Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah

Jeff Buckley – Hallelujah


Seems kinda random, doesn’t it? I mean, for a topic.

Heck, I have to explain it, before most will even understand what it means.

Jeff Buckley was a musician, who drowned in the Mississippi River in the mid 90’s, right around the time the first hint of future stardom surfaced.

He had released a critically acclaimed record (“Grace”), had a single that received air play, and was poised to break huge, probably with the release of his follow up record.
My memory’s not clear on it, because I didn’t know much about him at the time, but he might have drowned in Memphis, perhaps while taking a break in recording or rehearsing.

Add to the story the fact that he was the son of Tim Buckley, who was himself a critically acclaimed musician that died tragically young.

Hallelujah – A great song by Leonard Cohen.
“Who’s Leonard Cohen?”
Oh, please. That’s another entry.
Suffice to say he’s a guy who’s been writing great songs for 40+ years; songs that are best known as hits for other artists.

Which brings this narrative back around to Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah.

Buckley recorded Cohen’s “Hallelujah”. I’d actually read about the version, but hadn’t heard it. And since the one single that was released before Buckley’s death, Last Goodbye (there’s some irony, right there) didn’t resonate with me, I gave little attention to those who heaped such praise upon the recording.

Then one day not too long ago, I’m driving in the car with my wife and daughter, and this song came on.
And it was achingly beautiful. So much so that tears were welling up in my eyes, just listening to it. And when I realized what I was listening to, the tears started flowing a little harder.
“My god. His voice…" I thought to myself.

“What are we listening to?” my wife asked, in a slightly hushed tone it seemed.
“Jeff Buckley doing a Leonard Cohen song.” I choke out in reply.
“It’s…”
“Yeah.”

So there you go. A heartbreakingly beautiful rendition of a superbly written song, performed by an artist I never cared for when he was actually walking the earth.

Did it make me re-think my musical tastes?
Of course not.
Do I want to seek out a copy of a 15 year old CD for which I had no interest at the time, based solely on one song? No, not really. Thought it may prompt me to buy my first musical download, ever.

Do I, sadly, listen to the live recording of Cohen performing his own song, and while appreciating it find myself saying “Buckley got more out of it”? yep,I must confess that I do.

Canadian Geese

The past couple weeks have been big "Canadian Geese fill the skies" weeks.

After a mild November, they've finally decided it was time to flee the north, in advance of winter.

(Yes, I AM jealous.)

Last thursday morning was particularly impressive, as I saw moree geese in the sky at one time than I believe I've ever previously witnessed. If I hadn't been doing 80 mph on the interstate in morning rush traffic, I'd have stopped to watch for a minute.

I don't actually like canadian geese, truth be told. They're violent, merciless pooping machines.
But they DO make an impressive sight as they slowly sort themselves out into a big "V" and head across the sky.

I'm reminded of something I was taught as a child, when I see small groups of the geese slide into formation.
Geese mate for life.

Which is romantic and all, but contrary to the fact that I tend to see odd numbers of them flying together.
(I AM a nerd, and I DO count them, whenever possible.)

"Dude, c'mon! We're all headed to Florida tomorrow for the winter. You should come!"
"No, no. I couldn't. Y'all are bringing dates, I'd just be in the way."
"Don't be silly, of course you wouldn't! We WANT you to come."
"Nah, I'd just feel like a 17th wheel..."
"Maybe you'll meet someone new when we get down there."
"We're Canadian geese! There are rules....."
"Oh, yeah. Bummer about that...."

Sports Movies - Tin Cup

Tin Cup.

Why is Kevin Costner so damn effective in the role of likeable underdog? I can’t think of anyone who’s had more success playing this role.
(Doesn’t mean there aren’t a bunch of guys who’ve done it, just means I’m not thinking of one at the moment)

Maybe it’s his laconic delivery, or that half smile / smirk thing he does.

Anyhow, Tin Cup is movie about a great golfer whose accumulated life choices has resulted in him managing a driving range, and living in a Winnebago. He falls for a neurotic therapist, who happens to be dating his old golf rival. The rival, played by Don Johnson, is a successful PGA tour golfer, a bit smarmy, and very condescending toward Costner.

So of course, Costner gets his head together, qualifies for the PGA tour, and ends up competing against Johnson for both the girl, and for the honor of being tournament champion.

Does he win the tournament? Nope. He actually loses it in a spectacular fashion, by refusing to be un-true to himself and to the game of golf as he loves it. But he gets the girl, shows he can hang with the big dogs until the last hole of the tournament, and automatically qualifies for next season’s tour. And as Russo puts it, no one’s going to remember who won the tournament a week from now, but everyone’s going to remember Costner’s performance on the 18th hole……

So there’s the Rocky-like “redemption and winning while still losing” you expect from a good sports movie.


Great performances by Costner, and by Cheech Marin as his best friend and caddy. Renee Russo’s as dependably appealing as always. Johnson’s role is not huge, and does not ask him to stretch as an actor, so he also does fine.
Plot’s fairly linear, dialog’s realistic, and there’s lots to enjoy. Good primary and 2ndary conflicts, all resolved tidily.
Movie works ok on it's own merits, but at the same time benefits greatly from Costner's performance.

It’s like Happy Gilmore, but for grown ups.

Sports Movies - Mystery Alaska

Mystery Alaska

Unfortunately marketed with the tagline “The Rocky of Hockey”

Russell Crowe, Burt Reynolds and Hank Azaria star in a movie about a small Alaskan town’s local hockey team, a bunch of amazing hockey players who get together every week for a game of pond hockey. The team is comprised of guys chosen by the town council. They can bump you whenever they feel like it, and in this small town, the hockey team is ALL.

Russell Crowe plays the town Sheriff, and the guy who just got bumped from Saturday’s game, because it was time to “bring up the Weeks kid” (give a much younger guy his chance).
Reynolds plays the stick-up-the-ass town Judge, ex-hockey player, and father to one of the current hockey players.
Azaria is a town outcast (apparently can’t play hockey) who left town and became a writer for Sports Illustrated.

Long and at times convoluted story short – An article he writes about the town hockey team results in the NY Rangers coming to Alaska to play them in a game of hockey. Do they accept the challenge, and risk being humiliated and disillusioned, or do they refuse the challenge, and continue to live safely within their own illusion of greatness? Well, it would be a pretty damn short movie, if they didn’t accept the challenge, wouldn’t it?

Crowe gets his shot at redemption when the town council asks him back to the team, Reynolds redeems himself in the eyes of his son, Azaria gets a little redemption in the eyes of the town.
And there were some decent hockey scenes.
Does it matter who wins the game?
Of course not.

Redemption, baby!!!!

With a fair amount of laughs, and some realistically human subplots.

Sports Movies - The Replacements

Good sports movies have simple plots, too.
They’re aimed at simple creatures.
Namely – me.

This movie stars Keanu Reeves and Gene Hackman.
Basic plot: NFL goes on strike, team owners hire scabs to cross the picket line and play ball.
That’s the broadstroke.

The guys that are hired of course make the movie.
Reeves is a once-fantastic college quarterback who crashed and burned spectactularly in a bowl game, and is scraping barnacles off of boats for a living. his team includes:
A deaf wide receiver, A violent cop, a couple of criminals, a Scottish soccer player, and twin brothers who are professional bodyguards.
And Gene Hackman’s their coach.
He does “coach” really well.
There’s mayhem, violence, and bonding scenes, including the obligatory bar brawl.
There’s a great antagonist, namely the overpaid, lazy, fan-shunning striking quarterback.
Of course you hate him. He’s an overpaid, lazy, fan-shunning money grubber.
The cheerleaders are scabs, too.
Their day job? Strippers.
Oh, and there’s some good football.

“Pain Heals, Chicks dig scars, glory lasts forever.”

Words to live by. I get a little choked up, every time I think about it.

Does it matter if they win their final game or not with mere seconds left on the clock?
Not really. They’ve already redeemed themselves in their own eyes; the eyes of their coach and each other; and the eyes of everyone watching the games from….everywhere.
And the hero gets the girl. Of course.

When you can’t think of something original to write about……. Review something.

I’d been thinking about sports movies this morning, which is odd, cuz I’m not a huge sports or sports movie guy. While sitting through an 80 minute pep rally at work, I started writing out a list of my favorite sports movies.
Note I said “My favorite” not “The best” or “most critically acclaimed”.

Keep in mind, my tastes are pretty pedestrian.

A good sports movie isn’t actually about sports. I like to opine that a sports movie that truly works, from a viewer standpoint, is actually about…. Redemption.

Was Rocky actually about boxing?
God no.
(And if you watch boxing, you’ll realize that the fight scenes in Rocky are possibly the worst part of the movie..)

I rest my case, by the way.

And remember, Rocky didn’t win the fight at the end of the movie. He lost, but still won. He REDEEMED himself, proving he wasn’t a loser to himself, his girl, and the world.


I expect that the “Rocky-ing” of various sports in movie form pre-dated Rocky, but I’m not a thorough enough student of the history of popular film to speak on movies that pre-date…me.

So my list only goes back 30 years or so.
I'll review one per entry, and probably get bored with this by the time I'm done with the 2nd review

Life lesson, a lesson about life, if you will

So, I've been developing a life philosophy.
You know. In my spare time.

Not sure philosophy is the right word to describe it, but I've got none better for the job, so....

Over 40+ years of life, I've honed, refined, whittled away until I ended up with this simple statement.

"Be kind to one another"?
"Use Sunscreen"?
"Stop and smell the roses"?

Good guesses, all, and all of them incorrect.
(I prefer the smell of lilacs, by the way)

Here it is.

your average day starts to go downhill, the moment you put on pants.

Take a moment, re-read it if you need to. I can wait.

You wake up in the morning. You're in bed.
You're.....happy there. It's a happy place.
You get up, shuffle around for a little while.
There's coffee; some scratching; a stop off at the bathroom, maybe a nice shower.

Things are going well for you. And you've not yet committed to screwing this up for yourself.

Another cookie, perhaps, to dunk in your coffee?
Why yes, thank you, that would be lovely.

But at some point, it becomes decision time. Make or break, do or die.
"Am I going to put these pants on, and venture forth into my daily grind?"

