Category: Life

So the local papers to which I subscribe often have a “Remember When” sort of feature every week where they comb through their morgues and come up with news stories and photos that can fill column inches easily. Also, probably, their regular subscribers are generally older and have probably lived in the area for a long time, so when they go back twenty or fifty years, you might see someone you recognize. I just tend to glance over these sections, even though I sometimes linger on the ones from thirty-five years ago because they remind me of when I was young even though I was not young there, wherever there is.

This last week or so back–paper delivery was delayed because of the weather–the Douglas County Herald offered a picture of the the Ava High School Homecoming Court of 1969:

Those girls are, what, two years older than my oldest? But they look so much older. Partially probably because it’s black and white and partially because they’re wearing the clothing that my mother wore in some of her pictures, and my mother was old to me when I was young and my mother was younger than I am.

But, wait, look closely at the faces.

Ah, yes, now I can see teenagers in those old people clothes.

You know, I don’t know if fashion has flatlined since I was younger, but the clothes I’m wearing in the pictures from thirty-five or forty years ago pretty much match what I wear now, casually, and the khakis and dress shirts I wear when going grant aren’t bound by style. Aside from the fly hand-me-downs from our next-door neighbors in the projects that I received in the early 1980s (I was the last kid on the block wearing bell bottoms, and it wasn’t because I couldn’t let go of disco), we never got fashionable clothes like parachute pants or even polo shirts. I have been wearing jeans and sweatshirts or t-shirts for the duration. Actually, I guess some of the sweatshirts are actually approaching twenty years old themselves. But never mind.

So at least in my mind, when I look back at older pictures, I think I look like that now. Except the face, maybe. Also the fact that I was finally able to gain weight and grow into a man’s body instead of a spindly boy’s.

The women in these pictures are about to turn seventy. Which doesn’t seem old, now. But I go to church, so most of the women and men that I see regularly tend to be pretty vital and involved. I hope they still are. I hope I will still be.

So I’ve got this puzzle piece on my desk.

The normal trouble is to find, when you’ve almost completely assembled a puzzle, to find a single piece missing.

However, sometimes during the disassembly process here at Nogglestead, a single puzzle piece will hit the floor, especially if the cats are helping with the disassembly, only to be found some time later.

At which time, I apparently put it on my desk.

I cannot throw it out, of course, since we might assemble the puzzle later and need it. So I will put it with the other stray puzzle pieces; and, if we think of it, we can look for this piece if we ever come one short.

Although, given the distinct markings on this piece, perhaps I can just look for the box.

But, no: why deprive myself of a future item for a Five Things on My Desk post?

Also note, gentle reader, that I still have a couple incomplete young children’s puzzles wrapped up in storage, each missing one or two large wooden pieces. I cannot give them away incomplete, so I have set them aside in case those pieces turn up. They’ve been in storage for probably six or seven years now, and Nogglestead does not shake out as many stray kids toy bits as it used to. But that’s something for my estate sale planners to decide.

Gentle reader, you might have heard on the news that the south has gotten another visit from the jet stream this week, bringing with it not only the ice last week but also cold and snow this week.

It has basically snowed lightly all week until yesterday afternoon. We got a couple of measurable snowfalls, maybe six to eight inches total, and most everything closed down. My oldest has only had a partial school day in the last week and a half; the youngest has only had one. They have been off all of this week and have “virtual learning” for the day. So it has felt a little bit like the lockdown from last spring except that the cold has kept us from running outside or riding bikes. I haven’t actually left the house since church on Sunday morning.

So, yesterday, I needed a little me-time, and I was tired of sitting at my computer.

It had warmed to 20 degrees, so I went outside to shovel.

I have only shoveled the driveway at Nogglestead, what, two or three times since we lived here. Most snowfalls are an inch or two at most followed by days warm enough to melt them, so I haven’t bothered. But yesterday, the depth of the snow plus the lingering temperatures made it worthwhile to shovel. So I put on a coat, hat, and gloves (and my gym playlist), and I got to it.

It took me almost four hours of peace and quiet (well, except for the metal blaring in my ears), but it reminded me of home. The last winter I spent in Wisconsin, we got like 75″ of snow. It would snow eight inches, pause a couple of days, snow four inches, and so in. So I did a lot of shoveling then, but my father’s driveway was significantly shorter.

