Category: Life

So we attended an archery meet this weekend, and a kind of gawky looking kid came in, and I said to my beautiful wife, “I just walked in the door.”

This thought proved delightful not only to my wife, but also brought forth a belly laugh from the teacher whose son was shooting on the same lane as the lad.

I was a thin, gawky young man. Here I am at eighteen at my high school graduation party in May 1990.

I was only spared the heavy glasses because advances in contact lenses meant they could now (that being 1988 or so) correct severe astigmatism and because, for some reason, my sainted mother sprung for said contact lenses when I was in high school. We never were very flush with money, so I cannot ever understand why she sprung for them. Were they something I got in the summer when I went to my father’s home in Milwaukee and got all my dentistry and medical things taken care of under the aegis of his union benefits? That’s more likely.

At any rate, a commercial for Kia that aired during the Super Bowl features football player Josh Jacobs wondering what he would say to his younger self:

As this is a football player, the advice is to have faith in the football.

I expect my message to myself might be different.

Have faith, young man. Although you cannot put any weight on now no matter how much you exercise or how much protein powder you choke down, eventually you will be able to put on muscle if you want. In thirty years, you could go from an adult medium to a 2 XL, you can spend lots of time in a gym, and you can listen to heavy metal whilst doing so. Which could very well make you assume some of the characteristics of the very young people who torment you now.

You can marry a beautiful woman, have a couple of good kids, and pursue an interesting and lucrative and well paid career and yet be vaguely unsatisfied with it. You might spend much of your time restless, hoping for something better, kind of like you’re rushing through these teen years. Instead of focusing on tomorrow and the next best thing and growing up, you should spend today with your brother and your mother and your family because someday too soon they won’t be with you any more.

You know, I could give my younger self the same advice I give my contemporary self, and I’d probably heed it just as little.

Forget that other castle for sale.

I want this one instead:

A castle tucked away on 2,400 acres, visible to the outside world only from water or air, is on the market for $24.75 million — more than twice the asking price of any luxury property for sale in the St. Louis area.

It’s being touted as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to own a private estate that includes a furnished castle with a conference center and an 18-hole golf course, according to the listing by Cushman & Wakefield real estate firm.

Union Pacific has for more than 30 years owned the nine-bedroom, limestone mansion with a gun tower used in the Civil War. The railroad used it as a corporate retreat, but in 2018 decided to close it to cut costs.

I’ve read about this property from time to time in history books and whatnot, but I never thought I’d have the chance to own it.

Which depends upon me winning the lottery. But, still, like buying a lottery ticket gives you one chance where you had none without it, the property being for sale gives me a chance where I had none when it was not for sale.

Well, no, I guess I’ve always had the chance of societal breakdown leading me to becoming a regional warlord and using it as my headquarters. So maybe I have two chances now.

You can view the property listing here.

Spotted on a door of a shop on Historic Main Street in St. Charles:

Click for full size

An envelope taped to the shop door that says Confidential for Owner.

I cannot imagine what the envelope might contain. A note about the sale of the building with information about the new owner for the lessee? Information about the local protection racket and rates? A thank you card for a great gift purchased within?

Although it would have been very, very easy to have taken it and read it, I am not the owner, and I ain’t got no truck with no MacGuffin.

But taping something with that label to the door seems like an easy way to make sure that the confidential note does not get to the owner.

So on Christmas Eve, the oldest son and I had some time to kill. My beautiful wife and youngest son were playing trumpets for the service, so they had to go to church early to practice. As the oldest son was only the acolyte and I was but an attendee, we had an hour between our traditional early dinner out and that church service, so we stopped by the Barnes and Noble.

I picked up a Lee Child novel, as you know. I also picked up a couple magazines: 2600, a couple of writing magazines in case I have a New Year’s Resolution of writing more, and the latest copy of Metal Hammer magazine.

I mean, I’ll need something to read on the plane this summer. It’s not like I’ll dive right into it–I tend to pick up magazines and then get to them later. Sometimes much later.

