at 4:45 a.m. We had to check out, get breakfast downstairs, get on the bus and ride to Ford Field in downtown Detroit. You will be happy to know that they had eliminated the big stink at the field left by the Detroit Lions the day before.
--There was a welcome-home celebration when the bus got back to town--at about 12:45 a.m. Saturday morning. Three police cars and two fire trucks, sirens blaring, escorted the buses back to town, and there was a crowd of about 100 welcoming the players back. From there, the bus went back to the school, where my car was parked. I got back home about 1:30 a.m. The next morning, I was back at the office, working on my story.
--I had my cell phone along, of course, and called home either twice or three times a day. My younger son spent Thanksgiving with my wife, and they watched a couple movies together.
--We had four people in our motel room: a team trainer, the athletic director, a statistician and me. I think the trainer is the youngest of the four, but not by much. One night (in Mount Pleasant) we sat around the coaches' room, enjoying pizza and beer (in most cases) and talking football. I shared the bed with the athletic director.
I'm glad I didn't have to do all that driving, even if the weather conditions were pretty good for Michigan in late November.
Anyway, I'm back now and getting into basketball season. The girls started tonight; the boys begin next week. I have to write preview articles for them--I did the girls on Sunday.
And it's nice to be back home again.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Guess where I'm going?
All this fall, I have been wondering whether I would have a normal Thanksgiving this year.
On Saturday, I learned the answer.
The answer is yes.
Yes, I will have a normal Thanksgiving--normal for me for the last four years, at least. Each of them has been spent down to Detroit, where I went to cover state high school football championship games, played Friday morning.
For the fifth straight year, I will be doing that again. On Saturday, our team won its semifinal game 8-6. It wasn't a big win by any means, but a win's a win, and our team will make the 500-mile trip to the state title game again. Alas, so will I.
I have resigned myself to my fate for some time, realizing there was absolutely nothing I could do about it one way or the other. Would it happen again? I won't have to go down there five straight years, would I?
What a dumb question: Of course I would.
So on Sunday I worked on the article about the semifinal game. Then I start looking at maps, reminding myself where things are located relative to each other, what exits to take off the interstate, how to get from one place to the other and how to get back. I also have to make motel reservations.
Mind you, I don't mind going to Detroit when I can do it on my own terms. Like last summer, when all three of us visited my older son for a few days. But now the weather isn't so good. It's colder, and maybe there will be snow (though this week's forecast sounds pretty good).
My wife made the trip with me last year, but she will stay home this time--her training for her seasonal call center job starts Wednesday. But my younger son still wants to come along. So you don't have to worry about me not being well chaperoned throughout my trip. The chances of me slipping the leash and getting out somewhere for some fun are less than zero.
Let me say it plainly.
It. Is. Not. Fun.
I. Don't. Want. To go. Certainly not for the fifth straight year.
Especially this year. I wanted to spend part of Thanksgiving with my mom, since she is continuing to fade away. Every single bloody Thanksgiving since she went into the nursing home, I wanted to spend part of Thanksgiving with her. It hasn't happened, and it won't happen this year. God just doesn't want it to happen, I guess.
Here is a picture from Thanksgiving dinner at my mom's house back in 2001. Nothing elaborate, but we had venison and gravy, brown-and-serve rolls, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, apple pie (somewhat mashed) and (not pictured) pumpkin pie. We ate well ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/T-daydinner-11-01.jpg[/IMG]
(Of course, such a Thanksgiving isn't possible any more, because my mom has been in the nursing home since late 2005. Sigh.)
Another thing about driving to Detroit for a title game is that I don't control the clock. We leave for the 11-hour trip south Wednesday morning and arrive in the Detroit area long after sundown. On Thursday, it's Thanksgiving: Everything in the States is closed. Everything in Canada is open, and I'm hoping we can cross over to Windsor (Ontario) for a little shopping and a nice dinner. That means I have to find my birth certificate.
We'll spend all of Thanksgiving with my older son. On Friday morning, my younger son and I get up really early so we can get on the freeway for Ford Field and the football game, which kicks off at 9 a.m. Central Time. This year, our team is a massive underdog, and I'm realistic about such things.
After the game, I get back on the interstate and can spend the next 11 hours thinking about what I'm going to say in my article as I drive home. We'll get home about midnight. I've got to bust my ass home right away so I have time to write about it Saturday and Sunday. The paper gets put together Monday morning, and all my work has to be done by then. I can only imagine how my neck and lower back will feel once it's all over. Maybe this year I finally call that massage therapist after it's all over.
But stop the presses: Now it appears I may have another option:
I have learned (from the coach) that I may be able to ride south with the team in their bus--and it's not a school bus, either. Right now, I am weighing the pluses and minuses.
Among the pluses: Since my younger son stays home, he can keep my wife company on Thanksgiving. I don't have to drive for some 20+ hours, with all the wear and tear on the car (and the driver). In a real rarity, I would go somewhere and not have to do 100% of the driving. I could get used to that. Don't have to book a motel room. Someone else is in charge and gets to make all the decisions.
Minuses: I'm not in charge and don't get to make the decisions. No chance of a side trip to Canada--so keep my loonies at home. Probably won't see my older son. Disappointing for my younger son--he can't come along for once. Waiting around during several football practices. And I don't get paid the mileage money--and though we only get 30 cents per mile, it's still works out to a nice profit on a 1,100-mile round trip if your car gets 35 mpg.
So now that I have been thinking about it, I am leaning quite a lot towards riding the bus. Even though I found the birth certificate. That's OK--my wife and I have been talking about applying for the new passport cards, so we can visit Canada next summer.
I have another adventure to tell you about, but I'll post that in a day or two (assuming our motel has wireless internet).
On Saturday, I learned the answer.
The answer is yes.
Yes, I will have a normal Thanksgiving--normal for me for the last four years, at least. Each of them has been spent down to Detroit, where I went to cover state high school football championship games, played Friday morning.
For the fifth straight year, I will be doing that again. On Saturday, our team won its semifinal game 8-6. It wasn't a big win by any means, but a win's a win, and our team will make the 500-mile trip to the state title game again. Alas, so will I.
I have resigned myself to my fate for some time, realizing there was absolutely nothing I could do about it one way or the other. Would it happen again? I won't have to go down there five straight years, would I?
What a dumb question: Of course I would.
So on Sunday I worked on the article about the semifinal game. Then I start looking at maps, reminding myself where things are located relative to each other, what exits to take off the interstate, how to get from one place to the other and how to get back. I also have to make motel reservations.
Mind you, I don't mind going to Detroit when I can do it on my own terms. Like last summer, when all three of us visited my older son for a few days. But now the weather isn't so good. It's colder, and maybe there will be snow (though this week's forecast sounds pretty good).
My wife made the trip with me last year, but she will stay home this time--her training for her seasonal call center job starts Wednesday. But my younger son still wants to come along. So you don't have to worry about me not being well chaperoned throughout my trip. The chances of me slipping the leash and getting out somewhere for some fun are less than zero.
Let me say it plainly.
It. Is. Not. Fun.
I. Don't. Want. To go. Certainly not for the fifth straight year.
Especially this year. I wanted to spend part of Thanksgiving with my mom, since she is continuing to fade away. Every single bloody Thanksgiving since she went into the nursing home, I wanted to spend part of Thanksgiving with her. It hasn't happened, and it won't happen this year. God just doesn't want it to happen, I guess.
Here is a picture from Thanksgiving dinner at my mom's house back in 2001. Nothing elaborate, but we had venison and gravy, brown-and-serve rolls, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, apple pie (somewhat mashed) and (not pictured) pumpkin pie. We ate well ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/T-daydinner-11-01.jpg[/IMG]
(Of course, such a Thanksgiving isn't possible any more, because my mom has been in the nursing home since late 2005. Sigh.)
Another thing about driving to Detroit for a title game is that I don't control the clock. We leave for the 11-hour trip south Wednesday morning and arrive in the Detroit area long after sundown. On Thursday, it's Thanksgiving: Everything in the States is closed. Everything in Canada is open, and I'm hoping we can cross over to Windsor (Ontario) for a little shopping and a nice dinner. That means I have to find my birth certificate.
We'll spend all of Thanksgiving with my older son. On Friday morning, my younger son and I get up really early so we can get on the freeway for Ford Field and the football game, which kicks off at 9 a.m. Central Time. This year, our team is a massive underdog, and I'm realistic about such things.
After the game, I get back on the interstate and can spend the next 11 hours thinking about what I'm going to say in my article as I drive home. We'll get home about midnight. I've got to bust my ass home right away so I have time to write about it Saturday and Sunday. The paper gets put together Monday morning, and all my work has to be done by then. I can only imagine how my neck and lower back will feel once it's all over. Maybe this year I finally call that massage therapist after it's all over.
But stop the presses: Now it appears I may have another option:
I have learned (from the coach) that I may be able to ride south with the team in their bus--and it's not a school bus, either. Right now, I am weighing the pluses and minuses.
Among the pluses: Since my younger son stays home, he can keep my wife company on Thanksgiving. I don't have to drive for some 20+ hours, with all the wear and tear on the car (and the driver). In a real rarity, I would go somewhere and not have to do 100% of the driving. I could get used to that. Don't have to book a motel room. Someone else is in charge and gets to make all the decisions.
Minuses: I'm not in charge and don't get to make the decisions. No chance of a side trip to Canada--so keep my loonies at home. Probably won't see my older son. Disappointing for my younger son--he can't come along for once. Waiting around during several football practices. And I don't get paid the mileage money--and though we only get 30 cents per mile, it's still works out to a nice profit on a 1,100-mile round trip if your car gets 35 mpg.
So now that I have been thinking about it, I am leaning quite a lot towards riding the bus. Even though I found the birth certificate. That's OK--my wife and I have been talking about applying for the new passport cards, so we can visit Canada next summer.
I have another adventure to tell you about, but I'll post that in a day or two (assuming our motel has wireless internet).
Thursday, November 13, 2008
One down, three to go
Hello, hello to one and all. This is my crazy-go-nuts week in terms of fall playoff coverage. The weather is going downhill, and I've got a lot of long drives this week. One down, three to go.
So I really didn't need to read this in the weather news this morning:
...SIGNIFICANT LAKE EFFECT SNOW ACCUMULATIONS POSSIBLE LATE FRIDAY NIGHT INTO SATURDAY EVENING FOR WEST AND NORTH CENTRAL UPPER MICHIGAN...
Now it just so happens that I will be driving up to Marquette on Friday afternoon and Saturday afternoon this week, to cover playoff football games. The games themselves will be played inside the Superior Dome, which you saw photos of recently, and it's all nice and dry and warm inside. But to get there, you have to drive two hours through whatever weather the U.P. is enjoying at the time. To get home again, you have to drive two hours back through whatever. If you don't know. Marquette is in the lake effect snow belt, on the south shore of Lake Superior--they can get vast quantities of snow. So it's shaping up as one of those weekends.
On Tuesday, I drove to the volleyball regional tournament. That is an 80-mile drive each way; it's a lot closer to Lake Michigan than to Lake Superior. Our team won (just barely, in five games) and advances to the regional championship match tonight. My wife is coming along to keep me company (and, oh yes, to pick up some low-cost kitty food in Iron Mountain), and we'll stop by to see my mom, too. It's fun to have someone along--nice to have company.
Last weekend, both the football teams played at home in their district championship games. One team played Friday night: It was about 40 degrees F and dry until a few raindrops fell in the final minutes. By that time they had won, so they were happy.
During the night, the rain continued, and it changed over to wet snow Saturday morning. The other team's game was at home, starting at 12:30 p.m. Remember the recent post about the game played in the rain and fog? This one had the same two teams at the same field, only it was played in daylight.
The field had taken a good soaking overnight, but the snowflakes were real pretty during the first half. and the field was in fairly good shape ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Mudgm-Runplay-11-08.jpg[/IMG]
Not that every pass was caught ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Mudgm-Incomplete-11-08.jpg[/IMG]
Or that every tackle was made ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Mudgm-Tackle-11-08.jpg[/IMG]
So conditions were fairly good early in the game. But with all those football players chewing it up thoroughly over two hours of playoff football, the middle of the field got torn up and muddy and slick. Twas a muddy mess by the time it was over. The wet snow eased off during the second quarter, but some drier snow, driven by chilly winds out of the north, arrived during the second half.
As the game went on, the teams continued battling in the mire ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Mudgm-Pileup-11-08.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Mudgm-TackleB-11-08.jpg[/IMG]
Finally, the game was over. A touchdown in the first quarter was the only scoring in the game. As always, the teams shook hands when it was all over ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Mudgm-handshakes-11-08.jpg[/IMG]
I was talking to someone in the office today. Covering the game last Saturday was fun. Despite the rain and cold and mud. In fact, [I]because[/I] of the rain and cold and mud. It was outdoors. It was real. It was genuine football.
This weekend, I may be driving two hours through snow (twice) to got photos of teams playing on a plastic carpet in warm conditions. It's just not the same. To me, the fun part of football season ended last Saturday ... regardless of what happens in the playoffs.
So I really didn't need to read this in the weather news this morning:
...SIGNIFICANT LAKE EFFECT SNOW ACCUMULATIONS POSSIBLE LATE FRIDAY NIGHT INTO SATURDAY EVENING FOR WEST AND NORTH CENTRAL UPPER MICHIGAN...
Now it just so happens that I will be driving up to Marquette on Friday afternoon and Saturday afternoon this week, to cover playoff football games. The games themselves will be played inside the Superior Dome, which you saw photos of recently, and it's all nice and dry and warm inside. But to get there, you have to drive two hours through whatever weather the U.P. is enjoying at the time. To get home again, you have to drive two hours back through whatever. If you don't know. Marquette is in the lake effect snow belt, on the south shore of Lake Superior--they can get vast quantities of snow. So it's shaping up as one of those weekends.
On Tuesday, I drove to the volleyball regional tournament. That is an 80-mile drive each way; it's a lot closer to Lake Michigan than to Lake Superior. Our team won (just barely, in five games) and advances to the regional championship match tonight. My wife is coming along to keep me company (and, oh yes, to pick up some low-cost kitty food in Iron Mountain), and we'll stop by to see my mom, too. It's fun to have someone along--nice to have company.
Last weekend, both the football teams played at home in their district championship games. One team played Friday night: It was about 40 degrees F and dry until a few raindrops fell in the final minutes. By that time they had won, so they were happy.
During the night, the rain continued, and it changed over to wet snow Saturday morning. The other team's game was at home, starting at 12:30 p.m. Remember the recent post about the game played in the rain and fog? This one had the same two teams at the same field, only it was played in daylight.
The field had taken a good soaking overnight, but the snowflakes were real pretty during the first half. and the field was in fairly good shape ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Mudgm-Runplay-11-08.jpg[/IMG]
Not that every pass was caught ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Mudgm-Incomplete-11-08.jpg[/IMG]
Or that every tackle was made ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Mudgm-Tackle-11-08.jpg[/IMG]
So conditions were fairly good early in the game. But with all those football players chewing it up thoroughly over two hours of playoff football, the middle of the field got torn up and muddy and slick. Twas a muddy mess by the time it was over. The wet snow eased off during the second quarter, but some drier snow, driven by chilly winds out of the north, arrived during the second half.
As the game went on, the teams continued battling in the mire ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Mudgm-Pileup-11-08.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Mudgm-TackleB-11-08.jpg[/IMG]
Finally, the game was over. A touchdown in the first quarter was the only scoring in the game. As always, the teams shook hands when it was all over ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Mudgm-handshakes-11-08.jpg[/IMG]
I was talking to someone in the office today. Covering the game last Saturday was fun. Despite the rain and cold and mud. In fact, [I]because[/I] of the rain and cold and mud. It was outdoors. It was real. It was genuine football.
