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....