When my wife and son returned home from the second evening service, I had pies in the oven and the magazines on the desk in the parlor. When my wife saw what I’d bought, she gave me a look.

Because, as I discovered the next morning, she’d been at Barnes and Noble herself that week and bought that very issue for me for Christmas.

Which left me with two copies. I had the receipts, so I could easily return one for the $15 (!), but instead, I chose to give it to one of the instructors at our martial arts school. This gentleman not only leads classes, but has been in charge of musical selections to listen to during the class. He has played Leo Moracchioli, for crying out loud. Although, strangely, he plays the hardest rock for the children’s classes, and we adults get 80s hits for some reason.

Hopefully, this issue will inspire him to put more Jinjer and Ghost on the playlist for us adults.

So I’m not going as far as saying metal is family, but he was pleased with it. Enough for two fist bumps. And in a later class, he chose me to help demonstrate a drill whereupon he punched me several times. So I have that going for me, which is nice.

I’m kidding a bit, but it was a nice thing to make an unexpected and unprompted gift. Off the schedule of the normal gifting holidays and whatnot. Perhaps I should make more of an effort to unexpectedly brighten other people’s days.

Well, it’s not to the actual people. It’s to the Kobe and Vanessa Bryant Foundation which:

The Kobe and Vanessa Bryant Foundation was founded in 2006, originally called the VIVO Foundation. The charity was created in an effort to financially support young people in “life-changing experiences designed to broaden their global perspectives,” according to the Foundation’s mission statement. Change lives it did- since it’s [sic] creation, the charity initiative also provided countless scholarships for minority college students and youth worldwide, as well as worked with the Make a Wish Foundation.

I am sure someone could count the actual scholarships, but that’s beyond modern journalism.

As far as donating, thanks, but I have my preferred and mostly local charities I support.

• Republic Pregnancy Resource Center
• People Helping People
• Convoy of Hope
• Salvation Army
• Feed My People
• Nurses for Newborns

Not all are local and not all are local to me now (Feed My People and Nurses for Newborns are in St. Louis, not far from places I’ve lived). I also support three or four Friends of the Library organizations, the Wilson’s Creek Battlefield Foundation, and the church, but I am leery of large national organizations and sports figures’ organization, and organizations with nebulous goals. I’m also not a fan of giving in response to a triggering event (a death, a disaster) but recognize they do prompt other people who don’t give as a matter of course.

That’s my charitable philosophy. Not that you asked. But I’m sure if you click one of those links above, you can find a way to give. If you are the sort you responds to a triggering event or blog post.

As I mentioned, this week marked a milestone in my life: I am older now than my father ever was. He died a month short of his 48th birthday, and it’s now less than a month until mine.

I would have preferred to pass this occasion in the peak of my manhood, but my current job and parenting schedule has limited my trips to the gym and martial arts school over the last year, and I don’t have any GAINZZZ nor MAINTAINZZZ THE ZZZZTATZZZ QUO to report. I think I’ve melted. And, to top it off, I am dealing with a sports injury that will require at the very least a trip to a specialist if not surgery to correct (or, perhaps, “Your insurance doesn’t cover it, so I can only prescribe that you stop martial arts, weightlifting, running, and triathlons, old boy.”).

You know, I sort of always think of him as older than I am. Middle-aged. But I guess that makes me middle-aged.

I cannot imagine him–my father, not my doctor–as an old man, though. I mean, there are a lot of older gentlemen at church, and I can’t even imagine my father at that age.

Also, a shout-out to Disabled American Veterans, who this week sent a donation solicitation addressed to my sainted mother.

Who passed away almost eleven years ago–the anniversary is creeping up on me–and never lived at Nogglestead. But keep trying, you algorithm-based mailing list builders.

So my oldest son played Destiny 2: Shadowkeep the other night and didn’t like it because it was too hard–which means different from the first person shooters he’s accustomed to.

As my beautiful wife and I ate dinner, I mentioned to her what he said, and then I thought of Shadow Chasers, a short-lived television series from the eighties that could have been a comedic blueprint for the more successful The X-Files.

