A Christmas trip to remember

We stayed close to home for Christmas, but not everyone did. My friend B and her husband flew from Alaska to visit their two sons. Destination: New York City.

That put them right in the crosshairs of that huge winter storm that struck on Sunday.

Once in a while, B and I trade text messages while at work. In the week before their trip, she told me she was not going to take boots on the trip. Heels, yes. Flats, yes. Jimmers (gym shoes), yes. Boots, no. I had already heard concerns about a storm hitting the Northeast over Christmas, so I said maybe she may want to look for a Rent-A-Boot outlet.

The boots stayed home when they got on the jet early last Wednesday, but once the first warnings were issued after they arrived, she went out and bought a pair. They went to a play on Christmas night. The storm started the next morning and quickly got serious. But she had ordered tickets for another play that night--she really likes going to shows, and they don't get to the Big Apple that often.

They were staying at a B&B in Brooklyn, a few blocks away from one of their sons. "All we have to do is get to the subway station, and we will be okay for transportation," she wrote me Sunday morning.

Stormy weather

Oh, it's been a busy December for me! A stormy one, too.

And not just here. This December seems to be particularly nasty in much of North America and Europe. Vicious, even.

Today, storms are rampaging all over California and the U.S. Southwest. They are saying that same storm may clobber the Northeast with snow during Christmas weekend. Europe is trying to dig out after heavy snows and wind. Airports are trying to recover after getting shut down by the storms. Seems that the European airports don't have the snow-clearing equipment that's in the States.

Along with all its many other effects, it put the kibosh on my plans to visit my friend N today.

It would have been our first visit since mid November. The usual agenda: dinner, a few movies and stay up a little late. I had picked out some funny stuff, since that's what she likes best, and she likes my taste in comedy.

But this morning, while my wife and I were having breakfast, my phone rang, and it was N. Things are looking nasty here, she said.

Our area was hit by a snow system on Tuesday, leaving four or five inches of snow around our area. I braved the snowy roads to drive to a girls basketball game Tuesday night--but Wisconsin 70 was a little too white for my liking, so I took U.S. 2 back west after the game. (The Michigan highways have rumble strips that sound off when you veer out of your lane--they rumble very nicely, even when snow-covered.)

It snowed all day, finally ending about midnight. When I saw it wasn't snowing this morning, I assumed my drive this afternoon would be no problem.

Hunkering down

It's official: We are in "hunker down" mode here this weekend.

"Hunker down." Is that term in the dictionary? Let's see. My collegiate dictionary defines "hunker" as "to settle down on one's haunches; squat or crouch; often with down."

Hmmmm. Don't think that quite covers it.

It's like when you're lying low (is that term in the dictionary?), waiting for something unpleasant to pass by. Somebody or something you don't want to encounter. Your boss. A unpleasant neighbor. A snarling dog. A snarling storm.

In this case, we are waiting out the first major snowstorm of winter. It started early Saturday morning when light snow began. So far, we have 2 or 3 inches. The roads are a little slick and snowy, but not too bad.

But that's just the opening act. It's going to snow all day and night and get more intense as time moves on. Also, the wind (which was practically calm this morning) will be roaring out of the northeast. The snow is fairly dry, which means plenty of blowing and drifting can be expected, and road conditions will become worse than terrible late tonight.

The Weather Service warning says ...

* EXPECT WIDESPREAD SNOW TO DEVELOP TODAY AND CONTINUE THROUGH
TONIGHT.

* PLAN ON STORM TOTAL SNOW ACCUMULATIONS THROUGH SUNDAY OF 9 TO 15
INCHES. THE HEAVIEST SNOW IS MOST LIKELY OVER THE SOUTHERN HALF OF
MENOMINEE COUNTY.

* NORTH TO NORTHEAST WINDS GUSTING FROM 30 MPH TO AS HIGH 40 TO 45
MPH NEAR THE BAY OF GREEN BAY WILL CREATE CONSIDERABLE BLOWING AND
DRIFTING SNOW INTO SUNDAY. NEAR WHITEOUT CONDITIONS ARE LIKELY...
ESPECIALLY NEAR THE BAY OF GREEN BAY.

In other words, we will get it bad, but areas to the southeast of us (Menominee County, near Green Bay and Lake Michigan) will get it worse. We are inland from the Great Lakes; areas right on the bay or close to Lake Michigan will have to deal with the whiteout.

(The "bay of Green Bay" is that body of water just north of Green Bay, Wis. Does that mean the Green Bay Packers will be playing in a blizzard on Sunday? Alas, no: They are indoors at Detroit.)

The snow is supposed to end early Sunday, but the winds will continue well into Monday, and it will be cold. Did I mention that temperatures are going to take a plunge? Well, they are. By Monday, we'll have highs just above zero. And that's Fahrenheit. Maybe like -16C. Wind chills will be icy. Frigid. Arctic.

So it's good weekend for my wife and I to hunker down and amuse ourselves at home. Once the snow ends, I will be grabbing the shovel and trying to free my car (just back from the repair shop, where the deer damage was repaired) from the snowbanks so I can drive it again and also so Plow Man can clear the parking area with his big truck.

Incidentally, the daughter of a woman I used to work is getting married today, with the reception in the late afternoon and tonight. Right in the middle of the storm. But I wasn't invited. Just as well.

****

Otherwise, I am making my final plans for the holidays. My wife and I aren't planning to go anywhere, especially since this is turning out to be a stormy, cold December. I hope to visit N just before Christmas and S and T just before New Year's, but the weather and my schedule will have the final say about that.

I sent B her gifts (this year, it's all yummies) a few days ago. I'll be sending N a card next week, with a little something to help with the food budget for her rescue dogs. (She adopted another keeshond recently; I think she has eight now. Nine?) I sent S and T a check in November because an emergency came up, and they needed some cash right away.

We are going to send my older son and his girlfriend a check, too. They are doing OK, but they live in the city, and we know what the cost of living is--a lot more than out here in the boonies. Also, as I may have said before, they may want to look at finding a bigger apartment; the check should give them a hand with that. My other son doesn't need money. We are coming up with another idea for him.

I have found some gifts for my wife, too. A few years ago, we decided not to give each other gifts any longer--it's hard to come up with ideas. But still, it's Christmas. So hiding in my car's trunk are: a funny cat calendar ("Bad Cat"), some dark chocolate treats and a AM-FM radio that is also an Ipod player/charger.

My wife's problem is that she is ... well, how do I say this in a nice way? She is cheap. She would rather go for something inexpensive than something she probably would enjoy more. She has this ***-Mart mindset. For calendars, she goes to the local dollar store or gets them from local stores. For chocolate, she doesn't want to get tempted. And as for the radio ... she likes that Ipod player but is really hesitant to get it because it costs a little money. How do I say this nicely? She squeezes nickles, even though she doesn't have to.

As for me, I'm a generous guy. I think I am, at least. By nature I'm frugal, but different rules apply for the people or things I love. Like my wife. My kids. My girlfriends. I just like to make them happy or help them out.

I have to be careful with N. She is a widow and is very proud and independent. But she is close to retiring, and I don't think she has a lot of money. Enough, yes.

B works for a university, and her husband is retired military. Nuff said.

S and T don't have much money. They don't need much, either, but sometimes they do. Neither is working in this bad economy, so they need a hand at times. My hand is there for them. And that's how it's been since I met S five years ago.

I have a few other checks to send out, too. The local shelters: the animal shelter and the homeless shelter. The St. Vinny's food pantry. Those are the main ones, and they're all local, serving my neighbors. I know my Creator has richly blessed me, and good karma says I need to pass it along. What is money for if not for that?

Attack of the Zamboni!

After our sad encounter with the deer last Saturday night, my wife and I needed something to cheer us up once we got home. It came out of nowhere--thanks to "Hockey Night in Canada."

"Hockey Night in Canada" is the name of CBC's national broadcast of NHL hockey games on Saturday night; they carry a double-header. HNIC has been around since the '50s, and since our cable system carries CBC, we get to see it.

Once we got home, we sat on the couch and turned on the TV. The first game had just ended, and announcers Scott Oake and Kevin Weekes (a former NHL goalie) were introducing the second game--the San Jose Sharks at the Edmonton Oilers--while a pair of Zambonis resurfaced the ice for the start of the game.

Weekes was giving a report on the Sharks' recent play with his back to the ice. Meanwhile, the Zambonis had finished their work and started exiting the rink. Guess where Oake and Weekes were standing?

This, folks, is live TV!

Would mayhem ensue? No! Oake saw what was about to happen and pulled Weekes off to the side in the nick of time. Meanwhile, Weekes continued his report. Totally focused. Totally nonplussed. Didn't miss a beat.

