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Update At 1330 Daynotes.com, that now-defunct page residing on Mr. Syroid's server, will, in his words, be "going away". I remember first getting added to that group, and the flummoxing it caused me. Since then it's become "just another thing I do". Sure, I still get a tingle up and down the spine to see "lil ole me" on the same list as all those other people - some opinionated argumentative bastards who need a good kick, and some good friends. This is what makes the world go around - interaction, give-and-take, and good-old-arguments. Sadly, somewhere along the line, some of the group devolved into "yer mother" style of argument rather than discussing the finer points in contention - which never, ever leads to a positive ending. I will admit that, on occasion, I have stuck my fat lip into where I shouldn't have - and have learned from it. Such is the way of learning. You can be told, you can be taught - but you won't learn until you do it the hard way. So, folks, if you're looking for a bookmark, make sure it's Daynotes.ORG - or you'll be sadly disappointed. I'll be interested to see what Mr. Syroid does (if anything) to that page/site, and wish him well in the future - but I'm also equally certain that I, or at least my name, will likely not be a part of that group, whatever direction he takes it. Tom and I have different views on how to do things, and as is the nature of life, sometimes you run into stubborn boneheads (myself most definitely in that group) who are disinclined to either compromise or change their views. Such, as they say, is life. So, folks, you have been warned...
[Link] What has been bothering me since the Super Bowl, and I'm beginning to think that there is a serious problem here, is the behavior of CBS and their parent organization, Viacom, owner of MTV, CMT, VH1, and a number of other "edgier" properties. Not all that long ago, there was what was called "family hour" on television. From 7-8 pm locally (8-9 on the coasts, as I understand it), we watched mostly sitcoms and other non-offensive fare - stuff you wouldn't have to explain to your seven year old or ten year old. Somewhere along the line, that died. Last night from 7-8 we watched "Cold Case" which is fairly non-violent - it shows (at least, for me) how no matter what you do, things will haunt you - because the police never give up. Or at least, not on that show. Now, last night's episode found us explaining why nuns don't have children, why orphanages no longer exist, why nuns used to use corporal punishment, and a number of other things that I'd really rather have skipped - but couldn't. Of course, later in the evening I came upstairs and found my children in rapt attentive stares - and my wife laughing - a the history channel "documentary" "Cleavage". Yeah. Attempting to explain anything like "um, no" to The Redhead I Live With is a bit like trying to explain how the London Bridge ended up in Arizona. No, really, it did. But back to CBS - this time, they're offending the single group most likely to get up-in-arms in regards to an affront - Native Americans. Apparently Outkast, the singing group (if I might refer to them as that) with the fellow in the mid-seventies leisure suit (which, as President and Founder of the Kill-The-Leisure-Suit-Wearing-Bastards coalition, has me up in arms) did a number which offended Native Americans. I guess that kinda proves the point - someone, somewhere, in CBS upper management has completely and utterly lost it. Aside from the kow-towing to the Republican Conservatives and dropping the Reagan miniseries because of controversy, aside from the poor-taste commercials in the Super Bowl, aside from the bump-and-grind-grab-yer-crotch dance routines, aside from the bare boobie ending, and aside from the "well, we promised you shocking" self-serving promotions MTV ran following the event, CBS has proven, at least to me, that they shouldn't be trusted with one of our most valuable public properties - the public airwaves.
[Link] The best part, though, is that at 4:00 we head to the police station for a tour (Tiger Cubs), and we give kid #1 back to his parents. And after thousands of years of evolution, no one has yet managed to install a volume control in children.
[Link]
"Well, I want M&Ms. I need to do an experiment using a bunch of M&Ms."
[Link] As Ann points out - background checks cost money, and they don't do that to people whom they don't intend to bring back. So let's keep our fingers crossed, OK?
Update At 2200
[Link] The irritating thing is that the connection will appear to be made even when the cable modem is off-line. So I'm not entirely sure which direction that points, if any. |
Update At 1420 And for those of you who missed it (that'd be all of you, since the update didn't go until this morning), I've got interview #2 with the folks I spoke with last week - this one's Friday morningish, and we'll see how long it goes. I'm hopeful - very hopeful - even though it would entail additional expense and grief and a whole lot of running about - but it's a good outfit that I have a very, very good feeling about. So that's a positive. We'll just see what we'll see. It sure would be nice to be "stable" again. Whatever "stable" is.
[Link] I'm thinking that if George Bush was in the Reserves or Air Guard or whatever during Viet Nam, and then disappeared for a year, I'd like to talk to the man's CO, and his CO, during that year-long period. It's highly unlikely that the CO would now say what he said then - though I'm thinking that more than a few "unprintables" would appear in the list. I don't think Bush was AWOL - I think he was ignored or forgotten. I fully expect that, as the son of a former naval aviator who served with distinction, as a young man who had somehow managed to get into the reserve forces rather than onto active duty via the draft, as a man who had managed to leap all these other hurdles, no sane officer was going to haul his ass up before a review board and ask the tough questions. Military people call that sort of thing a CLM - Career Limiting Move. On the other hand, I'm at an utter loss when it comes to Kerry. Veterans whom I respect froth with hate at the man - people who protested the war also hate his guts. Not all veterans hate him, and not all anti-war protestors hold his actions against him either - but enough do that the complaints have risen above the noise level. On the one hand, I can understand their complaints. Here's a man who has put his life on the line, earned a commission and went into the fighting, and he's come home against the war - how dare he stab his buddies in the back? On the other hand - I know of no one person I could respect more than someone who went, who did, and then came back and said "this is wrong." Certainly, some individuals who disliked what Kerry did are rightfully upset - but I think that it took a hell of a lot of courage to turn about into the face of those who trained him, those who set him up for a successful career, and tell those people "screw you, this is wrong." Did Kerry single-handedly make a difference? No - the shootings at Kent State had a bigger effect on the outcome of the Viet Nam war than any other single thing done here at home - though the real effect was on the battlefield, and what was brought into our homes night after night after night. I remember as a small child driving past the entrance to the then-St. Cloud airport (no international needed there - though a reasonably-well-fueled Cessna taking off from St. Cloud would have no problem crossing the Canadian border) and seeing a couple of big old Huey choppers (the old "Jolly Green Giant") sitting between the Vo-Tech and the Scouting Office (near the entrance to the airport). I asked my dad "is this because of the retreat in Viet Nam?" "No, it's a recruiting drive." "Oh. Why aren't they in Viet Nam?" "Because we have lots of helicopters and other tools - we don't use everything in Viet Nam." Which was part of the problem. We weren't "playing to win"; we were playing to ... I don't know - play, I suppose, with the lives of our military. One does not "play" with explosive devices - one handles them very gingerly, if at all, because if one doesn't, they're liable to go up in one's face. And when one plays with lives, whether one is the President of the United States or some other individual in power, there's a lot of us who don't like it. I would bet that if you asked Kerry (in a non-candidate moment, of which there are none for him right now), he'd tell you there are some things he's not proud of. But I doubt protesting the war would be one of them. Again, IANAV (I Am Not A Veteran), but it seems to me that if Kerry did anything at all to shorten the war, that would be a good thing - fewer people fed into the meat grinder that was Vietnam. The veterans who are angry at Kerry for speaking against the war would do well to reconsider that. Are they upset at him for speaking against their superiors (or former superiors)? Or are they upset with him for saying that which they dared not say. If they're upset at him for "wasting the lives of those who died over there", I'm sorry, you just dropped off the edge of reality - Kerry didn't waste those lives - John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon did an excellent job of that right there. If they had committed enough forces to be effective and take out North Viet Nam, sure, there might have been engagement by the Chinese - or the Russians - or whomever wanted Ho Chi Minh to succeed. Then again, the threat of nuclear weapons in-theater might have backed them off. Frankly, had we the brains to watch the French evacuate and leave well enough alone, we might not have had the Viet Nam war - but we couldn't do that because we just can't leave well enough alone. I'm still not entirely sure I'd vote for Kerry come this fall's election. I'd much rather see someone like Edwards over Kerry, but then again, my affection for a candidate and their positions is universally well-known as the kiss of death when it comes to picking a winner. I like 'em and you'll see 'em selling campaign memorabilia on eBay.