Choosing "Pants" means leaving your house.

There's risk, all the sudden.
Traffic
co-workers
bullies
peer pressure
stress
germs
failure
bad lighting
etc, etc, etc

By putting those pants on, you're opening yourself up to the possibility of danger, disappointment, and peril.
Maybe your day will be ok.
You don't know.
But you DO know you're day's going pretty darn well so far....

My daughter's two years old, and she's already starting to get it.
She'll walk into our bedroom in the morning, where she'll notice my clothes laid out on the bed.
"Daddy's pants?"
yep.
"Daddy goes to work?"
yeah..........

No wonder she's so adamant about her "naked" (no pants) time in the morning.
Fight it for as long as you can, darlin'.

House On The Rock

Spent this past weekend in W. Wisconsin.

Decided 6-7 weeks ago to go to House On The Rock, in Spring Green, WI, this past weekend.
We've not done any traveling at all this year, save for annual jaunt down to my mother-in-law's house.

Hell, we barely went anywhere last year either.
3 days in N. MI sharing a condo with family, and a couple of nights in a bad motel in Holland, MI on the way home was the extent of it.

So was crazy-excited about taking this little weekend trip, even though we couldn't easily afford it.
6-7 weeks ago, we had no way of knowing that it would be freezing cold, or that snow (SNOW!!!!) was forecasted.
It did indeed snow on us a bit, as we drove toward Madison on Saturday.
And it never got above 43-44 degrees all weekend.
And none of this mattered at all, having no impact on our good time.

The House on The Rock, for those of you who've never heard of it, is a crazily-built home on the side of a cliff, in the middle of nowhere, WI.

Legend has it that the architect built it there, after being insulted by Frank Lloyd Wright, who had property and several (Beautiful) buildings just a couple minutes north of there.

I had never heard of it either, until it was referenced in what has become my favorite novel. In AMERICAN GODS, Neil Gaiman describes the House on The Rock as a place of power, one of the bigger ones. He explains that there are places that people find themselves attracted to, without knowing why, places where people will build a house on land they don't own, or create some random attraction that folks will flock to with great satisfaction and an underlying feeling of distaste.
And so was my introduction to The House on The Rock.
Imagine my surprise when I found out it was not a work of fiction. This piqued my wife and my interest, and when the time came to pick a getaway destination, we decided to go for it.

The original house is dark, and overly-ornate and strangely beautiful. It has no windows to the outside, save for occasional stained glass. A big waste of the panoramic view. After it became an attraction, the Infinity Room was added. It's a long, narrow walkway sticking out of the side of the house, several stories above ground. Walls are comprised solely of glass window panes. The view's amazing.

Also after it became an attraction, large warehouses were built, and the owner started collecting /creating a crazy array of.... stuff. Artifacts, forgotten amusements.... stuff.
Wonderful stuff.

You walk through a block of old storefronts, along a cobblestone street. go down a short hall, and enter a huge room where an almost life-size whale is battling with a gi-normous squid.
While an automatronic undersea band plays Octopus' Garden in the corner.
Because - why the hell not?

Feel free to wind a story or two up along the walkway that circles the outside of the room, looking at beautifully detailed model ships and other nauticaul items as the two legendary sea creatures do silent battle behind you.

Continue on, past the small room full of santa's, and you eventually enter a string of music rooms, each one containing a large and ornate coin-operated symphony. drop in a token, watch the Blue Danube Waltz being played on 60+ instruments. Go to next room, get another symphony.

Make your way out of there, and into a huge dark room that houses the world's largest merry go 'round. You find yourself standing in the dark, in awe of what you see before you, and wishing you could go back to stare at it some more, within moments of leaving it.

You simply cannot walk through the various sections of this place, and not experience a sense of wonder, unless you lost something, something important, as you left childhood behind.

Outside of the HOTR, that area of WI is pretty, but not a ton of stuff to do, though the various small communities will try to convince you otherwise.

Mineral Point is the cream of the crop, with cool looking little stores, and a # of fantastic and unique places to get a good meal. And after two days of dive-bar frozen pizza, and bad free continental breakfast at the hotel, you're SO ready for a good meal.

We had a great meal at a place called Cafe Four, after driving there to eat at the Brewery Creek BrewPub, and finding it closed on Sunday for dinner.

(a recurring theme for our weekend, driving to do something, and scrambling for a plan B when we got there)

The restaurant had a light, open dining area, a wood fired pizza oven, and a menu full of dishes made with as much locally grown items as possible. Body, meet vegetables.
Vegetables, meet my body.
Please be gentle.
Delish!

There's a gorgeous old hotel for sale, on the edge of town by these two restaurants. It was built in the mid 19th century, and looks like it would be fantastic on the inside. We found ourselves staring at it, before and after our dinner, and idly daydreaming...

Gov. Dodge State Park is also worthy of your time, if weather's agreeable. lots of beautiful trails, campgrounds and lakes, with woods and rock out-croppings and some of the biggest hawks you'll ever see, as back drop. Fall colors were just starting to really kick in as well.
nice.

The House On The Rock Inn was sufficient for us, and had a great pool area for little kids. A big submarine with fountains and waterslides coming out of it, set in 1 foot of water.
My daughter thought it was swell.
The hotel's about 10-15 years old, and probably hasn't replaced beds or carpeting since they opened. Our room actually had old cigarette burns in the carpet. But it also had a great view of the fall countryside.

Everything was spotlessly clean, and the desk folk were crazy-helpful. The free continental breakfast is almost, but not quite worth the price... If you like good coffee, you'll die just a little bit, drinking the coffee at their continental breakfast...

Overall- well worth the 3.5 hour drive and the reasonable expense. Might not go back to HOTR again for a couple years, as we've seen it now, but will probably camp at the state park when my daughter's old enough...


Caveats - Don't depend on locals for good directions to anyplace that isn't RIGHT THERE (It's the first road trip I've ever taken where I really wish I had a gps in the car),
and do NOT buy pizza from Dino's, in Dodgeville.

oddities in the heartland

The Indiana Toll Road, for those of you who're not familiar with it, is a very handy, very boring stretch of interstate that you can access about 12 miles into IN from IL. If you drive east long enough, it turns into a very handy, even more boring OH turnpike, which eventually turns into the handy, slightly more interesting PA turnpike.

Noone ever makes it to PA however, as they've fallen asleep long before they even get to Cleveland, and by the time they wake up, they don't remember why they were on the road in the first place; where they're actually supposed to be going; or even their own middle names.

As is the case with a thousand other miles of interstate in IL, IN and OH, you look forward to spotting the occasional bird of prey to break up the monotony a bit.

I mention this because:

1. I can.
2. I had occasion to drive a goodly part of the IN toll road this past sunday.

My mom lives in a small town in MI, right by the toll road, and because of this, I've spent quite a few hours driving to and fro along this stretch of highway.

You get excited, after awhile, a bout the prospect of stopping at one of the plazas that appear along side the road, as if by magic, every 45 minutes or so. There's people, and noise, and a bathroom that's probably fairly clean, and coffee.....sweet, sweet coffee.

And apparently, if you time it just right, you can be witness to the oddest assortment of god's children, gathered together in one spot, ever.

As I entered the building, I noticed an amish woman and what appeared to be her three daughters, standing by the door, watching the parking lot. it didn't really register, as I hurried by on my way to the bathroom.

Where, to my surprise, the guy at the adjascent urinal engaged me in conversation.

I'm not keen on talking to complete strangers while going to the bathroom. Call me anti-social.

But hey, I'm in the middle of nowhere, IN (a redundancy, actually) and pretty bored...

Turns out he's a truck driver. Dedicated route, keeps fairly close to home, which is good, cuz he's in college.
Not the regular kind of college you might be thinking of. Nope. He's in divinity school, studying to be a minister.

He seemed like a nice guy, and I wished him well as I finished up and washed up, and got out of there before there would be any laying on of the hands.

Wandered back out into the central area, and saw... three guys dressed in traditional indian costume. Because....why not?
One of them was talking on a cell phone, and I heard a quick snatch of the conversation on the way by. Apparently, they were waiting for another group of indians to catch up with them.
I did a quick look around, and noted that there wasn't a cowboy in sight...

But I did notice the amish woman and her daughters.
"Hey" I thought to myself. "They don't drive. Buggies aren't allowed on the highway. What are they up to?"

Got a cup of coffee at the Starbuck's, which was blaring country music through it's soundsystem. I realized country music at a Starbucks wasn't even one of the three oddest things I'd experienced in the last 8 minutes, and moved on.

To the convenience store, where I grabbed a pack of gum, and got in line behind an older guy. He was probably in his early 60's, and he stepped up to the counter carrying a 1lb bag of beef jerkey. He and the woman working the register were obviously familiar with one another.

I stood there, gum in hand, while he told her all about how he was tired of driving a truck, and was ready for the end of the world to come. The lady at the register clucked in a vaguely supportive manner, and the old guy with crazy eyes ( I noted as he turned away from the counter and walked past me), shuffled out of the store, assumedly to go back to his semi to enjoy some jerky, while awaiting judgement day.

She looked at me, and we grinned conspiraorially at one another, two sane people in the company of the insane. I paid for my gum, she wished me a good day, and I walked out, past the indians, pst the amish women, away from this Fellini-esque version of the heartland, and to the relative safely of my own car.

"Wow" I said to my wife as I put the car into gear, and accelerated away from that place.
"Just...wow."

times change....

So, we have company staying with us for the next couple of days. And because they're both older, we are being good hosts, and have given up our bedroom to one of them.

Shortly after we moved in together, 16 years ago, Wendy and I bought a bed.
We still have it.
It's held up remarkably well, is still firm, etc, and is in our basement.

I CANNOT believe we ever slept in the freakin' thing.

It's only full size. every time one of turned over last night, the other knew it. Blanket not perfect, wanna give it a little tug.... the other person knew it.

We slept on this thing for five years before upgrading to a queen. During those five years, we had a pretty regular bed companion in Archie, our Springer Spaniel. On a # of occasions, we had additional canine guests as well. All in this postage stamp sized bed.

I marvel at this.

