Category: Life

Over at Riverside Green, young Bark M. posts about a permanent sports injury:

There I was, charging toward the goal from my Center Attacking Midfielder position. The winger, sensing that I was going to make a run, played a perfect cross into the box just behind the centre back. The keeper was stuck in no man’s land—come off your line to try to intercept the cross or stay on your line and wait for the shot. Ultimately, the keeper made the decision to come out just a hair too late, and I was able to slide just underneath the outstretched, gloved fingers and strike the ball perfectly into the back of the net at the same moment I felt the meniscus tear in half in my right knee.

That 10-year-old girl never had a chance.

Yes, it’s true. I injured myself at great cost in a parents versus kids soccer game at the end of my daughter’s fall U11 soccer season.

* * * *

So if you’re doing the math at home—yes, I’m 43 years old now. But I never really felt it until Dr. Van Steyn started that sentence with, “Well, Mark, this is the first step to an artificial knee.”

Over the next seven months, I began to feel every day of it.

The real bitch about a torn meniscus is that it doesn’t get better, and you can’t really fix it. So I’ve had to adapt my entire life to adjust. I was a size 38 slim fit when I had my surgery. I’m lucky to get into a size 40 standard fit now, because I can no longer do any sort of plyometrics or running. As the Doc also said, “Running? That’s out of the question now.”

As you might know, gentle reader, I do foolishly athletic things in my middle age: Martial arts classes, triathlons, running and riding bikes on the farm roads near Nogglestead, playing catch with an overinflated football with my boys. So I am at some risk of self-inflicted irreversible injury often enough.

The worst I’ve ever experienced, aside from a bruised ribs a couple of times which mean a two-month break from martial arts classes, has been a torn groin muscle that took several months to heal and left me unable to tie my own shoes for a while. I can feel the scar tissue from time to time, but most of the time it does not impede me.

Each time I get a little hurt, I wonder if it’s going to be the one that limits me forever. Sometimes, this gives me some trepidation. Sometimes it makes me leery of closing in when sparring (Weet! Run away!)

But I watch the kids who take the martial arts classes or play elsewhere, and they don’t even think about getting hurt. They play and exercise with abandon. And when I’m dealing with a bit of nagging pain and something that’s aching in a not-muscle-soreness way, or when I just recover from something, I have to tell myself to continue to do the thing with abandon.

Because someday too soon, I won’t be able to do it at all, and although I jokingly complain about all of it, I will miss it when I am relegated to the recliner with books as my only activity.

So I feel for Bark. And I’m doing all the superstitious things I can to hope reading that piece has not jinxed me.

Lileks expands his idiom by reading the Internet:

I trust you had a good summer weekend, like the mid-60s Americans above, who are standing around wondering if they are in a cigarette ad or a soft drink ad. Most of all, I hope you didn’t have the Sunday Scaries!

No, I didn’t know the term, either. A google search produced an NBC news story that said “The term ‘Sunday scares,’ although not scientific, describes a common feeling of anxiety that builds up over the course of Sunday afternoon and evening.” The story was titled “The Sunday Scares are Real – This is Why.”

At Nogglestead, we use the term Sundaynitis.

But given our current workstyle and schedules, it’s less of a problem since we’re not working 9 to 5 or 8 to 6 or what have you.

Oh, but, no. Apparently, it’s just the number of years this particular musical theatre has been operating. Not actually plays based on Carella, Meyer Meyer, and Bert Kling from the 87th Precinct.

Which reminds me: I need to unsubscribe from these emails, too, since I don’t like musical theatre unless an acquaintance is in it, and it’s been years since my friend from martial arts was in Jesus Christ Superstar.

So our boys spent Independence Day at home for the first time in a couple of years instead of at camp (I guess the week is pretty expensive for the church to rent the YMCA camp the holiday week). They’re getting older now, so they get to light some fireworks themselves. Unfortunately, they got some inspiration from their older cousin and cousin-in-law last year–those guys were a little reckless, and my boys, being boys, loved it.

So my beautiful wife has taken to cutting flowers from her garden for locations around the house, and she ordered a couple of new vases for said cut flowers. As I was casting about for something to use to launch bottle rockets–c’mon, man, we used old soda bottles when I was a kid, but they’re not made of glass anymore, you know?–I spotted the recent arrivals on the counter.

“Can I use your new vases to launch bottle rockets?” I asked her.

“Sure,” she said.

Because she’s a girl and doesn’t know what bottle rockets do to their bottle.