Here is what my wife and I saw. Things start getting crazy about the 50-second mark.

But if you want to cut to the chase, here is a shortened version from YouTube.



Hmmm. An attack from out of nowhere? While Weekes was talking about the Sharks? Someone inevitably came up with a "Jaws"-inspired version ...



We needed a laugh, and we got one.

****

Here it is, the first week of December, and we only have a little snow on the ground. Less than an inch. This was in late November, as clouds were rolling through. Usually in winter, you don't see any details on the clouds. It's just a uniform mass of gray. So seeing some detail was unusual ...



The Weather Channel boldly forecast 1 to 3 inches for us this Tuesday. The National Weather Service forecast said the Weather Channel forecast was all wet. "Less than a half inch," it says. They were right. The big snow went elsewhere.

We got 2 or 3 inches of wet snow last week, our first real snow of the winter season, so I went around with my camera. First stop: the local Road Commission garage, where big plows stood at the ready ...



... and a huge mountain of sand had barely been touched by the front-end loaders that fill the bins on the heavy trucks ...



After that, I drove around. Here is the hillside at the fairgrounds ...



A snowy street ...



The snow was wet and clung to everything it touched, like these branches ...



Winter has struck hard in some places--even in England. Not so here. Not yet. We are waiting for the other shoe.

****

This has been a quiet week. Basketball season is starting--the girls this week, the boys next week. That continues into March. There are so many games I need to cover each week that it will be hard for me to get out of town for any fun. (Hard but not impossible!)

I may have a very quiet December. Over the holidays, it will just be me, my wife and son--my other son and his GF will stay down there. Maybe we will go somewhere, just to break out of the rut and do something different. It won't be to her sisters-in-law. That doesn't seem to be happening.

I had been hoping to visit S and T during the week between Christmas and New Year's (no local sports that week). If my wife and I haven't done gone anywhere else, maybe I'll take her along. She has met S several times and T once (last spring).

Oh deer! What a bad way to go!

As my wife and I drove out of town Saturday afternoon to do some shopping, my Ipod played an early Johnny Cash song. It's the one where he sings, "I don't like it, but I guess things happen that way."

By the time we got home, that's just how we felt.

What happened? I hit a deer on the way back. I normally don't feel that bad about hitting a deer. That kind of thing happens up here all the time in the Northwoods. We have plenty of deer, and they are notoriously poor at crossing roads. I have hit deer before, though it has been several years. Sooner or later, I will again. It happens.

(I will not swerve to avoid a deer. It's much too easy to lose control and go off the road. Most of the roads up here are in forested areas, and trees don't bend.)

A car-deer crash is no fun. It messes up your car; you need to take it in to get fixed. Even with the insurance, you probably have to pay a deductible. You're driving a rental for a day or two while the shop has it. And if the deer is lucky, it is dead within minutes.

This one wasn't lucky at all.

We were on good old Wisconsin 70, driving west, heading home and over halfway there. The shopping had gone OK. We didn't plan to get a lot, and we didn't. My wife found a opal necklace she really liked, and she bought it. We had a pizza for supper and then stared the trip home. The weather was seasonably cold (about 20 degrees), and the roads were dry.

Daylight was long gone; the sun sets at about 4:15 p.m. now. As we headed west, we listened to a radio episode of "You Bet Your Life," laughing at Groucho Marx's clever inquiries to a young engaged couple.

We had seen a few deer earlier. Then we saw another one. A doe. It was on the other side of the two-lane road, on the shoulder. Then it started walking across the road. Into our path. Notoriously poor at crossing roads, as I said.

Just as it crossed the center line, the doe seemed to realize what it had gotten itself into. But instead of running, it turned around and tried to go back the way it came. It pivoted right in front of me. I braked. Too late. The left corner of my car's front end (the driver's side) hit it in the hip.

We turned around and looped back around the deer, which was now lying right on the center line. I got out to look at the car. It didn't come out too bad. The headlight was still intact (though its aim was knocked awry), and the fender was a little dented. A little fur was caught at the upper corner of the headlight assembly. A little damage, but not much ...



The deer ... that was a different story. It was lying in the middle of the road, trying to raise itself up with its front legs. But its rear legs weren't moving. Then it paused and lay in the road. Then it tried to run away again.

I called 911 on my phone, and finally talked to the local sheriff's office. (Remember, this is a very rural area; lucky I was able to get through at all.) They apparently couldn't pick up my signal on GPS, so I told them about where I was. I gave them my name and address, and I stressed that they need to have somebody come out to put the deer down. I don't carry anything more lethal in my car than a crowbar. A 30-pound bag of kitty litter and various other purchases were lying on top of that.

I took a picture of the doe lying in the middle of the road. I thought for a long time whether to include this picture or whether to edit it to obscure the details. But no injuries were apparent. There was no blood. It is not a gruesome picture.

The deer is just ... lying there, looking at me ...



We were there 15 or 20 minutes, and in all that time just one vehicle passed by. A couple in a truck; the guy got out to look at the deer. He seemed to be a hunter--he wore red and black woolen pants--but he didn't have a gun or knife, either. He felt as bad about the deer as I did. And just as helpless.

Finally, we drove on home--the 911 dispatcher promised they would send somebody out to take care of the deer, which was still occasionally trying to get up. The Ipod stayed off after that; we drove on in silence, feeling awful about the deer left suffering on the road.

I love animals. You know I do. While I'm not a vegetarian, I don't hunt or fish--simply never learned how or had the interest. But as I drove home, I thought about bullfighting.

I know what happens in a bullfight. I have seen videos, from when the bull charges into the ring to when his body is dragged out by a team of three mules--the whole process. And I know how most of you feel about bullfighting.

When the "moment of truth" comes and the matador goes in with his sword, the blade goes in between the bull's shoulder blades and cuts the major blood vessels leading to and from the heart. Bleeding inside, the bull quickly gets weaker and collapses. Sometimes, he just lies down, like a cow in the pasture on a hot summer day.

As soon as that happens, the end comes very quickly. A member of the matador's cuadrilla comes up behind the bull with a short dagger-like sword called a puntilla and makes a quick jab in his neck, between the base of the skull and the first vertebra, cutting the spinal cord. The bull's suffering ends instantly.

Saturday night, I watched that poor deer thrash around for over 15 minutes and who knows how much longer after we left. Obviously alive and just as obviously doomed. I thought about the puntilla. If I had a sharp-enough knife and the nerve, I would have tried to do it. Anything would have been better than having it die slowly and gradually on a two-lane highway in the woods late at night.

There are many car-deer crashes up here. The sheriff's office told me they get so many that they usually don't send out an officer--they will send me a form for reporting it for my insurance. Many deer die the way this doe did.

I don't like it, but I guess things happen that way.

Long countdowns

The Android phones have all kinds of interesting apps. Today, I am playing around with one called MultiTimer.

This app is a countdown timer--countdowns to a certain time or to a certain date. Today, I started a couple timers counting down for distant dates.

One timer currently stands at 585 days, 11 hours, 15 minutes, 20 seconds. A year and a half, plus a month or so. Counting down to July 1, 2012.

That should be the date (more or less) when Freedom Fest starts in 2012. And that appears to be my next chance to see B. They already announced the dates for the event in 2011: It will be start June 30 and end July 4.

Because B works at a financial office, where it's really, really busy that time of year, she can't get days off or vacations in mid-summer. Her only break is at the Fourth of July, when they get a two-day holiday. This year (when the Fourth was on Sunday), they got Monday and Tuesday off. In 2011, the Fourth will be on Monday, and I'm guessing they will get Monday and Tuesday off again. She plans to retire at the end of 2011, and in the past they have talked about moving back to the Midwest --they are both originally from Ohio. So a visit in 2012 seems more possible.

In 2009, she was able to make the trip. But the days off at the office worked in her favor that year--she got Thursday and Friday off. It was hectic, but we made it work. To date, that's the first and last time we have ever met in person.

The other timer is at 1856 days, 12 hours, 14 minutes, 41 seconds. And counting. That's quite a while. Almost five years from now.

I will save you that math. It hits zero on Dec. 24, 2015. That's the day I turn 66 and will be able to retire with full Social Security benefits (if they don't change that by then, which seems possible).

Wild goose chase

I am not good at guessing. That's one thing I knew I had to do as I prepared for my visit to the Horicon Marsh in Wisconsin earlier this month.



My biggest question was this: When would be the best time to visit the marsh to see the Canada geese that stop there every fall? Is it October? November? Which week? Which day? What time of day?