I hadn’t thought of this show in years. But the Shadowkeep brought it to mind.

Almost as a non sequitur, my wife said, “In 2052, we’ll be eighty.”

It would almost be a non sequitur, and it might have seemed so to her, but I corrected her. “Shadowrun is set in 2050.”

Although she was not a big roleplaying gamer back in the day–or a television watcher who would have seen one of the eight episodes of Shadow Chasers that aired–our martial arts school is in Shadowood Plaza, and I have told her at least once that the name of the plaza reminds me of Shadowrun. Which I never played, by the way.

So we really hit for the cycle on geekery: Video games, esoteric television, role playing games, and martial arts based on the word “shadow.”

This is when middle age really starts to suck: study:

A new study confirms that middle age is unpleasant as hell, but there’s an exact moment where the malaise reaches its peak. Dartmouth College professor David Blanchflower was able to pinpoint that midlife torment reaches its crest at 47.2 years old.

The economic study, distributed Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research, used data across 132 countries, including 95 developing and 37 developed nations to determine the connection to well-being and age. The researchers concluded that every country has a U-shaped “happiness curve,” with the lowest point at 47.2 years old for developed countries, while a developing nation reaches its low point at 48.2 years old.

I’d have to say that my 47th year, which is ending soon, has not been the best or most satisfying one in my young life. If I believed in economic studies, I’d be encouraged.

Rather, I believe in myself. So I’m encouraged.

Patrice Lewis links to a Guardian story “Beat the Clock: The Surprising Psychology Behind Being Perpetually Late“, and she (Ms. Lewis) asks:

So what end of the spectrum do you hit? Are you early or late? And what’s your logic/reasoning/motive behind it?

I am on the early side. I think it’s because I don’t want to be rude and I don’t want to make a spectacle of myself coming in late and being unprepared for whatever.

I have a tendency to be really early, like being a half hour early to pick my boys up or drop them off. I used to be so early dropping my boys off to school that it became common to drive “around the block” a couple miles to kill some time until the school actually opened. And when going to job interviews, I’d end up being an hour early, find the company where I was to interview, and then drive twenty minutes down the road and twenty minutes back to be a little early.

The problem might have worsened when we moved to the Springfield area from the St. Louis area. In St. Louis, you might have to drive for forty-five minutes from one suburb to another for things and commute an hour. So I got used to that and built in some extra time, natch. But here in the Springfield area, you can go from our house outside the southwest corner of Springfield to ABC Books, all the way in the northwest corner of Springfield proper, in about twenty minutes. An hour’s drive will take you to another city (Joplin or Marshfield or Branson) past a lot of rural country. But I have tended to retain my sense that I need to leave an hour early to go downtown.

I am working on it, though. Just yesterday, I knew I had to pick up my boys at 5:30 and that it would take fifteen or twenty minutes to get to their school, and although I wanted to leave at 4:45, I waited until 5:00. And then grew anxious because I was afraid I’d be late.

So, nah, I’ll just give up on trying to be just on time. I mean, I know you’re supposed to get out of your comfort zone, but I think I’ll do it in other ways than taking a chance that I might, possibly, but not likely, be late.

So I have a cut on my head.

Clearly, I did not cut myself shaving as I am not shaving my head (yet). So, what happened, you ask?

Well, I got cut with a blade.

Sounds tough, ainna? Well, not really. It’s clearly not a knife wound.

An ice skate blade did this to me.

Well, no, I only wish it had happened doing something manly like hockey.

For ten years except for a couple of trips to the ice park (well, maybe only one), my beautiful wife has hung her ice skates on a nail in the garage, a nail on the front of the built-in shelving. The shelves feature many such nails, and we hang grill brushes, calendars, and at one time a thermometer from these nails. And her skates, ostensibly to protect the blades from the damage that would occur if we just tumbled them in a bin with other sporting goods.

So this weekend, when I was putting away some bottled water under the shelving, I stood up into the skates and nicked my head.