I have a birthday coming up, so of course I’m thinking about aging. I am blessed to be able to shovel for four hours in the cold with no ill effects. Or do triathlons. Or take martial arts classes. I just have to slow down and enjoy that I can while I can and not worry about that I’m not winning, or that I’m not super sharp on my skills currently, or that it takes me four hours and an eventual Advil. I’m trying to distill it into a pithy statement to put on a sky image and share tweeiously on the Internet, something like Someday I Will Can’t, But Until Then I Will Not Won’t.

I think I will venture out today for some errands, so the clear driveway will come in handy to be able to see it and avoid the ditch. And I won’t have to tromp through the snow to take out my trash since the can will likely be out there all week as well.

Next week, it is back to springtime. Today, I shall enjoy looking at the snow and listening to the snow-muffled silence when I take my trash out.

This Quickbooks ad made the rounds on television this season:

I chuckled, because it’s true.

My martial arts school awards black belts with special jackets and belts with the student’s name (and the school’s name) on them.

I, however, only wear those to testing, which means I only wore my first degree black belt and jacket four times: Once when I received it, briefly, and then every time I tested until I got my second degree. My second degree belt and jacket I wore only once, when I was awarded them almost two years ago. I am a little behind in the testing process given the events of the last couple of years; I should wear it for a formal occasion sometime soon.

For classes, I have a well-worn gi and a plain black belt that I have worn since I was awarded the black belt (although I might have replaced the gi since then). This is, of course, my casual gi.

So I can relate. Also, I use QuickBooks for my business, but not the live assistance since I have an accountant.

So I spoiled my beautiful wife with an Apple Watch for Valentine’s Day, and when I ordered it directly from Apple.com, I noticed how much Apple loves green.

Apple loves green so much that it does not include a charger with the Apple Watch.

It loves green so much that it will sell you a charger for an additional $30-80. A charger that will come in its own set of bespoke packaging that you will throw away after you get it.

Hey, I’m an Apple shareholder. I love how Apple extracts money from me for me. It’s kind of like the government, except with more for me at the end. Well, it would if I were to sell more of my holdings before the economic bubble bursts. Which I probably won’t.

Ah, my foes, and ah, my friends, how very carefully we undecorated last month from Christmas to make sure we got everything into storage. It helps that we’ve got a diminishing number of little touches that we put into random places, and although I felt confident that we got all of the things we put onto display, apparently I overlooked one thing: A Christmas ornament that we laid aside, not to display, but to either put on the tree or put back in the box.

Apparently, when decorating or undecorating the downstairs Christmas tree, we laid this little angel atop the books on the bookshelves next to the tree and unfilled book jackets were shuffled atop it, hiding it from sight. I found it when doing the detailed dusting on Sunday. I posed it artfully for this picture; it was, as I said, lying on books toward the back with a dustjacket over it.

So, in my defense, it was not a decoration put on display in such a fashion where it would be nominally visible, so I hope I can be forgiven for overlooking it.

Although, admittedly, there is a non-zero chance that this is a Christmas straggler from some previous year that has gone unnoticed for more than one solar orbit.

But the betting is on: The over/under of me actually putting the ornament with the Christmas decorations, instead of just taking a photo of it for the blog, is four weeks. Hang on, Southie is scratching something else on the chalk board as I type: four and a half weeks.

Probably still worth taking the over no matter how far it moves.

Also, watch for its appearance in a future Five Things On My Desk post.

Well, on Monday, I made light of schools cancelling based on predictions of an ice storm.

A couple hours later, both of my boys’ schools sent them home early, and they have not been to school since. Today is Thursday; one boy has off tomorrow because teachers are people, too, and they need mental health days built into the school year. The other has school scheduled, but the principal sent out an email that says “See you on Monday!” which is odd, because today is not Friday, and Monday is Presidents’ Day.

The issue has not been a snowfall of any note (so far–see below, or maybe just the next sentence). We had freezing drizzle on Tuesday, which got the boys of school on Tuesday and Wednesday; and although it did not drizzle exactly yesterday, we did get some freezing fog which doesn’t really fall per se but does leave a glazing of ice on the things it touched, like plants and roadways. So they’re off today as well. And it has started to snow, so perhaps the younger’s school will just call the whole week a wash.

My beautiful wife was out on Tuesday night and said it was a bad drive–mostly, the freezing rain kept freezing on her windshield. On Wednesday morning, she was scheduled to do a livestreamed presentation from a studio in central Springfield. About twenty-five minutes before she was scheduled to leave, she awakened me and asked me if I would drive. Of course I did–I haven’t lost control of my vehicle in an ice storm in like three or four years, so I am just the man for that job.

I schlepped her up there and then sat in an underheated warehouse studio while she streamed live.

