Category: Life

Ducks Unlimited offers some cutlery for a donation:

This knife set includes an 8″ chef knife and a 3½” paring knife for all of your kitchen needs.

Gentle reader, I could get by with that, I mean, dubious quality of the free knives aside (probably about as good as a Ginsu knife, ainna?), I cut some vegetables sometimes and maybe a melon or two.

But my beautiful wife is a cook, and she has needs that far outstrip mine. I mean, you cannot safely spatchcock a chicken with either of those.

So two knives would certainly not meet all of our kitchen needs.

Marching bands these days have growing “front ensembles” which are marimbas and xylophones and gongs and large drums that are set up on the near sideline at the fifty yard line. Increasingly, they include sound systems to play prerecorded samples and whatnot. I’ve only been attending marching band festivals for two years now, and I’m already an old school purist who disdains props and elaborate stagings that look more like a musical set piece rather than, you know, a marching band.

Last weekend at the Ozarko Marching Band Festival, one of the St. Louis-area bands went crazy, and might well have made a young lady sound like a liar.

“Oh, you’re in the marching band. What do you play?”

“The piano.”

“LIAR!”

She should probably just say percussion.

Although one of the Ace of Spade’s HQ’s overnight thread posters would like the band–that poster says if the band has an upright bass, it’s a good band.

Gentle reader, Facebook has determined that I must want to buy a new home. Maybe it’s not Facebook–maybe it’s the whole Internet. Maybe it’s my fault, actually, since my job requires me to test Web sites that refer to actual addresses, and I use Realtor.com to look up addresses in various ZIP codes. Regardless, I get a lot of ads for real estate listings on Facebook, and as you can guess, I often click through to see what they have to say (I do like to look at castles from time to time, not to mention old island forts).

But this rather simple, $499,900, this Absolutely One-Of-A-Kind Property has 20 acres, a pond, an out building, a barn, and a rather small modern home on it.

But the fences? The fences are tight.

There is so much outdoor space with Barbed: 5 wire and pipe/steel fencing for horses, cattle, chickens, bees, donkeys while living the dream in a beautifully modern home with soaring ceilings and fabulous open living/dining area featuring floor to ceiling stone fireplace!

They got fencing that will keep the bees in, y’all. You know what we call that in my old neighborhood? A screen. And we used it to keep the bees out.

You know what I call this listing? The product of a young real estate agent from the city. Perhaps a journalist who wanted to, you know, make a living.

In other news, perhaps I need a category for real estate.

Severian posted this Nerd Fight today: songs for grownups:

Or my other nominee, Bob Seger’s “Night Moves.” Yep, that’s what it feels like, all right, to be a normal teenage boy in a culture that isn’t quite yet terminal. It’s also what it’s like to be a normal adult looking back on that teenage boy. It’s not goopy nostalgia; Bob knows those days are gone. It’s not “Gosh, I wish I’d done this and that differently;” it’s “I’m glad it ended the way it did, because I am a sadder yet wiser person for it.”

In other words, it’s a song by an adult, for adults.

I mean, his first nominee is Dan Fogelberg’s “Same Auld Lang Syne” (::spit::). Heaven and the blog archives know what I think of that song.

Severian invites commenters to identify songs written for adults.

Gentle reader, I’m sure you would remember were you not still young that I posted Music: Not For Grown-Ups Any More in 2003, when I was less of a grownup than I am now, that music of the modern day was/is written for the young. We’ve covered the ground about why popular music tends to be geared to the young (I’m too lazy to find the links now–troll my Music category and see if you can find the posts about how country music was the last genre to fall to the call of the young and why I hate “Same Auld Lang Syne”).

One of his commenters posted about Roger Waters of Pink Floyd (as a co-worker in 1990 called them, “Three old men and a guitar”). However, that commenter missed the proper member of Pink Floyd for adults.

Roger Waters’ solo work was always a bit of youthful naval gazing. The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking resonates when you’re young and your relationships are unstable. Radio K.A.O.S and Amused to Death were political statements. Apparently, he has released music since then, but who cares? I mean, I grokked The Wall because my parents divorced when I was young, but aside from touching that youthful wire, meh.

David Gilmour, on the other hand….