This weekend, I may be driving two hours through snow (twice) to got photos of teams playing on a plastic carpet in warm conditions. It's just not the same. To me, the fun part of football season ended last Saturday ... regardless of what happens in the playoffs.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
A little bit prouder
For the last few days, I have been trying to write something significant and meaningful about the history America made last Tuesday. This is as good as I can come do. Life is moving on, and a new reality is setting in. It's a good thing.
In the summer of 2004, we were visiting my in-laws near Ladysmith, WI. We had visited one of my wife's sisters that night, and were driving back to my father-in-law's place, a distance of about 25 miles. We had the radio on--the Democratic National Convention was taking place, and their keynote speaker was talking. Earlier, I heard the radio hosts talking about him--that he's an amazing speaker. He had an odd name that I just couldn't remember, but I did remember he was from Illinois.
And I remembered the speech. It was a hell of a good speech. I heard about 35 minutes of it before we arrived at my FIL's place. I didn't turn on his TV to see the end of it; Democratic party conventions weren't big hits at his house, and when vacationing among the in-laws, I automatically keep my political leanings to myself.
A few days later, we got back home. I got on the internet, found the C-SPAN website and found the speech, which I then watched in its entirely. I was impressed--because the speaker was clearly intelligent and expressed himself well and seemed to rise above the petty partisan atmosphere. He seemed to have a deep belief in our country's ideals and its Constitution, in the middle of an era when those in power were ignoring or perverting them.
After he announced for president, it didn't take me long to come on board. I had thought the nominee would be Hillary Clinton or John Edwards, but I had some serious problems with Hilary. Not because of her gender or who her husband was--I was a big fan of Bill, through thick and thin. But I was feeling so angry about the stalemated political atmosphere in Washington, with firmly entrenched positions dug out by both Republicans and Democrats. Neither side was talking to the other, and bad problems were allowed to get worse: Health care, for one. The growing gap between the wealthy and poor, for another. The war in Iraq, of course, and the immense effect it was having on the U.S. budget.
Let's face it, Hilary had become a polarizing force for Republicans. So I felt if she had been elected, it would be more of the same--more stalemate, more inaction. The Republicans absolutely seemed to hate her and all she believes in (except when it became expedient for them to say nice things about her after she wasn't chosen for vice president; that's par for the course).
I liked the skinny guy, anyway. He seemed to have a positive view of the future, a positive outlook. When he talked about the problems and challenges America faces, his words made a lot of sense. He pushed the importance of compromise and unity. After years of feeling terribly depressed about where my nation was going, he made me feel more optimistic for the future. Inspired, even. I watched as many of his speeches as I could on C-SPAN.
Michigan's Legislature had, in its infinite wisdom, decided to hold a presidential primary in January 2008, even after the Democratic National Committee warned them not to. Some of the candidates who had filed asked to have their names removed from the ballot. Obama was one of them. So in a year when it seemed every state had its own primary or caucus, Michigan didn't, and I didn't get my chance to vote for him. That really bothered me.
This summer, during a mini-vacation at the in-laws, I spotted a Democratic headquarters in Ladysmith. I stepped in and asked for a bumper sticker--it was the first Democratic campaign office I had seen, and I wanted to have something to express my opinion. I put the bumper sticker in my car's rear window.
The Democratic party in my county seems to be in dunce mode. McCain signs popped up during the summer like mushrooms after a heavy rain, but Obama signs were nowhere to be seen. They never opened a local headquarters here. Never. So where do you get the friggin' signs? Hell if I know! Some started appearing in October--where they came from, I haven't the foggiest.
In the final weekend before the election, we visited Rhinelander, WI. While my wife was visiting a quilt shop, I spotted a Democratic office across the street. So I went over there. But no, they had run out of lawn signs. They offered a bumper sticker. Sorry, got one already.
I had wanted to attend one of his rallies so I could take some pictures of him. My own pictures. In the weeks before the Wisconsin primary, he had made some stops in central Wisconsin and one in Green Bay. But that was on a Monday, and I can't get away from the office on Mondays. Grrrr. He made other stops, as close as Wausau, but it was hard to find out about them in time to make the trip.
One of his forums was canceled because of a snowstorm--he returned in July to make it up. I was down there during that time. But we were there to visit S and her husband, and I put that as a higher priority to me. I was thinking at the time that he would return to Wisconsin several times during the campaign, since Wisconsin was regarded as a "swing" state, which the candidates would be battling hard to win. But before long Wisconsin stopped swinging, and the candidates focused their attention on other parts of the country.
Last Tuesday night, we watched CNN. As it became 10 p.m. Central Time and the West Coast polls closed, the networks made their declaration. My wife and I watched from the couch. No celebrating. No cheers or toasts. I just felt quiet satisfaction. That something had finally gone right. And I started feeling prouder of being an American. That we could make the change. That we could put any irrational fears behind us. And yes, I know not everyone feels that way ... and I also fear what some mental defective is capable of doing.
I prefer to think about something else. Another transforming moment. Do you remember the apartheid era in South Africa, with minority white rule and Nelson Mandela kept in a prison? He was finally released, and he led the effort of the ANC political party in the first multi-racial election in 1994. The ANC received over 60% of the vote and Mandela, as party leader, became South Africa's first black president.
Given the tense, violent history of the change to majority rule in South Africa, many feared that election would prompt a lot of racial violence. It never happened--the election was peaceful, and the world praised how South Africa made the change and found national reconciliation.
It's quite interesting to contemplate what this will mean to America's image in the world. For instance, read [URL="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/06/do0607.xml"]this article[/URL] from England's Telegraph newspaper about how it could play out in Iran. Very interesting.
On Wednesday, President Bush made a statement, which said in part:
[INDENT][I]No matter how they cast their ballots, all Americans can be proud of the history that was made yesterday. Across the country, citizens voted in large numbers. They showed a watching world the vitality of America's democracy, and the strides we have made toward a more perfect union. They chose a President whose journey represents a triumph of the American story -- a testament to hard work, optimism, and faith in the enduring promise of our nation.
Many of our citizens thought they would never live to see that day. This moment is especially uplifting for a generation of Americans who witnessed the struggle for civil rights with their own eyes -- and four decades later see a dream fulfilled.
A long campaign has now ended, and we move forward as one nation. We're embarking on a period of change in Washington, yet there are some things that will not change. The United States government will stay vigilant in meeting its most important responsibility -- protecting the American people. And the world can be certain this commitment will remain steadfast under our next Commander-in-Chief.[/I][/INDENT]
It was a classy thing to say. I am proud of being an American. And now I am a little bit prouder.
In the summer of 2004, we were visiting my in-laws near Ladysmith, WI. We had visited one of my wife's sisters that night, and were driving back to my father-in-law's place, a distance of about 25 miles. We had the radio on--the Democratic National Convention was taking place, and their keynote speaker was talking. Earlier, I heard the radio hosts talking about him--that he's an amazing speaker. He had an odd name that I just couldn't remember, but I did remember he was from Illinois.
And I remembered the speech. It was a hell of a good speech. I heard about 35 minutes of it before we arrived at my FIL's place. I didn't turn on his TV to see the end of it; Democratic party conventions weren't big hits at his house, and when vacationing among the in-laws, I automatically keep my political leanings to myself.
A few days later, we got back home. I got on the internet, found the C-SPAN website and found the speech, which I then watched in its entirely. I was impressed--because the speaker was clearly intelligent and expressed himself well and seemed to rise above the petty partisan atmosphere. He seemed to have a deep belief in our country's ideals and its Constitution, in the middle of an era when those in power were ignoring or perverting them.
After he announced for president, it didn't take me long to come on board. I had thought the nominee would be Hillary Clinton or John Edwards, but I had some serious problems with Hilary. Not because of her gender or who her husband was--I was a big fan of Bill, through thick and thin. But I was feeling so angry about the stalemated political atmosphere in Washington, with firmly entrenched positions dug out by both Republicans and Democrats. Neither side was talking to the other, and bad problems were allowed to get worse: Health care, for one. The growing gap between the wealthy and poor, for another. The war in Iraq, of course, and the immense effect it was having on the U.S. budget.
Let's face it, Hilary had become a polarizing force for Republicans. So I felt if she had been elected, it would be more of the same--more stalemate, more inaction. The Republicans absolutely seemed to hate her and all she believes in (except when it became expedient for them to say nice things about her after she wasn't chosen for vice president; that's par for the course).
I liked the skinny guy, anyway. He seemed to have a positive view of the future, a positive outlook. When he talked about the problems and challenges America faces, his words made a lot of sense. He pushed the importance of compromise and unity. After years of feeling terribly depressed about where my nation was going, he made me feel more optimistic for the future. Inspired, even. I watched as many of his speeches as I could on C-SPAN.
Michigan's Legislature had, in its infinite wisdom, decided to hold a presidential primary in January 2008, even after the Democratic National Committee warned them not to. Some of the candidates who had filed asked to have their names removed from the ballot. Obama was one of them. So in a year when it seemed every state had its own primary or caucus, Michigan didn't, and I didn't get my chance to vote for him. That really bothered me.
This summer, during a mini-vacation at the in-laws, I spotted a Democratic headquarters in Ladysmith. I stepped in and asked for a bumper sticker--it was the first Democratic campaign office I had seen, and I wanted to have something to express my opinion. I put the bumper sticker in my car's rear window.
The Democratic party in my county seems to be in dunce mode. McCain signs popped up during the summer like mushrooms after a heavy rain, but Obama signs were nowhere to be seen. They never opened a local headquarters here. Never. So where do you get the friggin' signs? Hell if I know! Some started appearing in October--where they came from, I haven't the foggiest.
In the final weekend before the election, we visited Rhinelander, WI. While my wife was visiting a quilt shop, I spotted a Democratic office across the street. So I went over there. But no, they had run out of lawn signs. They offered a bumper sticker. Sorry, got one already.
I had wanted to attend one of his rallies so I could take some pictures of him. My own pictures. In the weeks before the Wisconsin primary, he had made some stops in central Wisconsin and one in Green Bay. But that was on a Monday, and I can't get away from the office on Mondays. Grrrr. He made other stops, as close as Wausau, but it was hard to find out about them in time to make the trip.
One of his forums was canceled because of a snowstorm--he returned in July to make it up. I was down there during that time. But we were there to visit S and her husband, and I put that as a higher priority to me. I was thinking at the time that he would return to Wisconsin several times during the campaign, since Wisconsin was regarded as a "swing" state, which the candidates would be battling hard to win. But before long Wisconsin stopped swinging, and the candidates focused their attention on other parts of the country.
Last Tuesday night, we watched CNN. As it became 10 p.m. Central Time and the West Coast polls closed, the networks made their declaration. My wife and I watched from the couch. No celebrating. No cheers or toasts. I just felt quiet satisfaction. That something had finally gone right. And I started feeling prouder of being an American. That we could make the change. That we could put any irrational fears behind us. And yes, I know not everyone feels that way ... and I also fear what some mental defective is capable of doing.
I prefer to think about something else. Another transforming moment. Do you remember the apartheid era in South Africa, with minority white rule and Nelson Mandela kept in a prison? He was finally released, and he led the effort of the ANC political party in the first multi-racial election in 1994. The ANC received over 60% of the vote and Mandela, as party leader, became South Africa's first black president.
Given the tense, violent history of the change to majority rule in South Africa, many feared that election would prompt a lot of racial violence. It never happened--the election was peaceful, and the world praised how South Africa made the change and found national reconciliation.
It's quite interesting to contemplate what this will mean to America's image in the world. For instance, read [URL="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/06/do0607.xml"]this article[/URL] from England's Telegraph newspaper about how it could play out in Iran. Very interesting.
On Wednesday, President Bush made a statement, which said in part:
[INDENT][I]No matter how they cast their ballots, all Americans can be proud of the history that was made yesterday. Across the country, citizens voted in large numbers. They showed a watching world the vitality of America's democracy, and the strides we have made toward a more perfect union. They chose a President whose journey represents a triumph of the American story -- a testament to hard work, optimism, and faith in the enduring promise of our nation.
Many of our citizens thought they would never live to see that day. This moment is especially uplifting for a generation of Americans who witnessed the struggle for civil rights with their own eyes -- and four decades later see a dream fulfilled.
A long campaign has now ended, and we move forward as one nation. We're embarking on a period of change in Washington, yet there are some things that will not change. The United States government will stay vigilant in meeting its most important responsibility -- protecting the American people. And the world can be certain this commitment will remain steadfast under our next Commander-in-Chief.[/I][/INDENT]
It was a classy thing to say. I am proud of being an American. And now I am a little bit prouder.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Change? At last?
The BIG change won't be happening for another 2 1/2 months, but it should be in motion after today. After four years of waiting, it's Election Day. Will America get it right this time?
Most of the states had some form of early voting. In Michigan, well, we're a little behind the times. Everyone votes on Election Day in Michigan unless they get an absentee ballot. After discussing it with my wife, we decided to do our voting in the mid morning, just as I was driving her to the church and the quilters' group.
Lovely weather. It's partly cloudy outside, and temperatures are in the mid 60s. Not bad for early November!
So how long did voting take? How long were we in line? It took all of 15 seconds before I got the little slip (signature, address, date of birth) that I had to fill out to get my ballot; I also had to show my driver's license. Then I went into another room with the little voting booths and filled out the ballot. Same with my wife. Studied the ballot proposals: medical marijuana, yes; fewer restrictions on stem cell research, of course. Fed the ballot into the optical scanner. (Our ballots have the ovals that you fill in with a black felt-tip pen.) The whole procedure took five minutes, if that. Then I drove my wife to the quilters and went back to work.
It was, I should mention, my first chance to vote for Obama. Ever. Many of you had the chance to take part in primaries or caucuses early this year, but Michigan held an illegal Democratic primary in January (10 months ago). Knowing the DNC wouldn't accept the results, many candidates, including Obama, took their names off the ballot. It raised a ruckus in the run-up to the convention in August. Eventually, they figured out a solution.
We have a little tradition here on Election Day: Pancake Day. The local Kiwanis Club holds its Pancake Day on Election Day, so normally we vote, and then we get pancakes. Except this time we voted earlier than normal, so I took her to the quilters--they took her to the church where Pancake Day was taking place at 11:30 a.m., and I met her there. Pancakes. Sausages. Milk. Butter. It made for a filling mid-day repast.
We had finished the winter tourism issue (final step: proofreading) this morning. Tonight (at 5 p.m.) I will be covering a district volleyball tourney; I cover one match, then go home for supper and to watch the returns come in.
The volleyball districts continue on Thursday and Friday. Meanwhile, our football teams will both be going for their district titles on Friday night and Saturday afternoon. Both teams will be home. Both were home last Friday night for "sub-district" games. The weather was pretty decent: temperatures were in the 40s with no rain.
It wasn't so nice one week earlier, the final week of the regular season. The game I was at Friday night had some interesting weather. For most of the first half, it rained. Things got pretty soggy. Here's a picture of the action on the field during the rain ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Fog-rainplay-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
The rain eventually stopped during the second quarter, but during the second half fog started building. It went from soggy to foggy pretty quickly. Foggy conditions are hard for photography, especially action sports like football. Especially in a small, old stadium with poor lighting.