After lots of thought, the answer became obvious: It would be the month, day, week and hour I could be there! Because of my job, it's hard to get away for two days, especially in October/early November. I can only travel when there's a break in the action. And there was a break in the action in early November. I grabbed it with both hands.

I covered the volleyball regional semifinals on Tuesday night. On Wednesday morning I was winging south. South as the goose flies. But since I had to follow a road, I went south, then east, then south for a long time, then southwest, then south. It sounds random, but it really wasn't. I knew where I wanted to go--to the marsh, near the geese ...

"Knock me your lobes!"

When I started writing this on Tuesday, it was only going to be a brief update, either before or after the story and photos of last week's visit to the Horicon Marsh. But the update kept getting longer and longer. They tend to do that. I finally decided to do the marsh story/photos later. This time, just an update.

My wife is back home from her trip, and life is getting back to normal. Some of her friends on the trip drove her home--I didn't have to drive to Ironwood to pick her up last Saturday.

They arrived just in time for the first snow of the season. Over here, we got two inches of very wet snow Saturday morning--much of it had melted by that night, and the main roads and highways were just wet. But my wife reported the parking lot in Ironwood was very sloppy with several inches of slush--she had wet feet and pants from wading through it to their car. You just don't think about packing along your snow boots for a trip like that.

She had a good time on the trip but is happy to be back with me and the kitties. Of course, the kitties and I feel the same way. One apparent casualty of the trip: the charger for her Tracfone, which must gave gotten left behind in her motel room. I just ordered a new one for her.

In fact, she was happy she had the phone. She called me at home (or wherever I was) nearly every night, and we sent texts back and forth. It was the first time she had texted--I showed her how to do it before she left. It was a handy way to send her a fast update. I updated her a lot about the storm that was nearing us. The main part wound up going west of us--Minnesota got the worst of it.

Normal life resumed this week. She was with the quilters on Tuesday.

It also appears that my string of six straight Thanksgivings at the state football finals is in dire jeopardy. Our team won its regional title game last Friday night, but it lost its top player to a knee injury; he was such a major factor in the team's success that the playoff trail could well end this Friday night at the dome in Marquette, at the state semifinals.

So, for the first time in seven years, I may be able to stay home for Thanksgiving. Or not. We _may_ drive down to Detroit for a _relaxed_ visit with my older son and his GF; no final decision can be made until the team's fate is decided and I get a better idea of the Turkey Day weather forecast. We talked over the situation with him the other night. The truth is, much of me just wants to stay home and relax. These last few weeks have been demanding, and some extra rest would be very welcome.

I didn't feel rested when I visited N this week--our first visit since my wife and I had dinner with her just before my wife's trip started. She could see I was looking tired, so we took it easy and laughed at some DVDs. We watched the Marx Brothers in "Animal Crackers"; several silent shorts featuring Roscoe Arbuckle and Buster Keaton; and several episodes of "You Bet Your Life."

One YBYL entry featured 1950s hipster comedian Lord Buckley, a tall, well-dressed, aristocratic-looking man who was invited by Groucho to give the audience part of his hip version of Marc Antony's funeral oration from Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar." It starts, "Hipsters, flipsters and finger-poppin' daddies, knock me your lobes!"

Oh, yes! I am definitely going to have to learn more about Lord Buckley.

Modern art on the road

I got a call last night from my wife--her bus had just arrived at its destination in Branson, Mo., and she was calling from her motel. Sounds like a nice room--she said it has a whirlpool and everything. Well!

I had sent her a couple text messages earlier in the day. Before she left, I showed her how to send and receive texts. I asked her, and yes, she did receive them and read them. Later, after the call. I texted her with an added thought--and I got a text reply. I texted back congratulations.

The trip, she said, was uneventful. One attraction they expected to see along the way was a place that boasted the world's biggest pecan. But a road apparently was closed, and the bus couldn't find another way to get there. Bottom line: They didn't see the pecan. Awww!

Today (Tuesday), they will see three shows in Branson. Sounds like they will be busy.

I dropped her off Sunday at 8 a.m. It's a really big bus, like the one last year. Don't think I have ever ridden on a bus that nice.

The night before she left, we had a nice visit with my friend, N, who lives a few miles away. We met at a place where N and I eat from time to time and had a pizza--they have really good pizzas.

N grabbed the bill. The waitress put it in the middle of the table at an inopportune moment--I had a piece of pizza in my right hand. My left hand darted out, but her right hand beat me to it. We fight over that whenever we go out--except when we went out to mark her birthday in late July. That night, I paid, and she left the tip. Otherwise, it's "Don't argue with your elders!" (She's about three years older than me.)

The three of us had a nice chat. We talked about my wife's trip, N's rescue dogs, her kids and grandkids, our kids. This and that. The topic somehow got around to chocolate, and it turns out that both of them like dark chocolate. N remembered she had a nice, rich dark chocolate bar in her truck, so she gave it to my wife when we were saying good bye. They hugged. It seemed to go very well.

We went back to the motel and went to bed early. Sunday morning, she got on the bus, and I headed back east, accompanied only by my own thoughts. They can be strange thoughts, you know.

I started thinking about ... modern art. Specifically, modern art on the road. Right on the road. What could have led to that? Well, this is what I was looking at ...



This is the two-lane highway, with the rising sun shining off all the squiggles and wiggles of tar they have put on over the years, apparently to seal cracks. Some sections of the highway have been repaved in recent years and are nice and uniform. The older parts look like this ...



You may also be able to see the rumble strips they put on the highways in the last year or so--the middle of the road and at the shoulders. That's going to be very handy in winter, when we have snow.

The state of Michigan can't afford to plow roads as much as it used to, so if you have to go somewhere in winter, especially at night, you may have to deal with snow-covered roads. The scary part is that the snow covers the pavement markings, so you can't see whether you are in the proper lane ... or edging into the other lane or onto the shoulder. A gentle rumble will tell me to turn the wheel a little and move back the other way.

All the highway lines are reflective now, of course. But I'm old enough to remember when they weren't. That was long before I started driving, but I remember my dad having to cope with that. Also, are you old enough to remember before highway signs had reflective paint? Back then, they put little glass reflectors on them, like this one. I used my flash so you could see them better ...



Guess I got sidetracked.

The sun rose higher as I kept driving east. Then, I saw something along the north side of the road. I pulled over and got my camera out ...



Hey! Don't you know that's a dangerous thing for you to do? Especially in Michigan during the first half of November. Don't you know what happens on Nov. 15? ...



I guess he knows.

Later, I passed the big marsh near the county line. It looks the way it did a couple weeks ago, thanks to our rainy summer ...



Since then, I found a photo I took at the same place back in September 2009. How different it looked only 13 months earlier, back when the western U.P. was in a severe drought! ...



Tomorrow, I'm going to a different marsh. This one is the Horicon Marsh, down in Wisconsin. I wrote about that trip earlier. This is the soonest I could travel south, and I was worried the geese would be gone by the time I get there. But it's been a fairly mild fall in the Upper Midwest, and those Arctic winds from the Canadian prairies haven't arrived yet. I lucked out on the weather, I think.

I plan to leave as early as I can Wednesday morning and drive straight down to the marsh (4+ hours). After my cameras and I are satisfied, I return north to Oshkosh, call my friends S and T and take them out to dinner. From there, we will go to my motel and the swimming pool. We went to the pool with S and her husband several times before, but I haven't been there with S and T. This time, it's the three of us.

Unlike past visits, I don't think we will take turns using the bathroom to change into swimsuits before going to the pool. None of us are especially shy.

Odds are, we will head to the whirlpool, located near the pool. S likes to go there. It's very warm and bubbly and relaxing in the whirlpool, with strong jets of water stirring up the surface. We'll all enjoy the water and try to guess what's happening below the surface. With all the whirlpool action and bubbles, you can't see what's happening below the surface. I think we will be sitting close together, enjoying being together again.

Eventually, we will go back to my room and make sure we are all very dry before we go back out in the cold weather so I can take them home. Nobody wants to catch a cold, right?

Thursday morning, I'm driving back north. I probably have to cover a volleyball regional championship game that night. The semifinal game was Tuesday night--that's why I can't leave till Wednesday.

Our football team won last Friday, so they play in the regional championship game this Friday night--on their home field, just 15 miles away. Two weeks later ... well, you know about that.

My older son called Sunday night, and we talked about it. He and his girlfriend are going for Thanksgiving dinner with her family, but we will be able to spend time with them earlier in the day. He said he would show me where we went last year and had that "buffaloaf" for Thanksgiving dinner. Yummmmm!