Being the good husband that I am… Continue reading “Because She Is A Girl, My Beautiful Wife Did Not Understand….” →

So I have been pruning my email inbox by unsubscribing from various newsletters. I mean, the Type 1 Diabetes Foundation has sent me several updates a week after I supported a friend in a walkathon a couple years ago–I don’t need that. Companies that I ordered one-off gifts from that somehow ignored the fact that I did not explicitly opt-in to further communications sent me weekly come-ons, as though something I bought my eight year old would appeal to my fifteen year old.

I started clicking the unsubscribe links in them and successfully trimmed the number of emails I receive daily. But when I clicked Unsubscribe on the State Historical Society of Missouri email (I was a member several years ago, but let my membership lapse because the monthly magazine was a little academic for my taste, and I never went to the events.

I got all the invitations, though, and information about programs I wouldn’t participate in or support, so I clicked the Unsubscribe link in it.

And got this email:

Hah! Click to confirm your subscription because you’re unsubscribing.

I did click through it just in case they meant it, but, no, it really is asking you to confirm that you want to subscribe to the mailing list.

Which I did not.

We’ll see if I am unsubscribed or if I have to start marking it as spam.

I mentioned when reporting on the movie Safe that every couple of years, I decide to grow some facial hair. I mean, it’s the fashion. The same people who mocked Duck Dynasty ten years ago for the long beards have grown them out, followed by the tech trend setters like Jack Dorsey. As I’ve said before, I would believe that the elites were not angling for another Civil War again if only they were not growing their beards out for it.

As I said on June 17, I was growing it out. Continue reading “Brian J.’s 2021 Beard Adventure: Ended” →

Well, given that I was not thrilled with my reading material that I brought along for my De Soto vacation, to pack for my trip to the resort on the lake at the beginning of the week, I packed eight books, including three that I was in the midst of already:

On the vacation, I finished the three that I was in the middle of reading and a couple of magazines that were a couple of years old. So I had a pleasant blend of things to read, thanks.

And a good, albeit late, trip to pick up some additional reading material.

My beautiful wife tells me about how many books she has on her iPad, but I am still the sort who needs to read the books on paper.

And, most importantly, I had enough that I could pick and choose from so that I would not feel bored nor compelled to simply read the Internet on my iPad.

Mission: ACCOMPLISHED.

So I have a dental appointment today. I scheduled it specifically for July 1 because of course I would remember I have a dental appointment on Canada Day. But I’ve not been so diligent in recent years in recalling my dental appointments.

The penultimate penultimate time, that is the appointment before the appointment before last, I almost missed it; it was a ten o’clock appointment, a little later than normal–I usually schedule them after I drop the boys, and now just the youngest, off at the Lutheran school in Springfield so I could drop them and get my teeth rotated while I was in town. It was fortunate that it was a ten o’clock appointment because I dropped the boy off and made it all the way home when I got a reminder text that I had an appointment at 10, which gave me time to get back in town and make the appointment.

My penultimate appointment I actually missed. I mean, I got all the reminders–the office gives me a card that I can lose on my office desk, emails a month in advance, calls on the phone a couple of days before, and a couple of text messages asking me to confirm the appointment. I saw all the reminders with the dates, and I thought Thursday. I was certain I had a dental appointment on Thursday. However, that date fell on Wednesday.

So I got a text message on Wednesday from my dental hygenist. “Hi, this is Nicole at the dental office. You had an appointment scheduled for 9am, and I wanted to ask if everything is okay.” So I called back immediately, apologetic, and got it rescheduled. As an added bonus to my embarrassment, my iPhone picked up the first name in that message and now assumes that this phone number belongs to Nicole. Which means every couple of months, I get calls from Nicole and texts from Nicole saying, “I can’t wait to see you tomorrow!” I have added this as a contact with the dental office name in it, but it still thinks it’s Nicole. Which means I have preemptively explained this to my beautiful wife many, many times. Just like an adulterer would.

So, as I mentioned, I have a dental appointment today. I got a text reminder of it as I was driving back from my getaway this weekend, and I mentioned it to my wife that it was a 10am appointment the next day, and that I would probably need her help to remember it. Because 23 hours is a long time for me to remember things.

So, of course, yesterday afternoon, I was making plans to go to the gym first thing this morning and to do some marketing afterwards. And I held these plans in mind for much of the evening until I remembered I have a dental appointment today.