In case you’re wondering what talking dog joke I tell at about 4:30, off camera and before the audio and presentation begins, it’s this one:

A man walking down the street comes to a sign that says, “Talking dog: $10.” So he goes up to the house and knocks on the door. A man answers, and the first guy says, “I understand you have a talking dog for sale.”

The dog nudges his way to the door and says, “You bet. I was in the military, an explosive sniffing dog, and I found a lot of IEDs and saved a lot of our guys. After my tour was up, I worked for the highway patrol, and I found many kilos of bad stuff headed for the streets. Then I worked as a rescue dog on the beach, saving people who were drowning.”

“Wow, and he’s only ten dollars?” the man said.

“Yeah. He’s a liar. He ain’t done any of that,” the owner said.

Heather smiled and the host roared with laughter because he’s very polite. But I do like my talking dog jokes.

At any rate, so it’s been a cozy week of mostly going nowhere with a nice wood fire burning. One of my belated Christmas gifts was a cord or so of wood to burn this year instead of Duraflame logs. The man who delivered it asked how many cords of wood we burned every year–I didn’t know as I’ve not burned wood much, but judging how we’ve gone through this cord, it’s probably between three and four starting a fire about five at night and burning it into the evening and starting a little earlier on weekends or snow days.

I wish I could say I have been getting a lot of reading done, but I don’t tend to like to sit down during the day or afternoon with a book–I really am only comfortable doing it after dinner and the evening chores. Because this is good weather to sit and watch the snow with a book on your lap.

Spotted amongst things Wirecutter has posted on Facebook:

You know who is bothered by knowing the name of a cow? A soft city person. Which is not to say that I’m a Hank Williams, Jr., certified country boy, but I do read Ozarks Farm and Neighbor magazine, and I know where beef comes from. But most ranchers have too many cattle to name individually anyway.

When I was a bagger, ahem utility clerk (which pays better than a bagger, but only because minimum wage had gone up), the Shop Rite where I worked tagged itself as the Best Meat in Town, and every year, the owner would buy the best blue ribbon award-winning cattle from the state fair (the Wisconsin State Fair is held in Milwaukee, just across town), and they would butcher the meat in-store and sell it.

So, yeah, every year around September, I knew the names of the steaks and hamburger coming down the conveyor belt. And I am pretty sure I had my portion of Outlaw, the winner one year. And that’s when I was a city boy, before I thought I might become a hobby farmist. Before I almost convinced my beautiful wife that we could raise a couple cattle, since normal people down here do that. Before someone she worked with told her that she (my beautiful wife) would never be able to kill an animal she had looked in the eyes (come on, we send it “to go live on a farm in the country” for that). It’s not like we have to bang Little Nell (the cattle would have literary names, of course, like the cats) with a hammer and process the meat ourselves.

Which is why, I guess, if I am ever to raise cattle at Nogglestead, we will have to only assign them number, decownizing them, and put hoods over their heads. Further decownizing them, I suppose.

Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas supports petition to change SPS mascot, traditions

The mascot in question is the Chiefs, which is an English word meaning the head of a tribe.

The name of the school, which is also named after the tribe, is not problematic and warranting changing yet–although I am surprised given how far we’ve come–San Francisco is in a frenzy to rename schools already (link via Instapundit).

Gentle reader, I made mock of this premise almost thirty years ago when Marquette changed its mascot from the Warriors. I got an email from the school yesterday with the subject line Major Announcement at Marquette University. I opened it, sort of expecting news that the school, which has not been making me proud recently, had broken with the Catholic Church or was renaming itself to get away from a dead white European proselytizer. (No; apparently a guy who graduated eight years before I did just donated $31,000,000–jeez, what have I done with my life? All I have done is endow one small scholarship–not at Marquette, but in Marquette (Michigan)).

Adaptive Curmudgeon said:

Ouch! Hurts right? Well, time for some introspection. If you’re in a spiral of despair because shit’s getting weird, maybe it’s because you’re hoping for some external force to save you. It doesn’t work like that. You have to save yourself.

How do you start? Easy. Build something.

Pissed off about Frankenfoods? Plant a garden.

Pissed off about ammo prices? Load your own.

Pissed off about life in general? Stack some firewood.

Just build something.

I won’t say I’ve been spending less time on the computer than I have in the past–I still work on one, you know, but I’ve been spending less time on blogs than in the past and my social media use has fallen to checking in on Facebook every day or so to see if someone has reached out to me for something.