Of course ... look, folks, our team has gone to the state finals in Detroit for six consecutive years. They are going for No. 7 this fall. If I go, my wife says she will come along with me. But I want to stay home. It's such a long drive, and I'm so tense because of all the stuff I have to do and have to remember related to the state finals. It's definitely not a pleasure trip.

It's much different if I don't have to cover a game. Then it becomes a pleasure trip, and if the weather is behaving, we may go down there for a visit, either over Thanksgiving or the weekend before. But that way, we can set our own schedule and relax. But if the team keeps winning, I don't get many options.

Anyway, we'll figure it all out. At least, thanks to my trip, it won't be so lonely at home. Volleyball Tuesday and Thursday, football on Friday, I'm out of town on Wednesday, and she gets back home Saturday night.

OK, time to send her another text.

Two different trips

My wife's theme next week should be "On the Road Again." Either the Willie Nelson or the Canned Heat version.

She is preparing for another bus tour.

Her first was last September, to Branson, Mo., to see the country music shows there. This new tour is also to Branson, but the special appeal this time is a series of Christmas-related shows the tour group will attend. That's right up her alley--she loves Christmas-themed shows.

As last time, I will stay back here, keeping the kitties company in the increasingly chilly U.P. I've got the girls volleyball districts this week. I'm pretty sure at least one team will make it through to next week's regional tourney, so I'm going to be supporting the girls. (Umm, did I phrase that right?)

Also, one of our football teams is in the playoffs, and they play Friday night. This is the team that has gone to the state finals in Detroit for the last five years--but their 2010 tourney trail could end Friday night. Maybe. Time will tell.

However things turn out, on Saturday afternoon I am driving her about 90 miles west to the place where she gets on the bus Sunday morning--we will stay at a motel Saturday night. It's just a few miles from where my friend N lives; on Saturday evening, we plan to go out for dinner with her. My wife hasn't met N yet--we almost did earlier this year, but the trip was called off for other reasons.

Before she gets on the bus, I'm going to try to give her a crash course in sending/receiving text messages, which can be a handy skill during a trip/tour like this. She has a Tracfone. Now I have to show her how to send texts. And this time, don't leave the charger home!

My wife would like me to come along on these trips with her; she says she would even pay my way! But the trips seem to be scheduled when life at work is especially hectic. And we've got a small staff. You can count the reporters on our staff with one hand and still have a couple fingers left over.

She has expressed interest in a cruise tentatively planned next May--the Bahamas, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, etc. But that's in the middle of the spring season. Also England, Wales and Ireland--but that's next fall. And let's not forget that I've got places I like to go/things I like to do during summer, too, and two weeks of vacation simply won't cover it.

She doesn't have to worry about stuff like that. I do.

What she really ought to do is find a good, dependable friend who is able to go on trips and tours with her. She tried to interest one of her sisters in this trip, but that didn't work. If she finds a reliable friend who is able to travel--and yes, I have no problem if it's a male--that would solve that problem.

Eventually, I will be able to retire. That's not too many years away.

****

While she is out of town next week, I'm taking two days off for a trip of my own. This one is very special to me.

Several times while my brother and I were growing up near Milwaukee, my mom and dad would take us north to the Horicon Marsh, which is part of the North American flyway for Canada geese--it's a national wildlife refuge now. We would see incredible numbers of geese, honk-honking around in the sky or enjoying the marsh--they rest and feed there before resuming their flight south. With so many thousands of geese in one place, it's a very noisy place.

It's been many, many years since we last went there. And now I am the only one left. I'm pretty sure I took my wife there once (maybe before we were married), but that would still be decades ago--we moved to the western U.P. in the late '70s.

So next week, I'm taking my cameras along to record this incredible sight. I'm leaving early Wednesday morning and should get there in the early afternoon. That night, I'll visit my friends S and T--I'll take them out to dinner, and maybe we will enjoy the pool at my motel. (I won't spend the night with them this time.) Thursday morning, I'm driving back north. Not much time off, but you take what you can get

****

I will eventually write something about Tuesday's election. Not today. Let the dust settle a while. Let the poison leach out of the airwaves.

A big cat, a big blow and big news

First of all, Happy Halloween to everybody. My wife and I went to Rhinelander last weekend, and along the road, we saw something interesting.

Remember this summer when I saw "Mr. Robert Cat" along the road? This time, I saw a much bigger cat. Very big ...



And the very big cat had some inflatable companions for the holiday season ...



Hope they all survived our big blow okay. That's the big storm that passed through the Upper Midwest a few days ago.

It was a "three-day blow," like the title of the Hemingway story. The wind was really blowing hard from Tuesday through Thursday, especially on Tuesday night and Wednesday. We never lost power, and the house is still standing. Back in Rhinelander, some areas lost power for several days, and they opened the high school and YMCA as shelters.

Record low barometric readings were reported. Here, the reading sank to 28.59 inches (968 millibars). The low passed through Minnesota, several hundred miles west of us. It took its own sweet time.

Tuesday night, as the storm moved in, I drove off to a Wisconsin high school playoff game about 35 miles away. All the playoff games went on as scheduled, and I made the trip with my little digital camera--the big one stayed home. The little one is pretty good, but it's not the kind you want to use for taking night photos, especially on poorly lit football fields. I don't take my photos for the paper with that one. Otherwise, this is what they would look like ...



The home team is called the Bobcats. As I sat in the stands, I saw a real live Bobcat walking down the sideline, rooting on his team ...



Alas, things didn't go well for the home team. They trailed 17-0 after the first quarter because of two very short punts (into the wind) and a fumble in their end. The bobcat mascot got very sad. He was literally holding his head in his hands ... uhh, hand ...



The Bobcats fought back but eventually lost 24-20. The light rain and brisk winds we had during the game continued during the trip home. I saw a couple of deer along the road as I drove back west. I saw some wood debris on the two-lane road in places.

And then ... I got a glimpse of something that flashed past me, on the other side of the road. I turned around and went back east to get a better look ...



A dead birch tree had blown over and was completely blocking the eastbound lane. Luckily, I was westbound. In the next shot, the westbound lane is closer to the camera ...



More luck: I had enough of a signal on my cell phone to call 911 and alert the local sheriff's office of the tree blocking the road. Thanks to GPS, they could see exactly where I was. They said they would send out a truck right away, and I went on my way.

****

Our older son called on a recent Sunday night. He had passed along some big news to my wife the last time he called--but I was away that night.

In fact he had two things to tell us: The big one (from earlier) is: His girlfriend (and her dog) has now moved in with him (and his cat). Most of the excitement so far involves the dog and cat, who are having a hard time not acting like dogs and cats.

That decision didn't surprise me. They are old enough and smart enough. (He is 33; she, about five years younger.) They have gone on a number of trips together since they met last March. They have visited us twice and stayed in our spare bedroom. And they continue to grow closer. I wrote him after missing his earlier phone call, speculating whether they may want to look for a bigger place in spring. (Though I haven't seen his new place yet.)

The other news: He hesitatingly asked whether it would be OK if they do NOT come up for Christmas this year. I told him no problem--maybe they can visit once the snow melts in spring. Keep in mind--his Christmas situation has changed very much in the last 12 months: He has a close girlfriend now, and his grandma who loved him very much has died.

I know what he goes through to make those Christmas visits. It's a very long drive (550 miles each way) from Detroit to Mom and Dad, even in the best of conditions. In winter, he has to deal with snow, snow-covered roads, sleet, freezing rain and other fun stuff, since three of the five Great Lakes are so close. In the northern Lower Peninsula, about 100 to 150 miles of I-75 is often snow-covered and/or slippery due to lake-effect snow.

In short, it's not an enjoyable, relaxing drive by any means, and I speak from long personal experience. Maybe we can work out a video visit via Skype.

Our own holiday plans? Undecided yet. Our son usually stayed with us until just after Christmas--then he drove home. Some years, we visited my wife's sisters near Ladysmith around New Year's. Other times, we had quiet time at home. We need to talk about it.

In for a blow

At times I have commented that if the Upper Peninsula ever gets its own National Anthem, it would be Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." All 6 minutes, 32 seconds of it.

(Either that or "California Dreaming" by the Mamas and the Papas. You hear that one A LOT all winter on the radio stations up here. A LOT. I can see marching bands playing that song as they march down the street on gray and cloudy days, which we have an abundance of during winter.)

Right now, it's nearly November, the month when the real Edmund Fitzgerald met its watery fate in the waters of Lake Superior back in 1975. Thanks to the song, it's the most famous of the weather-related maritime disasters on the Great Lakes--but hardly the only one in a region that has seen many wild storms during fall. (Like this one, which took over 250 lives back in 1913.)