For a while, I tried using my flash like usual. But the light from the flash picks up all the water vapor in the air and you get something like this ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Fog-handoffbefore-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
Playing around with Photoshop can help some ... but it only goes so far ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Fog-handoffafter-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
What was I to do? I finally tried turning off the flash and using available light. The trouble was, there wasn't much available light. This is what the field looked like from the sidelines with all that fog in the air ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Fog-field-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
I wound up using one picture from during the rain and a shot of the reaction on the bench after our team earned a safety--I got the shot of the tackle in the end zone, too, but it was just too dark to use. You don't believe me?
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Fog-EZsack-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
The next day (Saturday afternoon), David and I went to the dome in Marquette for an evening game. It was just cloudy, so photography conditions were much better. Here's what the Superior Dome looks like from the outside ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Fog-domeoutside-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
And here is what it is like inside ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Fog-domeinside-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
If our teams win this weekend, we'll probably by back in the Dome for the regional title games. As the playoffs move on, of course, the U.P.'s weather gets less football-friendly. We have been lucky so far, but good luck lasts only so long.
Everyone else is fine. The cats continue to adjust to each other. David came over last night--it was his birthday, so we had a favorite meal of his, and we watched some football. I bought him something he had wanted for a long time--a DVD recorder and VCR unit with a tuner. The DVD recorder doesn't have a hard drive of its own (like mine does; you just can't get them any more), but he wanted it mainly to copy some of his old videotapes, and the unit I bought will handle that with no problem (according to the box).
I know I haven't been around here much lately. What can I say? The World Serious captured my attention. The election, of course--I've been watching CNN and C-SPAN a lot. And I've been pretty busy with night assignments. It should start easing off fairly soon.
I've missed writing. I like to write at night, and there just hasn't been the time lately--because my wife likes it when we sit together and watch something. Or else when I'm upstairs writing, Charlie comes around. She hops up on the computer desk, walks around behind the flast-screen monitor, comes out the other side and climbs down into my lap. That's just the way she does it.
Then she's happy. Purr, purr. And I'm done with writing for a while.
Most of the states had some form of early voting. In Michigan, well, we're a little behind the times. Everyone votes on Election Day in Michigan unless they get an absentee ballot. After discussing it with my wife, we decided to do our voting in the mid morning, just as I was driving her to the church and the quilters' group.
Lovely weather. It's partly cloudy outside, and temperatures are in the mid 60s. Not bad for early November!
So how long did voting take? How long were we in line? It took all of 15 seconds before I got the little slip (signature, address, date of birth) that I had to fill out to get my ballot; I also had to show my driver's license. Then I went into another room with the little voting booths and filled out the ballot. Same with my wife. Studied the ballot proposals: medical marijuana, yes; fewer restrictions on stem cell research, of course. Fed the ballot into the optical scanner. (Our ballots have the ovals that you fill in with a black felt-tip pen.) The whole procedure took five minutes, if that. Then I drove my wife to the quilters and went back to work.
It was, I should mention, my first chance to vote for Obama. Ever. Many of you had the chance to take part in primaries or caucuses early this year, but Michigan held an illegal Democratic primary in January (10 months ago). Knowing the DNC wouldn't accept the results, many candidates, including Obama, took their names off the ballot. It raised a ruckus in the run-up to the convention in August. Eventually, they figured out a solution.
We have a little tradition here on Election Day: Pancake Day. The local Kiwanis Club holds its Pancake Day on Election Day, so normally we vote, and then we get pancakes. Except this time we voted earlier than normal, so I took her to the quilters--they took her to the church where Pancake Day was taking place at 11:30 a.m., and I met her there. Pancakes. Sausages. Milk. Butter. It made for a filling mid-day repast.
We had finished the winter tourism issue (final step: proofreading) this morning. Tonight (at 5 p.m.) I will be covering a district volleyball tourney; I cover one match, then go home for supper and to watch the returns come in.
The volleyball districts continue on Thursday and Friday. Meanwhile, our football teams will both be going for their district titles on Friday night and Saturday afternoon. Both teams will be home. Both were home last Friday night for "sub-district" games. The weather was pretty decent: temperatures were in the 40s with no rain.
It wasn't so nice one week earlier, the final week of the regular season. The game I was at Friday night had some interesting weather. For most of the first half, it rained. Things got pretty soggy. Here's a picture of the action on the field during the rain ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Fog-rainplay-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
The rain eventually stopped during the second quarter, but during the second half fog started building. It went from soggy to foggy pretty quickly. Foggy conditions are hard for photography, especially action sports like football. Especially in a small, old stadium with poor lighting.
For a while, I tried using my flash like usual. But the light from the flash picks up all the water vapor in the air and you get something like this ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Fog-handoffbefore-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
Playing around with Photoshop can help some ... but it only goes so far ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Fog-handoffafter-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
What was I to do? I finally tried turning off the flash and using available light. The trouble was, there wasn't much available light. This is what the field looked like from the sidelines with all that fog in the air ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Fog-field-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
I wound up using one picture from during the rain and a shot of the reaction on the bench after our team earned a safety--I got the shot of the tackle in the end zone, too, but it was just too dark to use. You don't believe me?
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Fog-EZsack-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
The next day (Saturday afternoon), David and I went to the dome in Marquette for an evening game. It was just cloudy, so photography conditions were much better. Here's what the Superior Dome looks like from the outside ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Fog-domeoutside-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
And here is what it is like inside ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Fog-domeinside-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
If our teams win this weekend, we'll probably by back in the Dome for the regional title games. As the playoffs move on, of course, the U.P.'s weather gets less football-friendly. We have been lucky so far, but good luck lasts only so long.
Everyone else is fine. The cats continue to adjust to each other. David came over last night--it was his birthday, so we had a favorite meal of his, and we watched some football. I bought him something he had wanted for a long time--a DVD recorder and VCR unit with a tuner. The DVD recorder doesn't have a hard drive of its own (like mine does; you just can't get them any more), but he wanted it mainly to copy some of his old videotapes, and the unit I bought will handle that with no problem (according to the box).
I know I haven't been around here much lately. What can I say? The World Serious captured my attention. The election, of course--I've been watching CNN and C-SPAN a lot. And I've been pretty busy with night assignments. It should start easing off fairly soon.
I've missed writing. I like to write at night, and there just hasn't been the time lately--because my wife likes it when we sit together and watch something. Or else when I'm upstairs writing, Charlie comes around. She hops up on the computer desk, walks around behind the flast-screen monitor, comes out the other side and climbs down into my lap. That's just the way she does it.
Then she's happy. Purr, purr. And I'm done with writing for a while.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Last chance to mow
Our area had a lovely day today. It started cloudy and cool, but then it cleared off and got into the low 50s. I celebrated it after work today by doing something I hadn't done for a while: I mowed the lawn.
Final rite of our rapidly disappearing summer. A cold front is supposed to blow through on Sunday. We may see snowflakes before Monday.
The grass had gotten long because I hadn't mown it for a while. Part of it is basic laziness, I suppose, but the long delay is partly due to the ankle I twisted in early September. We have a push mower, so when you mow the lawn you get some good exercise. I didn't want to push the ankle until it was feeling nearly back to normal. It is now. If I twist it the wrong way, it hurts a little. Otherwise, it's back to normal.
I had to run out for a picture this evening, and when I walked out to the car, I said to myself that the lawn is looking fairly nice. Better than it was, certainly.
The picture, by the way, was at a youth hockey practice. Yes, winter's on the way.
****
Geez, I've fallen behind on everyone's blogs lately. I've got an excuse. Maybe not a good one, but it's better than nothing.
At work, we have been working hard on our winter tourism issue. The official deadline is this weekend, and I fell behind on things last week. Suddenly it came to me--Eureka!--that nobody else is going to do the work for me. So I had to hustle my bustle. Like they say about the butcher who sat down in the meat grinder, "I'm getting a little behind in my work."
So no quiet time at the office this week. Instead, manic work to get a bunch of features written or updated. Meanwhile, I had a pair of friends I wanted to write to, and that took up my evenings at home. And I was already tired, from all the work I had done.
Also, Wednesday was my wife's birthday, and we wanted to visit my mom that evening. So we did. I got her a couple cards. Some of you may remember some of the infamous cards I get for my wife. The stock of clever ones seemed to be down this year. Still, I came up with this one.
Here is the front ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Bday08A-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
And this is inside ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Bday08B-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
****
On a recent trip to see my mom, my wife and I decided to get a scratch mat for Max. We put it out, and Max seemed to take to it ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Scratch-Max-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
So did the other two cats. Maggie decided to give it a try. She thought it was good to sit on ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Scratch-Maggie-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
And Charlie decided to give it a try. First, she worked it up with a paw to make a little tunnel out of it ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Scratch-CharlieA-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
Then the little feathery toy on it got her attention, and Charlie had a great time playing with it ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Scratch-CharlieB-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
Oh, she was having a great time with it ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Scratch-CharlieC-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
The cats are getting along a lot better. Still an occasional hiss or growl, but it's gotten a lot better. Last time I wrote, I wasn't sure it was going to work out. Now it's better.
Max's personality is coming out more. He likes to get petted but doesn't like to be picked up that often. But he comes around, rubbing against my legs or my hand when I put it down. He likes to get his head petted and scratched. Purr, purr.
Meanwhile, nearly every morning now, Charlie comes to visit me about 5 a.m., when I'm just waking up. I feel her walking up by my side. I try to lie on my back, with my arm to my side, so Charlie will lie down by my side, with my arm on the other side, so she can put her forepaws on my upper arm. Purr, purr. Sometimes she gets her middle rubbed. Other times, I drift back to sleep.
Did I ever tell you that Charlie likes crackers? Every cat is strange in some way, and Charlie seems to have a weakness for ordinary soda crackers. When I came out to the living room this evening with a pair crackers, Charlie hopped up by me. Meow? Meow? Urrrow? She starts sniffing the crackers and tries to lick them, so I finally break off a tiny corner and offer it to her. She sniffs and then eats it. You could hear a soft crunch, crunch. She had two pieces and was satisfied.
Ironically, my wife said she was sitting with Charlie yesterday. She had a couple crackers for herself ... and Charlie paid them no attention.
Final rite of our rapidly disappearing summer. A cold front is supposed to blow through on Sunday. We may see snowflakes before Monday.
The grass had gotten long because I hadn't mown it for a while. Part of it is basic laziness, I suppose, but the long delay is partly due to the ankle I twisted in early September. We have a push mower, so when you mow the lawn you get some good exercise. I didn't want to push the ankle until it was feeling nearly back to normal. It is now. If I twist it the wrong way, it hurts a little. Otherwise, it's back to normal.
I had to run out for a picture this evening, and when I walked out to the car, I said to myself that the lawn is looking fairly nice. Better than it was, certainly.
The picture, by the way, was at a youth hockey practice. Yes, winter's on the way.
****
Geez, I've fallen behind on everyone's blogs lately. I've got an excuse. Maybe not a good one, but it's better than nothing.
At work, we have been working hard on our winter tourism issue. The official deadline is this weekend, and I fell behind on things last week. Suddenly it came to me--Eureka!--that nobody else is going to do the work for me. So I had to hustle my bustle. Like they say about the butcher who sat down in the meat grinder, "I'm getting a little behind in my work."
So no quiet time at the office this week. Instead, manic work to get a bunch of features written or updated. Meanwhile, I had a pair of friends I wanted to write to, and that took up my evenings at home. And I was already tired, from all the work I had done.
Also, Wednesday was my wife's birthday, and we wanted to visit my mom that evening. So we did. I got her a couple cards. Some of you may remember some of the infamous cards I get for my wife. The stock of clever ones seemed to be down this year. Still, I came up with this one.
Here is the front ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Bday08A-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
And this is inside ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Bday08B-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
****
On a recent trip to see my mom, my wife and I decided to get a scratch mat for Max. We put it out, and Max seemed to take to it ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Scratch-Max-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
So did the other two cats. Maggie decided to give it a try. She thought it was good to sit on ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Scratch-Maggie-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
And Charlie decided to give it a try. First, she worked it up with a paw to make a little tunnel out of it ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Scratch-CharlieA-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
Then the little feathery toy on it got her attention, and Charlie had a great time playing with it ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Scratch-CharlieB-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
Oh, she was having a great time with it ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Scratch-CharlieC-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
The cats are getting along a lot better. Still an occasional hiss or growl, but it's gotten a lot better. Last time I wrote, I wasn't sure it was going to work out. Now it's better.
Max's personality is coming out more. He likes to get petted but doesn't like to be picked up that often. But he comes around, rubbing against my legs or my hand when I put it down. He likes to get his head petted and scratched. Purr, purr.
Meanwhile, nearly every morning now, Charlie comes to visit me about 5 a.m., when I'm just waking up. I feel her walking up by my side. I try to lie on my back, with my arm to my side, so Charlie will lie down by my side, with my arm on the other side, so she can put her forepaws on my upper arm. Purr, purr. Sometimes she gets her middle rubbed. Other times, I drift back to sleep.
Did I ever tell you that Charlie likes crackers? Every cat is strange in some way, and Charlie seems to have a weakness for ordinary soda crackers. When I came out to the living room this evening with a pair crackers, Charlie hopped up by me. Meow? Meow? Urrrow? She starts sniffing the crackers and tries to lick them, so I finally break off a tiny corner and offer it to her. She sniffs and then eats it. You could hear a soft crunch, crunch. She had two pieces and was satisfied.
Ironically, my wife said she was sitting with Charlie yesterday. She had a couple crackers for herself ... and Charlie paid them no attention.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Tagged like me
OK, I got tagged, by IndigoMoonArts. My mission today is to relate seven strange or little-known facts about myself.
Now I know myself. And you think you know me from what I have written here. The fact is, though, that I don't write about parts of my life.
Reasons? They are boring. They are uninteresting. Yes, even more uninteresting than the stuff I normally write about. Some hurt a little too much to write about. They are too personal. With all the stuff I've written about, too personal?
Well, we'll see. I thought of a few things that may raise an eyebrow or two. And so ...
1. I don't drink coffee. Or beer. Don't care for the taste of either. So I don't go to coffee houses or bars. Not that I'm an abstainer. Wine is OK, and so is liquor. But I go real easy on that stuff. How easy? Last beer I had was at the "pre-draft party" around April 1. I had a little mead (honey wine) and other kinds of wine during the neopagan camp last summer. A little. Not much.
2. I've been cutting back on some kinds of food. Soda--I've cut way back on that. Milk--I drink just 1% milk now. White bread: cut that out entirely--I get rye bread with little caraway seeds or else natural grain bread. That's what we have for breakfast. In general, I avoid sweet stuff. A little candy is OK, but I don't do that often.
2. I may be involved in a lawsuit. As a plaintiff. It involves the estate of my aunt who died in January 2007. The personal representative, who is one of 11 nieces and nephews, may have taken a lot of money from the estate. We (my cousins and I) strongly suspect he has. He has been removed, and a new personal rep is being appointed. Stay tuned.
3. I have never been out of the U.S. Midwest in my life. Never have seen a mountain. Never have seen an ocean, unless you think Lake Superior counts. Furthest west: Minneapolis-St. Paul. Furthest east: Harriston, Ontario. Furthest south: the Chicago area. Furthest north: the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula in the U.P. It's not that I don't want to travel. But there just never has been enough time or money. I have been to Canada a few times; the Sault Ste. Marie area, Windsor with my son and that special trip to visit S in December 2005.
4. Never have flown in an airplane, either. Well, I'll take that back. About 20 years ago, I went up in a private plane--we flew around the county, with me taking pictures of some of the sights: the woods, the towns, the lakes. That was my only time. Commercial flights, no.