It’s not the first time.

So what makes this a very Brian J. injury? That I’ve not moved the skates to a nail in a more remote location in the garage. Partially this.

But, more to the point: I have engaged in a month- (soon to be months-) long project of cleaning up and organizing my garage, which involves sorting, packing, and donating various jetsam that has appeared in our garage. And, during the course of this re-organization, I discovered knit ice skate blade covers, and they made their way to a diminishing pile of things on the floor to deal with later.

So the very objects that would have protected my fragile gourd lie useless on the floor mere feet away whilst I cut myself on the ice skate blades. I worked around the ice skate blade covers during my working sessions and walked past them several times a day without taking a minute to actually put them on the ice skates.

I have done so now.

But it’s a very Brian J. thing to not do a little thing that eventually turns into a big thing. Or, in this case, a physical injury and perhaps a wicked scar whose origin I will hereafter obfuscate by saying, “I got cut,” and not want to talk about it.

Last night, we had severe thunderstorms, dime-sized hail, and a tornado warning. Today, it’s freezing rain changing over to snow.

Tomorrow: who knows?

I kind of miss living where winter is wintry. And the seasons are, for the most part, separate.

OregonMuse elevates a question from the comments on the stately, prestigious, internationally acclaimed and high-class Sunday Morning Book Thread at Ace of Spades HQ:

28 Mr. Muse: Have you ever been a fan of an author, then one day realize you are completely done with him/her? The first time this happened to me was Ludlum’s “Parsifal Mosaic”. The last 30 pages rendered the preceding 600 pages irrelevant. With Tom Clancy it was “Sum of All Fears”. After 150 pages the plot hadn’t yet started, but we got a lot of detail about Jack Ryan choosing his favorite wines. Boy did that need an editor. More recently I quit Harlan Coben when I got tired of reading the same story over and over. Also, once you realize he has zero wasted characters, you come to realize that the bait shop attendant (or who ever) briefly mentioned in passing will be a major character.

Posted by: Buck Throckmorton at December 22, 2019 09:21 AM (d9Cw3)

OM, who by the way is the Salesman of the Year whenever he mentions on of my books on the book thread, throws out Heinlein, almost. Commenters on the original thread mention Robert Ludlum, Tom Clancy, and Stephen King.

Although I have been known to abandon books (four in this decade alone), I don’t know that I have abandoned that many authors.

I mean, I can think of John Sandford, whom I last read in 2012 with the cri de coeur:

This book will probably be the last of the Sandford novels I read for a while. I’m tired of them. To recap, the progression kind of followed that of Robert B. Parker’s later work: I bought them new until I couldn’t take the thematic material stretching between the books, then I got them from the library not too long after their release, and then I got to getting them from the library sometime, maybe.

I might have done the same to Parker himself if he’d lived a couple more years. He was injecting politics more into his books as the twenty-first century wore on. He rather killed his characters’ ethos in Stranger in Paradise. Although I read several other books by him after that book, he really was on borrowed interest.

OregonMuse says he gives up on series, and when we’re talking about Parker, I might as well point out that I’m not even sure if there are further entries in Parker’s Spenserverse or Westerns that I’ve missed. I haven’t looked for them, I haven’t seen them in the book stores or on the tables at book sales. So I guess I have given up on them.

As to Clancy and King, I haven’t given up on them, per se. I still pick up their books from time to time and/or have a collection of them on the shelf, but I’m not in a hurry to read them. I haven’t even given up on The Dark Tower series even though I read The Drawing of the Three and thought it completely botched and subverted the first book (at least, I think that’s what I thought–it was twenty-five years ago).

I’ve also said that I’m putting Lee Child into a time out. Will that turn into a permanent giving up of? Perhaps. I guess time will tell.

Perhaps a better question is What writers can you read over and over again? which might be topic for a later post.

I saw these babies on a display at Walmart, and I had to have them.

I wrapped a model in the Pet Butler box for the older son and a Lego set in the My First Fire box for my younger.