On his 1978 solo album David Gilmour, his song “So Far Away” describes being close to but being far away from a lover:

Sweet Christmas, when I got that tape (audiocassettes were the thing in 1990-1991, child), I was an awkward teenager with no experience with the ladies. And I could imagine how it might feel (more than I could from Poison’s “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”). Now that I am, ahem, 25 years old and a little more experienced with the lady (my beautiful wife), I think he got it right.

His 1984 album About Face contains a couple of gems. The first is “Out of the Blue”:

Which is all about the passage of time. Not only his, but his children’s.

The last song on the album is “Near the End”:

Jeez, Louise, it’s a song about turning the record over and starting it again, renewal, and:

Thinking that we’re getting older and wiser
when we’re just getting old.

When he wrote that, he was far younger than I am now, albeit older than I was then. But it resonated.

Gilmour’s work has been a mix of mature, grownup songs, political/activist kinds of songs, and a lot of working with the music itself–the la(te)st Pink Floyd album The Endless River and his work with The Orb tend toward the techno and electronica….

But here’s a later work–“Yes, I Have Ghosts”:

You won’t find music for grownups in popular music–that’s all geared to kids. You can find it, even now, if you look for it.

If you want, old man. Me, I’m looking for new metal to exercise by, metal with youthful vigor as befits me when I exercise.

But then Gilmour.

We inherited a number of patio decorations and flowerpots from my mother-in-law when she downsized earlier in the year.

Now, when I sit outside at sunset, I’m reminded….

I borrowed Donnie Darko on DVD from my beautiful wife’s former roommate 20 years ago. I have watched it, but I did not want to return it until my wife and I watched it.

In those intervening years, we’ve fallen out of touch. And by “fallen out of touch,” I mean I scoffed when he said Bush was going to round up all the Jews and put them in camps when he and his wife came to our housewarming party in 2006. He unfriended us shortly thereafter on social media for differing political views which meant we were getting cut from social ties before it was cool. His wife has not, though, but she’s a Packers fan from Brown Deer, Wisconsin, so she’s clearly of a better stock.

At any rate, it’s getting to October, and Donnie Darko is kind of a Halloween movie, so perhaps I will watch it with my boys and maybe my beautiful wife. And then send the film back with a thank you note. Although they’re the kind of couple who might not have a DVD player any more.

Aw, c’mon, man, I have to explain?

It was a box office disappointment. And it never really became a cult hit. But I remember it mostly because I have this DVD on a 20-year-old loan.

Well, I broke my streak of weekends where I attended festivals at four. You can find other festivals and small town fall shindigs within an hour’s drive from Nogglestead, but other things were on the agenda this weekend.

Such as the famous, or at least capitalized on this blog, Weekend of the Three Stadia.

So, on Friday night, the marching band performed at the home football game, so of course we were present.

You might ask, “Did they replace #2, the 5’5″ player who has since graduated?” Indeed they did: they have two kids about 5 and a half feet tall this year returning kicks and acting as running back at times.

Friday night’s game was well over three hours, as the score was 68-43 with a lot of penalties. Also, someone was very bad with the clock. The clock stopped in tackles in bounds and for a variety of reasons. Through most of the game, I blamed inexperienced clock keepers, but at one point, I looked down and saw the official signaling time out after a tackle in bounds. So it might have been inexperienced officials. The Missouri State High School Activities Association has a mercy rule that says when the score gets to such a differential in the second half to keep the clock running regardless of the situation–but the home team did not get that far out ahead. They stayed only two or three scores ahead, and their opponent could throw the ball, which led to a number of one down touchdowns. So it went on.

Which was bothersome, because I had not eaten. I had planned to get a burger at the concession stand, but I did not want to surrender my seat in a crowded stadium. So I thought I would get something when I got home a little after 9pm. And with each passing minute of game time, I thought I was closer to it, but I didn’t want to spend the money if I didn’t have to. But I did want to have something because I was supposed to be carb loading, or at least not undernourished when I got to Saturday morning.

Because I had the NFFF Memorial Stair Climb at Plaster Stadium on the MSU campus.

As my boys had a marching band thing that day, they could not join me, so I did it alone.