But I’m trying to refocus on meatspace more than I have in the last months of last year. And I have a garage full of materials for projects that I should really jump on soon, perhaps even before it warms up. We’re at the mess part of the cycle in the garage, where I clean it up, maybe do a project at the workbench there, but other things come up so we tend to dump things on the workbench, on the side bench, or on the floor in front of the shelves or on random shelves to be sorted later. Then, I get into my head to clean up the garage so I can work in the garage on the various projects accruing there (“How’s that lamp repainting coming?” you’re too polite to ask). I spend a day or so cleaning and organizing and sorting, do a project, and then the cycle continues.

I am only going to be able to use the “my boys can’t put anything away” excuse for a little while yet, but it’s true that they do tend to just scatter their outdoor effects like Rip Taylor (PBUH) and confetti. But I am not much better.

So enough typing for now. I have real things to do.

My interpretation of headlines in May 2020–Jolly Old England Is Getting Back To Normal:

You can tell the ‘crisis’ is coming to a close when the elected officials greatest concern is getting more money.

Today’s front page:

GIFT OF THE JAB Brits should be able to enjoy a ‘happy and free Great British summer’ with most UK adults vaccinated, says Matt Hancock

SHOT IN THE ARM Boris Johnson warned EU vaccine blockade risked pensioners’ lives in ‘spicy’ seven-hour showdown

SAFE SPACE Social distancing could be in place for rest of year unless Covid vaccine can halt ‘third death spike’, say ministers

Oh, well. Better luck this year, I suppose

A teacher I know on Facebook who once offered me straight whiskey (I’m not saying that all teachers drink straight whiskey; all I am saying is that the only people who have offered me straight whiskey were teachers) posted “This town needs an….” on Facebook.

You know, I once made a GIPHY gif of Jack Nicholson from the Tim Burton Batman movie with the caption “This town needs an anemone.” Or maybe “an anemone.” The whole story is here (to which the gif is incidental). But the gif has been removed.

Okay, maybe the format of the URL changed. Or it got taken down by GIPHY because it has copyrighted material in it. Maybe it was disinformation because it had a pun in the caption instead of the actual quote.

But here’s what I got searching for “this town need [sic] an anemone [spelled correctly and pronounced correctly these days as I explained in the earlier post]“:

A gif of Joe Biden saying “People Need Hope” as the top result and magnified in the bigger rotating player to the side.

I will leave you to speculate why.

Meanwhile, I proffer to you, as I did my teacher friend, this response to her initial query:

I might have mentioned that I briefly joined the Audubon Society, but the based on the content of its magazine, political advocacy and climate change mostly, I figured I would not renew.

So yesterday, I got the renewal pitch, along with this CALL TO ACTION:

The anti-science bird-killing Trump administration?

Why, it’s like they don’t even want the money of 74 million Americans.

A friend on Facebook posted this:

Immediately, a putative adult of some sort asked, in all apparent earnestness, Does this mean you’ll be joining us?

The most marvelous tool, this Internet, is really just used as a silliness amplifier.

I mentioned previously that I am occasionally a fashion plate with my era-appropriate pocket squares; however, I am also not setting trends with another inadvertent pocket square I favor:

When I’m folding laundry, I tend to put the used dryer sheets in my shirt pocket to remember to throw them out. If I put them in my pants pocket, I tend to forget them, which means in a day or so I will have one or more clean used dryer sheets coming out of the laundry.

However, as it happens sometimes, I forget them in my shirt pocket–let’s face it, I’m not the sort of guy who looks at himself in a mirror frequently, even when going out–and I go out into public with one or more spent Bounce sheets for the world to admire.

Nobody mentions it, though, because are you going to question 195 pounds of sour attitude and Walmart-splendor that he’s got a dryer sheet in his pocket? It might just be the modern chip on the shoulder! I might be just daring you to take the dryer sheet out of my pocket.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am off to try to insert that phrase into the lexicon since nobody knows or understands the source of phrases chip on the shoulder or knock your block off any more.

Shocking news from the world of signs regarding human nature and the male/female dynamic.

Is there a comma missing, I wonder? Is this not a third person sentence but rather a command, Men, checkout women?

I will let you know if my beautiful wife buys that.

I tend to start Christmas shopping very early; I have mentioned that, come Christmas day, I am often as surprised as my gift recipients because by the time Christmas rolls around, the Christmas gifts have been wrapped and stored for eight months, and I’ve forgotten what I got for everyone.

The last two years, though, I have had to open and occasionally re-gift things that I have bought for people who have died during the year.