Everyone thought they were gag gifts at the outset, but they quickly learned they were humorous. Although my youngest might have been disappointed, as he is the one who always volunteers to help me build a fire in the fireplace and who is often disappointed when I use a Duraflame log. I am not too concerned about it… yet.

So even though my Christmas present purchases were a little disappointing (to me at least) this year, at least the boxes amused my family.

I’ve been seeing New Year’s Eve abbreviated NYE on the Internet today, so I thought I’d stick some text on a picture of Bill Nye for humorous effect.

Time will tell if it makes people laugh or not.

As a reminder, you can continue to say “Happy Holidays” all year round as our calendar is quite choked with them.

So my beautiful wife gave me some Relics gift certificates for Christmas. Relics has gift certificates, not gift cards, and they do not offer cash back when you present a gift certificate, so if you don’t spend the entire amount of the certificate, the remaining balance is lost. To account for this, she gave me four certificates valued at $25 each. As I entered Relics, I thought about what I might buy for $100.

And I bought records.

I did not get $100 of records. I could have if I wanted; heaven knows some of the dealers are starting to mark up the records above ten or twenty dollars each. Fortunately, I don’t listen to that kind of crap.

Instead, I got:

• Una Noche en Villafontana by Jorge Ortega, Roberto Pérez Vázquez, and Arturo Romero
• It Looks Like Phoebe Snow by Phoebe Snow. Still no sight of the elusive self-titled debut album.
• Jacquet’s Got It by Illinois Jacquet and His Big Band.
• Live at the Whiskey A Go Go by Herbie Mann. Not listed on Discogs except as part of a compilation CD.
• Bird in a Silver Cage by Herbie Mann.
• Shandi by Shandi Sinnamon. I got her album Shandi Sinnamon in October.
• Lisa Dal Bello by Lisa Dal Bello. Latin pop from the 1970s with a Pretty Woman on the Cover (PWC).
• Carnaval by Spyro Gyra.
• Collaboration by George Benson and Earl Klugh. The most expensive record I bought at $4 before discounts.
• Gallant Men: Stories of the American Adventure Told By Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen. Apparently, I am a sucker for legislators on LP as I bought Robert Byrd’s fiddling album in October.
• The Cantebury Tales read in Middle English by J.B. Bessinger, Jr. I haven’t listened to the copy that I bought in October–many of those LPs got shelved without a listen to make room for the Christmas LPs–but this one has a better cover.
• Holiday Cheer by Dean Martin. Upon further review, this is the same tracks as Winter Romance.
• Apollonia 6 by Apollonia 6. The other female pop group created by Prince after the Vanity 6.
• Hideaway by David Sanborn. A promo copy not for sale. Mine isn’t, unlike the vendor who violated the letter and spirit of this law.
• Skyway by Skyy. On the cover, the eight person band wears matching track suits. So you know what you’re going to get: 70s Disco Funk.
• The Christmas Song by Lawrence Welk. Even though I didn’t get to listen to listen to Christmas records much this year, I did feel that my collection was growing a bit stale, so I added, I thought, two records today. Given that the Dean Martin is really just a duplicate, I have only added this one.
• Winner In You by Patti LaBelle.
• Patti LaBelle by Patti LaBelle.
• Stevie Wonder Presents Syreeta by Syreeta.
• Intimate Excitement by Vikki Carr.
• Now by Patrice Rushen. PWC, and further evidence that I have completely turned the corner into collecting 80s pop as long as it looks to have an R&B sensibility.

The total came to $47 and change, which was not quite two gift certificates. So I only used one certificate and paid for the rest.

Which means, essentially, that the Christmas gift is four guilt-free trips to Relics to buy records. Not that I felt guilty, well, too guilty when I found my way to Relics and then home with a dozen or so records.

At any rate, flipping though Discogs and eBay has shown me that I didn’t really overpay for these records, but I didn’t get any real steals, either. So long as I enjoy them from time to time and can organize them when I build more record storage.