Update At 2120 I was closing the door when I looked down. There, inside the screen door was a box. Odd. Most odd. I picked it up - and remembered a conversation I had with a nice gentleman (WHO NEEDS TO SEND ME HIS E-MAIL ADDRESS SINCE I CAN'T FIND IT) who reminded me of guilty pleasures of misspent bus rides. It was in a fifth-grade reading book, if I remember correctly, that I was introduced to The Mad Scientists' Club via "The Strange Sea Monster of Strawberry Lake". Which was a horrible, horrible thing to do to a boy who lived on a river, was fascinated by electronics, and the only other boy near his age in the neighborhood was more interested in raising chickens and discussing theology than electronics. He became a priest in a banned order (yes, that's right, I know a pre-V2 priest who has been excommunicated by Rome - then again, Karl was a bit off his nut anyway - excellent piano player, spoke German better than the natives do, I'm sure, and was just an odd, odd duck - then again, weren't we all?). I became a computer geek. Go figure. This afternoon, when the kids got off the bus, I cracked open the first book, and read to them "The Strange Sea Monster of Strawberry Lake" - I'm sure I'm convincing my son that lying is good - he remembered that the entire story came from a lie at the beginning. I'm just thankful we don't live on a lake. My biggest fear, however, is what he'll manage to do in a few years with these guys to lead him on. He's resourceful, intelligent, and inventive - and if my dog or cats end up in orbit, Jack had damned well better go along with them, because if he doesn't, this particular mission control is going to be highly pissed. So thank you, Dave, for this wander down memory lane - just exactly what I needed.
[Link] I'll post pictures tomorrow, God Willing, but I'm working on a device to hold the pen blanks square and vertical to the drill on my drill press. I've got a "Drill Press Vice" which is utterly worthless, because it doesn't hold it square - I'd need to machine faces for the drill press, which is a big pain. So I made this other thing in a slapped-together way - a 1 1/8" hole through two pieces of wood, and a cut-off lag screw for a clamp - which worked nearly as well but for the fact that it pressed the piece at an angle to the drill bit. So we're on to jig #3. This one has two lengths of 2x4 with a square angle on one end and a 45o angle on the other - and a piece of 3/4" plywood screwed to the side and squared off against the bottom board. Now I'll attach one more piece of wood at a confirmed 90o angle to the plywood, and two clamps to the other side - and that should do it. Anyway, like I said - Pictures Tomorrow... |
Update At 1040
Why am I irked now, you ask (in a bored sort of voice)? Simple - "No Child Left Behind". We here in Minnesota did at one time have an excellent educational system. We went a bit overboard with something called "The Profile Of Learning" - which was an excellent tool for children to "show what they know" and not just regurgitate. But our legislature, in their almighty knowledge thereof, decreed the Profile Anathema - and kicked it out. Now we're on the third go-round of social studies requirements for the primary grades, and said third go-round mentions Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II as presidents, puts Harriet Tubman back BEFORE the Civil war rather than in it, and contains such a boatload of information that no teacher - let alone student - could hope to complete the course in a year, let alone nine months. It's absolutely horrific watching what they're doing. Rather than emphasize the process and encouraging children to think, they're emphasizing rote memorization and simple line-by-line event bazooka-barf-back, without putting the events in context - Why, for example, was the Civil War a failure for civil rights? Why is not a question teachers want to ask any more, I guess. Then again, with the rabid parents in the school systems ready to hang 'em if they catch the slightest whiff of unorthodox opinion, well, I suppose I understand. I wonder if we'll ever reach a point where we don't need to hire the engineers from other countries to design our buildings that our government uses to hold meetings about things like this. But instead of being able to concentrate on that, we're looking at the additional testing expenses and other demands of "No Child Left Behind" and cutting other programs instead. When I was a kid, our "art department" had two pottery kilns, an entire room devoted to ceramics (which was a favorite of the teacher's), also stained glass (another favorite), in addition to drawing, painting, and other things - even leatherwork. Our school of 600+ also had two full bands, an orchestra, two choirs, and fielded teams in Boys Football, Boys and Girls Cross Country, Girls Tennis, Girls and Boys Basketball, Girls and Boys Cross-Country Skiing, Boys Hockey, Girls Gymnastics, Boys Wrestling, Girls Softball, Boys Baseball, Boys Tennis, Boys and Girls Golf, and Boys and Girls Track. Just about every "Boys' only" sport listed also had cheerleaders - but then again, so did Girls Basketball (and it seemed to me the girls cheered harder for the girls teams) We had a debate team, a group of people that did a one-act play, we had soloists and small groups in both bands and choirs, plus a full range of educational topics from english, literature, science, math, and religion. These days the local high school fields a few teams short of that long list - they've added Girls Hockey, but I think they've removed some of the other sports - and the activity fees for participation are huge. I sometimes wonder if we're not so much interested in education as we are in "processing". Who knows.
[Link] We were thinking it would be nice to go get a snack - not a full meal, just something to eat - and be able to bring Daisy along with. But there's no "dog-friendly restaurants" here. Perhaps that's the because the health department doesn't allow it, or because of prejudice, I don't know. Nice to see some places are considering a change.