Is it just that we've gotten older? We're really not much bigger than we were then.
Or did we just get spoiled?

Troy, OH

Found this in an archived email the other day. It's from 4/08. I'm editing the original as I enter it, as there are parts that applied only to that trip, and are not pertinent, like my daughter's inability to sleep when traveling a year + ago; info about funerals, etc.

Read on.

Troy, OH.
You know where it is.
Everyone knows where it is.

You mean, you DON'T know where Troy, OH is?
Don't get out much, do you?

Troy's 15 miles north of Dayton, right on I-75.
It was a sleepy town when I was a kid. is not a bigger, slightly more caffeinated town. A Honda plant and the realization that you can live in a nice clean little community and still work in Dayton, has caused the growth.

It was a company town forever, the company being Hobart Bros. My grandfather worked there for 40+ years.
Troy has a big Strawberry Festival every spring.
Kids ride their bikes in the street; walk to school; get ice cream at the United Dairy; smoke cigarettes on a park bench on the levee; and grow up either counting the days until they can get out; or not thinking at all about leaving town, for any reason, ever.

I spent countless weekendes of my childhood in this place. Riding my grandpa's old ballon tire, pedal brake bike.
Bowling, playing cards...
Stopped going there with any kind of regularity when we were old enough to beg off the trips down. Weekend jobs and then college allowed for me to skip out on the mind-numbingly dull drives through IN and west central OH.

It was cool, driving around, trying to find the various places my grandparents lived, and goofy stuff like
"Wasn't there a bike trail along the levee, that started right....There!"
"Holy crap, where'd the farmland go?"
"Remember when we hit Aunt Missy's dog with the lawn dart?"
(It was an accident of course. We loved Babe, who was a teriffic black lab...)

And I got to do this with my brother and sis, which made it more fun.

Apparently, the town re-configured the strets aruond the (round) town square. Now, to get around downtown Troy, you have to traverse the square by yielding to traffic from the left, scooting into the circle, and then getting out where you need to.
This is not rocket science. Folks in the UK have been not crashing into each other at these interchanges since cars were invited, probably.
My mom could not wrap her head around this, and would lead us on ridiculous detours to avoid it. We stopped letting her drive shortly after we arrived.

I can only imagine the outrage and the letters to the editro that the decision to re-configure caused. I can clearly remember my grandmother complaining about the hoodlums that would drive around the square on weekend nights, playing their car radios too loud, 25+ years ago.

Apparently, the town square is nothing but trouble, no matter when you grow up there.

The weather was great, spring was in full bloom, and I got my haircut at 8am on a monday morning, at Walmart. All talk was on the earthquake that occurred a couple of days before my trip.

Strangers said good mornig to me, just because our paths crossed. Unless it was after noon. Then they said "good afternoon".
Mostly they said "What a beautiful baby!" which always works.

unless you don't have a baby, then it's just weird.

Troy's a nice town, with NICE people.

See, you DO know where Troy, OH is.
It exists under hundreds of different names, all over the USofA.

And as I rode to work on the El train upon returning, in a train car that smelled of urine and disinfectant, I thought about how nice it would be to live in a Troy, OH somewhere.

pepsi challenge for music

Was driving to work this morning, listening to Chris Whitley's Rocket House on cd.
I'm a big fan, and really didn't like this cd when it came out.

It was not easy. It was a marked change in direction for him. It didn't resonate.

But, 10+ years later, It's possibly my favorite Whitley disc.

Years ago, in my youth, Pepsi made a huge push to overtake Coke in market segment.
Toward this end, they created the Pepsi Challenge. They showed up everywhere, had people take a sip from two different cola's, and state their fave.
Pepsi won by a large margin.
Coke, in response, came out with New Coke, which tasted sweeter and more like Pepsi.
And.... it tanked.

See, what the pepsi challenge did was offer you a taste, and a taste of pepsi's not too bad.
But a whole bottle of it was simply too sweet for many people.
Coke Classic came out, the pepsi challenge disappeared, and life moved forward.

What does this have to do with Rocket House?

geezus, do I have to spell everything out for you?

It grew on me. first taste was not indicative of long term enjoyment. It wasn't yummy sweet, but became hugely satisfying over time.

I've had similar issues with a # of CD's from Carbon Leaf. I was insta-fan of the band when I heard them live, and of their CD, Echo Echo. So much so that when they released Indian Summer, I didn't enjoy the first taste very much. It, over time, has become my favorite of all their discs. Their new one, Nothing Rhyme's With Woman - same thing. And it's growing on me, rapidly.
Most of my favorite cd's are not ones that instantly resonated. They tend to be a bit different, a little more complex, a little harder to digest, initially.

The trick is to be patient with new flavors. Now if i can only get my 2 year old daughter to buy into this theory, she'll be eating eggs and vegetables in no time...

new spice girls, flip flop mayhem, and other El Train Fun

To make the lemon cake, first combine the dry ingred..... dammit.
I grabbed the wrong printout from the counter.
should have turned a light on.
hold a mo'.

Ok.

Being the un-hip, out of touch guy that I am, I had no idea what was going on downtown last friday evening, that resulted in so many extra folks iding the El train, carrying blankets, back packs, etc.

Yes, they were carrying etc.

I was listening to my mp3 player on the unusually crowded El train, when five young women got on together.
(young women = 16-20 years old. Not like I asked for ID....)

It was if the Spice Girls had reformed.

We had trampy spice; Sorority Spice; Sporty-in-a-vaguely-mannish Spice;and two girls in carefully beat up jeans and tight, long sleeve flannel shirts, who I can only label as "Retro K-mart imitgation Grunge Spice(s)". Or, maybe "Alternative Lifestyle Spice(s)" though they were thoroughly feminine otherwise.

Each one was so distinguishable from the others that it was cartoonish, and I cannot for a moment think that it was all just a coincidence of fashion choices.

At the same time, I wish the had REALLY committed, and decided to go full-on Village People, cuz that would have been cool.

Trampy Spice was sporting a tight, leopard skin mini-dress over tights, lots of cleavage, lots of loud jewelry and ridiculous heels; and she'd almost fall over every time the train would come into, and again when it would, a station. After three or four station stops, she decided that maybe she should hold on.

Somehow, she screwed that up, too, and a couple of stops latger decided that maybe if she sat down, it would be better...

As I sat there listening to Social Distortion, I watched them make fun of a little punkette who had already been on the train when they boarded. She was worthy of their scorn, apparently, because she had a couple of piercings in her lip, and had shaved off her eyebrows and drew on longer ones.
Really long ones.

Yep, the spice girls were quietly mocking someone ELSE'S sense of fashion, without irony. They had tgheir backs to her, and she wans't paying attention, so I hope she didn't realize what they were doing.
"I don't care what they think, I'm punk."
If you really didn't care, you wouldn't try so hard...
Been there, done that, fooled noone.

As much fun as all of this was, it was time to disembark the train for my 15 minute walk through downtown to my commuter train station. the platform, hallways, and escalators wree packed with humanity. One such example of this humanity was a large, older woman, dressed shabbily and pulling a very full grocery cart behind her. She made a slow, shuffling bee-line through the teeming masses, toward an elevator.

The rest of us were stopping, shifting, etc to try to get around her. the cart was full of plastic bags and boxes, and random scraps of detrius, so that the whole visual effect was that she was unbalanced and homeless.

As we all ducked and dodged to get around her, I accidently stepped on a flip flop, worn by the guy in front of me, another El train amateur. I was still listening to music, but saw him stumble slightly, and then turn around to glare at me.

"Don't glare at me! I'm not the dumb ass who thought flip flops were a good idea for the El train" I thought, but did not voice, as I slid his shoe toward him with my foot, apologizing as I kept walking toward the exit.

I heard the homeless woman address the guy, as I walked away.
"That's why I always carry a few extra pair with me."
I guess that explains the grocery cart....
I busted out laughing upon hearing her say this, as That's Entertainmnet by The Jam began playing in my ears.

As I turned the corner, further distancing myself from the crowd, I realized that for her to have said that, the guy mustg have discovered that his flip flop had broke.
The thought that I was responsible for this guy having to go barefoot through downtown Chicago for his big advenure in the big city made me feel kinda bad, for a moment.

Until I came out onto the street, and was reminded that I was a block or so from Macy's, a three story Old Navy, and various other places where poorly-thought-out footwear options were readily available. He was gonna be just fine....

Saturday, July 11th, driving through SW MI countryside....

“Cousin’s House!!!!”

We’re working on it, p-nut.

“Cousin’s house!!!!”

Pretty soon, darlin’.

“Cousin’s House!”

“How many more times do you think she’ll say that before we get there?”
“More than ten.”

“Aunt Colleen’s house!!!!”

Well, at least there's some variety.

"Aunt Colleen's House!!!"

Yep.

“Go see Cousins!!!”

Yep.

“Excited!!!!”

We could kinda tell.

Silence.

Then….

“Cousin’s House!!!!”

She’s crazy.
Like that’s a bad thing….

“Go swimming!!!!”

If you want to.

“See John!!!!”

Yep, he’ll be there.

“Cousin’s House!!!!”


And we thought she’d nap all the way to the cottage last weekend…
At least she was happy, and she was cracking us up.

When she was younger, long-ish car rides did not bring out her best qualities…

"Go home now!" at 3am the next morning.... not quite as funny.

Eight (8) more days 'til the 4th of July...

“Eight more days ‘til the 4th of july….Eight more days ‘til I burn my house down”
-Ike Reilly, from the “We belong to the Staggering Evening” CD.

Ike (one of the best rock songwriters around, and a great live show), is from the Chicago area, which makes perfect sense, from a fireworks standpoint...

Read on.

Received an email from our village today, highlighting everything that’s going on in the next week or so.
At the end, in small type, the email reminds everyone that it’s illegal to use fireworks in our village (the whole state, actually), and to please leave fireworks displays to the professionals.

Perhaps if everyone did that, I would not pray for rain, every night between now and July 5th.

Yep, it’s illegal to possess and use fireworks in IL, so there’s a lucrative cottage industry of retail firework warehouses, juuuuuust over the border in Indiana.