The Memorial Stair Climb raises funds for the families of the first responders who lost their lives on September 11, 2001, and hopefully others as well.

But when I’m sitting alone, I envy the camaraderie and the bonds that the first responders share. I feel the same sort of envy at the Ruck and Run, which benefits veterans’ organizations. It’s been a long time since I’ve had shared bonds and experiences with people. My family when I was young. Places where I’ve worked a bit, but not something that lasts a lifetime. Instead of sitting alone on the bleachers feeling sorry for myself, I tried to focus on their honor, and I knew I was not the only non-first responder or affiliated family there. I also felt a little guilty that my first thought, and the reason I did it, was not so much to honor them or raise money for them but rather because I wanted to prove to myself that I could climb 110 stories (78 flights according to my fitness tracker) in an hour and ten minutes. How bad of a person does that make me?

Worse than William McGovern, Battalion 2.

So I finished that, went home for a shower and a nap, and then I was off to watch my boys in their marching band.

It was a clinic and not an exhibition. The school took the field at 3:00 sharp (on schedule), performed the show, and then broke into groups (color guard, percussion, everyone else) to get some advice for improvement, and then at 3:40, they reassembled and did the show again, hopefully better.

So we were in and out in under two hours, which is good, because my legs began to stiffen the moment I stopped moving. In the event of an actual exhibition, I could expect to spend eight hours or more in bleachers.

Which is coming next weekend. After the triathlon.

At any rate, I did not visit any stadium on Sunday (or since), although the church sanctuary is kind of like a stadium–pews that rise from the altar in a semi-circle. But I’m not going to count that. It makes it like I’m reaching for blog content or something. Which I am.

Wow, gentle reader, it seems as though I have left you out on the biggest adventure of my summer/autumn. Well, adventures, and they’re not very big at all, but I am not 20 years old any more, so my adventures are a little more narrow in scope.

At any rate, for about four weeks, I lived a bit like a Milwaukeean.

I am sure that I’ve gone on and on, if not on this blog then certainly in person, about how many festivals Milwaukee has in the summer. Aside from Summerfest, the ten day (or however they do it now) music festival with multiple national headlining acts every day, the Henry Maier festival park on the lakefront also hosts a variety of ethnic festivals throughout the summer. And Milwaukee’s myriad churches also have festivals of their own. So on a weekend in Milwaukee, one can choose one or more festivals. And one can fill a summer’s full of weekends just so. Assuming, perhaps, that one is high school or college age and has no other real responsibilities.

So in mid-August, we lived like Milwaukeeans.

It started, really, with the Ernst-Fest in Freistatt, Missouri. When the boys were at the Lutheran school, they played basketball against the Trinity Lutheran School Knights from Freistatt, so we visited four or five times, and we’ve sent the school a little money now and then. The Lions Club fairgrounds are a mile north of the school on the one road through town that runs between Mount Vernon and Monett. It was a small affair—a polka band playing in the biergarten, brats and sauerkraut served at a concession stand, and a series of games mostly for kids run by Trinity Lutheran—the principal recognized us and greeted us by name (Springfield Lutheran). We also ran into a family from our church who was originally from Freistatt but live just a couple miles west of us for now. The oldest son went to SLS with my oldest until fifth grade, where the exodus of serious athletes occurred–their parents wanted them to play in public schools with real athletic programs. I guess it worked–the boy had an onside kick recovery on Friday night at the high school.

The next Saturday, we went down to Crane, Missouri, for its annual Broiler Fest (the broiler being broiler chickens—I guess historically Crane has been associated with the poultry industry, although the Tyson plants are down in Monett). I had read about this festival in the Branson and the Stone County papers for years, but in the past, our September weekends were consumed with cross country meets until they were consumed with marching band competitions. This year, I made an effort to attend, and I dragged my boys down to it. The Crane Boiler Fest is a more full-featured festival than Ernst-Fest, with two band stages (gospel and bluegrass), a midway with rides (the boys turned up their noses at the rides now that they’re used to full-sized amusement parks), craft and information booths (where I entered a couple of gun raffles, as is my wont—gun raffles are popular fundraisers in the Ozarks), and, of course, a chicken dinner. Which was delicious.