4. I met my wife on a blind date. Just after the first moon landing, in 1969. It was arranged by a high school classmate of mine with big boobs who was working with her, about a year after we graduated. We went to some park where we tried out a batting cage (I fouled off the first pitch and fanned on all the others), drove go-karts, walked along Milwaukee's Bradford Beach and then did a lot of kissing in the back seat as they drove us home. We went out the next Saturday by ourselves. And the next. And the next. And the next. And the next. And the next. Etc. Meanwhile, the other girl (my ex-classmate with the big boobs) broke up with her BF.
5. I love trains. I was born too late for the era of train travel, but at least I can see what it was like on many of the classic movies. I also have CDs and DVDs that featuring steam locomotives. Sometimes when I can't sleep, I put on a CD of steam locomotives roaring around. I listen, and before long I'm asleep. The stuff I put my wife through!
6. I love foreign films. Particular Akira Kurosawa's samurai films, samurai films in general and the Expressionist films (especially directed by Fritz Lang) from the post-World War I era in Germany. That's a passion that (like many of mine) I have to enjoy by myself or not at all. My dream poly lover would be someone who also loves to watch foreign films. And play around.
6. My fantasy football team, the Howlin' Wolfs (named for the classic blues singer), is undefeated and in first place seven weeks into the season. Three of the wins have been by less than two points, but a win's a win.
6. I'm a fan of cricket. Really. I understand how the game is played; in fact, I have a few cricket videos and DVDs. Want me to explain the LBW law? Or what "Bodyline" was all about? What strange thing happened in Sir Donald Bradman's final innings? Just ask me. (I got pissed during the baseball strike of 1994 and decided to learn what cricket was all about.)
7. I'm a president. For real. We have a cooperative cable TV/broadband internet corporation in town, and I have been a director for many years, as board president for the last 10 years or so. That means I get to sign the checks and preside at board meetings. We keep our rates as low as we can. Just finished a project to enhance our bandwidth and add more fiber nodes.
****
Not much else to report on. The cats are getting along better, as some of you predicted. Updates later--I want to write a friend tonight; this will be a week with very little spare time, so better take care of it now.
Now I know myself. And you think you know me from what I have written here. The fact is, though, that I don't write about parts of my life.
Reasons? They are boring. They are uninteresting. Yes, even more uninteresting than the stuff I normally write about. Some hurt a little too much to write about. They are too personal. With all the stuff I've written about, too personal?
Well, we'll see. I thought of a few things that may raise an eyebrow or two. And so ...
1. I don't drink coffee. Or beer. Don't care for the taste of either. So I don't go to coffee houses or bars. Not that I'm an abstainer. Wine is OK, and so is liquor. But I go real easy on that stuff. How easy? Last beer I had was at the "pre-draft party" around April 1. I had a little mead (honey wine) and other kinds of wine during the neopagan camp last summer. A little. Not much.
2. I've been cutting back on some kinds of food. Soda--I've cut way back on that. Milk--I drink just 1% milk now. White bread: cut that out entirely--I get rye bread with little caraway seeds or else natural grain bread. That's what we have for breakfast. In general, I avoid sweet stuff. A little candy is OK, but I don't do that often.
2. I may be involved in a lawsuit. As a plaintiff. It involves the estate of my aunt who died in January 2007. The personal representative, who is one of 11 nieces and nephews, may have taken a lot of money from the estate. We (my cousins and I) strongly suspect he has. He has been removed, and a new personal rep is being appointed. Stay tuned.
3. I have never been out of the U.S. Midwest in my life. Never have seen a mountain. Never have seen an ocean, unless you think Lake Superior counts. Furthest west: Minneapolis-St. Paul. Furthest east: Harriston, Ontario. Furthest south: the Chicago area. Furthest north: the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula in the U.P. It's not that I don't want to travel. But there just never has been enough time or money. I have been to Canada a few times; the Sault Ste. Marie area, Windsor with my son and that special trip to visit S in December 2005.
4. Never have flown in an airplane, either. Well, I'll take that back. About 20 years ago, I went up in a private plane--we flew around the county, with me taking pictures of some of the sights: the woods, the towns, the lakes. That was my only time. Commercial flights, no.
4. I met my wife on a blind date. Just after the first moon landing, in 1969. It was arranged by a high school classmate of mine with big boobs who was working with her, about a year after we graduated. We went to some park where we tried out a batting cage (I fouled off the first pitch and fanned on all the others), drove go-karts, walked along Milwaukee's Bradford Beach and then did a lot of kissing in the back seat as they drove us home. We went out the next Saturday by ourselves. And the next. And the next. And the next. And the next. And the next. Etc. Meanwhile, the other girl (my ex-classmate with the big boobs) broke up with her BF.
5. I love trains. I was born too late for the era of train travel, but at least I can see what it was like on many of the classic movies. I also have CDs and DVDs that featuring steam locomotives. Sometimes when I can't sleep, I put on a CD of steam locomotives roaring around. I listen, and before long I'm asleep. The stuff I put my wife through!
6. I love foreign films. Particular Akira Kurosawa's samurai films, samurai films in general and the Expressionist films (especially directed by Fritz Lang) from the post-World War I era in Germany. That's a passion that (like many of mine) I have to enjoy by myself or not at all. My dream poly lover would be someone who also loves to watch foreign films. And play around.
6. My fantasy football team, the Howlin' Wolfs (named for the classic blues singer), is undefeated and in first place seven weeks into the season. Three of the wins have been by less than two points, but a win's a win.
6. I'm a fan of cricket. Really. I understand how the game is played; in fact, I have a few cricket videos and DVDs. Want me to explain the LBW law? Or what "Bodyline" was all about? What strange thing happened in Sir Donald Bradman's final innings? Just ask me. (I got pissed during the baseball strike of 1994 and decided to learn what cricket was all about.)
7. I'm a president. For real. We have a cooperative cable TV/broadband internet corporation in town, and I have been a director for many years, as board president for the last 10 years or so. That means I get to sign the checks and preside at board meetings. We keep our rates as low as we can. Just finished a project to enhance our bandwidth and add more fiber nodes.
****
Not much else to report on. The cats are getting along better, as some of you predicted. Updates later--I want to write a friend tonight; this will be a week with very little spare time, so better take care of it now.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Are you sitting comfortably?
Prepare yourself for a shock.
Are you sitting down? (Of course you are; you're at the computer, aren't you?)
The news is: I haven't been feeling particularly creative lately.
It's this, that and the other thing. Maybe my brain is seizing up. Screeech! Summer now seems to have fled the scene for good, and I'm working on articles for our annual winter issue. I can't begin to tell you how happy that makes me. Wonderful. Six months of winter, on deck.
Well, like most stuff in life, it is what you make of it. Right at the moment, I'm a bit down at the prospect of winter coming. But after winter there's spring, and then summer. Spring is only six or seven months away, depending on whether it's a late spring or not.
****
There is big news at our house. We have added another cat. May I introduce you to Max (his shelter name) ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/MeetMax-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
Max--that name may be changed--was acquired from the local animal shelter. He is a male cat who was already neutered. He is about 3 1/2 years old, bright orange, as you can see, and comparatively thin. He is friendly and likes to be petted. Purr, purr, purr.
My naive hope was that Charlie was looking for a friend, someone she can play with, since Maggie still hisses at Charlie when she goes by. Such has not been the case. We brought Max home yesterday, in the late afternoon. Once Charlie realized that the pet taxi came home with an occupant, she started hissing. And growling. Charlie knows cat words that I have never heard before. One sounds like "Oyyyyy, yoy-yoy-yoy-yoy-yoyyyyy!" (Normally, Charlie "talks" a lot as she goes around the house; some cats do, and others don't.)
One time yesterday, she put her ears down (first time I ever saw her do that) and hissed and then chased Max upstairs. They both went under our bed. I followed them and heard them hissing at each other. That's all that happened. For the most part, they have stayed apart today. But my wife said they started having a conversation just before noon. She knew what to do: She turned on the vacuum cleaner. That ended the discussion immediately: One cat went one way, and the other went another.
Another issue must be resolved: Max has not been declawed. We are hoping we won't have to do this. This evening, we tried to trim her claws with a fingernail clipper--something we hadn't done since we had Princess (that cat that preceded Frisky, who is the cat that preceded Charlie). Max must have been declawed before, but he didn't want to cooperate with us, so we let him go. He is not scratching furniture; just the carpets, and most of our carpets at home aren't much to speak of. He does that when he's happy, sort of kneading his paws on the floor. When we had lunch together today, Max went around and around the table, brushing against our legs and getting petted.
I want to tell you a little about Max's history, too. Charlie came to the shelter as a kitten. Max arrived there around New Year's--he had been at the shelter for 10 months until this week. The story is that he was found as a stray, and they discovered he had an abcess in his mouth, which was causing him pain. The vet took care of that. According to the shelter's bio, "Max wants a nice indoors home. He doesn't want to be outside any more." At one point, they told us, he got depressed and stopped eating. He is still thin. Much lighter than Charlie, who had gotten rather rotund in her time with us.
I just hope that he and Charlie will be able to get along better. I feel pretty bad about the way things have turned out. If I had known Charlie would be this way about it ...
****
Tonight, I'm upstairs, writing, with the Red Wings game on the little TV to my left. I'm up here by myself. If this were a perfect world, I would have at least a cat here to keep me company. But this is not a perfect world, is it?
Usually stuff like that doesn't bother me that much. Tonight it is.
Are you sitting down? (Of course you are; you're at the computer, aren't you?)
The news is: I haven't been feeling particularly creative lately.
It's this, that and the other thing. Maybe my brain is seizing up. Screeech! Summer now seems to have fled the scene for good, and I'm working on articles for our annual winter issue. I can't begin to tell you how happy that makes me. Wonderful. Six months of winter, on deck.
Well, like most stuff in life, it is what you make of it. Right at the moment, I'm a bit down at the prospect of winter coming. But after winter there's spring, and then summer. Spring is only six or seven months away, depending on whether it's a late spring or not.
****
There is big news at our house. We have added another cat. May I introduce you to Max (his shelter name) ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/MeetMax-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
Max--that name may be changed--was acquired from the local animal shelter. He is a male cat who was already neutered. He is about 3 1/2 years old, bright orange, as you can see, and comparatively thin. He is friendly and likes to be petted. Purr, purr, purr.
My naive hope was that Charlie was looking for a friend, someone she can play with, since Maggie still hisses at Charlie when she goes by. Such has not been the case. We brought Max home yesterday, in the late afternoon. Once Charlie realized that the pet taxi came home with an occupant, she started hissing. And growling. Charlie knows cat words that I have never heard before. One sounds like "Oyyyyy, yoy-yoy-yoy-yoy-yoyyyyy!" (Normally, Charlie "talks" a lot as she goes around the house; some cats do, and others don't.)
One time yesterday, she put her ears down (first time I ever saw her do that) and hissed and then chased Max upstairs. They both went under our bed. I followed them and heard them hissing at each other. That's all that happened. For the most part, they have stayed apart today. But my wife said they started having a conversation just before noon. She knew what to do: She turned on the vacuum cleaner. That ended the discussion immediately: One cat went one way, and the other went another.
Another issue must be resolved: Max has not been declawed. We are hoping we won't have to do this. This evening, we tried to trim her claws with a fingernail clipper--something we hadn't done since we had Princess (that cat that preceded Frisky, who is the cat that preceded Charlie). Max must have been declawed before, but he didn't want to cooperate with us, so we let him go. He is not scratching furniture; just the carpets, and most of our carpets at home aren't much to speak of. He does that when he's happy, sort of kneading his paws on the floor. When we had lunch together today, Max went around and around the table, brushing against our legs and getting petted.
I want to tell you a little about Max's history, too. Charlie came to the shelter as a kitten. Max arrived there around New Year's--he had been at the shelter for 10 months until this week. The story is that he was found as a stray, and they discovered he had an abcess in his mouth, which was causing him pain. The vet took care of that. According to the shelter's bio, "Max wants a nice indoors home. He doesn't want to be outside any more." At one point, they told us, he got depressed and stopped eating. He is still thin. Much lighter than Charlie, who had gotten rather rotund in her time with us.
I just hope that he and Charlie will be able to get along better. I feel pretty bad about the way things have turned out. If I had known Charlie would be this way about it ...
****
Tonight, I'm upstairs, writing, with the Red Wings game on the little TV to my left. I'm up here by myself. If this were a perfect world, I would have at least a cat here to keep me company. But this is not a perfect world, is it?
Usually stuff like that doesn't bother me that much. Tonight it is.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Indian summer
Checking in ...
The last week or so went by in a bit of a daze. Mega amounts of baseball, at least compared to the rest of the season, when there frankly wasn't a lot on TV. Not the teams I was interested in, anyway.
But this year the Milwaukee Brewers made it into the playoffs for the first time in 26 years, so I was honor-bound to watch as much of them as I could (notwithstanding the fact that I'm not as much into baseball as I used to be. Hockey has taken over ... but the Brewers in the playoffs change all that temporarily).
How long has it been since the Brewers were in the baseball post-season? So long ago that I missed most of that World Series for two reasons. (1) My wife and I were taking childbirth classes at a local hospital, because she was pregnant with David. (2) We didn't have a VCR yet. It was the 1982 World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. This was back in the days of Betamax vs. VHS. You don't know what a Betamax is?
Anyway, this year, the Brewers were eliminated by Philadelphia in four games, with the final game on Sunday. I didn't expect them to win; they faced very long odds. I only wanted one thing: for them to last longer than the media darling Chicago Cubs. And they did--the Cubs were defeated by the L.A. Dodgers in three straight, the night before. So I was happy about that.
I'll probably watch more of the baseball playoffs. But hockey season starts on Thursday night, and that's my No. 1 now. So let's just say I will be greatly distracted.
****
Meanwhile, I'm wondering about how long the high school football season will go. Long-time readers know I have gone to the state championship game for the last four games--and our team won the Michigan state title last year. This year, I thought I wouldn't have to do that. Too many star players had graduated.
But guess what? It's six games into the season, and the team really hasn't been challenged so far. Last Friday, as temperatures dipped into the upper 20s, they played their biggest rival, in a town 30 miles away--and won 46-6. It wasn't close.
It's getting colder now, and the players' breath was steaming late in the game ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Grid-steamy-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
Earlier, I expected them to make the playoffs and last a few games. Now I have to adjust that projection. They are looking mighty strong, and my post-season may last longer than I first expected. Will I really have to make that 500+-mile drive down to visit my son over Thanksgiving and then the state title game on Friday morning?
Three weeks are left in the regular season and then the playoffs start. I won't worry about it. It's completely out of my hands. It's just that I would like to spend Thanksgiving at home for once. After all, it's been five years since I last could.
****
I have had a writing project in mind, which would have appeared here, this week. But I think I'm going to put it on hold until next year. It had to do with that trip to the pagan equinox ritual recently. During the trip, I visited a small city that was the site of a major disaster, the most deadly fire in U.S. history. And I bet you have never heard about it.
But time is tight this week--we are working on one of our many special editions each year, and I need to get some stories written. Also, I don't have all the photos I want to help tell the story. I got a few during my visit, but just some of them. This story, I think, has to wait for another day. Or another year. Long enough for me to write it up right.
****
I covered a cross-country meet on Monday. It rained for most of the day, and while the rain had stopped an hour before the race, it was still cool and damp and breezy. The seasons are definitely a-changing up here.
But then a front went through, with rain, and temperatures are now forecast to be well above normal for the rest of the week. Highs in the upper 60s. Beautiful mild autumn days. Indian summer.
There's a famous old cartoon by John T. McCutcheon, [URL="http://www.tkinter.smig.net/Chicago/InjunSummer/"]"Injun Summer,"[/URL] that appeared in the Chicago Tribune over a hundred years ago. About an old codger spinning tall tales to a boy while they are raking leaves in the fall. I always think about that this time of year.