We are about to be hit with another. The big feature of this one is expected to be the wind. Even here, far inland from any of the Great Lakes, they are expecting gusts over 50 miles per hour. The worst of the wind is expected in eastern Wisconsin--over 60 mph gusts. Most of the Wisconsin-U.P. region has a High Wind Warning in effect.

Interesting--especially since Tuesday night happens to be the first round of high school football playoffs in Wisconsin. I had been planning to go to one of the games--it's only about 35 miles away. Wisconsin has such a tight playoff schedule (the second round of games is on Saturday, just four days later) that the games have to be played barring some absolutely incredible weather.

Will this turn out to be incredible enough? Imagine trying to pass a football in 50 mph winds on a high school field that has no protection from the gale/storm (unlike all those college and pro stadiums with seating all around the field).

If that's not scary enough for you, imagine trying to drive a school bus full of kids in winds like that. Talk about "high profile vehicles." Now that I think about it, Wisconsin officials probably should be thinking about postponing this round of games despite the schedule chaos it would cause. Cheerleaders will be flying through the air, otherwise. Little kids, too.

All this reminds me of a story from about 20 years ago. One of our teams had made the playoffs and was playing in a town on the north shore of Lake Michigan. It was a very windy early November day--sunny but windy.

A memorable day. I saw things like passes being knocked down by the wind and punts going almost straight up--one went for exactly 1 yard. And I saw something else during halftime, while the marching band was performing.

The band had flag girls who were holding flags while the rest of the band played. This time, the wind had ripped the skirt of one of the flag girls. Of course, I observed closely, and later I duly noted that "She resolutely held her flag with one hand while holding her skirt together with the other to cover her predicament."

****

It's been a while since I wrote about the cats, right? OK, then. let's get you caught up on their adventures.

They are, after all, creatures of habit. Lately, Max has been sleeping a lot in our bedroom--either on top of our bed or, presumably, under it. Close enough so that when I sit at the end of the bed (when changing clothes), Max springs up on the bed right away and is purring and meowing at me.

He gets all excited when I pet him. As he waits, he is rubbing is head against me and making excited throat sounds. Max likes to get petted a little rougher than most cats I have known. He especially likes it when you hold out your hand, palm downwards, near him--he rises up and presses the top of his head against the palm. Over and over, while tromping with his front feet. Left, right, left, right.

Then he lies on his side and back, four feet in the air, and treads the air, buzzing happily. We keep that up for a few minutes. Inevitably he starts licking himself, and that's when I return to what I wanted to do.

Remember my recent post about the e-reader? Well, I had to get a picture of the thing while Max was on the bed. He started by looking at me ...



Then he rubbed against the e-reader as I tried to get my picture ...



And then he decided to try out the camera lens ...



Very subtle about getting attention, isn't he?

Just realized that Max has been a part of our family for two years this month. Max was a sad kitty when we got him. Did I ever tell you the story?

He had been at the shelter about 10 months when we adopted him--he had been found roaming outdoors in winter while struggling with an abscessed tooth. They fixed the tooth and then tried to find him a home. It took a while. I remember he was there when we adopted Charlie back in February. Just him in his little cage. He had been adopted out once, but it didn't work, and the people at the shelter said that he got depressed and stopped eating after he was returned.

Today, Max is a happy cat. When it's warm out, he sits in an open window, breaths in the fresh air and listens to the birds as he sunbathes. He has a nice soft bed to sleep on (when we're not using it; he doesn't use it at night). He has other windows to sleep in and innumerable hiding places. He's got staircases to sprint up and down and long hallways to dash along. He's got people to chase him (which he loves) and pet him when he finally allows himself to be caught. The life of a happy cat in his forever home.

As for Charlie, she seems to like the e-reader, too, for when I go to bed and try to read a little while, she soon hops up on the bed and walks up by my side. Meow, meow, purr, purr. She likes to lie down on one of my arms. I can manage to hold the reader and hit the "turn page" button with one hard, but it's not easy. After a while, she walks away. Sometimes to the foot of the bed, sometimes off the bed and out of the room.

She usually spends the night on the kids' old beanbag chair in our room--we have an old baby blanket on it. That's good until it gets close to morning. Sometime between 3 and 5 a.m., she hops up on the bed and walks up by my side. Meow, meow, purr, purr. She lies by my side, and I rub her tummy. Purr, purr, purr. Life is good.

At times she moves away, and I roll on my other side to put my arm around my wife and maybe doze off again. But then Charlie comes back for another round. Meow, meow? My wife understands about cats, though.

Everything changes, however, when Charlie's radar picks up a certain sound from the hallway: the sound of Max "talking" as he walks around. Suddenly she looks towards the door, wriggles out of my arm, hops off the bed and moves over to see what Max is up to.

A day or two ago, she was only in my arm about a half minute before the Max alert sounded.

I guess that shows where I rank.

Going high tech; going low tech

(This little essay was supposed to start with a wry observation about change and keeping up with the times or something like that. But I couldn't think of anything appropriate, so let's just plunge into the meat of it.)

Recently, I invested in something new, and I think it is helping me revive a pleasant pastime.

Voila! ...



Yes, I have invested in an e-reader. The one you are looking at is the Kobo reader, which I ordered from the Borders.com website.

There are many other e-readers. Barnes & Noble has the Nook. Amazon has the Kindle. There is a Sony reader. I could go on.

I selected the Kobo because it is relatively inexpensive, a charge lasts a long time, it can hold tons of books, it's easy to hold and easy to use. Even for an old coot like me. It also uses open-source Epub files and PDF files, unlike Amazon's Kindle, which is probably the best-known e-reader. It's also available in Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand.

How did I first hear about it? From Twitter. Bob McKenzie is a well-known hockey analyst on Canada's TSN network, and I subscribe to his Twitter feed. While in North Carolina on vacation this summer, he was twitting about his Kobo and how happy he is that he bought it. He was reading the Stieg Larsson books this summer, among other things.

That got me to looking at the Kobo website, where I saw I could order an e-reader from Borders.com.

The e-reader, which weighs well under a pound, can hold about a thousand books in its silicon memory and another thousand or so if you connect an SD memory card (which are cheap nowadays). Just after I bought mine (naturally!), Kobo released a updated version that can do more things and do them faster. I'm happy with mine, though.

My e-reader has about a dozen books I have downloaded plus a hundred classics that were preloaded. Many, many books are available for free--all you have to do is download them and transfer them from your computer to the e-reader. Check out feedbooks.com and manybooks.net--all their stuff is available for free.

My problem with reading has always been time. I tend to keep pretty busy and have a lot of things I like to do. My job, both during the day and at night. Some TV sports. Watching stuff on TV with my wife. Surfing the web. Taking and editing pictures. Writing letters and blog posts. Oh, it's a busy life! Multitasking, anyone?

All that has crowded reading for pleasure out of my life for quite a while. Occasionally I get excited about a book and spend much of my spare time with it. I have been reading texts I download from Project Gutenberg, using an eText reader. When I am at the computer screen, I can read the book. But I don't want to be staring at a computer screen all the time. I also want to read when I'm elsewhere, doing other things.

For instance, I took my wife to see the doctor for a checkup late last week. She was gone for about an hour. How did I spend all that time in the waiting room? You guessed it! I also want to have some maintenance done on my little car (which just hit 189K). How will I spend my time while the car is on the hoist? Old magazines or something I really would like to read?

(Actually, I picked up a copy of Playboy and paged through that while getting a haircut recently. They had some really good articles in there. Really!)

Part of the reason is space. I have been shying away from buying new books lately because I have too many books at home that I haven't gotten around to reading. Magazines, too. Collectively, they take up space. I realize that I really need to winnow the inventory down. Someday.

But the e-reader is light and easy to pack along. I bought a little neoprene sleeve for it, so it can safely hit the road with me--along with tons of books. All of it weighing less than a pound and taking less space than a trade paperback.

What am I reading? Not the popular bookstore stuff. Long ago, I developed an affection for classic literature, and there are so many classics I'd like to read. I love Dickens, and I've never read "A Tale of Two Cities." So that's what I'm reading now--I'm about halfway through it.

Also, at times during my eText days, I was plowing through "Lorna Doone." I got bogged down about two-thirds of the way through, but I'm making headway on it again. (At least I was until I got into "Two Cities.") Several other books, too. I read the last of James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales ("The Prairie") while in college. Now I plan to start with "The Deerslayer," the first book (chronologically) in the series.