On Labor Day weekend, as I mentioned, we went to the Kansas City Renaissance Faire. Which I am counting as a festival for blogging purposes and for keeping the streak going.

Last weekend, I went to four different festivals. LIKE A MILWAUKEEAN!

A bit of a note: The second weekend of September is apparently Springfield’s festival weekend, as the only two annual festivals I know of occur on the same weekend and are a mile or two apart.

On Friday night, we went to the St. Elizabeth Ann Seaton Catholic church’s Harvest Home festival. Now this is the festival that most closely tracks with my experience in Milwaukee: Food, some little games, some small rides, and a live band playing old time rock and roll. We only had one boy with us–the oldest was off to Cole Camp with a friend to attend the annual Cole Camp town fair–and my youngest was as interested in the games has he had been oh, five years ago, and not at all interested in the kiddie rides. But we had something to eat, and we listened to the band which featured three guitars, a bass, a drum, a saxophone, and a trombone. I asked my company, both trumpet players, whether the band would be better with a trumpet. The boy said no, my beautiful wife said yes. The answer is, of course, yes.

On Saturday afternoon, I went to the festival at St. Thomas the Apostle Greek Orthodox Church. It’s a small, one-day affair which has a silent auction/Greek Orthodox gift shop tent, tours of the church, a tent serving Greek food, and canned Greek music with some live dancers at times and, presumably, some live Greek music at some time. Most people just come for the food, which is why the line snaked to the parking area and it took me almost an hour to eat–some people also placed To Go orders and carried away large bags of the food. So I ate and left.

On Saturday evening, the remote campus of our church had its second Faith and Friends Festival, also a small affair (so far), Free food, free ice cream, and some small games. We went and ate and socialized a little.

On Sunday afternoon, we went to the Japanese Heritage Festival at the Japanese stroll garden at Nathaniel Greene park. As my wife is a member of the park board, she attends a lot of dedications and events at the parks, and the youngest and I came along. It, too, is a pretty small affair–a stage with different demonstrations and shows, a number of retail booths lumped together, and various business booths. The actual split between Japanese things and American companies was about 50/50. One of the booths was for K-Pop music for some reasons (historical spoiler alert: The Koreans and the Japanese have not been friends through the millenia), and another was for a Springfield cosplay group–and a large number of attendees were in costume as anime characters. One wonders what traditional Japanese people–I understand visitors from Springfield’s Japanese sister city Isesaki attended–thought of that. Although I guess young people in Japan can also be a little, erm, youthful as well.

So that was seven festivals in four weeks. Like a Milwaukeean!

If anyone needs me, I will be at the gym, trying to work of this festival food.

Instapundit is rife with headlines like this: Starlink Provides Service To Antarctic Research Station, Now Accessed On All 7 Continents

Ukraine, cruise ships, now Antarctica.

Meanwhile, I paid a deposit and have been waiting a year for service in my area.

The expected date I see when I log in is still late 2022 (we’re here!), but the date on the map if you type my address is sometime in 2023.

I could really use that now.

From this date in 2012:

Brian J. Noggle lost a bundle in bucket futures. A couple of years ago, who would have thought the demand on the Internet to haz a bucket would completely disappear?

Geez, to think the I can haz bucket? thing was old ten years ago.

Well, one of you posted this on Facebook:

It’s a YOLOLIV YoloBox Pro,All-in-one Portable Multi-Cam Live Streaming Studio Encoder Recorder Switcher which has 3 HDMI inputs, 1 USB input, 1 Full Featured USBC input, plus local SD card video sources and PDF source from SD card, 1 Mic in, 1 Line in, 1 HDMI out, 1 Audio out.

Meh. I can’t use it unless it has a couple coax inputs, a couple composite inputs, and a set of VHF antenna screws or two.

But I don’t have $1300 lying around, and my sixteen year old projector television would burst into flames if I tried to hook this up, so I guess I’ll have to continue to scout obsolete tech at garage sales.

Chimney service calls picking up across the Ozarks

Actually, it’s probably only a coincidence that this news story appears the day after I called my chimney sweep who is not mentioned in the story. It’s scheduled for late October; it’s only a week later than it was last year. I’ve been thinking about calling them all summer, but it’s only now that I am cold in the morning in the office if I have left the window open that I actually made the call.