Update At 2330
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Update At 1300 It doesn't mean my children are any better than anyone else's (though, in truth, they're the best kids in the world), nor does it mean that I look down upon the children in public schools. It's a choice they have made, and I applaud them for it. Good for them. Nothing wrong with that. However, the recent news that our local school district is still looking at a nearly $6 million dollar black hole has me beside myself. And there are two targets for my anger. The first is the school board. Through lack of planning, lack of control, and most of all, a true lack of original thinking, we've somehow gone from a $3.8 million dollar levy proceed last year to a giant sucking hole - again. The last time this happened, two years ago, my daughter's school day went from 7:40 am to 2:10 pm to 9:25 am to 3:30 pm. This was accompanied by much anguish. Let's play a little game, shall we? Consider what a normal school day will be like - school starting at 10:40 am. Some children will have been dropped at a sitter or elsewhere by 7 am - and 10:40 am is definitely when they'll start to get hungry. Your teachers are now facing a classroom full of children, some of whom haven't eaten for three hours. Others rose late (9:30 am), ate, and dressed. They're in clean clothes, while the early risers were at the sitter's working on an art project or some other fun thing - and they've got paint and markers on their clothes. So half of your class is starving - the other half doing OK - but you break out a snack anyway. Since the "full" kids know it's the only snack of the day, they stock up. Gee, there's good eating habits. Nonetheless, the room's doing quite well - considering that some of the children are ready for a nap, others just woke up, and two back in the corner are just about ready for their second dose of ADD medication. And there's the two missing kids whom you've called in to the office, only to find out that the eleven year old (with nine-year-old younger brother) missed the bus, have no way to get to school, and there's no parent there at home - the eleven-year-old answered the phone because they thought it might be mom or dad calling back after they left a message - but Mom's in a meeting and Dad flew out for a business trip. One more semi-excused absence for that family. Not like they don't have about three a month since school started already... And there's a funky smell - oh, yeah, that would be the four boys - good students - up front who had basketball practice this morning. Two of them are a bit big and a bit ahead for their ages, and they've got the hormone factory roaring full-blast - and they stink like a barn that hadn't been cleaned all winter long, and it's April. But you tough it out until lunch - at 2 pm. Then you get a little down time, but after recess, three of your kids are now asleep. They got up at 6 this morning, and here it is, almost 3 pm - you've got nearly an hour and a half left, and (whoops, there goes Joey down the hall for his second dose of ADD medication) there are two kids SNORING - the other's just drooling. And it's not unusual - it's the third time they've done it this week. But somehow, you survive the funky-smelling kids and the drooled-on desk and all the rest - and it's now 4:30 pm. Or, as we say in December around here - DARK. In the twilight you make sure your charges get onto their buses, and on their way. You come back to the classroom and see if you can get the last of that paper unstuck from the desktop (part of it's stuck to the kid's face). Then your classroom phone rings. It's the office - there's a frantic parent calling because they've just gotten home a few minutes late, and their child isn't home. And they know they passed the bus at the bus stop two blocks back, where little Jill gets off the bus. But it's twilight, and it's the end of a school day - your teacher saw Jill get onto the bus, and she knows she had all her books. So it's out of her hands. Jill, however, was walking the two and a half blocks from the bus stop into the wind, her backpack was flapping open and her papers were falling all over, and a car pulled over to help her. The nice man offered her a ride home. Was he a nice man? Was he a parent in the neighborhood? We don't know - when he slowed down, Jill did what her mother told her to do - scream and run - and she ran into a park where there's no lights. Now she's lost. And it's a twenty-below windchill. On the other side of town, Andy and Pete are home. Both Andy and Pete love to play outside, but they can't - it's too dark. They could play outside before school, but their mom gets mad, because their teacher sends home notes about the boys sleeping sometimes in their classes. Both Andy and Pete are energetic, almost hyperactive, boys. They get up and get going early in the morning - by 10 am they're positively wired. Their mom is going nuts - because she works out of her home, she can't schedule appointments or meetings until after those boys are out of the house. The last time she tried it, she came upstairs to see them - hanging from the ceiling fan over the table. Andy and Pete aren't bad boys - they have ADD tendencies, though they are undiagnosed. They're just energetic. Their mom has experimented with waking them up later - and that works - but then they're up until nearly midnight otherwise. Nine hours of sleep is good for them, but their father gets up at five to work out before going to work - and he's getting downright cranky. But they're just one family. So Andy and Pete are coloring. And will be doing so until about 9:30 or so, when Andy will realize he forgot about an assignment - and he'll call about four of his friends. All of whom are already in bed. So Andy will be behind in his classwork. Andy will end up with poor grades, because he regularly misses assignments. But it's his fault, you see, because his school is setting him up for success - they're telling him the four things he needs to do for homework. Since Andy's ADD, but unmedicated, he's so far off-track after item 2 that 3 and 4 are completely missed. Andy grows up, goes to a Vo-Tech instead of a four-year college, and ends up working in a parts warehouse. He'd get a better job, except when he was in high school, some friends introduced him to various forms of self-medication. Andy liked it - it helped to slow down the swirling in his head. But not enough. But that's fifteen or twenty years from now - not a concern when there's a $6 million dollar budget deficit for this fiscal period. Let's get back to the normal school day. Or as normal as 10:40 - 4:30 can be... Meanwhile, back at the school, there's a basketball game going on - and it doesn't end until almost 8:30 pm. Mike's legs are like rubber. He's got a shot that hits the basket from nearly everywhere on the court - but because he's exhausted by the time the game starts, he doesn't move too fast. One of the local high school coaches watches him and shakes his head. "Heck of a prospect, if only he had legs" the coach says. And Mike's hopes for a college scholarship go away, because the coach's brother works for a local Big-Ten school in recruiting, and the coach funnels promising local prospects to him. But Mike's just stumbling up and down the court. A dead-eye three-point shooter in sixth grade, just like Michael Jordan - but four hours of sleep a night is nearly killing him, between the homework and the Boy Scout meetings. However, the game's still going on. Most families have already eaten dinner by seven or so - some grabbed Mickey D's and rushed back to school. Good, nutritious meals they used to eat. Now, it's anything to stuff the pie hole and keep the kids from crying between choir practice, basketball, spanish club, ski club, science club, and the DI stuff. Four kids in all those activities - they need a third driver, but he's at least three years away legally and about ten, maturity-wise, from driving. Dad would like to spend more time wiht him, but the kid is just too dog-gone busy. Family times they used to enjoy in the evenings are gone now. It used to be Monday was Scout night, Tuesday was Cub Scout night, Wednesday was choir, Thursday was game night, and Friday was grocery shopping. Now it's run-run-run monday through friday for activities, grocery shopping gets done on the weekends (if at all), and both parents wonder when Sally got so tall that her pants no longer made it past the tops of her socks - or is that the fashion, I just don't know. It's a weeknight, though, and now the game's done, it's time to go home. And, yeah - the kids have homework. It's not a lot - a half-hour or so, but it's due tomorrow - and needs mom or dad to sign off. So it's got to be done tonight. So little Susie is up until nearly 10 pm on a Wednesday night doing her math worksheet for her third-grade teacher. Her older brother, in seventh grade, is still doing his homework at 11 pm. He's seen his parents three times - once at dinner, once when his mom came in to deliver his clothes from the laundry room, and once when Dad stuck his head in to see if he could do something this weekend. Sorry, Joe's got homework to get done, and there's an activity this weekend (he doesn't remember what), but he really wants to get the homework done before midnight so he can get a few hours sleep before the alarm goes off - at 6 am. Then his e-mail bell dings - there's a project due Friday for science he hasn't had a chance to start yet - mostly because the teacher assigned it to them a week ago, and it's Catholic Schools week. Sure, I'm off my nut in about eighty-seven different places. But I'm thinking I should send this off... |
Update At 2140 Kid B who fell last week and broke his upper arm went into Surgery Wednesday. A two hour "plate-and-pin" job turned into a five hour "ho, boy, is this thing screwed up". And that we found out today. Yesterday's bad news came in waves. Transportation changes, changes in the school day, and late yesterday, word that the school district did indeed have the power to "opt out" of the "hazardous roadway" exclusion. Yes, I can see from the confused and demented looks in your eyes that the above made no sense. So let's try that again. We live 9/10ths of a mile from my children's school. Eminently walkable, in my opinion, but for three rather horrible facts.