The fireworks started in my neighborhood, two nights ago. Not the non-stop “do we live in Baghdad?” explosions that we’ll undoubtedly be experiencing by July 1, but….it’s started. And it won’t stop, as police do not make efforts to enforce the illegal nature of the fireworks, nor the late night noise violations.

By July 1, it’ll be steady from 7pm until past 11pm. As we get closer to the fourth, more and more folks will join in with their illegal fireworks. By the night of July 4th, we’ll sit out on our front stoop around dusk, and watch not only the official fireworks display, but no fewer than a dozen other unofficial (illegal) displays of varying quality and duration.
While listening to even more…

On July 5th, I'll find exploded pieces of fireworks on my roof; dogs all over the village will come out from under the beds where they’ve been cowering for a week, and the huge amount of trash left behind on sidewalks, railroad tracks and in neighborhood parks will start to sink slowly into the earth.

Yep, I’m a bit of a curmudgeon about them. In my crowded residential neighborhood, they seem to be really dangerous and disruptive idea, and one more excuse for folks to not give a flying fig about their neighbors. Also, growing up, noone had these kinds of fireworks, and going to a real display somewhere away from residential neighborhoods, was a very big deal.

There was one time, however, as an adult, that I really saw the appeal and fun of playing with colorful explosives.

Halloween in Ireland is a very big deal. It’s a bank holiday there, akin to the 4th of July or Memorial day here.

I happened to be on vacation there, one Halloween a few years ago, or I never would have known this. We were staying with some acquaintances in a little village in N. Central Ireland, pretty close to the n/s border.
The acquaintance, Rory, was known for his Halloween gathering. He was also known for his professional grade fireworks display.

The village was atop a hill, he lived on a nice chunk of land partway down the hill, which afforded anyone who wanted to watch, a great view. It also meant that he would be lighting them off nowhere near anyone else’s house or property.
Fireworks of the caliber that Rory had, were very illegal in that part of Ireland. But every year he’d buy ‘em someplace vaguely shady, and light ‘em off on Halloween, with what appeared to be ½ the village as cheering audience.

And every year, there would be a handful of kids posted by his gate, whose job it was to run and alert him if the Gardia was arriving. So of course, when he asked me if I wanted to help him with the show, I said “Sure, sounds awesome!”

I didn’t even pause when he handed me a beer and a blowtorch. Hey, when in Ireland…

So, we’d spark the torch, light off a couple of these massive roman candle-type thingies, and then run away, laughing, before they went off, to avoid lighting ourselves on fire.

About mid-way through, as I’m standing in a dark field, in rural Ireland, holding a blowtorch, I briefly pondered such things as how many laws I might have been breaking; what would happen if the Gardia DID show up; and how it might negatively impact my efforts to make my flight home, scheduled for the following afternoon. After a moment of this, I saw Rory heading back toward the launching area for more, so I pushed these negative thoughts out of my head, and trotted after him, blow torch in hand.

California Causes Cancer

So, I was shopping for a couple of fishing lures last night, at a nearby chain sporting good store. I was looking for one specific lure, to replace one that finally broke recently.
I was doing this last night, because I intend to fish on fathers’ day morning, killing time on a small MI lake while waiting for everyone else in the house to wake up.

After not finding it, and coming close to giving up, I finally found my ¼ oz frog patterned Hula Popper.
Huzzah!
And while riding that high, I looked around a bit more, and found a weedless soft bodied frog popper by a different manufacturer.
Why not?

So it went into the cart as well.

As I’m waiting, and waiting, and waiting……. At the check out aisle, I turn the 2nd lure over, to read the "how to fish this lure" info on the back. Instead, I get a sticker, stating that materials used in the making of this lure have been found to cause cancer in the state of California… Knowing that it was largely much ado about nothing, I still decided not to buy it.

This is certainly not the first time I’ve seen such a warning placed on some item or another’s packaging. Whatever the material is, it’s in lots of stuff. The cord that feeds from my PC to my MP3 player causes cancer in California. So does the cord that connects my digital camera to the PC.

So downloading music and photos can cause cancer.
But only in California.

Oddly enough, nowhere have I read labels indicating that these items cause cancer, say, in Ohio.
Or…. New Hampshire, as another example.

I think the logical correlation is being overlooked here.

If a result only occurs in one place, when same activity takes place EVERYWHERE, it’s not the activity, or the soft bodied frog popper, or the patch cord that causes the singular bad result. It’s the PLACE.

Therefore: California causes cancer.

This will add a startling new wrinkle to the "come to California" ad campaigns I’ve seen on TV…..

All joking aside, I can’t help but wonder about the labeling. What prompted it in the first place (cancer, apparently); why no other state has stepped forward and said "Hey, us too."; why the potentially harmful substance, if indeed it truly is, has not been removed from the items, or had attention drawn to it on a national level…..

We don’t demand (As other countries do) that our food products be labeled if they contain genetically modified organisms, and it was recently determined that we won't need to know if the meat we're buying is from a cloned animal; but someone pushed hard enough, somewhere, to make sure that I knew the fishing lure in my hand may cause cancer in one state…..

Chicago Gaelic Park Irish Fest 2009

Attended my... 9th? maybe 10th Gaelic Park Irish fest this past weekend.
Found it soon after moving to the area, when we spotted a flier in a window of a store near our house.

four days, three stages of live music, beer tents, many varied food booths, a tent full of retailers, and free midway rides.
All this for a not-unreasonable price of $15 per person, per day.

My god, how can you go wrong with THAT?

Well, you can host such an event while spending as little money as possible.
You can stop paying for bands once they start to get popular.
You can, by and large, only book acts that are eager to play Chicago for the first time, or who don't have much in the way of travel expenses, IE - local bands.

You can rent or buy the cheapest possible folding chairs, and then just keep using 'em year after year until they all break and/or someone gets hurt....

Like I did, last year, while holding my (At the time) 9-month old daughter.

"Ah, but you've gone back year after year, whiner. you're not telling the whole story."

Ok.

Back in the day...

...the beer was sold in small-ish plastic pitchers. $5 would buy you your own, say, quart of miller lite. A couple of those, and you're diggin' on the midway rides, and in a more receptive mood in relation to whatever music was put in front of you.
"This is the best band ever!!!! Let's go ride the Matterhorn again!"

...You'd have friends, local and more that would come into town, childless like you, and you'd do what a couple thousand other people did over the holiday weekend. turn it into a big party.

...Every town, village, and municipality in the midwest did not host their own irish festival, thus making it easier for the decent bands to get gigs elsewhere...
Combo of beer and lack of competition introduced me to a couple of my very favority bands to see live, Great Big Sea and The Clumsy Lovers. Also afforded us opportunities to see the Young Dubliners, Black 47, The Elders, the Fenians, and various other good bands that know how to combine rock and roll and traditional celtic music.

So we'd brave one extreme weather situation after another, one year flooding, another year freezing cold, the next year scorching hot, and we'd go. And if some years I had to engage the 4WD in my jeep, just to get out of the parking lot at the end of the day, that was just a cool, mud flinging bonus.

Now.....
...We have a child.
...Friends aren't coming into town for the party anymore. Many of them have kids, too. or the single ones have gotten married, and don't see the need for these kind of adventures anymore.
We've grown up, apparently.
Dammit.
...Beer's still $5, but comes in a 12 oz cup.
...Quality of music's gone way down hill. We used to have to pick the best day out of 4 good ones, now we search for the one that sounds like it has more promise than the others.
"Pictures of the bands playing on Monday are not all of a bunch of old people.... a couple of 'em have websites...."


And one of their cheap-ass, as-old-as-I-am plastic folding chairs DID collapse while I was sitting on it, last year. And not just cuz I'm large, there were larger folks sitting everywhere.
And I WAS holding my infant at the time.
I opened my eyes to find myself looking at the ceiling of the tent, laying in wet gravel, still holding my daughter, who didn't seem too traumatized by the experience. The fact that I instinctively held on to her, and she was not lying in a mute heap 10 feet away, injured, made me feel really good about my parenting skills, and my dedication to her well-being. I knew I loved her, and would do anything to keep her safe, but there it was, actual proof.

MY dad was standing there, staring at me with a horrified look.
"You ok?" said my retired fire-fighter dad, in full-on firefighter rescue guy mode.
"I don't know yet" I said quietly, still holding my child aloft by her armpits. I indicated the baby. He took her.
She smiled at him.
I slowly stood up, and realized I had drawn a crowd.
Also realized that nothing was broken, and that I had kicked over the stroller as I went down, sending beers flying.
One of the bystanders pointed to where I landed, and said "you're lucky."
I looked to where he was pointing.
There, literally an inch from where my skull landed, sticking up out of the ground, was a large, steel, tent stake. If I had landed one inch from where I did, I would have been dead, or paralyzed, or lucky to get off with just a minor skull fracture.
I eventually stopped shaking, and walked around a little bit to get away from the well-meaning crowd, while my dad held his unharmed granddaughter, who was by this time clapping along with the music.
I replaced the beers I had kicked across the tent. I fielded the "holy sh*t are you ok, what happened?" questions from my wife, and moved on.

And we were back there again this year. It was 60 and rainy, a forecast far worse than predicted, and bad enough to cause our friends to cancel, turning their car around en route and going back to their house.
The potentially not-crappy bands were... pretty crappy. And my daughter had no interest in the music at all this year, nor in spending any time in the tents.
Maybe if the bands were decent.....

We spent the afternoon shuffling back and forth between the merry go round, the petting zoo which also offered pony rides, and the tent containing various irish breeds of dogs.
every so often, we'd try to spend some time listening to one of the boring bands, while waiting out a rain shower.
I drank a $5 beer in a plastic cup, quickly so as not to have it diluted too much by rain water.
We did NOT get our $15 per adult worth of fun, though my 21 month old thought the animals were swell. And it was pretty cool watching her march up to an Irish Wolfhound, one of the biggest dogs god made, and just give it a big hug. My god, she's fearless.

And we'll probably go next year, if we're around, law of diminishing returns be damned. We'll bundle up if forecast calls for it; wear shoes we won't miss; pack an umbrella AND sunscreen; and maybe, like this year, my daughter's enjoyment of all parts NOT related to irish music will almost be enough to make it worth our while, should the band line up suck, the weather not cooperate, and the friends cancel.