Have you ever seen it? Click the link and you will.
****
One other thing to mention: Last Saturday, we went to the local animal shelter, to look at the cats. We saw several that we liked. We have been talking about them since. Maybe we will make a return visit fairly soon.
The last week or so went by in a bit of a daze. Mega amounts of baseball, at least compared to the rest of the season, when there frankly wasn't a lot on TV. Not the teams I was interested in, anyway.
But this year the Milwaukee Brewers made it into the playoffs for the first time in 26 years, so I was honor-bound to watch as much of them as I could (notwithstanding the fact that I'm not as much into baseball as I used to be. Hockey has taken over ... but the Brewers in the playoffs change all that temporarily).
How long has it been since the Brewers were in the baseball post-season? So long ago that I missed most of that World Series for two reasons. (1) My wife and I were taking childbirth classes at a local hospital, because she was pregnant with David. (2) We didn't have a VCR yet. It was the 1982 World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. This was back in the days of Betamax vs. VHS. You don't know what a Betamax is?
Anyway, this year, the Brewers were eliminated by Philadelphia in four games, with the final game on Sunday. I didn't expect them to win; they faced very long odds. I only wanted one thing: for them to last longer than the media darling Chicago Cubs. And they did--the Cubs were defeated by the L.A. Dodgers in three straight, the night before. So I was happy about that.
I'll probably watch more of the baseball playoffs. But hockey season starts on Thursday night, and that's my No. 1 now. So let's just say I will be greatly distracted.
****
Meanwhile, I'm wondering about how long the high school football season will go. Long-time readers know I have gone to the state championship game for the last four games--and our team won the Michigan state title last year. This year, I thought I wouldn't have to do that. Too many star players had graduated.
But guess what? It's six games into the season, and the team really hasn't been challenged so far. Last Friday, as temperatures dipped into the upper 20s, they played their biggest rival, in a town 30 miles away--and won 46-6. It wasn't close.
It's getting colder now, and the players' breath was steaming late in the game ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Grid-steamy-10-08.jpg[/IMG]
Earlier, I expected them to make the playoffs and last a few games. Now I have to adjust that projection. They are looking mighty strong, and my post-season may last longer than I first expected. Will I really have to make that 500+-mile drive down to visit my son over Thanksgiving and then the state title game on Friday morning?
Three weeks are left in the regular season and then the playoffs start. I won't worry about it. It's completely out of my hands. It's just that I would like to spend Thanksgiving at home for once. After all, it's been five years since I last could.
****
I have had a writing project in mind, which would have appeared here, this week. But I think I'm going to put it on hold until next year. It had to do with that trip to the pagan equinox ritual recently. During the trip, I visited a small city that was the site of a major disaster, the most deadly fire in U.S. history. And I bet you have never heard about it.
But time is tight this week--we are working on one of our many special editions each year, and I need to get some stories written. Also, I don't have all the photos I want to help tell the story. I got a few during my visit, but just some of them. This story, I think, has to wait for another day. Or another year. Long enough for me to write it up right.
****
I covered a cross-country meet on Monday. It rained for most of the day, and while the rain had stopped an hour before the race, it was still cool and damp and breezy. The seasons are definitely a-changing up here.
But then a front went through, with rain, and temperatures are now forecast to be well above normal for the rest of the week. Highs in the upper 60s. Beautiful mild autumn days. Indian summer.
There's a famous old cartoon by John T. McCutcheon, [URL="http://www.tkinter.smig.net/Chicago/InjunSummer/"]"Injun Summer,"[/URL] that appeared in the Chicago Tribune over a hundred years ago. About an old codger spinning tall tales to a boy while they are raking leaves in the fall. I always think about that this time of year.
Have you ever seen it? Click the link and you will.
****
One other thing to mention: Last Saturday, we went to the local animal shelter, to look at the cats. We saw several that we liked. We have been talking about them since. Maybe we will make a return visit fairly soon.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Turning into October
We flipped the calendar page today. We also seem to have flipped the weather page. Yesterday, it was fairly nice. Today, it was cool and windy. Word is that the weather will get cooler as the week goes on. They are predicting lows in the upper 20s Friday night. (Note to self: Be sure to take the fingerless gloves to the football game that night.)
I bowed to the inevitable at about 10:30 this morning: I reached for my sweater to pulled it on over my short-sleeved shirt. It was the first time I had done that since last spring. Outside, it was 45 at about noon with no sign it will be getting warmer for a while.
So fall is here. The color change is now well along, but it's been cloudy most of the time so conditions for fall color photos have been very limited.
Time to report on my adventures over the weekend. I went to a fall solstice ritual conducted by a neopagan group near Menominee, Mich. I spent the night there; I left home (by myself) at about 2 p.m. Saturday and arrived back home at about noon Sunday. Things went pretty well.
I was there at the invitation of a couple I had met at the gathering held every summer, around the Fourth of July, in southwestern Wisconsin. They also travel long distances to get there. I drove first to their home. They helped carry my stuff downstairs to their "pagan guest room," which is a spare room equipped with a couch, several bookcases with pagan-related books in them, candles on top of them and posters on the wall. The room also featured lots of clutter. They had set up an air mattress on the floor, and I put my sleeping bag and pillow on it. I was all set.
We had a light dinner there, and I got to meet the two resident cats. Another older woman arrived; she went to the event with us. It took place in Wisconsin, about 10 miles to the south, near a home and a large garage. It was just after sunset when we arrived. Outside, next to the garage, they had a large cauldron set up and were starting a fire. The cauldron had moons and stars cut out on the sides, which I thought was very cool (for a burning cauldron) ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Solst-cauldron-9-08.jpg[/IMG]
Temperatures were about 55 to 60. Not overly cool. Once everyone had assembled (about a dozen people), the ritual took place in the garage. It was centered on a table decorated with several candles and some normal fall/harvesttime decorations ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Solst-table-9-08.jpg[/IMG]
My hosts led the ceremony, which lasted maybe 20 minutes. I had a minor part, speaking to the element Air. (There are four elements, Air, Water, Fire and Earth--their spirits are invited to take part in the ritual.)
Once the ceremony ended, it was time for Act Two: Everyone moved over to a nearby table, where a variety of goodies were out for a pot luck. They had mead (honey wine), several other kinds of wine and a crockpot full of hot cider. That's what I went for; hot cider is one of my favorites. There were cornbread muffins, along with your typical Doritos and blue corn chips and dip and a few other things.
Part three of the evening consisted of drumming. Maybe about half the people had come mainly for the drumming, and now was the time they were waiting for. Originally the drumming was to have been outside, around the cauldron, but some light rain passed through for about a minute or so, and the drummers were worried about their drumheads. So the drumming moved inside the largish garage. I played a small drum--I'm just a beginner, you know, but I know rhythm and syncopation, so I was able to figure out the rhythms part of the time.
I took this shot by just the light of the candles ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Solst-drumcandle-9-08.jpg[/IMG]
But if you want to see the drums and the drummers ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Solst-drumflash-9-08.jpg[/IMG]
It lasted till about 10:15 p.m., when the group started saying good-bye. We drove back to Menominee, dropped off the older woman at her place and then went back to the house. Before long, I was in the pagan guest room, stretched out on my sleeping bag. It took a while to fall asleep, but I finally did. I headed for home at about 8:30 a.m. Sunday.
****
Outside of that, life has been fairly ordinary lately. The other notable thing to happen was our visit to my mom last Thursday. My wife came along. For the first time since spring, my mom expressed an interest in going for a ride. So we did. Between then and now, however, she has gotten a different wheelchair, and this one won't fold up and go into the trunk, like her old one could. Bottom line is that she couldn't get out until we were back at the nursing home.
Our first stop was the cemetery where my dad and brother are buried. I pulled up so she could look out her window at the gravestone (about 15 feet away). She looked at it and before long she was crying. Crying for her son (my only brother), who took his life 23 years ago.
The last time we were there, the stone was dirty with moss, lichens and other dirt. We came back there around Memorial Day (end of May) with our cleaning supplies. It looks nice now.
The rest of the trip was better and predictable. We visited the rural area where she was raised (which looks nothing like it used to, even when I was a kid) and the farm where my dad lived (which still looks much like it did way back when). They are just a mile or two from each other.
We wrapped up the drive by getting her a chicken sandwich at Subway on our way back to the nursing home. It was a six-incher. She ate about a third of it, and my wife and I polished off the rest of it. After that she was tired, so we headed for home.
Lucky that we did it when we did. It was a nice day--temperatures in the mid 70s. Today, it's not even 50. It's October, after all.
I bowed to the inevitable at about 10:30 this morning: I reached for my sweater to pulled it on over my short-sleeved shirt. It was the first time I had done that since last spring. Outside, it was 45 at about noon with no sign it will be getting warmer for a while.
So fall is here. The color change is now well along, but it's been cloudy most of the time so conditions for fall color photos have been very limited.
Time to report on my adventures over the weekend. I went to a fall solstice ritual conducted by a neopagan group near Menominee, Mich. I spent the night there; I left home (by myself) at about 2 p.m. Saturday and arrived back home at about noon Sunday. Things went pretty well.
I was there at the invitation of a couple I had met at the gathering held every summer, around the Fourth of July, in southwestern Wisconsin. They also travel long distances to get there. I drove first to their home. They helped carry my stuff downstairs to their "pagan guest room," which is a spare room equipped with a couch, several bookcases with pagan-related books in them, candles on top of them and posters on the wall. The room also featured lots of clutter. They had set up an air mattress on the floor, and I put my sleeping bag and pillow on it. I was all set.
We had a light dinner there, and I got to meet the two resident cats. Another older woman arrived; she went to the event with us. It took place in Wisconsin, about 10 miles to the south, near a home and a large garage. It was just after sunset when we arrived. Outside, next to the garage, they had a large cauldron set up and were starting a fire. The cauldron had moons and stars cut out on the sides, which I thought was very cool (for a burning cauldron) ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Solst-cauldron-9-08.jpg[/IMG]
Temperatures were about 55 to 60. Not overly cool. Once everyone had assembled (about a dozen people), the ritual took place in the garage. It was centered on a table decorated with several candles and some normal fall/harvesttime decorations ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Solst-table-9-08.jpg[/IMG]
My hosts led the ceremony, which lasted maybe 20 minutes. I had a minor part, speaking to the element Air. (There are four elements, Air, Water, Fire and Earth--their spirits are invited to take part in the ritual.)
Once the ceremony ended, it was time for Act Two: Everyone moved over to a nearby table, where a variety of goodies were out for a pot luck. They had mead (honey wine), several other kinds of wine and a crockpot full of hot cider. That's what I went for; hot cider is one of my favorites. There were cornbread muffins, along with your typical Doritos and blue corn chips and dip and a few other things.
Part three of the evening consisted of drumming. Maybe about half the people had come mainly for the drumming, and now was the time they were waiting for. Originally the drumming was to have been outside, around the cauldron, but some light rain passed through for about a minute or so, and the drummers were worried about their drumheads. So the drumming moved inside the largish garage. I played a small drum--I'm just a beginner, you know, but I know rhythm and syncopation, so I was able to figure out the rhythms part of the time.
I took this shot by just the light of the candles ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Solst-drumcandle-9-08.jpg[/IMG]
But if you want to see the drums and the drummers ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Solst-drumflash-9-08.jpg[/IMG]
It lasted till about 10:15 p.m., when the group started saying good-bye. We drove back to Menominee, dropped off the older woman at her place and then went back to the house. Before long, I was in the pagan guest room, stretched out on my sleeping bag. It took a while to fall asleep, but I finally did. I headed for home at about 8:30 a.m. Sunday.
****
Outside of that, life has been fairly ordinary lately. The other notable thing to happen was our visit to my mom last Thursday. My wife came along. For the first time since spring, my mom expressed an interest in going for a ride. So we did. Between then and now, however, she has gotten a different wheelchair, and this one won't fold up and go into the trunk, like her old one could. Bottom line is that she couldn't get out until we were back at the nursing home.
Our first stop was the cemetery where my dad and brother are buried. I pulled up so she could look out her window at the gravestone (about 15 feet away). She looked at it and before long she was crying. Crying for her son (my only brother), who took his life 23 years ago.
The last time we were there, the stone was dirty with moss, lichens and other dirt. We came back there around Memorial Day (end of May) with our cleaning supplies. It looks nice now.
The rest of the trip was better and predictable. We visited the rural area where she was raised (which looks nothing like it used to, even when I was a kid) and the farm where my dad lived (which still looks much like it did way back when). They are just a mile or two from each other.
We wrapped up the drive by getting her a chicken sandwich at Subway on our way back to the nursing home. It was a six-incher. She ate about a third of it, and my wife and I polished off the rest of it. After that she was tired, so we headed for home.
Lucky that we did it when we did. It was a nice day--temperatures in the mid 70s. Today, it's not even 50. It's October, after all.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
To all you independents
Recently, I was quite amazed/amused to hear about the Canadian election, which is coming up on Oct. 14.
Do you know when they called the election? It was on Sept. 7. So the length of the campaign will be 37 days. Thirty-seven days. Yes, I know there was speculation for a long time that an election would be called this year, but the wheels were only set in motion on Sept. 7. Thirty-seven days.
By contrast, the current U.S. presidential election unofficially started the day after the 2004 election and actively after the 2006 election. I'm sure most of you are getting quite tired of it.
I have been doing my best to keep my opinions to myself, but I made an exception back on Jan. 4, when Vox's question of the day was "What is your reaction to the Iowa caucus?", which had just been held. [URL="http://drdog.vox.com/library/post/qotd-iowa.html#comments"]I commented here.[/URL] I think Efx2 was taking one of its periodic vacations at the time.
I know many people are still undecided, and many are just plain turned off my the entire drawn-out process. Myself included. But I found an article this week that hit home. It was an open to letter to people who haven't yet decided whom to vote for, whatever the reason, whether they follow politics closely or whether they stay far away from it. You're a diverse group. To quote from the introduction:
[QUOTE]But there are a few qualities that many of you share. You are fed up with the choices offered you and sick of partisan rancor. You are disillusioned both with the Bush administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress. Many of you are conservative on fiscal policy and liberal on social issues, which is a big reason neither party exactly fits you. Mainly, you want someone who will actually deliver -- on the economy, on foreign policy, on domestic programs. And you don't care what his or her political label is
Because you hold the key to the election, both John McCain and Barack Obama have been assiduously courting you. But you're not sold on either candidate. You like the fact that McCain has a reputation as a maverick and an independent thinker, but you're not sure if he doesn't just represent more of the Washington status quo. As for Obama, you don't know much about him and all the mania about him only makes you suspicious.
As the endless campaign moves into the home stretch, the noise from both sides and their supporters grows deafening. You're sick of the hyperbolic, us-against-them commentary that dominates our political discourse. What follows is a list of the main issues facing the country, and an attempt to compare, in as neutral a way as possible, how the two candidates stack up on those issues.[/QUOTE]
It was an interesting read, and I thought maybe you would like to see it, too. If you want to read it for yourself, [URL="http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2008/09/23/letter_to_independents/print.html"]here is the link[/URL]. The election is less than six weeks away. The first debate is Friday night.
Do you know when they called the election? It was on Sept. 7. So the length of the campaign will be 37 days. Thirty-seven days. Yes, I know there was speculation for a long time that an election would be called this year, but the wheels were only set in motion on Sept. 7. Thirty-seven days.
By contrast, the current U.S. presidential election unofficially started the day after the 2004 election and actively after the 2006 election. I'm sure most of you are getting quite tired of it.