I’ve also called to see if our firewood provider can get us a couple of cords this year as well, but they’re not cutting or scheduling deliveries until October, either, so I am a bit on hold on that.

But now that football season has started and it’s cool in the mornings, a boy’s heart turns toward fire.

This weekend, my family and I attended the Kansas City Renaissance Festival–apparently, my boys and I did go another time, and we brought my beautiful wife as well. My brother invited me to join he, his new girlfriend, and my godson earlier in the summer, and as the holiday weekend brought no band or cross country (neither of the boys were in it in high school, but their old school had a meet on Saturday) obligations, we could actually go.

Continue reading “Renaissance Festivals at the Stages of My Life” →

From this date in 2011:

Brian J. Noggle is in his laboratory, working on a vending machine that plays music and offers tasty Greek sandwiches for purchase.

It will be a Juke. Box. Gyro.

Sometimes, you get a scent on your hands that makes you smell your hands throughout the day to see if the smell lingers. Well, I do. For example, the weekend before last, I continued my futility in starting my tiller (my ineptitude with small engines is just short of being legendary, which makes me fall short in that regard as well). As such, my hands smelled like gasoline for a day or so even after using mechanic hand slime a couple of times.

But this last Saturday, I had a succession of scents to enjoy.

• Chlorine
  When I treat the pool, I have to touch the 2″ chlorine tablets that go into the slow-dissolve chlorinator, so I had the clean scent of chlorine on my hands until…
   
• Barbecued Chicken
  We went to the Crane (a town in Stone County south of here) Broiler (the small chicken) Festival on late Saturday afternoon. We had gone to Ernst-Fest in Freistatt the week before (whilst my hands smelled of gasoline), but that was a small Lion’s Club German-themed shindig. It had a beer garden, some brats, and a couple of small games geared to kids along with some polka music. It was small, and we ate and left.

  Crane Broiler Festival is a full town fair; it had two music stages (bluegrass and gospel), craft and local organization booths, carnival rides, a couple of carnival games, and a barbecued chicken dinner. We walked the booths, entered a few gun raffles, and had a chicken dinner, which left my hands smelling of barbecued chicken even after washing them a couple of times. The boys didn’t want to do any carnival rides–they were a little skeptical of their safety as they’ve gotten older and have gotten used to full-scale amusement parks over the last two years–so we left. But it was great chicken.
   

• Toad Urine (Presumably)
  I was doing something at my desk in the early evening, when one of the boys ran down the stairs, claiming an emergency in the kitchen. I heard the words “garbage disposal” and was afraid that it had fallen off again. My oldest was laughing about something, and I discovered the “emergency” was that a toad had gotten into the house, gotten in the sink, and when startled by one or more of my boys, hid in the garbage disposal.

  Now, the obvious solution had occurred to my oldest (and to me), which was why he was laughing: turn on the garbage disposal, and the problem is solved. However, this would not suit my beautiful wife’s sensitivities. Her proposed solution was to get a pair of spoons and try to capture the toad, sight unseen, that way. Which ultimately would likely have had the same effect as solution #1, only slower. The most obvious solution, maybe only to a man or maybe obvious but unpalatable to a woman, was to reach into the disposal and grab the toad. Which I did. And I conveyed said toad out onto the back deck, where he could feasibly find something to eat under our back light.

  As toads and other reptiles are known to urinate when a predator attacks, one can only assume that the toad wet me, but my hand got wet was I pushed it through the rubber in the drain, so it was not like I went from dry to wet when I grabbed it. And, honestly, I did not sniff my hands all night to see if I could smell it. But perhaps other toads and their actual predators could.

As I sniff my hands this morning because I have nothing else to blog about this morning, I can’t say exactly what they smell of. Perhaps waffle cereal as I recently handled cereal bowls from the boys’ breakfasts.

Sorry if I have planted this noseworm in you, and you spend the day sniffing your hands.

On occasion, I have been known to say or, more likely, type in chats of various flavors, a variety of lamentations. And if you want to know what pretention I am parading at any time, here’s a handy guide:

• ¡Ay de mí! know that I speak some Spanish
   
• Ah, me! or Ay, me! know that I have read Shakespeare
   
• Amie, what you gonna do? I have heard that song by Pure Prairie League

Actually, I never say the last, but a bulleted list with only two items seems wrong.