I would add in the fact that half of the no-sidewalk portion of the exercise is in a very, very dark area (even in daylight) with no streetlights, and a narrow underpass for drivers to negotiate - but that's a bit of lily-guilding I don't see as necessary to my point. The "hazardous roadway exclusion" is very simple. School districts can, at their option, require students within a 2-mile radius of the facility to walk or obtain their own transportation to the school. However, when the route(s) require crossing high-volume streets or other hazardous areas, the 2-mile limit does not apply, and such children shall be bused. Which means my kids could walk the 9/10ths of a mile, and be tough guys. The good news is that's it's all downhill in the morning, but uphill in the evening (so they've got grandpa beat - I had a semi-heated bus to ride, so no complaints there). But there's a problem. My kids are 7 and 10, and I'm not going to let ANY 7 and 10 year olds walk along a dark street at 4:30 pm on a January night when it's snowing and you can't see the edge of the road. It's not a question of maturity, or care, or anything else - it's a question of public safety. So there's that sickening development. On the positive side (sorta), this morning's interview went pretty well. I think it went good, but I also am very hard on myself. The weather-warnings were up - rain, freezing rain, and sleet last night (Rain = water falling from the sky. "Freezing rain" = water falling from the sky and freezing on the ground. "Sleet" = water that freezes on the way down - different from snow in that sleet is more pellet-like), followed by snow this morning - so I dropped the kids off at school at 8:08 (Chess Club) and left from there. Of course, you know how it goes. I hit the top of the exit at 8:50 (and I drove slowly). When was my interview? 10 am. Oops. 70 minutes early - that would be a bit excessive. So I wandered the neighborhood, and realized that my sister used to have an apartment in that neck of the woods. So I wandered about there (and discovered much to my great chagrin that Kahn's Mongolian Barbecue has a location right near there. Oh, dear - if I got that job there would be a monthly pilgrimage to Kahns - and my wife would soon get a new vent in the bathroom, plenty of new air freshners, and I'd need some sort of asbestos donut to sit on. And fire-retardant undergarments. But that's there, and maybe (hopefully) then. The IT setup and the organization is very much in line with what I've been doing most of my life - a bit broader in range, perhaps, but certainly the depth is there and the opportunity to learn and grow - and the company is the sort that makes a difference, not just a profit, which is a very, very good thing. But we shall see what we shall see. I was one of some four hundred resumes, one of twenty-plus first interviews, one of at least four second interviews - and I find out on Monday. So yeah, I've got cards for the people I met with today - They'll go out this afternoon to thank them for their time and consideration. It's not much, but it's something. Now, I wait. Well, I'm not waiting idly - I'm doing other things - but I'm hoping - hard - that I get this one. Anyway, that's about all there is to say about that. Tonight we had the "Father Daughter Dance" - one of the Girl Scout moms put together dinner and a DJ at school. Dinner was catered by KFC (greasy chicken, nasty-smelling cole slaw - not that I like the stuff anyway - lukewarm mashed potatoes, and not even the real KFC buttermilk buscuits - oh well, the cookies were good), the music was good (until the kid turned up "The Twist" too loud - yeah, Chubby Checker blew the tweeter crossover fuse, I'm guessing, and suddenly about $1200 worth of DJ equipment sounded like an AM radio - a CHEAP AM Radio - turned up way, way too loud), and we got out of there early - at Rhiannon's request. We headed down to Dairy Queen where Mr. Buffet got more of my money - not that he needs it. I remember as a kid dredging up a buck and a nickle - then riding the five miles or so on my bike to the nearest DQ (which was actually in Sauk Rapids) with a buddy, getting a Peanut Buster Parfait, and coming home. As is always the case, I might have gotten away with it, cold, but for the dribble of chocolate down my "mood" tee-shirt (as I recall, it showed "good and ready" - then again, low nineties and high humidity, and I'm sure I was "good and ready" - shove a stick up my hind parts, put an apple in my mouth, and spin me over pavement and I would have been medium rare in about thirty minutes - there's a lovely mental image for you). Foiled again by my inability to stick a napkin in the collar of my shirt. And yes, I dribbled gravy on the front of the shirt I was wearing tonight. Two positives - one, I got the shirt, not the suit coat or tie (the tie was over my shoulder), and two, the shirt was dark blue and won't show stains that well. I hope. Tomorrow? Who knows. Rhiannon's got DI 9-11 tomorrow morning, and I'll probably work on something or other - pens, I'm guessing. I've got a pretty good setup going. |
Update At 2300 The fact that he doesn't get it won't be changed by screaming about it - there will still be machinists working at Wal-mart, software developers stocking grocery shelves, and network administrators doing low-level tech support - if they're lucky. The entire problem boils down to "where will they find customers when we no longer are part of the our in our products?"