I read today where someone has compiled a list of 15 of the most recession-proof consumer products.

The punch lines associated with this list are, to be honest, so easy and so numerous that my brain locked up, like when too many people are trying to buy tix on-line at the same time.....

In no order, here's a sample from the list.

Mac and Cheese
Spam
Chocolate
Lipstick
Fishing gear
condoms
laxatives
stomach relief meds (Tums and such)
Guns
running shoes
Cheap Wine (further clarified to be "inexpensive wine" which successfully removes the image of MD 20/20 or Wild Irish Rose from my head, and replaces it with any bottle of wine that still needs a corkscrew, but can be purchased for under $8)

"SAMPLE" is my way of saying I don't remember all fifteen items.

Where to start.....Combine Mac and Cheese and Spam, and a bottle of inexpensive domestic wine.... What color goes with Spam and Mac & Cheese, Red or White? I'd guess a white, but good luck finding one that heralds how well it complements....spam.

You'll need the tums for later, when you wake up in the middle of the night with your upper abdomen on fire.
Which is too bad, cuz you and your mate became amorous after drinking the inexpensive wine, and had 15 minutes of carnal bliss, while still being sober enough to take necessary precautions.

You then drift off to a contented sleep, not expecting to be awoken by indigestion three hours later.

By the way, if you eat enough spam...you won't need laxatives. Please consult a physician before attempting this cure.

If more people owned guns, fewer people would need to buy high end running shoes to motivate themselves to run.
Sadly, article did not highlight a exponential growth in shooting lessons, target practice, etc.

The list, without comment, is pretty humorous, and most of the punchlines were funnier in my head, so I'll dispense with the humour now.

Had someone tell me the other day that make up in general, is recession proof, that women will continue to spend the $$$ on make up, lipstick, nail polish, hair care products, regardless of how tight money becomes. Kinda makes women sound a bit shallow, and the person who told me this is herself a woman.
I'm not sure I agree with her. At the very least, many women will downgrade as money tightens. Bye bye, high end dept. store cosmetic counter, hello CVS.

Fishing gear - nearest and dearest to my heart. Article said that not only is sale of fishing gear and tackle on the rise, but fishing trips are on the rise as well.

Fishing has always been a cheap way to really relax. If more people realize this, and more folks also realize it's a cheap, fun morning out for the whole family and a way to spend QT with their kids, there's no downside. And you can even pick up dinner while you're out if you're lucky, or not finicky about what you eat.
So props to all the new fishermen, as long as they don't all decide to fish where I fish, and as long as they all pick up after themselves.
Which, by the way, will never happen.

So expect a similar increase in the # of empty worm containers, beer bottles and crushed cigarette packs, coming to a river bank near you. We call the "keep-what-ever-we-catch-regardless-of-legality-don't-own-a-fishing-license-screw-picking-up-after-ourselves" folks bucketheads.
Guys who really enjoy fishing for the sake of fishing, guys who "Get it" hate the bucketheads, and....you should, too.

Finally, from a red-blooded american guy standpoint, I'm a big fan of the combo of chocolate, wine and lipstick. It just smacks of potential and promise.

Mississippi Gulf Coast - part 1 - 3.75 years after Katrina

Sitting in my M.I.L's office looking out at the Gulf.
I remarked three years ago that her view had improved, thanks to Katrina.

It's not changed much in three years.

For those that didn't know, her home was one of thousands completely leveled by the storm surge caused by the high winds of Katrina. All that was left were the wood floors and the in-ground pool. The pool was how they figured out where her house used to be.

You see footage of volcano-caused tidal waves hitting an unsuspecting third world country, on various cable channels? That's pretty much what happened here, in the good ol' USofA.

However, levies broke, flooding a portion of a larger city 85 minutes to the west, and most folks didn't hear much about the MS coast, in comparison.

We went berry picking this evening, as wild blackberries are at their peak right now.
We got a couple of big bowls, went out the front door, and..... walked to the lot next door.
We've seen folks stopping behind the house, up the street, etc, off and on all day, and finally figured out what they were doing.

Y' see, there have only been three houses rebuilt on the block in the 3.75 years since Katrina leveled everything. Nature has a way of reclaiming it's turf, if left alone to do so.

Past trips (post-katrina) have given us a riot of birds of prey, living in the neighborhood, and non-domesticated animal tracks in the sand on the beach nearby.

I'm a fan of nature, so got a kick out of this, while still being saddened by the fact that the area's been so incredibly slow to re-build.

But, dammit, you're supposed to go pick wild berries....in the wild. Not where your neighbor's house used to be.
A couple doors down on the other side of the street, there are 8-10 young fir trees scattered in a loose circle around the foundation of a house. A couple more years, you're going to have a small grove going. There are wild flowers everywhere.

And it's quiet. Really quiet.
Still.

I'm within view of the beach highway, it's not supposed to be this quiet.

Blah, blah. You get the picture.

Went to mass at the roller rink this morning. My church was on the beach, and met the same fate as so many other structures. God's house fared no better than my mother in law's.
Or, ironically, the priests' house, (they live next door, and were the 2nd house to rebuild on the block).

So they worked out a deal with the local knights of columbus, and an out of business roller rink was purchased (my MIL brokered the deal) and converted into a church and class rooms.
Lots of the conversion work was done gratis, by the Sea Bee's. I was down here when it all started, and was amazed by the way that everyone who could, just plain stepped up.

I still think that the removal of the disco ball was short sighted, as it really could have added a certain something to the catholic mass.

My vacation is just starting, there are many more days, and hopefully there will be more to write about.

N .O. part III

You want ME to play washboard for the next song, Oh random cajun band at unknown bar?
I'm so there.

And I rocked it, thanks much.

home safely from my night in the quarter.

Thanks to Zazoo's for 3 for 1 Dos Equis.
which turned into 6 for 2 by the time we left.
one of them ended up on my shirt.
thanks to my boss for that.

Thanks to work for a lovely meal before hand.

Thanks to Daisy Dukes for being open 24 hours for cheap breakfast, and for being right next door to the hotel. Darn convenient, when your travel companion demands food before going to sleep, and waited to do so until you were blocks away from where all restaurants are.

Good night, serbian test tube shot vendor - remember my advice, and get a new job back in Myrtle Beach before summer arrives in N.O.
Be happy in your endeavors.

Good night barbie and kimmie, hometown girls who pretended to be with my boss and I long enough to shrug off some skeezie guys. Be careful out there.
Good night, Steve, MSU alumni and Fed. great hanging with you. I can't wait to get home, but props to you for waitinng 'til sunday to go home, so you can watch the MSU game down here.

Hope you and your brother did well for yourselves. Hope your presentation goes well in....7 hours. You were hilarious.

Good night moon, good night mush, good night old lady whispering "hush".

New Orleans Part II

a woman came up to us and asked to sit at our table, first thing this morning.
Before even introducing herself, she told us that she had met up with friends last night, and next thing she knew, she woke up to find herself still in last night clothes, with all the lights on.
And was relieved to find her purse and credit cards.

I would have settled for a "Good morning, I'm ______"

Found out the conference is moving to L.A. next year. won't be as crazy, that's for sure.
And I doubt there will be gumbo.

Hoping to go out sans vendor tonite, and enjoy the quarter with the knowledge that we don't have to be up early tomorrow.

Cafe Du Monde for coffee, maybe a spot of shopping, and then a cab to the airport shortly after noon.
nice.

New Orleans, LA, 3/31 - 4/3 part one

part one he says, assuming there will be a part two. Pretty optimistic for a guy who's been catching up on work, and studying, and attending a conference, all at the same time.

In the very neighborhood, in the very city, that is LEAST designed for that kind of nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic.

I've a vendor who's attending this conference as well. He's a very nice guy, one with whom, as it turns out, has familial roots in the same sad city in OH that I do. A huge "No shit?!?!?" moment we shared over dinner.
He latched on to my boss and I this morning, and then wanted to buy us lunch. Only we picked possibly the only restaurant in N.O. that's cash only. So he had to borrow money from us to pay for our lunch.
He paid us back when we met him in the lobby to go out to dinner.

Crescent City BrewHouse. limited menu, but you can't choose wrong, cuz everything on there is good. Five kinds of beer, brewed right on the premises, and a location right across the street from the old Jax beer building, and the riverwalk. Fantastic seared Tuna salad and a bowl of gumbo. I was a happy man.

Weather was too nice, after dinner, to NOT take advantage of, three guys from the north like we are. So I played tour guide a bit, we walked off dinner, and our new friend started joking about getting thirsty, about the time we wandered past Bourbon street.

to back track a few hours, after meeting him for the first time, he mentioned his church in the second sentence of our acquaintance. Grammatically, the previous sentence is probably a mess, but I assume it conveys what it needs to.
"Oh, geez, another person I know from small town central PA, who's a little too into their church for my comfort zone."

So, after three tall beers at dinner, and a stroll around the quarter, he comes upon groups of revelers on Bourbon street, and starts making the comments.
Drunk-ish guy sees women type comments.
Seemed kinda stereotypical, really. Religious wholesome guy, turning lecherous after a couple of beers....

There are a lot of gent. clubs on Bourbon street, and each of them had a couple of the dancers hanging out in the doorways of the clubs, while guys stand in the middle of the street handing out discount admission tickets, drink coupons, etc.
Last trip down, one of them told me that if I came into his club, it would change my life.
I was.... dubious.

Anyhow, my boss and I kept walking( been there, done that) as these guys came up to us with their coupons and their vague promises of... I'm not sure what exactly.

Our new friend kept stopping, pointing to the young women in the doorways, making vaguely inappropriate comments.
Finally, he turned to us and said:

"You guys have amazing willpower!"

Not really. We just didn't want to be his excuse to misbehave; and didn't want to spend our limited funds on frustrating ourselves. Perhaps it was 'cuz we were still sober...

We kept walking right back to the hotel lobby, even though another beer and a bathroom sounded pretty good.
"so, you guys calling it a night?" our friend asked us.
as we were standing in the hotel lobby, after passing every excuse to NOT call it a night that you can imagine.
"Uh, yup."
We say our goodbyes, and get on an elevator.
"He's gonna be miserable tomorrow." we laugh to one another, with a certain air of superiority.