I have been doing my best to keep my opinions to myself, but I made an exception back on Jan. 4, when Vox's question of the day was "What is your reaction to the Iowa caucus?", which had just been held. [URL="http://drdog.vox.com/library/post/qotd-iowa.html#comments"]I commented here.[/URL] I think Efx2 was taking one of its periodic vacations at the time.
I know many people are still undecided, and many are just plain turned off my the entire drawn-out process. Myself included. But I found an article this week that hit home. It was an open to letter to people who haven't yet decided whom to vote for, whatever the reason, whether they follow politics closely or whether they stay far away from it. You're a diverse group. To quote from the introduction:
[QUOTE]But there are a few qualities that many of you share. You are fed up with the choices offered you and sick of partisan rancor. You are disillusioned both with the Bush administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress. Many of you are conservative on fiscal policy and liberal on social issues, which is a big reason neither party exactly fits you. Mainly, you want someone who will actually deliver -- on the economy, on foreign policy, on domestic programs. And you don't care what his or her political label is
Because you hold the key to the election, both John McCain and Barack Obama have been assiduously courting you. But you're not sold on either candidate. You like the fact that McCain has a reputation as a maverick and an independent thinker, but you're not sure if he doesn't just represent more of the Washington status quo. As for Obama, you don't know much about him and all the mania about him only makes you suspicious.
As the endless campaign moves into the home stretch, the noise from both sides and their supporters grows deafening. You're sick of the hyperbolic, us-against-them commentary that dominates our political discourse. What follows is a list of the main issues facing the country, and an attempt to compare, in as neutral a way as possible, how the two candidates stack up on those issues.[/QUOTE]
It was an interesting read, and I thought maybe you would like to see it, too. If you want to read it for yourself, [URL="http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2008/09/23/letter_to_independents/print.html"]here is the link[/URL]. The election is less than six weeks away. The first debate is Friday night.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
The mystery of the missing notebook
OK, I'm back after a very busy weekend, one filled with frustration and drama and fear. Yes, fear. Sorta.
It all started at the football game last Friday night. An ordinary game, and not a very exciting one, either. Our team had a 14-0 lead within two minutes of the kickoff, a 28-0 lead one play into the second quarter and was ahead 42-7 at halftime. Final score: 49-14. No, not so thrilling.
After the game, I got a picture of the team in its post-game huddle, then got a picture of a volunteer coach on the team, for a feature I'm planning. I was hurrying around after the final gun to grab my camera bag and stuff, and I know I dropped my reporter's notebook and program once or twice. Usually I stick them in the camera bag, but I was wrapped up in talking to people. That's the way it is after a game.
I went home, watched TV for a while, helped my wife to bed, caught up with the news online and then hit the hay myself. Saturday morning, I had to be at the office early to talk to the coach (who likes to get interviews out of the way before 9 a.m.--he gets up early).
I get to the office, open the camera bag and reach for my little yellow notebook. It's not there. The program is there, my photo notebook is there, and the camera is there. The narrow yellow notebook isn't. Not there. I go out and look in my car. No dice. Inside the house, where I put the bag overnight. Ix-nay.
This notebook is where I write play-by-play notes of the game. Who did what and when and to whom. I stand on the sidelines during a game, scribbling notes between plays. When it's time for another play, I stick the notebook under my arm and put the pen in my mouth so both my hands are free to operate the camera. After the play, I put the camera down and start writing. That's how I do it.
And even though it was a lopsided, not-that-interesting game, they were still my notes on what happened, from which I compose my story. Without it ... I didn't want to think about it. So I got in my car and drove to the football field. Walked down the hill to the field and looked around. Not there. I climbed the hill again, got back in the car and drove to the parking lot at the school. Nothing to see.
Crap! All I was thinking was that I'd have to base the story on the bare-bones account in the local daily paper and the coach's faulty memory. So I was depressed about that. I covered a volleyball match that afternoon, and all I could think about was that missing football notebook. Crap! I was glum that night.
But my wife said that someone had called, asking if I was missing a notebook. It was one of the school personnel; a retired teacher and husband to the tennis coach. She said he would put it in the office mailbox.
It wasn't there in the morning, when I got there, but it was at mid-morning. I didn't quite kiss it, but maybe I should have. Anyway, now I could write my uninteresting story about an uninteresting game, with all the necessary uninteresting details intact.
It got me to thinking. I don't take a lot of things too seriously, myself especially, but I do take my work damn seriously. I care very much about writing it right and getting facts straight, knowing what to say and how to say it. I don't like mistakes, my own especially. I like to give the facts, and let the reader make up their own mind.
I covered a volleyball match last night. Then, when I got home, my wife and I sat together and watched the original "Hellboy" movie. That was a lot of fun; we both enjoyed it. I know that the second Hellboy movie came out last summer, and I really wanted to see it, but it just didn't work out, and the film slipped out of town before I knew it. Heard a lot of good things about it, though, so I'm waiting for the DVD to come out. Not yet.
****
Ankle update: It is almost back to normal. Late last week, I started wearing athletic shoes again, and that worked OK. I wore them at the game last Friday and climbed up and down the hill OK. Including Saturday's unexpected visit.
Monday, I tried my normal work shoes, but they were still digging in a little too much where the ankle is tender, so back to the athletic shoes. I had to run a few errands this noon, and as I was walking from the car to the drug store to city hall, I noticed that I was walking at my normal brisk pace.
****
It's a beautiful day here today. Sunny, and the temperature is in the mid 70s. The annual color change has started, but it's moving very slowly. Partly, that is because we haven't had a really hard frost yet.
The office golf fanatics are away today, getting in a final round, so there's just me and another woman in the office. Very quiet day. A good day for writing.
It all started at the football game last Friday night. An ordinary game, and not a very exciting one, either. Our team had a 14-0 lead within two minutes of the kickoff, a 28-0 lead one play into the second quarter and was ahead 42-7 at halftime. Final score: 49-14. No, not so thrilling.
After the game, I got a picture of the team in its post-game huddle, then got a picture of a volunteer coach on the team, for a feature I'm planning. I was hurrying around after the final gun to grab my camera bag and stuff, and I know I dropped my reporter's notebook and program once or twice. Usually I stick them in the camera bag, but I was wrapped up in talking to people. That's the way it is after a game.
I went home, watched TV for a while, helped my wife to bed, caught up with the news online and then hit the hay myself. Saturday morning, I had to be at the office early to talk to the coach (who likes to get interviews out of the way before 9 a.m.--he gets up early).
I get to the office, open the camera bag and reach for my little yellow notebook. It's not there. The program is there, my photo notebook is there, and the camera is there. The narrow yellow notebook isn't. Not there. I go out and look in my car. No dice. Inside the house, where I put the bag overnight. Ix-nay.
This notebook is where I write play-by-play notes of the game. Who did what and when and to whom. I stand on the sidelines during a game, scribbling notes between plays. When it's time for another play, I stick the notebook under my arm and put the pen in my mouth so both my hands are free to operate the camera. After the play, I put the camera down and start writing. That's how I do it.
And even though it was a lopsided, not-that-interesting game, they were still my notes on what happened, from which I compose my story. Without it ... I didn't want to think about it. So I got in my car and drove to the football field. Walked down the hill to the field and looked around. Not there. I climbed the hill again, got back in the car and drove to the parking lot at the school. Nothing to see.
Crap! All I was thinking was that I'd have to base the story on the bare-bones account in the local daily paper and the coach's faulty memory. So I was depressed about that. I covered a volleyball match that afternoon, and all I could think about was that missing football notebook. Crap! I was glum that night.
But my wife said that someone had called, asking if I was missing a notebook. It was one of the school personnel; a retired teacher and husband to the tennis coach. She said he would put it in the office mailbox.
It wasn't there in the morning, when I got there, but it was at mid-morning. I didn't quite kiss it, but maybe I should have. Anyway, now I could write my uninteresting story about an uninteresting game, with all the necessary uninteresting details intact.
It got me to thinking. I don't take a lot of things too seriously, myself especially, but I do take my work damn seriously. I care very much about writing it right and getting facts straight, knowing what to say and how to say it. I don't like mistakes, my own especially. I like to give the facts, and let the reader make up their own mind.
I covered a volleyball match last night. Then, when I got home, my wife and I sat together and watched the original "Hellboy" movie. That was a lot of fun; we both enjoyed it. I know that the second Hellboy movie came out last summer, and I really wanted to see it, but it just didn't work out, and the film slipped out of town before I knew it. Heard a lot of good things about it, though, so I'm waiting for the DVD to come out. Not yet.
****
Ankle update: It is almost back to normal. Late last week, I started wearing athletic shoes again, and that worked OK. I wore them at the game last Friday and climbed up and down the hill OK. Including Saturday's unexpected visit.
Monday, I tried my normal work shoes, but they were still digging in a little too much where the ankle is tender, so back to the athletic shoes. I had to run a few errands this noon, and as I was walking from the car to the drug store to city hall, I noticed that I was walking at my normal brisk pace.
****
It's a beautiful day here today. Sunny, and the temperature is in the mid 70s. The annual color change has started, but it's moving very slowly. Partly, that is because we haven't had a really hard frost yet.
The office golf fanatics are away today, getting in a final round, so there's just me and another woman in the office. Very quiet day. A good day for writing.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
A weekend with Starlius
]I haven't written an update for a while. There are reasons.
First, the big news is that my foot and ankle are still attached to my body. Yes, it is still hurting, though not as much. No, I haven't been putting ice on it. I know I should, but I've been a bit of a baby about that. We have one of those cold wraps in the fridge, and I've used it a few times on the ankle and the top of the foot. The thing of it is--it's cold! Really! So I can stand it for a while, and then I put it away.
Rest? Ha! My ankle gets rest when I can rest. And I can't rest. Not ever. Well, I did for a while on Saturday. I never visited my mom on Saturday--that's one thing I'm doing today. So on Saturday, I just sat around home most of the day. On Sunday, more of the same. I had to run around and do some errands, but most of the time I was off my feet. I even took a nap Saturday afternoon!
[B]I have started wearing[/B] a sandal on that (left) foot. I can get the foot in a shoe, but the side of the shoe rubs too much on the bruised part of my ankle and foot, so I finally got the bright idea of wearing a sandal on that foot. It's working for now. I covered the football game last Friday--another 2+ hours on my feet, walking up and down the sidelines--and it survived pretty well.
The inflammation and bruising is still there, at my ankle and the top of my foot, and I should have used that cold wrap last night. But I didn't. And I also haven't been taking Tylenols as often as maybe I should. I've just been taking them when it's really bothering me. A macho thing, you know.
After visiting my mom today, I have to cover a volleyball match. When I get back, I'll put the cold wrap on it again for a while. I promise.
[B]The distractions came[/B] in a box from Amazon that arrived on Friday. It included a couple books on open relationships, a book about the 1908 major league baseball season (one of the closest ever) and -- ta-daah! -- Spore. Yes, I "invested" in the new "god game" Spore, so after my game Friday night and on and off over the weekend I worked on a purple and green quadruped that has gone through some evolutions as I make my way through the game. I am in the "creature" phase now. Maybe about 2/3rds of the way through that. But there are other phases to come.
He's cute ... in an ugly sort of a way. I named him "Starlius." You can see him at spore.com by doing a [URL="http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=srch-Starlius"]search on Starliu[/URL]s. He's among nearly 20 million critters created in the week or so since the game came out. I described him as "a weird-looking blue thing," and that is still accurate. But he's cute ... if your idea of cute includes a narwhal-like horn, a gator-like snout, eyestalks and odd colors. They have a thing where you can take a picture of him. Maybe Starlius can be my new avatar!
I can blame Starlius for distracting me from the books that I really wanted to study. In fact, I have been reading one, but late at night, just before bed, as my brain is shutting down. Then my wife puts her book away and Charlie hops up and wants to start chasing toes. My toes. Time to turn off the light.
[B]The other thing[/B] that happened over the weekend is that we had a rainstorm move through Saturday evening. Not from the remnants of Hurricane Ike that passed through other parts of the Midwest with vat quantities of rain, but it was raining hard for a while. Anyway, I was upstairs, busy with Starlius, when I heard some dripping. Yep. The spare bedroom.
We had our roof replaced about 10 years ago, but there seems to be a bad shingle there, and it drips into the attic and from there into the spare bedroom when it's raining heavily. Bad foot/ankle and all, I (and my wife) climbed upstairs to set out buckets to manage things for the time being.
Just too much excitement and exertion for my ankle, which was aching afterwards. Get out the cold wrap.
[B]The highlight of today's[/B] visit to my mom is getting her rings, which she wanted resized. Her fingers are so thin now that the rings can just slip right off, so I took them to ajeweler to make them smaller. My wife said the jeweler called Monday--they're ready. I also have to stop at the store to get some cat food (for the cats), some Tums (for her) and some Vitamin B and D (also for her).
I'm also going to look for a blouse I saw at the store last week. It's a dark, long-sleeved blouse with sort of semi-transparent stripes on it. For my wife. As a gift. Maybe she'll wear it for me. Maybe not. I'll try. Can't blame a guy for trying.
From there, off to a volleyball match at North Dickinson and then home. My wife is with the quilters today; we won't be able to eat together, but I should be home the rest of the week, and the football game on Friday is right here in town.
First, the big news is that my foot and ankle are still attached to my body. Yes, it is still hurting, though not as much. No, I haven't been putting ice on it. I know I should, but I've been a bit of a baby about that. We have one of those cold wraps in the fridge, and I've used it a few times on the ankle and the top of the foot. The thing of it is--it's cold! Really! So I can stand it for a while, and then I put it away.
Rest? Ha! My ankle gets rest when I can rest. And I can't rest. Not ever. Well, I did for a while on Saturday. I never visited my mom on Saturday--that's one thing I'm doing today. So on Saturday, I just sat around home most of the day. On Sunday, more of the same. I had to run around and do some errands, but most of the time I was off my feet. I even took a nap Saturday afternoon!
[B]I have started wearing[/B] a sandal on that (left) foot. I can get the foot in a shoe, but the side of the shoe rubs too much on the bruised part of my ankle and foot, so I finally got the bright idea of wearing a sandal on that foot. It's working for now. I covered the football game last Friday--another 2+ hours on my feet, walking up and down the sidelines--and it survived pretty well.
The inflammation and bruising is still there, at my ankle and the top of my foot, and I should have used that cold wrap last night. But I didn't. And I also haven't been taking Tylenols as often as maybe I should. I've just been taking them when it's really bothering me. A macho thing, you know.
After visiting my mom today, I have to cover a volleyball match. When I get back, I'll put the cold wrap on it again for a while. I promise.
[B]The distractions came[/B] in a box from Amazon that arrived on Friday. It included a couple books on open relationships, a book about the 1908 major league baseball season (one of the closest ever) and -- ta-daah! -- Spore. Yes, I "invested" in the new "god game" Spore, so after my game Friday night and on and off over the weekend I worked on a purple and green quadruped that has gone through some evolutions as I make my way through the game. I am in the "creature" phase now. Maybe about 2/3rds of the way through that. But there are other phases to come.
He's cute ... in an ugly sort of a way. I named him "Starlius." You can see him at spore.com by doing a [URL="http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=srch-Starlius"]search on Starliu[/URL]s. He's among nearly 20 million critters created in the week or so since the game came out. I described him as "a weird-looking blue thing," and that is still accurate. But he's cute ... if your idea of cute includes a narwhal-like horn, a gator-like snout, eyestalks and odd colors. They have a thing where you can take a picture of him. Maybe Starlius can be my new avatar!