[Link] Every time - every SINGLE TIME - I go out the door with one child or another or both - or mom - to be delivered to a location somewhere, and return alone, there is this accusatory glare. Regular as clockwork. She seems to say "they hired YOU to be Shepherd? My God - every time you take one of them off out that door, they disappear! Sure, they come back later, but who's watching them? Good Grief!" I had gained her trust for a while - after the "large yellow monster eating our lambs" problem we encountered at the bus stop, I managed to regain her trust slowly by showing her that the yellow monster gave them back at the end of the day. Every time the monster took the lambs, they came home again. I did make that horrible mistake of taking her to pick up Rhiannon one day, and she was nearly apoplectic - "Look, I'm a HERDER. It's what I DO. This situation screams for ORDER if there ever was one. You NEED ME to DO THIS! RIGHT NOW!!!" Fortunately, we got her home and soothed. After that, there were the occasional trips to pick Jack up from Kindergarten. That was it. Less chaos, more shepherds - a much more orderly situation. But again this morning I leave to take Rhiannon to her DI practice, and I come home, and as usual, no happy dance. Just the offended scowl. "You've lost her again, haven't you. You idiot." My wife doesn't tend to see the times I return home alone and I get the scowl - when Ann comes home, Daisy is happy. "Look, lady, that fat guy in the corner there - he's an absolute idiot. He let the lambs get eaten by a big yellow monster AGAIN today - they were gone forEVER. Then they came back, but that's not the point. It must have been horrible, because this morning they were all warm and excited and fun, and now they come home and just sit and ignore me. And he just flips back and forth between the room with the noisy smelly things where he doesn't let me go and the room where he just sits and there's click-click-clicking all the time. But when you come back, the lambs do too." Sheesh. Sometimes I wonder why I bother to feed her. Then this big wet nose hits my armpit when I'm deep in thought reading something online and I nearly wet myself before I realize it's not a burgler with a snowball in my armpit, it's just Daisy saying "hey, Dad, play with me, not that stupid thing."
[Link] But you know how it goes - the old firehorse still tries to get out of the stall when the fire bell rings (there's a dated cliche if there ever was one), and I hear the alarm clock and the brain goes "get up, get moving, we're on." So I eventually hauled Rhiannon to her thing, came home, and did a little puttering. About 10 am I laid down on the couch upstairs for a wee nap. I had the TV on so I wouldn't go out too deep - but that didn't help at all. I awoke at 10:55. Bloody great. Rhiannon needed to be picked up clear across Burnsville in like five minutes - so I'm up, out, and across Burnsville by 11:07. Not bad, even if there was some ... well, we'll just say that I was stretching boundaries, and leave it at that. Came back home, got Ann out of bed (finally), lumped around the house for a bit, experimented with the free features of "Video On Demand" (think pay-per-view on your own schedule - and cheaper, too, come to think of it), then went back to my prone position on the couch - this time, merely waiting for a cue from those who plan the day as to what was next. I veered through the guide, and found "Boy Meets Girl" and put that on - only to learn the scheduling computer was dyslexic (surely, it wasn't I who had misread it?) and it was actually "Boy Meets Grill". A fellow named Bobby Flay, from New York, who has a grill about the size of my old Tempo. Next thing I know I'm watching a guy put cheese and onions between tortillas and toss them on a grill. Well, Ok. Camembert wouldn't have been my choice, but then again, I'm not a restaurant owner and TV show cook. Then he grills fillet mignon - right - I spend that much money on that kinda meat, I guarantee you the thumb-fingered babboon (that'd be me) will not be the cook of that - I'll trust the expert - besides, she'll be eating it. Then he tosses cheese on top of the things he's just doused with chili sauce - well, one down, two up - and then pulls out a blowtorch.
"I want one of those" says my wife. Which isn't true - I have my eye on a much smaller one that would do triple-duty around here as an adequate scorcher for her creme brulee, firestarter for fires I need to start, and make an excellent addition to the camping gear - and it's only about $40 and uses standard cigarette lighters for fuel. Downside? Not really. But yeah, we'll share. I have precious little use for a torch right now - except, maybe, to burn the weeds out of the cracks of the sidewalk, to edge the driveway, and ... say, maybe that's not such a bad idea after all... His-n-hers torches... I swear, every day that goes by my life gets more and more surreal. So this guy finishes his cooking, and I find a show on Discovery Wings channel about Rockets in WWII - specifically, Nazi experimental rockets. Stuff I didn't know. So I'm watching about their unusual two-stage surface-to-air missile (which was more liable to be a hazard planes ran into than something that would strike the plane because of superior guidance), and then I'm trying, with little success, to get fresh oxygen as the snow piles and piles above me - the suffocation gets worse and worse - and I wake up with my blanket over my face. Lovely. Obviously, "Wings of the Luftwaffe" (what was on when I went flat) was unsatisfactory to the other denizens of the house, and so we're near the end of "Something to Talk About" (movie with the Wide Mouthed Frog and Dennis Quaid, amongst others - Robert Duvall does play assholes you'd like to kick in the testicles well, doesn't he?). And so that is how we ended up leaving for a "quick dash" for a few things. A stop at Menards for "magneta" for Jack (well, that's how he wrote it on the board) for one of his art projects that kept flopping from the fridge turned into a $6 trip - I got a second $1.99 boot tray for the back door, last year's backup being pressed into duty by the sliding glass door, and two 69¢ screwdrivers (with an eye towards turning them into specialized scrapers). Then, with little else worth sticking around for we trotted over next door to Cub, where we got four of the six items on the list (italian tomato paste, tomato sauce, diet coke, and shredded cheese), but failed miserably on meatballs (they had the Simeks brand for $8.69 for a 2 pound bag - which was robbery, if you ask me). So we shrugged and crossed Savage to Target, where we found ... Simeks meatballs for $7.99 for the same 2 pound bag. (shrug) Around the corner, however, we found some off-brand of meatballs, $5.79 (or thereabouts) for a 3 pound bag. Works for me. That, some hoagie buns, and some dessert-type foods, and we were ready to head for home - until I realized that I'd managed to forget (for a moment) the purpose of the trip. Someone (the same someone with that damned alarm clock) had set their taste buds for pie - and wasn't going to be persuaded otherwise. OK, fine, whatever. Back across Savage to Baker's Square, back home, and ... well, it's nearly 6:30 pm by now. Supper? Yeah, it's about an hour or so of preparation ... And thus the plaintive wail "what about McDonalds" kicks the pins out of a very, very shaky resolve (and I realize that the pain in my abdomen, while quite possibly pre-ulcers (yes, I've had them before) was in fact hunger - which was probably compounded by the fact that I ate only one donut in the preceeding 12+ hours I'd been awake (or nearly so)). Ann has no objections... And so into Mickey D's we went - only to find a limosine in the parking lot. Well, ok... It's empty. You know, I kinda figured that. It's not prom or formal season - that I know of, anyway - but the formal dresses were out in the windows when I wandered a mall yesterday... Of course, it's close to home. Of course, it's got a play land. Of course, we told the kids 15 minutes. Of course, we let them have 25 - and there wasn't a single wail or sniff when we said "let's go". So, we come home. And, as befitting the end of a day that saw the phone ring not once between 6 am and 4:15 pm when we managed to leave, no less than five