But I might just use it as an exclamation of sorrow henceforth.

Animal reposts his man test. Scoring is one point per right answer. I have bolded points I scored:

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Personal Hygiene
1. I use soap in the shower. A bar of soap. (Not a whole bar per shower. Also, I want a bonus point for cold showers.)
2. I do not use body washes.
3. I do not trim or pluck my eyebrows.
4. I do not get manicures.
5. I do not put any lotions, oils, balms or creams on my body unless there is some purpose either medicinal or sexual.
6. I have a “haircut,” not a “hair style.”
7. I can wash my hair with soap and a washcloth. (Okay, I don’t have enough to require a washcloth, and TBH I have been using the last of the children’s Spider-Man shampoo because they’re to Grown Up to use kid’s shampoo, but generally it’s soap. And I shave with soap.)
8. I do not wear cologne. Perfume is for girls. Aftershave is acceptable, as long as it’s Old Spice. (I am onto my second lifetime bottle.)
9. I can go from ‘asleep’ to ‘ready to leave for work/movie/date’ in under fifteen minutes. (Or triathlons or the airport.)

Personal Style
10. I own a pair of cowboy boots or engineer boots. (Counting work boots.)
11. I own more than one pair of cowboy boots and/or engineer boots.
12. I own a cowboy hat.
13. I own more than one cowboy hat. (More than one fedora and Panama hat, though.)
14. I own more than one cap with a logo from either a car company, heavy equipment manufacturer, or an agricultural supplier. (Only one John Deere hat, but several NRA hats–I would rather this count as well.)
15. I do not use an umbrella. If it rains, I have caps and hats.
16. I know the difference between a cap and a hat.
17. I own a leather jacket.
18. I own a black leather jacket.
19. I have scars.
20. I have scars that I brag about. (Most were the result of dumb mistakes, so nah.)
21. I have scars from gunshot wounds.
22. I carry a pocketknife.
23. I hang stuff on my belt. (I have been known to, but I do not frequently.)

Driving
24. I can drive a manual transmission.
25. I can drive a motorcycle.
26. I can drive a commercial truck.
27. I can operate almost any vehicle on two, four or more wheels, from a motorbike to a five-ton truck.
28. I can operate tracked machinery (i.e. Caterpillar.)
29. I can operate a light airplane.
30. I own a truck. (I used to, but now it’s strictly SUVs at Nogglestead, and SUVs are just tall sedans.)
31. I own a four-wheel drive truck.
32. My truck has branch scrapes and rock chips. Lots of them. (My old pickup was scratched up a bunch.)
33. I carry jumper cables in my truck. (And almost complete toolboxes, and one has a compressor/jumper kit.)
34. I carry a high-lift jack in my truck.
35. I carry a tow strap in my truck.
36. I carry an axe in my truck.
37. I carry a gun in my truck.

Outdoors
38. I can navigate with map and compass. (Well, probably.)
39. I can navigate by orienteering.
40. I can run a chainsaw. (Starting it is another manner–I am not the best with small engines. Perhaps I should deduct a point.)
41. I can start a fire without match or lighter.
42. I am proficient with a pistol (Not sure what ‘proficient’ means, but I hit the target near the center most of the time.)
43. I am proficient with a rifle. (Ditto.)
44. I am proficient with a shotgun. (I have not shot one much, and never at something on the wing, but when I was shooting at a can on the ground in a quarry with my old man when I was a kid, I kept missing.)
45. I can make improvised traps.
46. I can capture, kill, prepare and cook wildlife.
47. I can catch fish with purchased fishing tackle. (Although not recently.)
48. I can catch fish with fishing tackle improvised from materials obtained in the wild. (Well, I could try to noodle if I had to.)
49. I can build an improvised shelter with materials obtained in the wild.

Entertainment
50. I do not see “chick” movies unless there is a chance that I might get sex afterwards by so doing.
51. John Wayne is, very nearly, a deity.
52. I love Westerns. Especially John Wayne Westerns.
53. I enjoy movies that feature:
• Hot vampire chicks in black leather.
• Hot any kind of chicks in black leather.
• Hot any kind of chicks.
• Killer androids.
• Killer aliens.
• Zombies.
• Hot vampire android alien zombie chicks in black leather.
54. Tom Cruise is the result of a Communist plot to demoralize America by subjecting us to crappy acting.