I can blame Starlius for distracting me from the books that I really wanted to study. In fact, I have been reading one, but late at night, just before bed, as my brain is shutting down. Then my wife puts her book away and Charlie hops up and wants to start chasing toes. My toes. Time to turn off the light.
[B]The other thing[/B] that happened over the weekend is that we had a rainstorm move through Saturday evening. Not from the remnants of Hurricane Ike that passed through other parts of the Midwest with vat quantities of rain, but it was raining hard for a while. Anyway, I was upstairs, busy with Starlius, when I heard some dripping. Yep. The spare bedroom.
We had our roof replaced about 10 years ago, but there seems to be a bad shingle there, and it drips into the attic and from there into the spare bedroom when it's raining heavily. Bad foot/ankle and all, I (and my wife) climbed upstairs to set out buckets to manage things for the time being.
Just too much excitement and exertion for my ankle, which was aching afterwards. Get out the cold wrap.
[B]The highlight of today's[/B] visit to my mom is getting her rings, which she wanted resized. Her fingers are so thin now that the rings can just slip right off, so I took them to ajeweler to make them smaller. My wife said the jeweler called Monday--they're ready. I also have to stop at the store to get some cat food (for the cats), some Tums (for her) and some Vitamin B and D (also for her).
I'm also going to look for a blouse I saw at the store last week. It's a dark, long-sleeved blouse with sort of semi-transparent stripes on it. For my wife. As a gift. Maybe she'll wear it for me. Maybe not. I'll try. Can't blame a guy for trying.
From there, off to a volleyball match at North Dickinson and then home. My wife is with the quilters today; we won't be able to eat together, but I should be home the rest of the week, and the football game on Friday is right here in town.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
In another land
This is a sexy story. If you don't like sex, read no further.
This has not happened to me in many years. But last night was different.
The details are fuzzy. I remember I was walking around in a large building. I had the impression it was the neighboring high school, but the building was much larger than I remembered. An extra floor, for one thing, and a large darker hallway area. Also, there were mostly adults there, not high schoolers.
We all seemed to be there to register for something. I remember waiting to talk to people seated at desks in the hallway. And I knew some of the people there. I remember one of the women there, a vague acquaintance. We seemed happy to see each other, and we hugged each other. We talked to each other, and I had my hands on her hips as I faced her. I had thought she was wearing regular jeans--but under my hands, I felt soft lace instead. I moved her hands down a little, to her butt, and the lace felt really soft and warm and wonderful.
Later, I walked upstairs and looked out a door. It seemed to be late morning, and the snow was melting and dripping off the building, like on a spring morning with the sun out. I remember seeing a couple of older dogs, lying about. Did I see a cat?
Then I was in the hallway again, at one of those registration desks. I was second or third in line, with maybe two or three people behind me. And as I waited, I felt some light pressure on the front of my pants. It was like the back of a hand, brushing up against the underside of my bulge. I looked around to see who. I saw a woman nearby. She had short, straight, whitish-grayish hair and no glasses.
We went off to another area and another desk. Again, I was second or third in line. And as I stood there, I felt it again. Soft pressure from a hand--the back the hand, maybe--gently caressing the front of my pants. Only now, my penis was bigger than before. This kind of thing never happens to me. Never. Not even in my dreams.
I turned and saw the same woman, closer. She is an older woman, about my age. I wanted to hold her close. I wanted to go off somewhere dark where we could caress and hold each other. And if she wants my cock ... I damn sure wasn't going to say no. I looked at her and said ...
"Urrrrow??"
I had felt the pressure at the foot of the bed moments earlier, the footsteps across my legs and then the pressure moving up the side of the mattress by my side. I opened an eye. It was still very dark, but I could see an inquisitive kitty face inches away.
"Hi, Charlie," I mumbled at her and threw an arm out at my side. She settled down between my chest and arm, with her paws on my upper arm, and started kneading and purring.
Lying between two sleepy females, one human, one feline, I soon drifted back to sleep, wondering what my dream means.
This has not happened to me in many years. But last night was different.
The details are fuzzy. I remember I was walking around in a large building. I had the impression it was the neighboring high school, but the building was much larger than I remembered. An extra floor, for one thing, and a large darker hallway area. Also, there were mostly adults there, not high schoolers.
We all seemed to be there to register for something. I remember waiting to talk to people seated at desks in the hallway. And I knew some of the people there. I remember one of the women there, a vague acquaintance. We seemed happy to see each other, and we hugged each other. We talked to each other, and I had my hands on her hips as I faced her. I had thought she was wearing regular jeans--but under my hands, I felt soft lace instead. I moved her hands down a little, to her butt, and the lace felt really soft and warm and wonderful.
Later, I walked upstairs and looked out a door. It seemed to be late morning, and the snow was melting and dripping off the building, like on a spring morning with the sun out. I remember seeing a couple of older dogs, lying about. Did I see a cat?
Then I was in the hallway again, at one of those registration desks. I was second or third in line, with maybe two or three people behind me. And as I waited, I felt some light pressure on the front of my pants. It was like the back of a hand, brushing up against the underside of my bulge. I looked around to see who. I saw a woman nearby. She had short, straight, whitish-grayish hair and no glasses.
We went off to another area and another desk. Again, I was second or third in line. And as I stood there, I felt it again. Soft pressure from a hand--the back the hand, maybe--gently caressing the front of my pants. Only now, my penis was bigger than before. This kind of thing never happens to me. Never. Not even in my dreams.
I turned and saw the same woman, closer. She is an older woman, about my age. I wanted to hold her close. I wanted to go off somewhere dark where we could caress and hold each other. And if she wants my cock ... I damn sure wasn't going to say no. I looked at her and said ...
"Urrrrow??"
I had felt the pressure at the foot of the bed moments earlier, the footsteps across my legs and then the pressure moving up the side of the mattress by my side. I opened an eye. It was still very dark, but I could see an inquisitive kitty face inches away.
"Hi, Charlie," I mumbled at her and threw an arm out at my side. She settled down between my chest and arm, with her paws on my upper arm, and started kneading and purring.
Lying between two sleepy females, one human, one feline, I soon drifted back to sleep, wondering what my dream means.
Monday, September 8, 2008
A half-fast solution
Gee, what a surprise: Efx2blogs is down again.
Join the club. Guess who else went down over the weekend.
No, I don't mean Tom Brady or anyone else in the NFL, quarterback or non-quarterback, "skilled" position or unskilled. Or any major league baseball pitcher--a number of them have arm injuries now.
Whom do I mean?
I mean me.
It happened on Friday night, while I was covering a high school football game. We're in the second quarter, our team is leading 14-0, and they had just recovered a fumble by the other team at their own 20. I went to the team's bench, to ask the players along the sidelines who made the recovery.
It's now 3rd and 10, and the quarterback goes back to pass. I get a great picture of his offensive line protecting him as he wings the ball far downfield ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/PassplayA-9-08.jpg[/IMG]
The ball comes down to the pass receiver, who catches it in full flight, past a diving defender ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/PassplayB-8-09.jpg[/IMG]
Hey!!! Get the hell out of my way!!! You wrecked what could have been a great picture!!!
The reaction on the bench told me he is now running downfield, trying to dodge defenders. In a gap between the players standing along the sidelines I catch a glimpse of him cutting back, away from his pursuers. I fired ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/PassplayC-9-08.jpg[/IMG]
Damn! A helmet in the way! I tried to push forward past all the obstacles along the sidelines ... and felt my foot catch on something. It must have been the plastic container used by the water boys when they carry water bottles onto the field during time-outs. Anyway, I was off-balance. I felt my ankle give way. I was falling.
Falling ...
A thousand thoughts raced through my cranium in the next fraction of a second. Most of them had to do with people I know who have fallen and broken stuff. My friend, S, wrecked her knee when she was doing some hot-dog skiing as a kid--she has zippers on two sides of that knee today. Last year, she broke a leg when her dog unexpectedly pulled her off her front porch. The woman at the next desk here in the office broke her leg last year. A dog was involved in that saga, too.
My life passed in front of my eyes, so to speak. Then I was seated on the ground, watching as the pass receiver completed an 80-yard touchdown. The knot of players followed the play, but I stayed on the ground, and my left ankle was hurting. I wanted to stay seated for a while until I could assess one question: How bad is this? OK, I didn't hear a pop. My ankle was hurting, but it wasn't real bad. My leg seemed intact.
After about 30 seconds (as they were running the conversion) I tried getting up. The ankle hurt more when I put weight on it ... but I could put weight on it. I was limping heavily as I started moving around. But we were only three minutes into the second quarter. I still had a lot of game ahead of me, not to mention the postgame walk back to the car and then an hour-long drive home.
I limped around for the rest of the game. During halftime I sat on the bench and called my wife to tell her what happened. It's not that bad, I told her. After the game ended, I walked back to the car for the trip home. An hour later, after keeping it fairly motionless during the trip home, I pulled into my parking spot and started getting out of the car. I could, but that ankle was very stiff now. I ambled along like Frankenstein to the porch, up a few steps and then inside. By the way, the bedroom and computer room here are both on the second floor, up 16 steps.
It hurt just about as much Saturday, but I had to go to the office to write for a while and then left for an all-day volleyball tournament. That involved not only a long walk to the school but also walking back and forth between three different courts where the games were being played. That was most of my Saturday. I got to stay home Saturday night.
Sunday, I had to write in the office in the morning, then went home, then took my wife grocery shopping, then back home. 16 steps upstairs. 16 steps downstairs. Slowly. Slowly. Today, it was back to work and walking around there.
No cast. No crutch. It's not that bad. I'm taking Tylenols to deal with the pain when it gets too rough. For a while Saturday morning, I was worried about a broken bone in my foot--I've been down that road before, about 15 years ago. But no. It feels slightly better than it did Sunday. My foot is swollen, and my left calf is stiff. There are bruises on my ankle. Looks real pretty.
I am walking, but at only about half my normal speed. I usually walk fast. Now I'm just ... I guess I'm just half-fast.
****
Sunday, I got to watch the start of the new NFL season. That's very good news. Know why? It means the start of the new NHL season is just a month away.
This evening, the Green Bay Packers start their new season with a game against the Minnesota Vikings, who are supposed to win their division title this year. I imagine DeeJay is at the game--she usually makes the trip to Green Bay when her Vikings play there. Has a great time with the tailgate parties, etc.
Just for DeeJay, here is a joke I heard a few weeks ago:
Why are the Minnesota Vikings like an Indian car?
Think about it.
Why are the Minnesota Vikings like an Indian car?
Give up?
Q: Why are the Minnesota Vikings like an Indian car?
A: Because neither of them has a title!
(Now, in case you think this is a little bit racially insensitive, let me inform you where I first heard thisjoke: It came from the P.A. announcer during that Indian powwow we attended in early August.)
Join the club. Guess who else went down over the weekend.
No, I don't mean Tom Brady or anyone else in the NFL, quarterback or non-quarterback, "skilled" position or unskilled. Or any major league baseball pitcher--a number of them have arm injuries now.
Whom do I mean?
I mean me.
It happened on Friday night, while I was covering a high school football game. We're in the second quarter, our team is leading 14-0, and they had just recovered a fumble by the other team at their own 20. I went to the team's bench, to ask the players along the sidelines who made the recovery.
It's now 3rd and 10, and the quarterback goes back to pass. I get a great picture of his offensive line protecting him as he wings the ball far downfield ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/PassplayA-9-08.jpg[/IMG]
The ball comes down to the pass receiver, who catches it in full flight, past a diving defender ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/PassplayB-8-09.jpg[/IMG]
Hey!!! Get the hell out of my way!!! You wrecked what could have been a great picture!!!
The reaction on the bench told me he is now running downfield, trying to dodge defenders. In a gap between the players standing along the sidelines I catch a glimpse of him cutting back, away from his pursuers. I fired ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/PassplayC-9-08.jpg[/IMG]
Damn! A helmet in the way! I tried to push forward past all the obstacles along the sidelines ... and felt my foot catch on something. It must have been the plastic container used by the water boys when they carry water bottles onto the field during time-outs. Anyway, I was off-balance. I felt my ankle give way. I was falling.
Falling ...
A thousand thoughts raced through my cranium in the next fraction of a second. Most of them had to do with people I know who have fallen and broken stuff. My friend, S, wrecked her knee when she was doing some hot-dog skiing as a kid--she has zippers on two sides of that knee today. Last year, she broke a leg when her dog unexpectedly pulled her off her front porch. The woman at the next desk here in the office broke her leg last year. A dog was involved in that saga, too.
My life passed in front of my eyes, so to speak. Then I was seated on the ground, watching as the pass receiver completed an 80-yard touchdown. The knot of players followed the play, but I stayed on the ground, and my left ankle was hurting. I wanted to stay seated for a while until I could assess one question: How bad is this? OK, I didn't hear a pop. My ankle was hurting, but it wasn't real bad. My leg seemed intact.
After about 30 seconds (as they were running the conversion) I tried getting up. The ankle hurt more when I put weight on it ... but I could put weight on it. I was limping heavily as I started moving around. But we were only three minutes into the second quarter. I still had a lot of game ahead of me, not to mention the postgame walk back to the car and then an hour-long drive home.
I limped around for the rest of the game. During halftime I sat on the bench and called my wife to tell her what happened. It's not that bad, I told her. After the game ended, I walked back to the car for the trip home. An hour later, after keeping it fairly motionless during the trip home, I pulled into my parking spot and started getting out of the car. I could, but that ankle was very stiff now. I ambled along like Frankenstein to the porch, up a few steps and then inside. By the way, the bedroom and computer room here are both on the second floor, up 16 steps.
It hurt just about as much Saturday, but I had to go to the office to write for a while and then left for an all-day volleyball tournament. That involved not only a long walk to the school but also walking back and forth between three different courts where the games were being played. That was most of my Saturday. I got to stay home Saturday night.
Sunday, I had to write in the office in the morning, then went home, then took my wife grocery shopping, then back home. 16 steps upstairs. 16 steps downstairs. Slowly. Slowly. Today, it was back to work and walking around there.
No cast. No crutch. It's not that bad. I'm taking Tylenols to deal with the pain when it gets too rough. For a while Saturday morning, I was worried about a broken bone in my foot--I've been down that road before, about 15 years ago. But no. It feels slightly better than it did Sunday. My foot is swollen, and my left calf is stiff. There are bruises on my ankle. Looks real pretty.
I am walking, but at only about half my normal speed. I usually walk fast. Now I'm just ... I guess I'm just half-fast.
****
Sunday, I got to watch the start of the new NFL season. That's very good news. Know why? It means the start of the new NHL season is just a month away.
This evening, the Green Bay Packers start their new season with a game against the Minnesota Vikings, who are supposed to win their division title this year. I imagine DeeJay is at the game--she usually makes the trip to Green Bay when her Vikings play there. Has a great time with the tailgate parties, etc.
Just for DeeJay, here is a joke I heard a few weeks ago:
Why are the Minnesota Vikings like an Indian car?
Think about it.
Why are the Minnesota Vikings like an Indian car?
Give up?
Q: Why are the Minnesota Vikings like an Indian car?
A: Because neither of them has a title!
(Now, in case you think this is a little bit racially insensitive, let me inform you where I first heard thisjoke: It came from the P.A. announcer during that Indian powwow we attended in early August.)
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Summer's final act
I think we can declare summer unofficially over. Labor Day has come and gone, and we are back from a three-day trip to visit my wife's sisters/brothers. On the day before we left for home, temperatures were in the upper 80s with high humidity. Two hours after we got home, a cold front blew through. (It was following us!) Today, it just reached the mid 60s.
The last time I wrote, I was tired from a day of sitting around at my late father-in-law's house, watching seven (of eight) brothers and sisters trying to divide up some of the items there. It got a lot better after that.