Where not to buy chinese food, follow up to my previous post, and thoughts about Archie

Ordered take out Chinese food in Sturgis, MI yesterday.

"why in the hell....?" you start to ask

Mom lives there, she's recuperating from surgery, so we drove over for the afternoon yesterday to help her out a bit.

As I'm eating my pale-yellow chicken fried rice, and realizing that they prepared it with the aid of a bag of frozen peas and carrots, I have to stress - don't get take out chinese food in Sturgis, MI.

Seriously, a bag of frozen veggies? Who does that?

I guess I should feel lucky there weren't any lima beans.

Fried Rice should be brown, if you were not aware.
And, you know.... fried.
My wife's Kung Pao shrimp, by the way - a festive shade of pink.

There were over 60 arrests at the South Side irish parade last weekend. Including the breaking up of a riot at a park near the parade grounds.
(see my previous post)
The riot that prompted my call to 911.
Seems they only sent two officers to the scene, to restore order. The first one passed us as we left the area. He was about sixty.
If I were him, upon getting out of my car and seeing what he was up against, I would have just drawn my weapon and shot the nearest rioter in the leg.
How better to get everyone's attention, and to let them know you're not messing around?
I'm just kidding, of course.
maybe.

There are petitions being circulated to rescind the parade permit for next year, due to the over-abundance of intoxicated minors. Folks from the neighborhoods along the route are concerned that it's no longer a family-friendly event.
Um..... Duh?

It's rumoured that majority of the guilty parties were part of tour bus groups that came in from other areas for the parade.
Not sure if this is legit, or if it's simply easier to believe this than to believe that these were all kids from the neighborhood.
"Hey, I think that's my babysitter over there, squatting a couple of yards away from all those little kids..."

I won't cry if the permit's rescinded for a couple years. I'd like to be able to take my kid and her friends to the parade, without fear of fights and exposing them to people who are...exposing themselves.
If it takes a couple years off to get this sorted out - so be it.

Had to put my dog to sleep last friday. It was about as fun as it sounds, maybe less so.

We brought Archie home almost exactly fourteen years ago.

He was a bright, fun and faithful companion.
His desire to be close to us was touching, and cost us more than a few bucks in replacement window screens, door trims and other things over the years.
He was great to camp with, and always came back to us when hiking, eventually.
He was a joy to watch in the water, was crazy-good with a frisbee, and loved us unconditionally.

We thought we were going to lose him 5 or so years ago, when he hurt his back so bad he could barely walk, but we got him past that. I keep finding myself checking to make sure I'm not going to step on him as I get out of bed in the morning. Almost told him to be a good boy yesterday, when we were leaving the house, before catching myself.

We hope that he's happy wherever he's at now, and that there are many lakes, lots of mud, and many, many frisbees.

We're the southside irish, let's get p*ssed!

Today's the annual South Side Irish parade.
The one day a year when parents don't seem to care where their kids are, public intoxication is not punishable, and I'll witness some high school kid relieving himself in the alley behind my house at some point.

Need to admit it up front - I'm old.
I'm old, I have a toddler, and I did not grow up here.

So I'm probably not the right person to ask about the parade. Those who've grown up with it, will tell you how much fun it is. The pre-parties, the kids all having a good time, etc.

I just know that it's hundreds of thousands of people, majority of whom are drunk by 11am on a sunday, milling about, getting drunker, in tight confined places.

If I was 19 again, and didn't have to see my parents at some point in the day, I'd look forward to the parade, for months on end.

But we go every couple of years, living within walking distance of the parade route. This year the weather was great, and my daughter's old enough to appreciate the fire trucks and marching bands and such, so we were looking forward to it.

And when we finally waded through the beer scented mass of humanity, met up with some folks we knew, and staked out our tiny little piece of sidewalk, it was fun for a bit. Then it was time to go. everyone stopped to let us through, everyone on the sidewalk were nice, being physically AT the actual parade was fun.

We cut down an alley, to avoid the largest part of the crowd, past rows of minors, relieving themselves. Then down another alley, where we watched one high school girl stumble up to another, and exuberantly greet her with " You f*cking whore!" as she gave her friend a hug.

Out of the alley, down the street 1/2 a block to the big park. Fiona was excited about the park.
There's a great playground at the north end of this pleasant, one square block large park.
We made our way across the playing fields to the playground, ignored the casualties passed out on the grass nearby as their friends continued to party, and were really enjoying ourselves, probably for a half hour or so, until the screaming started.

We looked up, and one large older guy, mid-20's probably, was screaming at 3 highschool age guys, who wanted nothing more but to get back to their friends, the large group that had set up shop near the playground.
Apparently, from what I could discern from the yelling, one of them said something snide as they passed this guy, and his friends, one of whom had dropped her pants and was squatting by a tree. nice.
"keep stepping motherf*ckers" this guy was yelling.
"better yet, start running!"
"we'll keep stepping" one of the younger guys said back.
"but we're not running."

They made it back to their friends, probably 2 dozen kids in all, at least 12 of which were guys.
a minute later, the violent guy started toward the crowd of high school kids, with two other guys in tow. We were already getting ready to leave, thankfully.
"It's going bad fast" I tell my wife, who had already started to put the baby in the stroller.
"we'll put her in in a minute. we gotta go right now."

We walk away, and I'm on the phone to the police, as I walk backwards, watching the fight start.
I'm surprised that other parents continue to sit and watch their kids play on the playground, while things are going south behind them. All the sudden, they all start herding their kids, picking them up, calling them away from the playground, leaving.
I see a body fly out from the crowd, and know that the fight had officially started.

Police cars pass us as we approach the end of the block. half of Chicago's police force is within a mile of the park today, so not surprised by the quick response.

My daughter's oblivious of course, happily munching pretzels as we put as much space between us and the park as possible.
We pass many house parties on the way home, everyone's having a great time. We see no fewer than 4 young guys p-ing in alleys in the 7 block walk back to our house.
We're very glad to be home. And oddly enough, look at the parade as a good day, overall.
Great weather, Fiona enjoyed herself, got some quality playground time in on the way home, until things went bad.

I expect we'll continue to take Fiona to this parade as long as we remain here. She'll be old enough to ask to go, by next year.
She'll be mad, 13 years from now, when we tell her she's not allowed to go to the parade all day without adult supervision. I expect it won't be the first time she'll be upset with us.

Public transportation is hazardous to my health - Part 2

As it was not a terrible evening, weather-wise, I got off at the early stop yesterday afternoon, for the big walk to my train station.
Let me sidetrack a bit, before I get too far into the story.

Folks who ride the el trains regularly will likely tell you that they're so used to the mildly crazy, the homeless, the psychologically or pharmaceutically impaired, that they don't really pay attention anymore. Garden variety crazy doesn't even really rate notice. So when someone DOES catch your attention, it's cuz something's seriously off about them....

So when I stepped off the el train yesterday afternoon, and was immediately drawn toward such a person, I knew he was.... special.

I noticed him right away. Walking back and forth, looking around, stopping, changing direction, etc. He was wearing a parka and a ski hat, and thick black rimmed sunglasses with yellow lenses. Bono sunglasses, if you will. He also hadn't shaved in 3-4 days.
And he was carrying a longish cloth bag with a large lump in the bottom of it, obviously heavy.
First thought was that he was simply lost, took the wrong stairs to the wrong platform, didn't know which train to get on - something like that. Quickly realized it was something more.

He ran past me while taking the escalator to the next level. Then paused, looked around, did the back and forth, waited by the elevators for a second...
Then followed me through the turnstiles, and out into the government building that's attached to the El train stop.
The Thompson Center is gorgeous. Basically a big, tall, round building, all of glass. you can stand in the center of the basement, and look straight up a couple dozen stories, and it's dazzling. If you recall seeing the movie Running Scared with Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines, the climax was filmed there....

So it's in the direction I need to go, and it's visually appealing, which is why I head out that way.
And I'm usually the only one doing so, as everyone else is headed somewhere else, and the building's businesses have shut down by 5:45.

So it was me and the strange man alone in the basement of the Thompson Center, save for a small cleaning crew at the other end of the building. He passes me, then stops at the bottom of the escalator, and acts like he's nervous about stepping onto it. He allows me to go first, then immediately hops on behind me. I move quickly up the escalator, he follows. I get outside, he's right behind me. I start walking west toward my street, and looking for a hole in the traffic so I can cross. He's still behind me. I stop and turn around to face him, when he's about 10 feet away from me. He turns around and starts walking the other way, and I cross the street in front of traffic. When I turn around to see if he's still there, he's standing by a trash can, looking around. He then very carefully places his bag into the trash can, and proceeds to walk away in the opposite direction, fairly quickly.

This is so very NOT right....
I call 911, give them the rundown of his appearance and behaviour. They want great detail on his clothes, etc, I want to get to the part of the story where he places a suspicious bag in a trash can out in front of a government building....

Finally finish the call, and haul *ss away from there, to catch my train, and to put distance between myself and him, and the mysterious bag in the trash can.
I look over my shoulder all the way to my train station...

The Thompson Center was still standing this morning, so I guess everything turned out ok.

Public transportation is hazardous to my health - Part One

public transportation is harmful to my health. Part one

Mentioned in a previous post that I like to walk 15 minutes out my way when it's nice out, and utilise an El train stop much further way from my train station than others.

Last week, I did just this. Waited for my brother in law to arrive at the train station (cathes the train after mine) and then we walk the 10-15 minutes to his office, which is across the street from an el train stop.

Got on the el train, sat down, and immediately realized that there was a lot of stank in the car. Looked around, saw too v. possible sources for the stank, and got back up and walked back to the train door.
The plan was to get off at the next stop, walk 20 steps to the next closest car, and get back on.

A good plan, one I've utilised on countless occasions.
Except this time, I was the only one getting off the train, and noone was on the platform to get on.
So the doors started shutting far quicker than normal.
So that I had to break into a run to make the next train car door.
And it shut as I got to it. So, like you do with an elevator, I stuck my hand in to stop the doors from sliding shut, so I could get on.
Except they didn't stop.
They shut on my arm.
I holler loudly, trying to get the driver's attention, or at least someone on the car. They looked up at me, did nothing to help, and looked back down.
As I was trying to pull my arm out of the train door before the train took off.