Food
55. Vegetarian, my ass. Give me a steak.
56. The four major food groups are: Steak, pizza, beer and cheeseburgers.
57. Real men eat any damn thing they want.
58. I love bacon with near-religious passion.
59. All foods should be served with home fries and/or corn bread.
60. Everything’s better with Tabasco.

Scoring:
Total up the number of question you can honestly answer “yes.”
55+ – You’re a manly man in the manliest form.
50+ – Your testosterone level is normal, but you’re not blowing up anyone’s skirts.
< 50 – Oh, for crying out loud, cowboy up already.

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I started out so strong, but in the end, I got 29 of 60, although perhaps as high as 31 or 32 with asterisks (I mean, I haven’t driven tracked equipment or a skid steer, but I have a zero turn radius lawn mower, and the concept is the same).

But, ya know, probably the best a city boy with an English degree could hope for. About the same as I scored on the Heinlein.

My beautiful wife just had a professional social media campaign for her consultancy. Well, I think it was interns, as it was run through a local university, but they did a couple of video shoots and photo shoots and wrote and posted a number of things on her company’s social media pages over the course of the last couple of weeks.

So I’ve been seeing lovely professional photos of my wife scattered throughout the days. Most of them are photos of her in various locations and poses, generally with a laptop, tablet, or pad of paper at a desk or coffee shop table or whatnot.

But some of the photos are just of her hands at or near a keyboard.

So I’ve become accustomed to thinking that any set of a woman’s hands on my social media feed is a picture of my wife’s hands.

Which is odd, because they are not. And I recently had to pause because I did not recognize the pattern of the blouse in the picture, and it turns out, the photo was not of my wife’s hands.

Here, let’s see if you can figure out which picture I’m talking about:

Can you guess which one is not my wife?
Continue reading “Now When I See Women’s Hands” →

He suffers from newspaper reading disease:

Your mate is snuggled next to you on the couch. You’re sharing the Sunday newspaper — cuddled and cozy — just enjoying the written word together. He points his finger to print on his page and looks up.

“Hey, honey. That movie you wanted to see is getting great reviews. They say it’s Oscar-worthy.” He pauses and waits for your response.

How endearing, you think, smiling sappily. My hubby is sharing news with me. The squeak of surprised interest you emit exudes approval and encourages exposition. He squirms slightly, hunches over his page, and furrows his fuzzy brows in concentration. Oh, look. He’s hunting for more tidbits to share.

. . . .
NEWSPAPER READING DISEASE forces your mate to provide updates on printed topics that you find nauseatingly boring. He will toss sports statistics your way and pepper them with incomprehensible commentarial expletives. Sports statistics are tossed like dice and peppered with commentarial expletives.

Obituaries of strangers whose names seem familiar to him (and therefore, to you) are recited, filling your head with ‘nee’ s and internment dates.

What’s the latest take on dietary prevention of cholesterol buildup? Don’t worry. His fingers are underlining the words right now, and his “listen to this” s are sure to clog your auditory canals.

There is no cure for NEWSPAPER READING DISEASE. The only treatment offering a modicum of relief is to read faster than he can talk. That way, you can enjoy the paper before his recitation begins.

I read this story in the Phelps County Focus yesterday, and as we were driving to Freistatt’s Lions Club’s Ernte Fest (a German festival), I recounted this column to my beautiful wife after recounting the story of the local columnist who had a recent cardiac procedure and was strapped to the bed for many hours in the very room where her husband died several years earlier. So it was a little meta, my recounting newspaper reading disease that I’d read about in the paper.

Also, hmmmm…. I read the column by Robin Leach (not that Robin Leach), a regionally syndicated columnist in the Phelps County Focus, but I could not find it on the Internet version of the site. But I did find it at the linked Herald-Whig, which I do not yet take. Ah, investigation indicates this paper is based in Quincy, Illinois, so I will probably not subscribe. I am not taking Illinois papers. Yet.