The thing I enjoy most about reading, of course, is that it takes me away from the here and now, whisking me away to another time, another place. The classic writers have the human condition down pat--the same human frailties all around us today existed back then, too, as well as the virtues. I made sure to download Henry Fielding's "Tom Jones" and plan to re-read that. A very long book that rewards the reader with many wry observations about life and people. A excellent read. There are so many more, I know. I wish I had more time to read.

Time. That reminds me that I also went low-tech this year.

For years, I have worn complex wristwatches. Most were digital models made by Timex, which had timers and stopwatches and alarms. And they also stored data. Notes. Phone numbers. Reminders. A calendar. Data was transferred from the computer to the watch via a cable or even a flashing screen.

But while the watches were complex and a bit costly, they attached on my wrist with cheap plastic bands. After a year or so, the cheap plastic band would break, and I would have to buy a replacement. Before long, the battery needed replacing, too. The replacement batteries never seemed to last that long.

The data watches were a product of the 1990s: before cell phones were popular and smartphones evolved. About two years ago, it occurred to me that my phone already stores all the info that was on my data watch. So what's the point of having one?

When it became battery time again, I decided to go in an entirely different direction. Low tech. No new data watch. Not even a digital.

Yes, I went analog ...



I decided to get a simpler watch that only has to tell me the time. That's the kind of stuff watches do best. I remembered many times during winter, when I was driving somewhere in the dark and I wanted to check the time. There is a button to light the digital data watch's face, but the digits were hard to make out, especially in a moving vehicle. And in order to activate the light, I needed to reach over and press the button with my other hand. While driving.

I finally selected a watch that has luminescent hands and a dot on the second hand, so I can read it when it's totally dark. With one hand. It's got a dark green face and white hands; with that contrast I can read it in low light conditions. With one hand. When I use my other hand to press the light button, the watch has a light green face with dark hands.

Of course, the watch operates with a quartz crystal and is shock-resistant. I may have wanted to go retro, but not so retro that I was always checking its accuracy and turning the hands a few minutes ahead or behind as needed. Two major things I will have to do each year: switching to and from daylight time. That isn't done automatically any more. But I can handle that. In spring, I turn the hands ahead an hour. In fall, I pull out the stem--and let the watch sit frozen in time for an hour. Before long, I'm back on time.

I got the new watch early this year, and I really like it. There's just one thing I don't care about--it's got a leatherish strap (real leather? who knows?) that you have to open and close when you take the watch off, like when you wash your hands or shower. Maybe an expansion band would make life a tiny bit easier.

"What are you going to offer me?"

I talked with my wife Saturday morning. We were both waking up and talking about what we had ahead of us that day.

I had been out of town, covering a high school football game Friday night. It was about two hours away, so I got back home about 10:45 p.m. My son David came along--I dropped him off at his place before getting home. My wife was just heading for bed when I got home; we talked a few minutes, I checked a couple things on the computer and then lay down, too.

I had another game to cover Saturday. This one was in the afternoon, about 70 miles away. The weather forecast said it would be sunny and mild. David was staying home this time, and I got an idea.

"Do you want to come along?"

"Why? What are you going to offer me?"

She asks this because sometimes I can offer some special incentive for her to come along and keep me company. Things like towns that have a shopping center or a quilt shop. Places where she likes to stop along the way. Some especially nice scenery. A good restaurant.

But in this case, there was no such place. Between here and there, it's mostly forests on each side of the road, 75 miles west through the national forest and after the game 75 miles back east. The fall leaves have mostly fallen, and the countryside can be rather barren in places. No big towns. Nothing much larger than a convenience store. It's just a long drive.

If we had more time after the game, maybe we could have visited N, who lives about 20 miles further west. Maybe take her out to supper. But that's another 20 miles each way, and I wanted to get back home. Also, I hadn't mentioned it to N as something we might do, and I don't like to drop in on people unexpectedly.

Still, it would have been nice to have someone to talk with and keep me company on my long drive. I have to walk up and down the sidelines during the game, true, but I could come over and sit with her during halftime. Maybe fetch her a hot dog (high school football cuisine; that and nacho chips). And when she goes with me to a sports event, I always pay her ticket.

But in her eyes, going for a ride with me and sitting through a football game wasn't an appetizing enough prospect for a sunny Saturday. She said she'll stay home. Maybe she would go to a rummage sale. Maybe she would work on her vacuum cleaner.

So I made the trip by myself.

It was a long drive.

Marching through October

Our march to winter weather is marching in place at the moment. September was chilly, wet and cool. October? Not bad at all.

We are definitely enjoying Indian summer. Last Friday, we got close to 80F (26C) here. It has cooled off since then, but we were still in the low 70s (23C) Tuesday. It's not mild enough to leave the windows open at night (unfortunately for Max, who loves to spend his nights in open windows), but pretty nice for mid October.

Hmmm. Honey, didn't we get our first snow last year on this date?

With all that has been taking place lately, I haven't been very active with the autumn color pictures. But last week I took a drive west to visit N, and I took a few nice pictures of some trees I saw along the way. Unfortunately, the color was obviously past peak ...







One other nice thing to see: With all the rain we got this summer, the big swamp near the west county line looks a lot healthier than it did before, when it was almost totally dry, as drought conditions prevailed over the area ...



But the summer of 2010 is dead and gone. I like fall, but I'm sorry summer is over, for a simple reason: I like warm weather more than the cold that is in our not-too-distant future.

The usual regrets, too. I went on a number of trips with my wife and son, but there are more places we wanted to go. That trip to the Amish area near Bonduel, Wis., which my wife wanted to do, hasn't been done yet; as long as fall sports continues, it's hard to get days off. In my son's case, his broken hand in early August threw things off for him. He wasn't interested in going places after that, with his hand in a cast.

As for myself: As you know, B and I never got together this summer. I felt pretty bad about that for a while. But fate took an unexpected twist when S and her husband broke up, and she started living with her girlfriend, T. So when I can get away and drive down there, I am more than welcome, and we have a fun time. That's a turn of events I never would have imagined at the start of 2010.

I was able to visit N several times, too. For this or that reason, we weren't able to get together between late July and early October--over two months--but our long separation ended last week. I drove over to visit, and there were no further problems with weather, snarky septic systems or other matters.

The surprise highlight of last week's visit: We watched several episodes of "You Bet Your Life" from the 1950s with Groucho Marx. Groucho will come along next time, too, as will the Three Stooges. N absolutely adores all the old cars she sees on the DVDs--like those 1950s DeSotos that Groucho was selling. "Wow! What would a car like that be worth now???" And many of the Stooges' films come from the 1930s.

If you don't know, N is a widow, a few years older than me, and she lives by herself in the woods with her rescue dogs. While she enjoys her independent life, she also enjoys my visits; for one thing, she gets to cook for someone else. She doesn't get many chances to do that. Then we settle down on her sofa and watch some of my crazy movies. We laugh a lot.

S and I never got to Dragonfly Beach this summer, either. That's partly because T never wrote a short essay to the owner (only about 100 words) about why she wants to go there. But they could only have gone there with me, and I only got down to visit them once during summer (aside from our trip together to Freedom Fest). That's the day it got so hot, and we went to the animal park.

In fact, I didn't go swimming all summer, clothed or otherwise. Just too busy with stuff.

I hope to visit S and T during the second week of November. We are talking about visiting the Horicon National Wildlife Refuge, to see all the geese. My mom and dad would take my brother and I there when we were kids, and it's a truly incredible experience.

If my camera and I can make the trip, you will see why.

That also, by the way, is the week my wife plans to go on another bus tour to Branson, Mo., to see the Christmas shows there. It's not a final decision, but she is definitely leaning that way.

But it's also possible that I will have to delay my trip to S and T and the geese until the week after. It's because of a scheduled meeting and the "high holy days" in our area. I'll explain later.

****

All right! I finally had a fairly decent week in that football contest. This week, my three teams totaled 90 points, and that was the 473rd highest score. That may not sound like much (and it isn't), but the week before I was #2073, and the week before that I was #2779.

One couple from our area finished with the fourth best score: 119 points. They won $50.

Next week, my three teams are the Atlanta Falcons, Indianapolis Colts and New York Giants. Those are three pretty good offensive teams.

So we all know what's going to happen: At least one of those teams will have a really bad game, and later everybody will be asking why. Only I (and you) will know the rest of the story.

Video: A new season starts

This last week was a very busy one, a very demanding one. As I neared the end of my work on Saturday, I looked ahead to finally getting some time off and watching some hockey.

The hockey season started on Thursday night, but I was covering girls volleyball. More games Friday, but I was gone at a football game. I finally had a chance to enjoy some hockey Saturday night.