An 8am dental appointment, I have fortunately re-discovered. I had been scheduling them for 9am to be assured of making it. I mean, I drop my son off at a little before 8am, and the dentist’s office is a couple of minutes away, but I did not want to be detained in traffic and show up a minute late. Which left me with time to kill in town, preferably not drinking copious amounts of coffee and filling my teeth with pastries for Nicole to contend with. However, we recently agreed that it would be okay for me to schedule for 8 and be a couple minutes late sometimes. So it’s been 8am for a couple of visits, yet I forget.

Why do I have so much trouble with the dental appointments?

I think it’s because I’ve gotten accustomed to a calendar of days, not a calendar of dates.

I mean, my weeks tend to be filled with similar goals, tasks, and travels. The gym, the markets, errands, car servicing, transporting kids, blogging, nap, work, martial arts on weekdays; martial arts sometimes on Satudays and chores; and church, nap, chores on Sundays. So the day of the week more determines what I am to do than the date. Which means when I encounter something requiring a specific date, such as a doctor’s appointment, I get a little flummoxed, and if I get it in the wrong day of the week–when I remember it–I can get it wrong with certainty.

Also, the constant barrage of reminders might have the opposite effect, kind of like magazine subscription renewals–you get too many of them, and you miss the important one when your subscription is actually expiring.

Or it could be a character flaw, but let us dismiss that out of hand, gentle reader. I am an Internet blogger; I have no character to be flawed.

So what are the odds that I have spent too much time this morning blogging about dental appointments and miss or are late to one? Better than average.

Gentle reader, I sneaked out again for a couple of days on you. My sons are at camp this week, so my beautiful wife and I drifted away to a Branson resort for a couple of days on our own. It was not the first time we’ve gotten away since we had kids–we went to St. Louis a year ago, and to Tampa a couple years before that on business. So we do have these adult getaways, but only every couple of years on average. This might have been our fourth in fifteen years of child husbandry.

At any rate, we planned to go hiking in a state park, but scattered showers enjoined in a downpour just as we were getting out of the car, so we altered our plans to visit a couple of thrift stores in downtown Branson. We hit the animal shelter thrift store and another “thrift store” next week that did not say what charitable organization it supported, so it might have been a second hand store.

I got some books, DVDs, books on tape, and a couple of CDs.

The books include:

• Journey to China by the National Geographic Society just in case my Sinophilia rages again.
• The Male Factor by Shaunti Feldhahn. Purportedly the secret rules of men in the workplace that every woman should know. Probably me, too. The book was from the second thrift store; it looks like that shop intakes a bunch of remaindered books kind of like Sheldon used to at the Collector’s Book Shop in University City.
• The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail, a play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee.
• Frederiksborg Museum, a picture/memento book from said museum. Where is Frederiksborg? Ask me during or after football season if I even watch any this year.
• The Almost True Story of Ryan Fisher by Rob Stennet; apparently the story of a real estate man that decides to woo Christian clients. And might end up redeemed himself.
• Dispatches from Bitter America by Todd Starnes, a political current events remainder. I don’t know why I bought it. I don’t tend to read books like this very often, but I pick them up slightly more often. A remaindered copy.
• The Rick and Bubba Code by Rick Burgess and Bill “Bubba” Bussey. Purportedly a humor book. Also a remainder.
• Dave Barry’s History of the Millenium by Dave Barry. I don’t think I have it, but it was a buck, so we will give it a try.
• Memoirs of a Public Servant by Charleston Hartfield.
• Secrets of a Tabloid Reporter by Barbara Sternig.
• Car Guys vs. Bean Counters by Bob Lutz; a former auto executive draws a distinction between visionaries and the corporate guys, I bet.
• Road to Paradise by Max Allan Collins. Clearly, I am collecting his books for a time when I decide I really, really like him.
• Treasure in Hell’s Canyon by Bill Bulick. A Double D Western. Which is probably not like the DD Westerns Randisi writes; this looks like a kids’ book.
• Myths and Mysteries of Missouri by Josh Young. This looks a lot like something that Larry Wood would write if Larry Wood would write this.
• Crowdpleaser by Marc Smith who purportedly founded poetry slams. So these should have good, long lines and rhythm.

Were I betting man, I would place money that I read the play or the poetry first.

Man, I don’t know where I am going to go with these books. I was just getting the shelves kind of tidy. It looks like I have made some room up on top reading Executioner novels recently, but that won’t account for them all. I might be getting close to stacking on the floor again, which seems a little like a defeat.

I got two audio books, Just a Guy by comedian Bill Engvall and Shakespeare’s Sonnets which is not an audio book but rather a collection of the actual sonnets. The latter is on audiocassette, which means if I ever get another vehicle, I will have to have a sound system with CD players and audiocassette player installed. Bluetooth? Optional!