Yesterday, as I was walking in a antique mall flea market, I thought, What if I pass away before Christmas, leaving my Christmas shopping half-done and with people wondering about how I prioritized them, with gifts for people with whom I haven’t spoken in years but not my immediate family?

Whether that thought was macabre or merely rationalizing more trips to antique malls and flea markets, I leave to you to decide.

This weekend, we stopped at Family Video. The stores are closing, and they are liquidating all their stock and fixtures. Everything must go. And the boys had fragmentary gift cards from Christmases past.

So once more, I browsed the remaining shelves of DVDs and Blu-Ray discs. I spotted a couple that I had previously rented. But the prices were not, in fact, desperate–the DVDs were $4.99, the prices they would have listed when the tried to sell the DVDs as they rotated them out. But I bought a stack anyway.

Because, gentle reader, this will likely be the last time I browse DVDs at a video rental store or any store for that matter.

I know, gentle reader, I suffer more last times for everything than actually occur (for example, the bottle of Mr. Bubble mentioned in The Future Forgotten Bottle of Mr. Bubble actually got used up, another secured, and that one used up, so there is currently no half-empty bottle of Mr. Bubble to be forgotten, but the bath toys are long gone now).

But the industry changes that killed Family Video–that studios are starting to bypass physical media for their own streaming services–will kill what remains of physical stock are in movie shops. I mean, I used to browse Best Buys on Friday nights to pick out a couple films to watch over the weekend, but when I was in Best Buy recently, I looked over their very thin movie section. I guess I could browse Vintage Stock/Entertainmart, but their videos tend to only show the spines, whereas the video store showed them face out. Maybe it’s a change in me as much as anything.

But, yeah, it’s probably the end of something I’ve done with increasing intermittency, for, what, thirty-five years?

Yeah, it’s been a maudlin weekend.

Although, given my pace for film watching these days, the six that I bought will last for four years or so.

From a story seen on Outkick, WILLIAM ZABKA’S TRAINER DISCUSSES TURNING ‘COBRA KAI’ STAR INTO FIGHTING MACHINE, we get this tidbit:

“By the end of the first season, I was as low as 176 pounds, eating around 1,700 calories each day,” Zabka told Men’s Health.

I remember one of the instructors at my martial arts school saying some years back that if he ate a cheeseburger, it really stuck to him.

Jeez, I cannot imagine living on 1700 calories a day. I eat that much at many meals.

Yeah, my drive for fitness ends on the other side of indulging in what I want to eat and drink and not worrying about it.

Sorry if this disappoints you, gentle reader, but I am not going to sacrifice my doughnuts for my film career.

Instead, I think I’ll hang out with the triathlon people, many of whom look like they’d better fit in a bowling league than in multisports. Kind of like I do.

As I mentioned, I gave my boys for Christmas pieces of paper that announce they are lords of Sealand and Scotland. What am I expecting in return? Well, this wouldn’t hurt: Inside the £18million mansion no one wants that takes 30 minutes to walk through:

An 18th Century mansion is up for sale at a guide price of £18m and is so big it takes 30 minutes to walk through.

The Irish estate includes part of ancient woodland and is made up of 1,050 acres.

The abbey was set up by a group of monks back in the mid-12th century, in Co Laois, and is the most expensive property publicly listed in the Republic of Ireland right now.

* * * *

The mansion was built by James Wyatt in 1773, and includes nine bedrooms, 10 bathrooms as well as 10 lodges and cottages on the grounds.

Abbey Leix comprises of 26,910 square feet of private estate, ancient woodland and even the country’s oldest oak tree.

The stunning country house is positioned within a private estate and frontage to the River Nore.

It takes a full half-hour to tour the three-storey mansion alone, and extra to walk around the immediate grounds.

The house is filled with classic Irish furniture an art, which some is available to acquire if new owners want to buy them.

Forget the furniture; what’s the serf tenant situation? Do I have people to work the land for me, or will I have to raid Scotland on my own?

Wait a minute:

The original library was replaced with the new state dining room but a smaller library remains in its place.

Well, never mind then. I’ll have to spend my thirty dollars somewhere else.

Wait a minute: I have just been handed a note. Apparently, the exchange rate is not $30 to £18,000,000. I must have confused it with Euros. Perhaps I should pay more attention to exchange rates before I direct my real estate professional to make an offer next time. It will prevent international incidents like that one in the future, and I might not get officially banned from St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in the future and being put on the Guinness No-Buy list. Consider this my mealy-worded apology that does not work anyway and only serves to make me look weak. Thank you, that is all.