Monday morning, we were invited to go blueberry-picking by one of my wife's sisters. In all, five of us went: us, two sisters and one great-niece--granddaughter of one of the SILs. We headed west about 20 miles or so, in western Rusk County, Wisconsin. The little place was way out in farm country, but the directions led us right to it.
My first self-appointed task, of course, was to get some pictures of the blueberry bushes. The plants I found close by had both blue and pink/purple berries. So, in addition to the blueberries, here's what pinkberries and purpleberries look like ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Blueb-Pinkies-9-08.jpg[/IMG]
Then I put the camera away and started picking. The rows I worked had been picked over, but the berries are growing quickly now, and it wasn't hard to find nice, dark blue blueberries. Some were high--too high for the women to get at easily--and others were down low, a foot or so above the ground. Others were well inside the bushes. I took my time and picked away. Of course, I also had to do some quality control work: sample the occasional berry to make sure they were worth picking. My verdict: They were. Of course, I double-checked every so often. Just to make sure.
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Blueb-Trueblue-9-08.jpg[/IMG]
It was partly cloudy as we started (about 10 a.m.) but as the morning went on, the clouds started breaking up and the sun started beating down. We went till about 12:30 p.m., by which time I was getting kind of hot--I later discovered my neck got a little sunburned. Surprised?
But it was worth it. And here is the reason why ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Blueb-Berrybucket-9-08.jpg[/IMG]
That's about four pounds of blueberries, and my wife picked another four. We paid the woman for the berries (at $2.50/pound). For a while, I couldn't find my wife--the bushes were tall and the rows were narrow. I was hot, but I wanted to see where she was. So I started going up and down the rows--including some rows that we didn't pick in.
Oh, I wish I had taken the camera along, because it was like a jungle back there. Very narrow spaces between the rows of plants. And near the ends of the rows ... it was just incredible how many big berries there were. All dark blue. All large. All more than ready for picking--no pinkies here. I had already picked enough berries, so I had left my bucket by my camera bag. But I would have picked many more berries a lot faster if I had found that area earlier. As it was, though, I was getting hot and still hadn't found my wife, so I continued looking.
As it turned out, she had gone to the car: She decided she had enough berries, too.
We were all pretty hot and tired and hungry by then. So we went back to town, got lunch, stopped briefly at the house to change clothes, whereI dropped off the camera. Then we went to a park in town--the SIL with the granddaughter wanted to take her in her kayak. The SIL likes to kayak and has even kayaked in the icy waters of Lake Superior, near Duluth (in quiet bays, I should add).
"Would you like to ride in the kayak?" She asked my wife, and she agreed to give it a try. She climbed in, and the SIL pulled her along with a nylon rope. Then she asked me. I said Why not? I climbed in--carefully; she said that is the tricky part--and then graspedthe paddle.
I know how kayakers move around in the water--I don't watch the Olympics for nothing!--and started getting the hang of paddling quickly. I learned how to turn and how to get from here to there on the river. I took a short run to a boat landing and back. About 15 minutes, I tried it again.
This time I went the other way--past the beach and up the river (along the shore) maybe a quarter mile or so before turning around (that again was the tricky part) and paddling back. The river is about 200 yards wide at that point, and I got maybe 50 yards from shore at times.
My shoulders were getting a little tired by the time I finally got back to where I started, but I made it all by myself. The kayak wasn't anywhere near as tippy as I feared it might be. Again, climbing in and getting out wasn't so easy, but I stayed mostly dry.
So where are the visual aids? Well, it's like this: While in the water, I thought about my camera ... safely back at the house. My SIL took several pictures of me paddling around in the water. But she uses a film camera, so it may be some time before I get to see what I looked like. (FYI, I was wearing a brimmed hat, a light blue T-shirt and tan shorts (which you couldn't have seen, anyway.)
Our next stop was to be supper, at a pizzeria on the outskirts of town, with the SIL we were staying with and her BF. (The other SIL took her granddaughter home.) We drove there--and discovered that the pizzeria was taking Labor Day off. Closed! Grrrr! So we went to a Country Kitchen instead.
After that, the other SIL (and her BF) joined us for a movie: "Mamma Mia" was playing in town, in the city's big, old theater. A nice place to see a movie, and that's what the six of us did. One of my wife's sisters had invited another SIL to join us, but she decided not to, luckily. She is very conservative, and "Mamma Mia" doesn't reach out to that demographic.
The next morning was Tuesday: Our day to drive home. We talked with the SIL for a while, then said good-bye and hit the road about 11 a.m., for the four-or-so-hour trip home.
We had a long-delayed, very serious talk during the drive, but I'll save that part for another time. It went well. As did the trip.
Today ... back to work.
The last time I wrote, I was tired from a day of sitting around at my late father-in-law's house, watching seven (of eight) brothers and sisters trying to divide up some of the items there. It got a lot better after that.
Monday morning, we were invited to go blueberry-picking by one of my wife's sisters. In all, five of us went: us, two sisters and one great-niece--granddaughter of one of the SILs. We headed west about 20 miles or so, in western Rusk County, Wisconsin. The little place was way out in farm country, but the directions led us right to it.
My first self-appointed task, of course, was to get some pictures of the blueberry bushes. The plants I found close by had both blue and pink/purple berries. So, in addition to the blueberries, here's what pinkberries and purpleberries look like ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Blueb-Pinkies-9-08.jpg[/IMG]
Then I put the camera away and started picking. The rows I worked had been picked over, but the berries are growing quickly now, and it wasn't hard to find nice, dark blue blueberries. Some were high--too high for the women to get at easily--and others were down low, a foot or so above the ground. Others were well inside the bushes. I took my time and picked away. Of course, I also had to do some quality control work: sample the occasional berry to make sure they were worth picking. My verdict: They were. Of course, I double-checked every so often. Just to make sure.
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Blueb-Trueblue-9-08.jpg[/IMG]
It was partly cloudy as we started (about 10 a.m.) but as the morning went on, the clouds started breaking up and the sun started beating down. We went till about 12:30 p.m., by which time I was getting kind of hot--I later discovered my neck got a little sunburned. Surprised?
But it was worth it. And here is the reason why ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Blueb-Berrybucket-9-08.jpg[/IMG]
That's about four pounds of blueberries, and my wife picked another four. We paid the woman for the berries (at $2.50/pound). For a while, I couldn't find my wife--the bushes were tall and the rows were narrow. I was hot, but I wanted to see where she was. So I started going up and down the rows--including some rows that we didn't pick in.
Oh, I wish I had taken the camera along, because it was like a jungle back there. Very narrow spaces between the rows of plants. And near the ends of the rows ... it was just incredible how many big berries there were. All dark blue. All large. All more than ready for picking--no pinkies here. I had already picked enough berries, so I had left my bucket by my camera bag. But I would have picked many more berries a lot faster if I had found that area earlier. As it was, though, I was getting hot and still hadn't found my wife, so I continued looking.
As it turned out, she had gone to the car: She decided she had enough berries, too.
We were all pretty hot and tired and hungry by then. So we went back to town, got lunch, stopped briefly at the house to change clothes, whereI dropped off the camera. Then we went to a park in town--the SIL with the granddaughter wanted to take her in her kayak. The SIL likes to kayak and has even kayaked in the icy waters of Lake Superior, near Duluth (in quiet bays, I should add).
"Would you like to ride in the kayak?" She asked my wife, and she agreed to give it a try. She climbed in, and the SIL pulled her along with a nylon rope. Then she asked me. I said Why not? I climbed in--carefully; she said that is the tricky part--and then graspedthe paddle.
I know how kayakers move around in the water--I don't watch the Olympics for nothing!--and started getting the hang of paddling quickly. I learned how to turn and how to get from here to there on the river. I took a short run to a boat landing and back. About 15 minutes, I tried it again.
This time I went the other way--past the beach and up the river (along the shore) maybe a quarter mile or so before turning around (that again was the tricky part) and paddling back. The river is about 200 yards wide at that point, and I got maybe 50 yards from shore at times.
My shoulders were getting a little tired by the time I finally got back to where I started, but I made it all by myself. The kayak wasn't anywhere near as tippy as I feared it might be. Again, climbing in and getting out wasn't so easy, but I stayed mostly dry.
So where are the visual aids? Well, it's like this: While in the water, I thought about my camera ... safely back at the house. My SIL took several pictures of me paddling around in the water. But she uses a film camera, so it may be some time before I get to see what I looked like. (FYI, I was wearing a brimmed hat, a light blue T-shirt and tan shorts (which you couldn't have seen, anyway.)
Our next stop was to be supper, at a pizzeria on the outskirts of town, with the SIL we were staying with and her BF. (The other SIL took her granddaughter home.) We drove there--and discovered that the pizzeria was taking Labor Day off. Closed! Grrrr! So we went to a Country Kitchen instead.
After that, the other SIL (and her BF) joined us for a movie: "Mamma Mia" was playing in town, in the city's big, old theater. A nice place to see a movie, and that's what the six of us did. One of my wife's sisters had invited another SIL to join us, but she decided not to, luckily. She is very conservative, and "Mamma Mia" doesn't reach out to that demographic.
The next morning was Tuesday: Our day to drive home. We talked with the SIL for a while, then said good-bye and hit the road about 11 a.m., for the four-or-so-hour trip home.
We had a long-delayed, very serious talk during the drive, but I'll save that part for another time. It went well. As did the trip.
Today ... back to work.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
The eight-way split
Hi, everyone. I am writing this on my sister-in-law's computer. We are visiting here over the holiday weekend. Partly to visit but mostly to divvy up some family possessions. It's late, and my wife was very tired, so she went to bed by herself.
Quick recap: My father-in-law died last December. Since then, the brothers and sisters have been splitting up the household items. This visit is our first since the funeral. Well, sort of. I drove my wife here in April but drove home by myself the same day, while she stayed for a day or two and got a ride home with a sister.
They have been putting some stuff on the side for her, so today was a very busy day over there, as she was finally there to look over things. This might be a good time to remind you that my car has very limited storage space. They had put aside boxes and boxes of stuff for her, on a work bench in the garage. In terms of volume, maybe two or three times what the car can hold, including the back seat. (And, to be painfully honest, much of it was junk.) We selected the stuff she wanted most and pushed, prodded and packed it into the car.
One box that didn't make the cut contained model tractors. My father-in-law was a big collector of model tractors, of various sizes--most of them stood about eight inches tall. I'm not so gung-ho on tiny tractors as he was, but there was a good side. One of my wife's brothers was very interested in them, and my wife sold them to him for $100.
On this particular weekend, seven of the eight brothers and sisters were present, so it was half visiting and half sorting stuff. Today, they went through their mother's jewelry, photo albums, sheets and blankets and some money. Money!
Yes, indeed. Coins, mostly. Some silver dollars (mostly Eisenhower dollars) and many JFK half dollars. This process went extremely slowly, as they divided the coins into Bicentennial (1976) and non-Bicentennial piles. Then they looked the coins over to make sure there weren't any silver half dollars mixed in there. Then they divided the coins into groups of eight, and each took a turn to decide which of the eight half dollars in a group they wanted. It got to be very slow. Of course, there were leftover coins from each group, so they had to decide how they should divvy those up.
Add in a few Susan B. Anthony dollars and a few $2 bills. Of course, the number of those was not divisible by eight, either. There also were some older coins. A few Morgan silver dollars. One Peace silver dollar. Both are from the 1920s. Two Standing Liberty half dollars from the '40s. A Buffalo nickle from the '30s. And an Indian head penny. The date on that one: 1864! They are going to have those coins examined for collector value before deciding what to do with them.
With this very deliberate procedure, progress was snail-like. They also had a long, long talk about my father-in-law's property and what to do with it. Two (maybe three) of the sons want to buy parts of it, but they want to pay less than the appraised value. And there is a retired priest who supposedly interested in buying the land--with gold! So there was a l0ng talk about that and whether they would be able to dodge the taxman. For some of them, you can see dollars signs dancing in their eyes as they talk about it.
For me (and for my wife, I suspect) it was tedious. I, of course, am not one of the eight children, so I watched the discussions and mini-auctions (yes, they did that) of some of the items. At other times, I went off into another room and listened to music. Thank goodness my wife suggested I take along the headphones for the iPod before we left!
It was a very long day. Finally it was over. We drove back to town and got supper at Subway. Then here, to my sister-in-law's place.
Tomorrow promises to be much more fun. Another sister-in-law has gotten wind of a blueberry farm a few miles away, so we are going blueberry-picking! After that, a cookout at someone's place. We will drive home either Monday night or Tuesday morning--with some blueberries for our ice cream. Yummm!
Quick recap: My father-in-law died last December. Since then, the brothers and sisters have been splitting up the household items. This visit is our first since the funeral. Well, sort of. I drove my wife here in April but drove home by myself the same day, while she stayed for a day or two and got a ride home with a sister.
They have been putting some stuff on the side for her, so today was a very busy day over there, as she was finally there to look over things. This might be a good time to remind you that my car has very limited storage space. They had put aside boxes and boxes of stuff for her, on a work bench in the garage. In terms of volume, maybe two or three times what the car can hold, including the back seat. (And, to be painfully honest, much of it was junk.) We selected the stuff she wanted most and pushed, prodded and packed it into the car.
One box that didn't make the cut contained model tractors. My father-in-law was a big collector of model tractors, of various sizes--most of them stood about eight inches tall. I'm not so gung-ho on tiny tractors as he was, but there was a good side. One of my wife's brothers was very interested in them, and my wife sold them to him for $100.
On this particular weekend, seven of the eight brothers and sisters were present, so it was half visiting and half sorting stuff. Today, they went through their mother's jewelry, photo albums, sheets and blankets and some money. Money!
Yes, indeed. Coins, mostly. Some silver dollars (mostly Eisenhower dollars) and many JFK half dollars. This process went extremely slowly, as they divided the coins into Bicentennial (1976) and non-Bicentennial piles. Then they looked the coins over to make sure there weren't any silver half dollars mixed in there. Then they divided the coins into groups of eight, and each took a turn to decide which of the eight half dollars in a group they wanted. It got to be very slow. Of course, there were leftover coins from each group, so they had to decide how they should divvy those up.
Add in a few Susan B. Anthony dollars and a few $2 bills. Of course, the number of those was not divisible by eight, either. There also were some older coins. A few Morgan silver dollars. One Peace silver dollar. Both are from the 1920s. Two Standing Liberty half dollars from the '40s. A Buffalo nickle from the '30s. And an Indian head penny. The date on that one: 1864! They are going to have those coins examined for collector value before deciding what to do with them.
With this very deliberate procedure, progress was snail-like. They also had a long, long talk about my father-in-law's property and what to do with it. Two (maybe three) of the sons want to buy parts of it, but they want to pay less than the appraised value. And there is a retired priest who supposedly interested in buying the land--with gold! So there was a l0ng talk about that and whether they would be able to dodge the taxman. For some of them, you can see dollars signs dancing in their eyes as they talk about it.
For me (and for my wife, I suspect) it was tedious. I, of course, am not one of the eight children, so I watched the discussions and mini-auctions (yes, they did that) of some of the items. At other times, I went off into another room and listened to music. Thank goodness my wife suggested I take along the headphones for the iPod before we left!
It was a very long day. Finally it was over. We drove back to town and got supper at Subway. Then here, to my sister-in-law's place.
Tomorrow promises to be much more fun. Another sister-in-law has gotten wind of a blueberry farm a few miles away, so we are going blueberry-picking! After that, a cookout at someone's place. We will drive home either Monday night or Tuesday morning--with some blueberries for our ice cream. Yummm!
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