Speaking of CDs, I got two music CDs: Exitos y Recuerdos by Selina because I have Paulina Rubio and Shakira, so why not some Selina? Also Greatest Hits by Nino Rota which is apparently Italian for Henry Mancini as they’re all movie themes.

I also picked up a bunch of things to watch:

I got:

• A couple Mel Gibson movies, Ransom and Maverick. It’s easy to forget Ransom or confuse it with Payback as they’re both one-word crime thrillers. But I should already have Payback in the library as it’s based on the Donald Westlake as Richard Stark Parker novels.
• Four Highlander movies; I am pretty sure I have them as I just watched them a year or so back, but I spent four bucks to make sure.
• Her Alibi with Tom Selleck and Paulina P. I have yet to see it, which is weird, since I like Tom Selleck. Remember he made a bunch of movies in the 80s where he was the lead, but he really did not have success on the big screen without Ted Danson and Steve Guttenberg–but he did all right in television Westerns.
• Tombstone, which I did not own until now and have only seen probably once before back in the day.
• Shanghai Knights with Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson. I don’t own and have not seen the first movie (as I mentioned when I talked about Rush Hour).
• Quantum of Solace. I am a bit behind on my Craig Bond movies. I think I have only seen the first.
• Assault on Precinct 13. This is the 2005 remake; I saw the original 1976 film some time ago.
• Hamlet at Elsinore which is a hoity toity British production of some sort.
• A Bruce Lee two movie disc (pictured in error with the books) containing Fist of Fear, Touch of Death and Blind Fist of Bruce which actually stars Bruce Li. I will have to watch them first to see if I can watch them with the boys.

If I were a betting man, I would bet the first of these that I watch will be Tombstone with the longer odds on Her Alibi. Of course, were you to bet with me, I would watch what I bet on first to win, so don’t fall for it. That said, we will know the answer soon, as they are next scheduled for the amusement park this weekend. And they have a week of VBS volunteering coming up, so I will continue my summer of increased movie scheduling. W00t!

At any rate, the total haul, including a couple of frames for crafts and a necklace of my wife, was fifty some dollars. More expensive than a hike, assuredly, but many hours of enjoyment to come and perhaps the cost will be recouped at my estate sale.

This article hit my email inbox from the local athletic shoe store’s parent company: How to Make Your Running Shoes Last Longer.

To be honest, I didn’t read it because I have a better method.

Don’t run.

My running shoes, unlike me, are immortal.

I keed, I keed! But I have not been running that much this year. An indoor triathlon, an in-person 5K, and a couple virtual 5Ks. Which means, in calendar months, my shoes are getting up there indeed, but they don’t have much mileage in them.

I might replace them soon, though, as my walking shoes are getting worn, and I use my old running shoes as my walking shoes.

In an article entitled John McAfee dead: Inside the Internet millionaire playboy’s wild world of guns, drugs, and jungle harem of seven women, appropriately lurid as it’s in a British tabloid, we get this photo and caption:

John McAfee. So ahead of his time that he was on Twitter. In 1972.

So we returned from our vacation on Saturday–we got home about 1pm after departing around 9 from De Soto, and we had to re-route around a traffic incident on Highway 44.

Now, when I return home, I have a little trepidation about what might have transpired while we were gone. I generally shut down the computers and whatnot, and I don’t recall if I ever had an instance where the machine failed to start after a vacation–I had an old Packard Bell with Windows 95 that was prone to throwing a shoe on reboot, requiring me to restore from the company-provided CD many times, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility. And who knows what else? At the very least, a thorough housecleaning, at least as thorough as we get at Nogglestead even though we cleaned ahead of the trip. And lots of laundry.

The heavily armed pet sitter managed to keep the Vikings at bay. None of the cats were forgotten and locked into some confined space without food or water for days, emerging emaciated or not at all. But the trouble began immediately.

Continue reading “And We’re Back–The Excitement Awaiting Us At Home” →

You might not have noticed, gentle reader, that I was on vacation last week as I spent a little of my time on the normal twee postings here, albeit at a slightly reduced rate. Which might have left the larcenous corners of the Internet wondering, is he on vacation, leaving Nogglestead in the hands of an armed pet sitter or is he just not feeling it this week? Fortunately, this confusion served its purpose, and Nogglestead’s vast libraries remained unplundered and unburned by Vikings.