I managed to do this just as the train started moving. However, the strap from my laptop bag was still stuck in the door. Which means my work laptop was still stuck in the door.
Unacceptable.
I could care less about the laptop, but knew that my "sorry, the el train ate my laptop" story would not go well for me at work.
So I started tugging on the strap, as I walked along the slowly moving train.
And continued to pull on it, as I began trotting alongside the train as it gained speed.
And finally got it out, as I was running along side the now fast moving train.
"mother f*ck!!!" echoed the length of the empty el train platform.
I walked over to a bench, and sat down, working on bringing my heart rate and breathing back under control.

Turns out I had plenty of time to work on this, as the next train was very late.
Of course.
So, to recap - almost died trying to escape El train stank, then almost lost my work laptop, and ended up late for work.

Whoo hoo!!!!!!

a fool in the rain

You know it's been winter for far too long, when you get excited because it's 40 degrees outside.

But excited I've been, embracing the 50 degree day on Wednesday, and the rainy 40 degree day yesterday, to the extent that I get off the el train several stops early, just so I can take a 15 minute walk through downtown Chicago, to my commuter train station.

Yes. I said "40 and raining! whoo hoo! I'm walkin!"
cuz, to reference led zepplin, i'm a just a fool in the rain....

Anyhow, part of the fun of the walk is to watch all the other folks around you. heading to dinner, to shows, leaving work late, flagging taxis....
It's high entertainment, the moment to moment hum of a big city. I've been doing this for years, and never tire of it.

Something was a bit off yesterday. Noticed it for the first time as a couple walked toward me. He was a few inches taller than her, and was moving at a good clip. She was literally trotting to keep up with him, while smiling and talking to him. They were obviously a couple, yet he's oblivious to the fact that he's making her run, just so she can walk next to him.

a block later, while waiting for my turn to cross a busy intersection, an older couple walks past me. He's got a small cheap umbrella out, and he's holding it directly over his own head. His wife's struggling to keep up, while walking sideways and leaning in, so that aprox. ½ of her head is under the edge of his umbrella. You could easily see how wet the rest of her was, which tells me they'd been walking like this for a bit.

Dudes. Where's the love?

toys

I've been Simpson's fan since it began airing 20 years ago.
The annual Tree House of Horrors episodes around Halloween have always been some of my favorites.

One of the best was an episode titled "Clown Without Pity".
(Yeah, I DID have to look the title up.)

In it, Homer runs out at the last minute to buy Bart a birthday present, ends up getting him a "cursed" Talking Krusty the Clown doll.

Which ends up going all "Chucky" and chases Homer around the house with a butcher knife.
This goes on until a repairmen flips the evil Krusty over, and realized it had been set to the "evil" function, flipped the switch over to "Good" and they lived happily ever after.

Why'm I mentioning this?
Cuz it's my blog, and I can do whatever I want.

Oh, wait. That's not the reason.
Here's the reason.

I have a kid now. She has many battery-operated toys. They all make a variety of sounds.
And.... they make these sounds unprompted, at random intervals, and it's damn creepy.

Was talking to my wife on the phone yesterday. She was sitting in the rocking chair in the baby's room, feeding our daughter.
All the sudden, I heard a noise in the background.

"what the ???" my wife says.
Seems the LeapFrog alphabet caterpillar was making noises all the sudden, from inside the closet. The closet door was shut, but I could still hear it.
It kept repeating the letter "T".

"something probably shifted in there, fell on it, so the "T" leg is pushed down." I opined.

The baby finished feeding, and my wife walked over the closet door, and opened it.

Nothing was on or even near the toy.
"T!" "T!" "T!"
It stopped, when my wife opened the door, and then....
"Ok, goodbye!" and became silent.

"T" stands for "Time to turn that toy off".
And remove the batteries.
And douse it with holy water.
and then bury it's head in someone else's backyard....

We've a rocking horse that whinnies, seemingly at random. We think it gets lonely. We keep expecting to find it grazing on our rug, or drinking from the dog's water bowl.

We've a v-tech ball that lights up and moves by itself, and makes noise. If you leave it alone for too long, it calls attention to itself.
"Over Here!!!"
Uh, no. I think you'll be happier over..... here. in the cupboard. which we'll keep latched.

We've a magnetic barn on our 'frig. It makes animal noises. Not always when we want it to.
Honey, the refrigerator's squealing like a pig again. Let's order out.

Good friends of ours bought their daughter a V-Tech barn. It happily tells anyone who listens that it likes mud. But this sounds an awful lot like "I like blood." And once, completely unprompted, it said something that could only be interpreted to be "Get used to the color red."

Not too surprisingly, that toy is sans batteries on the top shelf of a closet somewhere in their house.

These little eccentricities are generally attributed to low battery power. I've got a big problem with toys getting petulant, when they need new batteries. low power = low activity. They need to become quiet, when their batteries are dying. And still.
Aww....the toy's sleeping........

If I knew that was the case, then maybe I, too, could sleep.

Forbes' list of miserable cities

Should anyone have actually read anything posted herein, they'd know of my fondness for Memphis, TN.

That's irony, by the way. My sphincter actually clenches whenver i have to drive through this city.
Not a fan.

Anyhow, Forbes published their annual list of the 10 most miserable cities in which to live this week.
Memphis was #2.
Of course it was!

surprisingly, Chicago, the very place in which I'm writing this, ranked # 3.

I never really framed it in these terms, but I can see how we might have made the list.

the reasons Forbes listed are:
10+% unemployment
Highest Sales Tax in the nation
Crappy weather
Political skullduggery.

I would have also added highest gasoline prices in the continental US, and sick-high property taxes.

So, we're third. And the local papers (one of which in bankruptcy right now and just sold the Cubs- Natch) were up in arms about it.
"Look at this picture of a happy person bya new landmark on THE warm day we had the other day! how can we be a miserable place to live?"

Oh, well. If the long legged chick with the camera enjoyed herself outside last Saturday by the big bean, when it was sunny and 60 degrees out, Forbes must be full of sh*t.

Obviously, this is Utopia, and similar enjoyment could not have been found anywhere else on an unseasonably sunny and warm day after thre months of terrible winter.

Fleshing out the top 10 were some pretty obvious choices, and perennial favorites.

Flint - duh, it's Flint! haven't you been paying attention?
Detroit - See Flint. Plus - the mayor went to jail last year.
Cleveland - It's been decades since their river burst into flames. Not sure why it's still not a happy place. my guess it's been hit hard by industrial down turns.
Buffalo - bad employment, I'm guessing, plus the most severe winters of any city in the United States. Want to be unemployed AND buried in snow for five months straight? move to Buffalo!

I didn't read the entire article, so am not 100% on top of the criteria they based this on, so I don't know why Stockton CA was # 1, nor why St. Louis eked out some other sad place to make the top 10.

I do know that Chicago's #3 in misery, and I've been feelin' it the last few months.
Long, particularly miserable winter? check
tight job market? check
Wife's business not doing as well as it was a few months ago? check.

And my sick-high property tax bill's due in a couple of weeks.


Could be worse, though.
I could live in Memphis.

more cabin fever combat, and important dog poo stories 2/9

Went to the Tinley Park Fishing expo yesterday. Met a friend for breakfast nearby, and then we headed over to the show from there.

Some very wise man thought up a great idea a few years ago. Host a big fishing show at your high school as a big fundraiser. probably have over a thousand paying customers through your door a day at $5 a pop, plus vendor booth fees...


Fuck the Worlds Finest Chocolate sale.

It's the 3rd time, I think, that I've gone to this show. Early Feb. is usually the perfect time of year to wander around one of these things, as cabin fever has really set in by this point.

I think I spent $5.50 total on new gear, and picked up some guide and fishing location info for central Wisconsin. My buddy, who has greater amount of discretionary income and greater need for gear, had a very successful morning.

People watching (and smelling) is always interesting there.

Ironically, this remedy for cabin fever happened to fall on an unseasonably warm weekend. It was about five degrees out last year when I went. It was about 45 degrees warmer this year.

So was able to spend a fair amount of time outside. I miss outside. So I really kicked cabin fever's ASS last weekend. It needed a good ass kicking.

We took our daughter for her first big outdoor walk on sunday. Went to a nearby land preserve with a paved walking path, to avoid getting splashed by traffic, navigating piles of snow with the stroller, and huge mud puddle. Fewer obstacles, and a lovely scenic backdrop.
That's a win / win, my friends.

Didn't really count on the dog poo, however. Seems people get lazy about cleaning up after their dogs when there's snow on the ground. Who knew?

So when the snow melts, all that's left is 4 months worth of poo. It seemed like it was EVERYWHERE.
So we had to steer her around some things, but it was great watching her walk, and she walked more than she had ever done, up to this point.
It was the slowest walk I've been on since I was....well, her age, probably. she's brilliant, adorable and showing signs of developing a great sense of humour, but she is NOT speedy.

We had a fantastic time!
and now it's cold again.

a fishing story - from my archives

From weekend of 7/13/07 -7/15/07 - Twin Lakes, MI

Got lost on friday the 13th, 11pm, SW MI, trying to get to a house I've been to several times before.
Seems there are no street lights, and few street signs in the middle of nowhere, SW MI, and good luck with the cell signal.
thank goodness I had my very pregnant wife with me, to add just a little more pressure....
I was almost desperate enough to stop in a bar we passed, walk in, say "Hi, i'm one of those FIP's you all love to hate, and I'm lost, who wants to help me out?" almost, but not quite. made it eventually, I'd say we took the scenic route, but it was too dark to see anything.

woke up early saturday morning.
Real early.

Seemed the dog wanted to be let out of the bedroom. the sun was almost up, my wife had just recently gotten back to sleep, so I figured I'd get up with the dog.
Not another soul was stirring at 6am, EST, which is saying something, as there were aprox 12 adults and 10 children on the premises.
That's a lot of possible stirring souls...