I watched the "Hockey Tonight" pregame show on CBC while my wife prepared dinner. Then, two things happened, seconds apart: She called me, saying it's time to eat, and CBC started showing a video piece at the start of the actual "Hockey Night in Canada" telecast.

I knew what was waiting for me on the table, nice and hot: chicken parmigiana. It's a tasty meal. But I couldn't get up from the couch: The video piece that started was just so mesmerizing, so outstanding for someone who loves hockey.

Today, I found a video link to it. Take a look ...



Wow! What an outstanding way to show that the new season has begun!

Sometimes I think that if I were a young person just starting out now (in other words, if I weren't an old coot), I would really want to get into video production and learn how to make pieces like that. Who knows, maybe someday I'd get really good at it.

****

This week will be easier. It should be. It can't get harder, can it?

An idea zooms into sharp focus

Here's something I have been thinking a lot about lately: getting another lens for my camera.

Photography can be a pricey hobby, especially if you use Nikon cameras, but Sigma makes nice third-party lenses for Nikon, and those seem more reasonably priced.

A week or two after my mom died, I got a check from her insurance company. It was a bit more than the $800 or so I had expected. And all the funeral costs were paid years ago. So I have been thinking about what to do with that money, and I thought about my camera.

I fondly remember a few years when I used a 28-200 mm zoom lens on my Minolta Dynax 800si camera at work. That was a very handy lens to work with: It could handle both wide-angle shots and telephoto shots (as long as neither of them are very extreme). I enjoyed using that one.

But the Minolta was a film camera, which meant we had to develop the film in chemicals and then make prints using more chemicals. In 2003 or so, the company wanted to cut costs and started thinking about the cost of all those chemicals vs. digital cameras. No chemicals. That's about the same time we started laying out the paper on our computers. Maybe a little before, maybe a little after. It's been a while already, and I forget.

At any rate, they persuaded me to switch to digital to allow us to stop buying chemicals. Chemicals that smelled. Chemicals that we had to mix ourselves. Chemicals that got depleted and had to be replenished. Hey, we're a small-time operation with a small-time budget. This was an economy move. We were spending a lot of money and time on photo chemicals and lots of time in the dark room, developing and printing film. Believe me, never for one second have I pined for the good ol' days when I played with chemicals in the dark room.

But I did--and still do--miss that Minolta camera. Especially that lens. They remain together, in a filing cabinet near my desk. Once in a while I look at it. And at times I think about it. Like when I have to switch from my 18-55mm zoom to my 55-200mm zoom. And back again. Or when I wonder which lens I ought to pull out of my camera bag.

Wouldn't it be cool ... to have two cameras? Yeah, probably. But it would also be a headache. Which one am I taking along? Decisions, decisions! More bulk. More stuff to worry about and schlep around. Maybe that's not such a good idea.

But a tele/wide-angle 18-250 zoom lens? That could work very well.

Here's one other photo-related thing I need to think about: a new tripod.

My main tripod is a Vivitar model I purchased back when I was working in downtown Milwaukee. It was first hooked up to a Minolta SRT-101 camera. That tells you how old it is--nearly 40 years. It isn't in very good shape now--it's hard to convince the legs not to collapse on me--and when I go to a place like Best Buy and wander off to the camera department, I eventually look over the tripods.

Hmm, I think to myself, I really ought to get one of those someday.

Vandals in the garden

My wife pulled the plug on our garden Monday morning. When I went out to the car at lunch, I saw that the last vines of the tomato plants were gone, the sunflower stalks were down, and the marigolds have been pulled up.

All that's left now are the rhubarb and the asparagus. Those are perennials. But the first killing frost of the season early Sunday morning took care of everything else.

It was 25F (-4C) when I got up that morning. A thick layer of frost lay on everything exposed outdoors. The sunflowers stood tall on Saturday. Sunday, their heads were drooping. They got zapped.

But even though they stood tall Saturday, they looked pretty sad. Garden vandals had struck just a day or two earlier. After they left, the stalks looked as if mad loggers had attacked them, with a hack and a whack and a slash. Where big leaves had absorbed the sun's heat a few days ago, only stumpy stalks remained. The unopened flowers at the very top of the stalks still were there. But where had all the leaves gone?

Look at the aftermath ...



And look at this one ...



Despite the raids, the sunflowers that survived looked pretty healthy ...



... but that was the day before the killing frost.

What pointless vandalism! Why would someone just come along and cut all the leaves off the plant? What a heartless thing to do! Who could be so thoughtless and cruel and destructive?

Who would do such a thing?

I've got my suspicions, and they all center on this wandering nogoodnik and his pals, who have been casing out our neighborhood lately.

Yes, them ...



Look familiar? Our garden is just out of the frame, to the right.

The deer have been a headache on and off over the years. So have the bunny rabbits. But bunny rabbits can't reach very high.

My wife is a very amateur gardener, but this year she got more serious about it. She cleared out an area of our lawn. She planted rhubarb. She planted asparagus. She planted tomatoes. She planted sunflowers. And to help repel area critters, she planted some marigolds. When I suggested getting some spray-on repellent that is advertised on TV, she said the marigolds would repel the critters.

She placed a plastic border around the garden, and all summer I made sure the lawnmower would not create havoc. All was well until very early in August, when the vandals paid us their first visit (marigolds or no marigolds).

The next morning we went outside, and this is what we saw ...



The rest of the garden looked fine ...



See that big sunflower at the far end, behind the rhubarb? It was growing quickly, and it kept growing. Fact is, we had a nice summer, with warm weather, warm nights and above average rain. Area gardens had a very good year. Even ours.

The sunflowers attacked by the deer proved to be resilient, and they picked up where they left off. They grew and grew. This is how they looked on Sept. 1 ...



All the sunflowers were growing great guns ...



That tall sunflower? It had grown taller than my wife! It was as tall as me! Until, that is, the night of Aug. 31, when some strong thunderstorms blew through the western U.P., with thunder, lightning, wind and heavy rain.

When we came out the next morning, our tall sunflower was lying on its side. It had been broken off an inch or so above ground level by the wind. We held up the wilting plant late that morning, and my wife stood next to it one final time ...



A tragedy, sure, but our neighbor on the other side of the alley got it far worse. He had a huge maple tree growing in his back yard. For years. For decades. Then the storm blew through. The next morning, it looked like this ...



The wind broke off about half the maple and pushed it onto his garage. And the neighbor's garage. The next day, they did the only thing they could do ...



I love big maples. So this was a sad day for more reasons than the sunflower.

A few last things

Both my wife and I dealt with minor colds late last week. My guess is that they were a byproduct of our recent round of cool, very wet weather, along with dealing with my mom's death and funeral, plus a very heavy workload the next week.

I knew my resistance was slipping, so I tried to get more sleep (went to bed earlier at night) and took things easy when I could. I still came down with a bit of cold late last week, and my wife must have caught it from me. She has been under extra stress, too.

But we both felt better last Saturday, so we decided to go on a drive to Iron Mountain, our first trip there since the funeral. The first and most important stop was out in the country--the cemetery where she was buried two weeks ago. We got there in the early afternoon.

The headstone hasn't been updated yet, but that will come, like everything else. There is still a lot of dirt lying around from the service, and clean-up work is needed. One of the flower pots on the grave had blown over. I righted it, and within seconds the wind blew it over again.

But the sun was out, just a few clouds were in the sky, and the birds were singing. It really is a beautiful place to rest--I should have taken a picture to show you. There's a small woods on one side (the leaves are turning) and a farmer's field on another. The sky, the clouds, the woods and the birds are all around you. We talked about that: Such a pretty place to spend eternity. And my mom is with her husband and her other son now. Physically, she lies right between them, and her spirit is in the next world with them and her mom and dad. She is happy again, I'm know.

From there, we did some shopping and then went for a steak supper by ourselves. Yum! Haven't done that for a long time. But you must remember that we've been pretty busy, both with summer trips and visiting my mom. It's the same place where we often ate with my mom while she was still at home. I think we started doing that shortly after my dad died in 1994--before that, they went there together a lot.

****

Recently, I wrote to my friend S about my mom's death and how I was dealing with it:

I have been wondering ... whether I should go in and talk to the pastor. She's a nice lady. Something is troubling me: I'm wondering why I feel so detached from my mom's death. I haven't had any emotional moments, not even in private. Hasn't it hit me yet? Not really. Will it? I'm not sure. My work related to her death is nearly over.

The value (?) of self-control

The thing about online chats is that it can open up some new ideas that just sort of spring up out of nowhere. Here's an example.

Last week, I sent a "treasure chest" to my friend B for her birthday. Just a few things. We talked for a while online Tuesday. And she said ...