For a second year in a row, we called off a trip to Miami because of travel uncertainty and instead booked a week in a resort in De Soto (also sometimes spelled, confusingly on government signage as Desoto even though the man’s name was clearly two words), Missouri. Which is in Jefferson County and not far out of of St. Louis. So, basically, about 20 miles from where I lived in the trailer park and 20 miles from where I lived down the gravel road. When I lived out there, I was unvehicled until after college, so I did not get out to that part of the county except a couple of times for a sleepover with Jimmy T., whose father had moved from the trailer park to a new development outside of Festus. Later, after college, when I lived down the gravel road for another six months, my driving, working, and social life generally took me to St. Louis, not other parts of Jefferson County. So I was only familiar with the area in name only.

Gentle reader, I did not set myself up to have the most enjoyable vacation.

Continue reading “Brian J. Underwhelms Himself On Vacation” →

In a story about the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s new dalliances with multi-verse based story lines (‘Loki’ on Disney+ is playing with multiverses — why that’s a slippery slope), the author mentions a DC crossover event that I remember, but it doesn’t mention it by name:

For what it’s worth, the multiverse concept didn’t end well for DC Comics. The storyline got so convoluted that by 1985, the publisher was forced to blow it up and start over.

The crossover series that ended this, as an fool over 40 (and not just those who read Worlds’ Finest Volume 2: Hunt Or Be Hunted) knows, this series was called Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Not being a DC fan, I didn’t follow it; I did have a comic that ended with the hero (Superboy?) getting pulled into a space ship with Harbinger and the big bad behind whatever the crisis was, and another DC comic I had had a special letter from the editor in the DC-wide column with a very somber Supergirl dies in that issue (uh, retrospoiler alert!). Also, I have a cat named Isis, so as you can well imagine I sometimes call her Isis on Infinite Earths.

Now, I’m not going to say the New York Post writer did not know the name of the series. If it’s one thing that the twenty-six-year-olds in the news rooms would know, it’s comic book esoterica. But what I want you to recognize, gentle reader, is that I know.

So over the course of the last year, as I have watched DVDs, I have from time to time picked up the DVD remote after the film ends to eject the disc. A couple of times, I was taken aback when I looked for the eject button on the remote, and it was not there. I mean, I haven’t generally watched enough films nor gotten so in depth with the functions of the DVD player that I’m intimate with all of its functionality, but I do generally know where the play, pause, stop, select, power, and eject buttons are. But, as I said, a couple of times over the last year, I’ve picked up the remote and have struggled to find the eject button. I mean, I am pretty sure I have pressed the eject button after the movie. Heck, I might have even pressed the button on the remote to put this particular DVD in. But it’s not there now.

I chalked it up in the user error column. After all, a flaky receiver and some ad hoc reconnecting inputs in the back have led to some strange results when trying to watch a movie in the past (see also Movie Night at Nogglestead: THWARTED). I have started to think I’m reaching the age where I get flummoxed by technology. That’s not really the case, though, as connections to new devices are getting simpler (just stream it on your device!). But the Case of the Disappearing Button intermittently bothered me. And then other times, I would push the button to eject the DVD.

We also have a Sony Blu-Ray player which we use very infrequently. Its remote looks almost exactly like the DVD remote, but it has a BD at the bottom instead of DVD.

You see, it has an open/close button on it. Maybe I’d gotten confused between the two, although I really don’t watch many Blu-Ray discs as you don’t find them for a buck at garage sales yet.

I try to keep the remotes organized on the side table by the entertainment center. But when the boys use them to put on their video game systems, watch television, or occasionally put in a movie, they tend to roam to various seats, under blankets, or under pillows/cushions. I am not immune–sometimes I will pick up a remote and lay it on the entertainment center somewhere when I’m putting in or taking out a movie only to “lose” it for a moment where I cannot remember where I laid it.

So this weekend, while preparing for my bi-weekly movie watching (it has been twice a week the last two weeks and more when I include watching a movie with the boys), I discovered the truth.

For some reason, I have two Sony DVD player remotes.

Which is odd because we only currently have one Sony DVD player; the one I stored last November was not a Sony. It might have been a previous model that I replaced at some point; I know I used to save old remotes in a bin (I have since donated them). This one would have been spared, though, since it looks like it works with the current DVD player.

And it does. All the buttons work as expected, so I was able to conduct the movie. So I would pick up whichever one I found first, and when that was the one without the open/close button, I would briefly question my sanity. Which, I am pleased to say, is intact is not disproven. And the world might not actually be a Philip K. Dick illusion that a small inconsistency can dispel.