I had brought a pole and 1/2 dozen surface lures with me, with the assumption that I'd probably get 1/2 hour of solitary quiet dock-time in, if I was lucky. I tied on a frog patterned hula popper, started the coffee pot, and waited for someone else to get out of bed, so they could hang with the dog.
Dog + lake does not = quiet solitary dock fishing.

Finally I was sprung, when my 7 year old nephew came in from tent sleeping. he gave me a hug. I offered him a cup of coffee. He thought I was hilarious. "OK, how about a chocolate chip cookie?" he took one. "Y'know, they tast great, with a cup of coffee."
He rolled his eyes at me.
I get this a lot.
Got cereal bowls down for the parade of children who seem to have all woke up at the same time, left the milk on the table, and scooted.
walking onto the dock, looking out at the weed beds beyond its' end as I stepped onto it, I spooked 1/2 dozen bass that were hanging out under a paddle boat, 2 feet from shore, in about 8 inches of water.
sonofa.......
Put down my coffee, began casting. Immediately had a fish on, and lost it. 2 minutes later, another fish on, another fish lost, another sip of coffee.
Many small bodies and a couple larger ones start filing out the kitchen door onto the porch, clutching individually sized boxes of fruit loops, coffee cups...
Time was running out for happy quiet dock time....
Another fish one, and I landed it. Smallmouth. 9 inches. Nephew sees me doing this, came running out to see it.
I would have let him release it, except - still clutching the fruit loops.
All the sudden, the fishing pole became a child magnet.
I continued to cast, as I heard the re-telling of a children story, where the main character hooked something big, but didn't know what it was.
It ended up being a turtle. Good story. I've actually done this.

I had another fish on, but wasn't giving it my full concentration... fish off. Child #2, who was all of about three years old, saw my lure, and praised me for catching a frog. Had to explain that it wasn't a real frog, and I didn't catch it.. I cast again, I reel in again.
"did you catch one?"
No, kiddo, not this time. Two more kids showed up on the shore, brandishing what appeared to be butterfly nets. "we'll help you catch some!" they said, approaching the waters edge.
"hey, that'll be great! how about you wait a couple more minutes though, OK?"
I cast out, watch a couple very small bass swat at my lure on the retrieve, which was not hard to see, because I was fishing in a about 18 inches of water.
The kids all made noise when this happened. I finish reeling in. "Did you catch one?" "no I didn't, young lady." "I'm not a young lady, I'm a girl!"
"how about I just call you Emily?"
"OK! how come you're not catching any fish?"

I'm sure I don't know.

And that, my friends, is my fishing report from Big Twin lake, Mi. And, I must confess: It was a blast. Except I couldn't talk any of them into getting me a re-fill on the coffee whle I was standing out there. Maybe next time...

thoughts on driving through memphis

I'm traveling to new orleans soon, on business.
An old friend, who's afraid of flying, asked how I was getting down there.
Flying, of course.

Told her that I'd flown many times, and also driven through Memphis many times, and i find driving through Memphis to be more harrowing.

Which got me to thinkin' back....



Memphis.

Ah, Memphis.

A city known for social disease, vehicular homicides, and crimes against women.
I'm not making this up. these were factors that helped the city make the 10 worst places to live for women, a couple years back.

As outlined in Guns and Garden magazine.

Ok, I made that part up. Not the name of the magazine, it's a real magazine (see previous posts). But the article was actually in US News Report or something similar.

Memphis: Also known for good BBQ, Elvis, Sun Records, and one really good radio station, so it has it's good points, too.


Anyhow:

First time I drove through Memphis, we stopped for breakfast up the street from Graceland. It was about around 2am.
The woman working the grill at the Gridiron cafe (where Elvis used to go when he'd sneak out for peanut butter banana snandwiches, it said on the wall there) told us right off that she was into her third straight shift, cuz noone else showed up. She'd been taking orders and cooking for almost 24 hours straight.
And it was right out of My Cousin Vinny. We put our orders in, she turned around, got a big scoop of lard out of can, and threw it on the grill.

We'd been driving for many hours, so thought to relieve ourselves.
the men's room door was blocked.
With a body.
The body spoke to us when we tried to open the door.
"Use the other one" a demonic sounding voice croaked up at us from the bathroom floor.
A fine idea! Thanks for suggesting it.

Best part of that first drive through Memphis, besides the company I kept, was the security guard that came speeding up to us when we got out of the car at the gates of Graceland. We figured he was there to chase us away.
It WAS 3am after all.
He was a lonely soul, it turns out, and was happy for the company. Somewhere there are pictures of the me and my companions, posing in front of the Graceland sign.
At 3:00am.

In the rain.

2nd drive through Memphis was on the return trip home. We got sideswiped by a semi. That left a mark.

This was almost 12 years ago. I've likely driven through Memphis a dozen and a half times since then.

Each way.

It's the only city I've ever driven through, where you have to exit the highway 2x, to... stay on the highway.

I've seen semi tractor trailers lying upside down in the middle of an off-ramp. not tipped over, not rolled and mushed. Upside down, clean and neat. Like it was picked up by a giant hand, and turned over, and put gently back down.
Not surprisingly, there were a number of people standing around it, scratching their heads.

Only city in which I've consistently either missed or almost missed the exact same exit?
Memphis.
An exit, by the way, that you MUST take, to...remain on the highway you're already driving on.

The one time thus far in my life that my engine light's gone on, while on a big road trip?

7am on a Sunday morning in, drumroll please..... Memphis.
And just what do you suppose you can do about an engine light, at 7am on a sunday morning in Memphis?

Keep driving, of course. Always the best choice, when considering options in Memphis.

This is why we call my sister, every single time we make it through Memphis unscathed. She was driving when the semi hit us, all those trips ago. It's kind of a joke now, a joke that just never gets old.

"hello?"
"We made it through memphis!!!!"
"yay!"

both tids AND bits

Was reading our local village newspaper this morning while eating a bowl of cheerios. A paper largely devoid of any real news.
It leads with announcing what student won a green competition, and listing info about chamber of commerce dinner.
Best part of the paper is the police column, listing notable arrests.

90% of the weekly list is comprised of South Side Chicago residents being arrested for trying to steal $42.63 worth of merchandise from Evergreen Park's Walmart.
Or $19.37,
or $62.51...

Misdemeanor petty theft, from the cheap-ass department store...
I guess you can steal more for your money, at a place like Walmart.
I can't wait to see THAT ad campaign.

The city of Chicago would not allow Walmart to open a store on it's beleaguered West side, or anywhere else within city limits.

So my village quick stepped up and welcomed Walmart to open a store as close to the city as they possibly could.
It's a mess, not too shockingly. I try not to give Ol' Sam Walton any of my money, on principle.
I avoid this particular Walmart, in particular.

Anyhow... one blotter item piqued my curiosity.
a Nineteen year old village resident was arrested for allegedly (it's always "allegedly" of course) steeling two candy bars, and TWO TUBES OF CREST TOOTHPASTE, from a gas station.
What, no toothbrush?
How's he gonna do a good job on the back teeth, where cavities start, without a good toothbrush?

I'm all for good dental hygiene, especially after eating sugary snacks, so I have to applaud his choices.

Bush leaves office today.

It's kind of a relief, though hollow, due to damage his administration was allowed to do.
I think my daughter said it best, when she said "Bye Bye Poo Poo."
I think she was talking about something else, so context might be different, but sentiment's dead on.

Took my daughter to an "open gym" for toddlers on Sunday, at a nearby racquet club. We walked in, and there are literally hundreds of little kids running around, with their adults in tow.
"Wow" I whispered to my wife.
"This totally reminds me of a dog park."

It was awesome, by the way, and we'll be going back. floor covered in gym mats, trampolines, toys everywhere, balls, frisbees,slides, every piece of gymnastics equipment you can imagine..... awesome.

we had to park two blocks away, which was a bit of a drag on a cold winter afternoon.

And it didn't HAVE to be that way. I do not exaggerate, when I state that 1/10th of the parking spots were wasted in this lot, due to a huge percentage of the parents simply not giving a shit about anyone else. There's simply no other explanation. It was the worst communal parking job we'd ever seen.

Wait there's a spot up there on the.... nope. Ok, over there, in the next aisle....nope
wow, they really took up three spots, how did they do that?
maybe in the last aisle.....nope. But 6 cars in a row did park straight, in angled parking spots. Open gym's only for an hour, time for plan B....

Turns out, I'm in violation, of something....I think.

Got an interesting item in the mail yesterday.
A ticket from one of those automated photo-enforcement dealies.

It listed the aprox. address, showed a picture of my car stopped at a red light, and gave reason for ticket simply as "red light violation".

Uh....

So I'm looking at this thing.
First thing I notice is that it's not on letterhead identifying it as being from Chicago PD, or Chicago dept. of Traffic Enforcement.

The letterhead ID's the sender as " REVENUE".

No shit, really? At least they're being honest about it.

So I'm looking at the picture of my car, stopped at a red light, looks like I'm going to turn right.
Then a picture of NO car at the intersection.
Then I look for an explanation of my infraction.
What law did I break?
And..... it doesn't say.

Nowhere on the ticket does it say that I failed to yield, didn't come to a complete stop before turning, my front tire was one inch past the white line, I jaywalked, spat on the sidewalk, removed the tag from my mattress, chewed gum in class.....

So I'm confused. "red light violation" doesn't really explain it, does it? I know I didn't run a red light, as I DONT RUN RED LIGHTS!!!
Especially not in bad weather, on sloppy roads, with a baby in the back seat.
So we'll see what happens when I argue this, via the mail.

I'm bothered by the notion that a random camera that the city leases from a 3rd party company; a company who in turn promises a minimum # of tickets per camera to get the contract, and gets a piece of the proceeds from the tickets; determined me to be guilty until proven innocent, of some inadequately explained breaking of a law.

The internet is full of stories of these cameras being vandalized, and a growing movement to get them banned in various states and locales, and I GET IT.

On the plus side of life, my daughter gave me a kiss goodnight last night. All on her own accord. I asked for a hug before handing her off to her mom to be put to bed, and she gave me one, then puckered up and gave me a smooch. She's 17 months old, this was a first.
She melts my heart, every time.