phone calls - and add to that the delivery of the new phone books (great - now I just need to set a trap to kill the next seventeen bastards who will attempt to drop their trash on my door - I do miss the old "Ma Bell Monopoly" days when there was one freaking phone book - I only need one way to find the sixteen million local phone numbers - 99.9995% of which I'll never, ever use, thank you very much, because I've got online directories bookmarked up the kazoo), three huge bags of stuff from the entryway of my parent's house (including (gulp) five overdue books from the St. Cloud public library. When were they due? Oh, April 28th. 1982. I am so, so, so dead), and then we hauled the rest of the stuff in - the Dog was quite happy to see us. "I tried to answer the noisy thing, but I don't have those spindly things you use to pick things up - then I tried to answer the door when my friends with the dog stopped by, but my tongue doesn't turn the doorknob yet. I tried, really I did - but hey, at least you brought all of the lambs home. Whacha bring me?" And so, to make the day completely useful - or just a day - I also cranked out another pen from what I expected was going to be a pile of waste. Nice end to it. And yeah, I'm still on pins and needles for Monday. I'm ever so hopeful - but we'll see what we'll see. |
Update At 2210 Mechanically, it's fairly simple. I scroll up to the top of the document, change the date and day of week, scroll down to "yesterday" - or whereever I forgot the Most Recent tag, cut that out, and paste it into the top of today. Then I scroll down, and things get hazy. Sometimes, I pick a title. For example, this one came out right off. Sometimes I go back later and title it. Usually, though, havign a title up there helps me to focus (such as I do). I then start typing. Pretty much stream (or scream) of consciousness. I'll go back and correct typos, and I trust my spelling (sometimes too much), but otherwise, there's (as you may be able to tell on occasion) very little editing involved. It seems odd, of course. Just earlier this week I received those Mad Scientist books - and I decided to send an e-mail to the son of the gentleman who wrote the books, thanking him. I don't know why I'm so surprised, but he wrote back. Mentioned he had relatives in Winona, because I'd mentioned Minnesota and living on a river. So I sent him a link to Terraserver, showing my parent's house (yes, actually, his got a closer picture, and no, I'm not telling you where - although if you look at the lower-right-of center, just below the river rapids, the roundish dot there is Lake George - near Downtown St. Cloud). I spoke to my mother this morning, and she was quite happy to be home and working on how to get around. We discussed a tray for her walker (she's got a basket already) - something light-weight to hold a plate and maybe a glass of milk or something to get from the kitchen to the Dining Room. It wasn't until my sister called a few hours later I'd heard the news. Dad, having been home now for over two weeks, is considering selling the house. From the outside, it's not much. In fact, some of it's greatest features are outside. Due to erosion, age, and just plain upkeep, sadly, some of them are gone. There was the perfect branch right outside the bay window where we had birdhouses and squirrels would stop to eat - some nitwit relative sawed it off. There was the short-but-bushy pine tree which fouled up the view of the riverbank (and aided me in many afternoon escapes down there - if mom couldn't see through the tree, I couldn't be caught). There was "my tree" on the river bank the first two years we were there - the roots had been undercut enough that I ended up putting two boards down as a seat, and fished from that spot - until one winter I came down the bank and found my tree (which hadn't leafed out at all in the two years) on the ice, instead of the bank. There's the first "bay" with the twenty granite slabs, each easily 100 pounds, some polished, some not, and the flower garden that had gone to poison ivy a few years ago. There's the "rock garden" with my "little sledding hill" and my first under-the-pines "fort" where Grandma never found me - or so she said - even when she was burning her trash in the firepit under the twisted tree (which has since died). There's the second bay with the wooden stairs and the huge concrete block for anchoring a wooden deck/dock - now some ten feet back from the water's edge, and blocked by a monsterous weeping willow. The 1.94 acre-yard itself (I always got called on it when I said "two acres") was a variated delight - along the river ran an area big enough for a tennis court AND a volleyball court - or tackle football. Wide open and treeless, it was shaded in the late afternoons by the trees to the west, but bright and open in the mornings. The middle portion of the yard was heavily treed. Mostly red and white oaks, with a few maples, and an elm or two. The two hackberry trees went down years before to allow for the expanded living room and bedroom my parents added to the original house - which had grown from a cabin to a bigger cabin to a cabin for a family of nine or so to a house, and again to a house with basement and garage. Well over twenty hardwood trees in that center section alone made fall a trying time - but mowing was a pleasure - I only had to mow under the trees about twice a year. And the acorn wars we could have. There was "the other rock garden" with the giant five-trunked tree just feet from the back of the neighbor's house. There was the concrete-rock-and-brick fireplace/grill with the hidden bits of polished granite and agate stuck here and there - and the terrifying "honeycomb" rock in the top that looked like a bee's nest. There was the "new" garbage fire pit - unused for at least 30 years now - and the tree that my father nailed a 2x4 to. Because the 2x4 was oak, not pine, and because it's been there for freaking ever, the oak grew around the 2x4. But that's OK. As a kid, I'd put the old TV Antenna mast against those trees, and used it occasionally for portable volleyball net posts - well, portable in the sense that I'd dig a three-foot-deep hole, tamp the dirt back around the post, and play volleyball. I've made my mark, because those posts haven't moved in years (at twenty, they were a tough haul for me. It'd take two of us grownups now). And they're in-grown as well. There WAS the old shed with the giant American flag with only 48 stars, the cabinetry from the old County Clerk's office that Grandpa managed to rescue when they remodeled, and the weird weather-vane with the two idiots sawing a block of wood - oddly, the theory behind it (vibrations transmitted to the ground to scare away groundhogs) is still in use by some - now, of course, we use either batteries or solar power. There was also great-grandma's old shaft-driven bicycle (now in the Stearns County Historical Society) which she used to deliver at one point about a third of St. Cloud as a midwife. There were other treasures, provided you braved the bugs, the smells, the musty cobwebs, and didn't get caught by mom or dad. I usually did. But the old shed - yes, the shed that I killed the giant something-or-other below by tossing in a bag of bleach while my sister tossed in a bag of ammonia - yes, I'm a twisted sort, and I was standing about ten feet downwind until I took off running - I grabbed the BB gun and she grabbed the hose. Nothing came out, and it stank to high heaven for months afterward - but that old shed is gone now. Taken down and burned, and the giant sheet of 3/8" thick plate glass from Grandma's old front window is long gone. I had hoped to use it as a table top. Next to the shed was the old "idiot's picnic table" - quite likely the reason I overbuild things was from this piece of construction. One-inch-thick oak boards formed the three-foot wide top, a two-inch-by-twelve inch plank for a seat (on one side), and the six-by-six inch posts at the four corners (none under the seat) for legs. Think for a moment what would happen when you place three or four adults on one side of a table - and there are no supports below the seat. Yes, I think someone somewhere in the family may actually have film or video footage of a number of adults sitting on that bench, and then one