"I was just thinking about you...yes, indeedy!! A mysterious box arrived at my house yesterday. It was sitting on my computer chair when I got home last evening.

It remains untouched....I do have a little self-control from time to time. ;)"

"Self-control ... so important!"

"Self-control can be overrated as well...oh my, did I just say that?"

"Actually, I totally agree!

Self-control is so overrated! It interferes with new experiences in life. And I, as Mr. Self-Control himself, can testify to that.

Our impulses are trying to tell us something that maybe we need to listen to."

"I hear you, but, like you, I have spent a lifetime "behaving" so everyone thinks that of me....so wrong they are, aren't they?"

"Seems we have to unlearn things we learned when we were young. But we've done that before, haven't we? Not too old to change."

"For sure!! Not at this point in my life anyway. I feel younger than ever, actually. Regardless of what the mirror tells me!"

"So that means we are both still growing and reaching out. That's a good thing."

"Yes, sir, it is!!"

B, of course, is my polyamorous friend from Alaska. It's her birthday on Wednesday. We met for the first and (so far) last time in July 2009.

Our next close encounter? Only the future knows.

Mediations about Mona

I'm getting obsessed with Mona. Really.

So who is Mona? She is a woman who uploads pictures of herself on Flickr. In these photos, she appears to be a woman in her 50s. Maybe a bit overweight, but not by much. Nice smile. And big breasts.

That last part is easy to tell, because in most of her photos her breasts are bare. One breast (the one on her left) is a somewhat larger than the other. They both sag down. As I said, she is not a young girl by any means.

I love her photos, but what I love more is her attitude about her body, the joy she gets (and her husband gets) when she shows off her breasts. This one is under a typical photo. "Jim took this in our room at the beach resort. He has always liked me topless with jeans. I hope some of you like it also."

Here is another. In it, she is standing next to a man wearing a white shirt and a red tie. All she is wearing above the waist is a jingle bell on a red piece of yarn (I think). She writes, "This is Hubby and I at a holiday party a few years ago. I started the evening with a sheer top, but the host spilled wine on it. She wanted to soak it right away, so I took it off and went the rest of the evening with just my bell. She couldn't believe that I would, but It was so fun. It seems that there were many people who wanted pictures of us. Hubby kept saying it must be his red tie. ????"

At times she is wearing blouses, but they inevitably are very sheer, leaving her nipples easily visible. Sometimes she is at the beach (usually a Mexican resort), sitting topless on the beach and enjoying the sun and the attention. Even has a drink with a tiny paper umbrella at times.

Here's one of her in a white tube top, with about half the breasts covered. "I wear this tube top often, but on this day, it seems to have slipped down a little. I hate to see women wear something sexy and then tug at it all the time, so I try not to adjust my tops, unless my tits come completely out. Do you think this is ok?" Looked OK to me.

And yes, I have noticed that, too, when women (especially girls) wear something skimpy. Are you really trying to look sexy or are you just confused?

One picture from the 1980s show a younger Mona wearing a blue sweater that is very loose, opening wide down her chest. "This is a scan of my favorite sweater in the early 80s. I wore it all the time and it was just right. I could make sure I was covered if I felt I needed to, but I know just how to sit to allow one tit to show.

"I'll never forget the first time I let my nipples be seen in a public place. We went to a nice restaurant with another couple and we were seated in a booth with the men on one side and the women on the other. We were visiting and all at once I felt air on my left nipple. I knew it was showing and that Jim and the other guy could see it and about then this cute waiter came by. My first thought was to cover up, but I didn't and I was sooo excited.

"After the waiter left, Jim announced that I was the sexiest woman in the world. The other guy agreed, and the woman looked puzzled, when she looks at me and gasped. "How long have you been like that?" Her husband said "Only 5 minutes." But what was fun for me, was that I did not cover up the rest of the night. My nipple got so hard that it caught my neckline and would not let it up. It was the first tit flash, but certainly not the last."

Obviously, she enjoys showing off. But so what? It harms nobody, it makes her happy, and it makes him happy. I imagine they have a great sex life because she is willing to tease and show off a little ... or a lot.

And you know, I think every woman can be like that, unless they have been traumatized or raised to feel ashamed of their bodies. I don't know what inhibitions Mona had to deal with to be as open as she is now. That's a part of her story I have never read. But I think everyone has the power to overcome our cultural inhibitions about body image and that they are not "perfect" or nearly so. Or a model or cover girl on a fashion magazine. Perfect smile, perfect figure, perfect skin, perfect nails. Most women aren't like that and never will be, no matter how much they fret and anguish about every imperfection. Or how much they spend.

Mona isn't perfect either. Far from it. She is just herself. She loves herself the way she is, she loves her husband, and he loves her. She isn't afraid of making a mistake. We're all human, you know. Same frailties, same vulnerabilities, same fears to some extent.

I think we come down to two very simple facts. The first is that without our clothes, we are all naked. All men look more or less the same, and all women look more or less the same, with the same parts in the same places (with, of course, infinite variations). That is why I have never understood the cultural taboo about nudity. Aren't we all the same under our clothes? Aren't we all human?

The other simple fact is that a person's true beauty is on the inside. I have believed that for many years, and as time goes on I see more and more proof of it. As you look at all the people in the world, you can see it, too. Look beyond appearances. Look beyond the face. Look past the eyes. Yes, look beyond the boobs, too. Look inside. Only then can you start to see the true person, and you can only do that if you actually get to know the person.

Don't know Mona. Never met her. Likely never will. But I'm glad I got to know about her. She's one in a million and probably even more rare than that.

Big-time freeloaders

My wife likes to feed the neighborhood critters. She enjoys that. When some of our bread gets old or we have some old ground beef or scraps from chicken or stale crackers, she doesn't dump it out. She puts it on the back yard. Before long, some of the neighborhood crows or bunnies or cats or sparrows are around, feasting on the stale food.

A couple nights ago, she made chicken corn chowder for supper with some oyster crackers. But crackers she poured out for us were stale. Get rid of them, I said. Today, I saw the aging oyster crackers in the back yard along with bits of stale bread and buns.

This evening, she was making supper for us, and I was upstairs, reading something on the computer, with Charlie in my lap. It was about time to eat, and I heard her voice. But is wasn't time for supper. "Take a look out the bedroom window." I went over to see.

I think I knew right what I was going to see, and I was right. I went downstairs and grabbed my camera ...



There's one. Wait a minute. I looked to the left. There's two deer ...



The deer were moving off to the left of us, to the east. I followed then, and I saw two deer ... and then a third deer moved out from behind the lilac bush next door. Probably the one I saw first ...



See them all? ...



They eventually moved further left and out of our sight, and we sat down to supper. Then my wife looked up. "Look out the front door," she said.

In the distance were two of the deer, which had sauntered across the highway and were nearing the alley behind the houses across the street. I went back to grab the camera again, but the deer were gone by the time I got back.

****

How have I been doing? Well enough, I guess. Late last week, for a number of reasons, I was getting close to burnout. Some extremely busy days at work, at a time when I was still worn down from the last couple weeks. I wrote a piece about it but decided it wasn't worth posting here.

I had worked very hard all weekend, and I was close to exhausted on Sunday, at least for a while. Took an unplanned nap, and that helped me feel better.

My highlight this week was to be a visit to N on Wednesday. She was going to make some steak quesadillas, and we were going to watch some silly movies. The usual routine, which works very well for us. That was the plan.

But Wednesday morning, she sent me an e-mail--she was having septic problems at her place, and she couldn't get someone out right away. On top of that, heavy rain is expected to move in overnight. By the time it ends late Thursday, we are expecting 2 to 4 inches of rain. Flood watches and everything. We have had a wet summer and early fall. The last time I visited N (in late July), it was another stormy night.

It's disappointing, but on the other hand I got to relax some more at home, and R&R time is badly needed. I have been feeling like Mr. Hamster, scampering around, trying to reach the end of his wheel. Mr. Hamster is tired and bored. He wants to do something different. All work and no play for too long makes for a dull hamster. I think Jack Nicholson said that.

At least I'm aware of the problem, and I want to get off my wheel and enjoy life a little more. That is the plan, anyway.

****

My aggregation of football teams didn't finish 1,883rd last weekend.

That's what happened the weekend before. Last weekend, they were 2,721st. I had one of the best offensive teams of the week (San Diego) and one of the worst (Carolina). They nicely canceled each other out. The way the game works, you only have a chance of winning if all three of your teams are really, really good or really, really bad. Otherwise, you wind up in Mediocre City.

This week, my teams are Dallas, Denver and Oakland. Can we at least get back in the top 2,000?