last nail in the coffin - or rather, one last rock on the launcher, and over goes the food, the people, and the table. Which explains why my father tended to clamp plywood sheets to large work tables for picnic dinners we had out there. Then there was the "part by the road" - over half was left "wild" and overrun with scrubbrush, sumac, chinese elm, and generally just weeds. Mom convinced Dad to call up a nearby farmer, who came over with his cultivator, did a run up and back with the big rack, and missed the apple tree - and we had a garden some seventy-by-fifty feet. Ever tried to water a seventy-by-fifty foot garden by hand - and when I say "by hand" I mean using a suction pump on a pipe well over 100 feet deep? I spent many a summer afternoon blistering my hands on that old cast-iron pump, dark green and red, and somehow, despite the bugs, the muck, and the other stuff that I knew could have gotten into that water, nothing tasted so good. We never did manage to get the second well (in the west end of the garden) going. It was only about thirty-five or forty feet deep, but had the advantage of being IN the garden, whereas the working well was in the middle of the treed area - and a good forty feet from the EDGE of the yard. Next to the garden was the fifty-by-fifty section that was just "left wild". I could usually count on getting at least one good walking stick out of that pile each year - Chinese Elms were fast-growing - they'd be at fifteen feet or higher after just three years or so. Sumac couldn't grow straight for love nor money - though it did look very pretty in mid-august when it was the first plant in the yard to warn "Winter's coming". Next to that was the wonderfully-fertile section where Grandma had her garden originally - replacing Grandpa's chicken coop where he raised "Buff Orpington" chickens - I'm told they didn't ALWAYS fight, but it seems that Grandpa was fond of that particular activity. Sadly, due to "county regulations" the old septic system was no longer acceptable, and was filled - and replaced with two giant tanks out under grandma's old garden. After Mom and Dad's difficulties with the septic system in the old house, it's not at all surprising that six or seven truckloads of good black dirt left, and was replaced by two giant tanks made of multiple concrete rings (each ring stood more than five feet tall - I was about four and a half when I wandered over to them) - I want to say at least three each - surrounded by large rocks (the smallest of which was torso-sized), mingled with gravel and sand - which went a long way towards explaining why mowing out there was a nightmare, all dust and sand. I called that area "The baseball field" because it was square and landmarks had been pretty-well defined for a baseball diamond. There was the sole remaining hackberry tree as home plate, the old fencepost as first base, the clump of Chinese Elms near the edge of the wild area as second, the edge of the "junk lumber" pile as third (under the only elm tree I ever had to take down for Dutch Elm), and back to home. There was the driveway which was dirt and sand the first few years we lived there until Dad put in a tar driveway - oddly, it was above the surrounding grass and yard when installed, but lately, it's sunk below the surrounding area. Of course, in the middle of the top of the driveway is the little property-edge marker pipe which shows the "official" edge of the property - though the house is quite literally within inches in spots from the property line. I think the Central Air Conditioning unit out behind the house (which used to be right outside my bedroom window) was at least in part on the neighbor's land - we all built like that up there. That driveway served as a tennis court when I banged a ball against the garage door - a baseball field when I used the same tennis ball to practice fielding (tough to play catch with a father with polio, and impossible to play catch with sisters), or a racetrack when we would ride our bikes up and down the driveway. Next to the driveway near the house was the big old two-trunked tree - the one that one of my uncles stood on the roof of my father's 1970 hunter-green and black vinyl interior Ford Station Wagon to hang "the idiot swing" - so named because it was a single rope down through a plywood disk and you would swing - not necessarily the same direction, or any specific direction, and more than a few boneheads over the years would introduce themselves in whole or part to the trunk of that tree - accidentally, each time. I remember the car well, and the day even better, because it was the rather pathetic site of my most serious (to date, knock on wood) injury - I'd sliced my arm open while climbing down from the top of the wagon. The gash was perhaps an inch and a half long, went through the skin and left me staring at a relatively bloodless layer of something - I know not what - and required seven stitches to close up. So I missed my turn at the ice cream cranking. No cranking, no licking the paddles. Next to the driveway (on what was officially the neighbor's land) was the "parking area" - bordered by a poplar killed by wild grape vines, and long since dropped, a pair of low long-needled pines, and a lilac hedge that stood easily twelve feet high by twenty feet wide by at least fifty feet long. I could still go up there today and, if the snow was gone, show you where the trench went through for the sewer lines from the house to the tanks - or the trenches from the house to the riverbank where Dad bought Mom a pump one year for Christmas and got it installed the following spring so we didn't have to pump well-water any more - we could use river water instead! And the trench from the riverbank to the edge of the old garden. I could even show you the strawberry patch we spent hours putting in and has now "gone wild" or the horseraddish plant that mom would dig some roots from and make homemade horseraddish. If it were warming, I could stand on the banks of the Mississippi and hope that just once more the river ice would go out like it did one memorable late March Sunday afternoon, with the booming and cracking and thunder-without-lightining - and the power that was so incredibly awesome to watch. Or a warm afternoon in May, on "spring break", watching a chunk of ice as long as the river is wide and twice as wide as my yard make it's way around the bend upriver, nose into the cove where the house stood, hit the shore, turn end-for-end, and then drift down-river - only to meet up with an icebreaker just a mile further down, saving the "new, permanent" dam in Sartell. Or I could look to the south and see the smokestack from the paper mill, or on bitterly cold mornings, maybe even the plumes of steam from the Monticello nuclear plant. If the river was low, I could borrow a canoe and head across and upstream to the bend, and if it hadn't completely rotted away yet, you could look down and see the old two-masted schooner-style boat that someone with more money than sense had built - and sank - long before I was born. Or I could point across the river to the by-now-probably-old-Spaniol place, and the spot in the river just in front of their house where the sunken island occasionally peeks it's collection of weeds up - and where the governor, or senator, or congress-critter's plane took an unexpected spin when heading to Spaniol's place one time. Or I could walk along the sandy part of the shore - when the dam is open, the river's edge isn't weedy banks a foot high, but a low, sandy beach that runs out about six feet before turning into the most God-awful collection of sharp pointy rocks, river mussel shells, and other nasty collections of crap and trash that led to us wading in the water in old tennis shoes - if we went in at all. Or I could wait for my mother's absolutely favorite view - when a late-day thunderstorm had passed and was headed east, and she could see the dark storm clouds being struck by the setting sun. Watching them across the river with the light against the trees on the other side was one of her favorite moments. My father spent many, many years in that house. His father, according to family lore, had a nervous breakdown and spent several years there. Two brothers died - one, I believe, in the cabin, one from leukemia, the other from what sounds like "SIDS". There's the stories of the watermelon patch across the road, and how my father and his friends tried to snitch a few, only to be foiled (in his father's watermelon patch) by a shot-gun weilding maniac. When my father got back to the house and told his father of the lunatic trying to steal the watermelons, there was some confusion as to why my father had entered forbidden territory - and it wasn't until some moments later that one of dad's friends noticed Grandpa's shotgun by the back door, waiting to be cleaned, and then the pieces fell into place... The inside wasn't much - there was the back screen door with the lock I accidentally locked one day while Grandma was making macaroni and cheese - my favorite lunch, and oddly my son's as well, and she had to go to the neighbors and call for my father to come get me while she arranged for a locksmith to come out and let her back into the house - seeing as I had locked her out and all. And I cried so very hard because I thought she was mad at me. But the inside was home. I can't remember how many times I lay awake looking at the living room lights - knowing mom and dad were there, and it would be all right. Even in the middle of the night I'd get up, and the light over the stove would be on - always a light on at home. The positives for Mom and Dad are huge - the last time the house was truly appraised was about twenty years ago. Since then the lots down the street (that used to be pasture) have been sold for a housing development. Disgustingly huge, ostentatiously obscene houses have been built - one real estate agent and friend of one of my sisters said the land alone would be worth twice the appraised value - maybe four times if we subdivided and sold quarter-acre lots. I don't know that I could do that - but then again, it is their life-savings. Dad put everything he had into getting that house. Never had a house payment when he moved in, paid off some debts, and that was that. Of course, he worked hard until he was my age before he married, he managed (through what is now known as "insider trading") to invest well (one company he put money into had a number of stock splits. As I recall, a $500 investment made the day the company went public turned into $100,000 in about two years - and kept going up. The positive for me is also pretty big - Dad's tool collection - everything from the Radial Arm Saw to the mini table saw to the router, to the assorted wacky bits (an old-fashioned bow saw, a brace-and-bit, pipe clamps, a scroll saw, sabre saw, blowtorch... I'll stop now) is pretty much going to be mine. The problem will be getting it down here. And, of course, there's Cheops Ramp, which will never be completed. The design was masterful - the results, well, who knows. Maybe Jack will build one for me someday. When I mentioned the "how I do this" above, one thing got left out. "Why?" Simple. Doing this often has the effect of forcing me to organize my thoughts. Back in the pre-computer days (yes, kidlets, I did spend a fair amount of time stumbling about the planet before these wonderful tools became popular), I would write, re-write, and sometimes end up with drafts scotch-taped together. A word-processor-style approach (note for the record "word processor" is the proper term, kids, for what you now say "Word" for. I remember the good old days where there was WordStar, WordPerfect, Noto Bene, Write, QA Write, and a half-dozen other choices. Hell, Microsoft Word was the worst of a bad lot of choices down in the dregs of the field. Just goes to show that if you hang out long enough and add EVERYTHING into the mix, sooner or later the other guys will go away. Provided, of course, that your first name is "Microsoft") works quite well for me - because I can hop back and forth and organize the thoughts I do have. Such as they are. So yeah, hearing my mother and father are considering selling land that's been in the family for nearly a century is a bit of a shock - but this, too, shall pass.
[Link] This morning was Rhiannon's Big Solo. I should have just crawled back under the bed when I woke up. I heard my daughter banging in and out of the laundry room and rolled over to look at my clock. <DIGRESS> A pox - a thousand pox, give or take a few - on the fellow who designed the digital clock with a one-touch method for changing the time. Then again, given that said clock is ... great googly moogly, almost twenty years old - wow, the Evilyn sticker on the side is old enough to drink...</DIGRESS> It said 8:30 am. Not a problem - normally. But we'd promised to pick one young lady up before church - at 8:30 am. So I said a number of un-church-like words, and hauled carcass out of bed. Only to be confronted by my wife. "Uh, honey? Your clock is an hour ahead." Doh. OK then. Into the bathroom, the shower, back out. Start the kids moving faster (Ann had them moving), and then I discovered that we were running normally - as in we were running late. And so I took off to get said young lady (with about an eighth of a tank of gas), and discovered that my head and my hind parts were exchanged in the night. Well, that's a little harsh. The last time I'd been to said young lady's house was about three years ago. Since then, many of our friends have moved around. They haven't, but I got confused. So I head off to route 1 - and discover shortly that while the scenery is beautiful, the house we wanted ain't there. Back up and around - and call home for directions. Well, minor problem #2 surfaces - said young lady no longer goes to the same school Rhiannon and Jack do. Which means she's not in this year's directory. Doh, again. Third time's the charm. Rhiannon remembered her phone number. So I dial it. "This call cannot be completed..." Oh, shut up, Darth Vader. My cell phone is a hold-over from the good old days when we were all one area code. OK, try again - this time with the right area code. Viola. The young lady is home - and knows how to get to her house. In minutes, we're there. Which is good. Because we left home at 8:20 with an eye towards picking up the laggards (Jack was the pokey one - Mom was ready) at about 8:35 on our way to church. And it was now ... 8:47. Oh, good. Rhiannon's supposed to be at church 15 minutes before mass on NORMAL choir sundays - and she's got a solo today. Many more unchurch-like words, and a fair amount of disregard for speed limits later, I picked up Ann and Jack on a flying run (basically I stopped where the bus does), and dropped them at church at about 8:54. I found a spot in the back of the parking lot (well, it was IN the parking lot) and tore through the parking lot to church - only to remember Rhiannon's solo is the second-to-last song. Oh, OK, then. Circled the entire church - and found Ann in the back of a section we hardly ever sit in. Well, at least it's a seat. Waited through Mass until Rhiannon did her thing, and she was terrific - perfect pitch, a bit breathy, but that's going to clear up with maturity and training. And those were the choir teacher's words. Many, many compliments later, we got our guest home - just in time for Rhiannon to say "Mom, if it's okay with her parents, can I go play at her house?" Uh, well, let's let her ask her parents first. We get home, chat with my mother (who does not discuss the momentous news of above), get "The Call", haul Rhiannon over to the house I can now find with ease, and then I come back home - via Rockler, as I looked there for inspiration for a tray my mother could use to get from the kitchen to the dining room table with her breakfast now that she's got a walker. I picked up a couple of T-bolts, but I'm actually now thinking there might be a better way - like broom clamps. It's a thought. A light-weight small tray made with quarter-inch plywood with a little trim around the edges, some short legs at the corners, and a wee bit of reinforcement where the clamps attach to the tray. That should do it. Then I made two pencils and a pen - one of the pencils goes to my father, the other pencil-and-pen set is going to go to someone who has been very patient with us throughout this mess - and she doesn't even know this site exists, I'm sure. So no, if you're reading this, it's not you. But I'll get to you later. |
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